"But you are ill, Sally. You are as pale as a ghost."
She shook her head impatiently, and I noticed that the furs she wore seemed to drag down her slender figure.
"The wind will bring back my colour. If I lie there and think all day, I shall go out of my mind." Her lips trembled and a quiver pa.s.sed through her face, but when I made a step toward her, she repulsed me with a gesture which, gentle as it was, appeared to place me at a measured distance. "I wish--oh, I wish Aunt Euphronasia wasn"t dead," she said in a whisper.
"If you go, may I go with you?" I asked.
For a minute she hesitated, then meeting my eyes with a glance in which I read for the first time since I had known her, a gentle aversion, a faint hostility, she answered quietly:--
"I am sorry, but I"ve just telephoned Bonny that I"d call for her."
The old bruise in my heart throbbed while I turned away; but the pain instead of melting my pride, only increased the terrible reticence which I wore now as an armour. Her face, above the heavy furs that seemed dragging her down, had in it something of the soft, uncompromising obstinacy of Miss Matoaca. So delicate she appeared that I could almost have broken her body in my grasp; yet I knew that she would not yield though I brought the full strength of my will to bear in the struggle.
In the old days, doubtless, Matoaca Bland, then in her pride and beauty, had faced the General with this same firmness which was as soft as velvet yet as inflexible as steel.
A few days after this, the great man, who had grown at last too feeble for an active part in "affairs," resigned the presidency of the South Midland, and retired, as he said, "to enjoy his second childhood."
"It"s about time for Theophilus to bring around his box of ants, I reckon," he observed, and added seriously after a moment, "Yes, there"s no use trying to prop up a fallen tree, Ben. I"ve had a long life and a good life, and I am willing to draw out. It"s a losing game any way you play it, when it comes to that. I"ve thought a lot about it, my boy, these last weeks, and I tell you the only thing that sticks by you to the last is the love of a woman. If you need a woman when you are young, you need her ten thousand times more when you"re old. If Miss Matoaca had married me, we"d both of us have been a long ways better off."
That night I told Sally of the resignation, and repeated to her a part of the conversation. The sentimental allusion to Miss Matoaca she treated with scorn, but after a few thoughtful moments she said:--
"You"ve always wanted to be president of the South Midland more than anything in the world?"
"More than anything in the world," I admitted absently.
"There"s a chance now?"
"Yes, I suppose there"s a chance now."
She said nothing more, but the next morning as I was getting into my overcoat, she sent me word that she wished to speak to me again before I went out.
"I"ll be up in a minute," I answered, and I had turned to follow the maid up the staircase, when a sharp ring at the telephone distracted my attention.
"Come down in five minutes if you can," said a voice. "You"re wanted badly about the B. and R. deal."
"Is your mistress ill?" I enquired, turning from the telephone to take up my overcoat.
"I think not, sir," replied the woman, "she is dressing."
"Then tell her I"m called away, but I will see her at luncheon," I answered hurriedly, as I rushed out.
Upon reaching my office, I found that my presence was required in Washington before two o"clock, and as I had not time to return home, I telephoned Sally for my bag, which she sent down to the station by Micah, the coachman.
"I hope to return early to-morrow," I said to the negro from the platform, as the train pulled out.
In my anxiety over the possible collapse of the important B. and R.
deal, the message that Sally had sent me that morning was crowded for several hours out of my thoughts. When I remembered it later in the afternoon, I sent her a telegram explaining my absence; and my conscience, which had troubled me for a moment, was appeased by this attention that would prove to her that even in the midst of my business worries I had not forgotten her. There was, indeed, I a.s.sured myself, no cause for the sudden throb of anxiety, almost of apprehension, I had felt at the recollection of the message that I had disregarded. She had looked stronger yesterday; I had commented at dinner on the fine flush in her cheeks; and the pain, which had caused me such sharp distress while it lasted, had vanished entirely for the last thirty-six hours.
Then the sound of her voice, with its note of appeal, of helplessness, of terror, when she had called upon George at the reception, returned to me as if it were spoken audibly somewhere in my brain. I saw her eyes, wide and bright, as they had been when they looked straight beyond me in search of help, and her slender, swaying figure in its gown of a pale sea-foam shade that was stained from bosom to hem with the red streak of the wine. "Yet there is nothing to worry about," I thought, annoyed because I could not put this anxiety, this apprehension, out of my mind.
"She is not ill. She is better. Only last night I heard her laughing as she has not done for weeks."
The afternoon was crowded with meetings, and it was three o"clock the next day when I reached home and asked eagerly for Sally as I went up the staircase. She had gone out, her maid informed me, but I would find a note she had left on my desk in the library. Turning hastily back, I took up the note from the silver blotter beneath which it was lying, and as I opened it, I saw that the address looked tremulous and uncertain, as if it had been written in haste or excitement.
"Dear Ben (it read), I have been in trouble, and as I do not wish to disturb you at this time, I am going away for a few days to think it over. I shall be at Riverview, the old place on James River where mamma and I used to stay--but go ahead with the South Midland, and don"t worry about me, it is all right.
"SALLY."
"I have been in trouble," I repeated slowly. "What trouble, and why should she keep it from me? Oh, because of the presidency of the South Midland! d.a.m.n the South Midland!" I said suddenly aloud. A time-table was on my desk, and looking into it, I found that a train left for Riverview in half an hour. I rang the bell and old Esdras appeared to announce luncheon.
"I want nothing to eat. Bring me a cup of coffee. I must catch a train in a few minutes."
"Fur de Lawd"s sake, Ma.r.s.e Ben," exclaimed the old negro, "you ain"
never gwineter res" at home agin."
Still grumbling he brought the coffee, and I was standing by the desk with the cup raised to my lips, when the front door opened and shut sharply, and the General came into the room, leaning upon two gold-headed walking-sticks. He looked old and tired, and more than ever, in his fur-lined overcoat, like a wounded eagle.
"Ben," he said, "what"s this Hatty tells me about George taking Sally out motoring with him yesterday, and not bringing her back? Has there been an accident?"
My arteries drummed in my ears, and for a minute the noise shut out all other sounds. Then I heard a carriage roll by in the street, and the faint regular ticking of the small clock on the mantel.
"Sally is at Riverview," I answered, "I am going down to her on the next train."
"Then where in the devil is George? He went off with her."
"George may be there, too. I hope he is. She needs somebody with her."
A purple flush rose to the General"s face, and the expression in his small, watery grey eyes held me speechless.
"Confound you, Ben!" he exclaimed, in a burst of temper, "do you mean to tell me you don"t know that George"s blamed foolishness is the talk of the town? Why, he hasn"t let Sally out of his sight for the last two years."
"No, I didn"t know it," I replied.
"Great Scott! Where are your wits?"
"In the stock market," I answered bitterly. Then something in me, out of the chaos and the darkness, rose suddenly, as if with wings, into the light. "Of course Sally is an angel, General, we both know that--but how she could have helped seeing that George is the better man of us, I don"t for a minute pretend to understand."
"Well, I never had much opinion of George," responded the General. "It always seemed to me that he ought to have made a great deal more of himself than he has done."
"What he has made of himself," I answered, and my voice sounded harsh in my ears, "is the man that Sally ought to have married."
I went out hurriedly, forgetting to a.s.sist him, and limping painfully, he followed me to the porch, and called after me as I ran down into the street. Looking back, as I turned the corner, I saw him getting with difficulty into his buggy, which waited beside the curbing, and it seemed to me that his great bulky figure, in his fur-lined overcoat, was unreal and intangible like the images that one sees in sleep.
The train was about to pull out as I entered the station, and swinging on to the rear coach, I settled myself into the first chair I came to, which happened to be directly behind the shining bald head and red neck of a man I knew. As I shrank back, he turned, caught sight of me, and held out his hand with an easy air of good-fellowship.
"So General Bolingbroke has retired from the South Midland and Atlantic Railroad, I hear," he remarked. "Well, there"s a big job waiting for somebody, but he"ll have to be a big man to fit it."
A sudden ridiculous annoyance took possession of me; the General, the South Midland Railroad, and the bald-headed man before me, all appeared to enter my consciousness like small, stinging gnats that swarmed about larger bodies. What was the railroad to me, if I had lost Sally? Had I lost her? Was it possible to win her again? "I am in trouble," the words whirled in my thoughts, "and as I do not wish to disturb you at this time, I have gone off for a few days to think it over." Was the trouble a.s.sociated with George Bolingbroke? Did she mind the gossip? Did she think I should mind it? Whatever it was, why didn"t she come to me and weep it out on my breast? "I didn"t want to disturb you at this time."
At this time? That was because of the South Midland and Atlantic Railroad. "d.a.m.n the South Midland and Atlantic Railroad!" I said again under my breath.
The red neck of the bald-headed man in front of me suddenly turned.