On a November evening, when we had been married several years, I came home after seven o"clock, and found Sally standing before the bureau while she fastened a bunch of violets to the bosom of her gown.
"I"m sorry I couldn"t get up earlier, but there"s a good deal of excitement over a failure in Wall Street," I said. "Are you going out?"
Her hands fell from her bosom, and as she turned toward me, I saw that she was dressed as though for a ball.
"Not to-night, Ben. I had an engagement, but I broke it because I wanted to spend the evening with you. I thought we might have a nice cosy time all by ourselves."
"What a shame, darling. I"ve promised Bradley I"d do a little work with him in my study. He"s coming at half-past eight and will probably keep me till midnight. I"ll have to hurry. Did you put on that gorgeous gown just for me?"
"Just for you." There was an expression on her face, half humorous, half resentful, that I had never seen there before. "What day is this, Ben?"
she asked, as I was about to enter my dressing-room.
"The nineteenth of November," I replied carelessly, looking back at her with my hand on the door.
"The nineteenth of November," she echoed slowly, as if saying the words to herself.
I was already on the threshold when light broke on me in a flash, and I turned, blind with remorse, and seized her in my arms.
"Sally, Sally, I am a brute!"
She laughed a little, drawing away, not coming closer.
"Ben, are you happy?"
"As happy as a king. I"ll telephone Bradley not to come."
"Is it important?"
"Yes, very important. That failure I told you of is a pretty serious matter."
"Then let him come. All days are the same, after all, when one comes to think of it."
Her hand went to the violets at her breast, and as my eyes followed it, a sudden intuitive dread entered my mind like an impulse of rage.
"I intended to send you flowers, Sally, but in the rush, I forgot. Whose are those you are wearing?"
She moved slightly, and the perfume of the violets floated from the cloud of lace on her bosom.
"George sent them," she answered quietly.
Before she spoke I had known it--the curse of my life was to be that George would always remember--and the intuitive dread I had felt changed, while I stood there, to the dull ache of remorse.
"Take them off, and I"ll get you others if there"s a shop open in the city," I said. Then, as she hesitated, wavering between doubt and surprise, I left the room, descended the steps with a rush, and picking up my hat, hurried in search of a belated florist who had not closed. At the corner a man, going out to dine, paused to fasten his overcoat under the electric light, which blazed fitfully in the wind; and as I approached and he looked up, I saw that it was George Bolingbroke.
"It"s time all sober married men were at home dressing for dinner," he observed in a whimsical tone.
The wind had brought a glow of colour into his face, and he looked very handsome as he stood there, in his fur-lined coat, under the blaze of light.
"I was kept late down town," I replied. "The General and I get all the hard knocks while you take it easy."
"Well, I like an easy world, and I believe your world is pretty much about what you make it. Where are you rushing? Do you go my way?"
"No, I"m turning off here. There"s something I forgot this morning and I came out to attend to it."
"Don"t fall into the habit of forgetting. It"s a bad one and it"s sure to grow on you--and whatever you forget," he added with a laugh as we parted, "don"t forget for a minute of your life that you"ve married Sally."
He pa.s.sed on, still laughing pleasantly, and quickening my steps, I went to the corner of Broad Street, where I found a florist"s shop still lighted and filled with customers. There were no violets left, and while I waited for a sheaf of pink roses, with my eyes on the elaborate funeral designs covering the counter, I heard a voice speaking in a low tone beyond a ma.s.s of flowering azalea beside which I stood.
"Yes, her mother married beneath her, also," it said; "that seems to be the unfortunate habit of the Blands."
I turned quickly, my face hot with anger, and as I did so my eyes met those of a dark, pale lady, through the thick rosy cl.u.s.ters of the azalea. When she recognised me, she flushed slightly, and then moving slowly around the big green tub that divided us, she held out her hand with a startled and birdlike flutter of manner.
"I missed you at the reception last night, Mr. Starr," she said; "Sally was there, and I had never seen her looking so handsome."
Then as the sheaf of roses was handed to me, she vanished behind the azaleas again, while I turned quickly away and carried my fragrant armful out into the night.
When I reached home, I was met on the staircase by Jessy, who ran, laughing, before me to Sally, with the remark that I had come back bringing an entire rose garden in my hands.
"There weren"t any violets left, darling," I said, as I entered and tossed the flowers on the couch, "and even these roses aren"t fresh."
"Well, they"re sweet anyway, poor things," she returned, gathering them into her lap, while her hands caressed the half-opened petals. "It was like you, Ben, when you did remember, to bring me the whole shopful."
Breaking one from the long stem, she fastened it in place of the violets in the cloud of lace on her bosom.
"Pink suits me better, after all," she remarked gayly; "and now you must let Bradley come, and Jessy and I will go to the theatre."
"I suppose he"ll have to come," I said moodily, "but I"ll be up earlier to-morrow, Sally, if I wreck the bank in order to do it."
All the next day I kept the importance of fulfilling this promise in my mind, and at five o"clock, I abruptly broke off a business appointment to rush breathlessly home in the hope of finding Sally ready to walk or to drive. As I turned the corner, however, I saw, to my disappointment, that several riding horses were waiting under the young maples beside the pavement, and when I entered the house, I heard the merry flutelike tones of Bonny Page from the long drawing-room, where Sally was serving tea.
For a minute the unconquerable shyness I always felt in the presence of women held me, rooted in silence, on the threshold. Then, "Is that you, Ben?" floated to me in Sally"s voice, and pushing the curtains aside, I entered the room and crossed to the little group gathered before the fire. In the midst of it, I saw the tall, almost boyish figure of Bonny Page, and the sight of her gallant air and her brilliant, vivacious smile aroused in me instantly the oppressive self-consciousness of our first meeting. I remembered suddenly that I had dressed carelessly in the morning, that I had tied my cravat in a hurry, that my coat fitted me badly and I had neglected to send it back. All the innumerable details of life--the little things I despised or overlooked--swarmed, like stinging gnats, into my thoughts while I stood there.
"You"re just in time for tea, Ben," said Sally; "it"s a pity you don"t drink it."
"And you"re just in time for a scolding," remarked Bonny. "Do you know, if I had a husband who wouldn"t ride with me, I"d gallop off the first time I went hunting with another man."
"You"d better start, Ben. It wouldn"t take you three days to follow Bonny over a gate," said Ned Marshall, one of her many lovers, eager, I detected at once, to appear intimate and friendly. He was a fine, strong, athletic young fellow, with a handsome, smooth-shaven face, a slightly vacant laugh, and a figure that showed superbly in his loose-fitting riding clothes.
"When I get the time, I"ll buy a horse and begin," I replied; "but all hours are working hours to me now, Sally will tell you."
"It"s exactly as if I"d married a railroad engine," remarked Sally, laughing, and I realised by the strained look in their faces, that this absorption in larger matters--this unchangeable habit of thought that I could not shake off even in a drawing-room--puzzled them, because of their inherent incapacity to understand how it could be. My mind, which responded so promptly to the need for greater exertions, was reduced to mere leaden weight by this restless movement of little things. And this leaden weight, this strained effort to become something other than I was by nature, was reflected in the smiling faces around me as in a mirror.
The embarra.s.sment in my thoughts extended suddenly to my body, and I asked myself the next minute if Sally contrasted my heavy silence with the blithe self-confidence and the sportive pleasantries of Ned Marshall? Was she beginning already, unconsciously to her own heart, perhaps, to question if the pa.s.sion I had given her would suffice to cover in her life the absence of the unspoken harmony in outward things?
With the question there rose before me the figure of George Bolingbroke, as he bent over and laid the blossom of sweet alyssum beside her plate; and, as at the instant in which I had watched him, I felt again the physical soreness which had become a part of my furious desire to make good my stand.
When Bonny and Ned Marshall had mounted and ridden happily away in the dusk, Sally came back with me from the door, and stood, silent and pensive, for a moment, while she stroked my arm.
"You look tired, Ben. If you only wouldn"t work so hard."
"I must work. It"s the only thing I"m good for."