"You"ve been lying here all day alone?"
"Bonny Page came in for a few minutes."
"Have you read?"
"No, I"ve been thinking."
"Thinking of what, sweetheart?"
"Oh, so many things. You"ve come up again, haven"t you, Ben, splendidly!
Luck is with you, the General says, and whatever you touch prospers."
"Yes, I"ve come up, but this is the crisis. If I slip now, if I make a false move, if I draw out, I"m as dead as a door-nail. But give me five or ten years of hard work and breathless thinking, and I"ll be as big a man as the General."
"As the General?" she repeated gently, and played with the petals of an American Beauty rose on the table beside her.
"As soon as I"m secure, as soon as I can slacken work a bit, I"m going to cut all this and take you away. We"ll have a second honeymoon when that time comes."
"In five or ten years?"
"Perhaps sooner. Meanwhile, isn"t there something that I can do for you?
Is there anything on G.o.d"s earth that you want? Would you like a string of pearls?"
She shook her head with a laugh. "No, I don"t want a string of pearls.
Is it time now to dress for dinner?"
"Would you mind if I didn"t change, dear? I"m so tired that I shall probably fall asleep over the dessert."
An evening or two later, when I came up after seven o"clock, I thought that she had been crying, and taking her in my arms, I pa.s.sionately kissed the tear marks away.
"There"s but one thing to do, Sally. You must go away. What do you say to Europe?"
"With you?"
"I wish to heaven it could be with me, but if I shirk this deal now, I"m done for, and if I stick it out, it may mean future millions. Why not ask Bessy Dandridge?"
"I don"t think I want to go with Bessy Dandridge."
Her tone troubled me, it was so gentle, so reserved, and walking to the window, I stood gazing out upon the April rain that dripped softly through the budding sycamores. I felt that I ought to go, and yet I knew that unless I gave up my career, it was out of the question. The railroad deal was, as I had said, very important, and if I were to withdraw from it now, it would probably collapse and bring down on me the odium of my a.s.sociates. After my desperate failure of less than five years ago, I was just recovering my ground, and the incidents of that disaster were still too recent to permit me to breathe freely. My name had suffered little because my personal tragedy had been regarded as a part of the general panic, and I had, in the words of George Bolingbroke, "gone to smashes with honour." Yet I was not secure now; I had not reached the top of the ladder, but was merely mounting. "It"s for Sally"s sake that I"m doing it," I said to myself, suddenly comforted by the reflection; "without Sally the whole thing might go to ruin and I wouldn"t hold up my hand. But I must make her proud of me. I must justify her choice in the eyes of her friends." And the balm of this thought seemed to lighten my weight of trouble and to appease my conscience. "It isn"t as if I were doing it for myself, or my own ambition. I am really doing it for her--everything is for her. If I can hold on now, in a few years I"ll give her millions to spend." Then I remembered that the last time I had gone motoring with her it had appeared to do her good, and that she had remarked she preferred a car with a red lining.
"I tell you what, sweetheart," I said, going back to her, "as I can"t take you away, I"ll buy you a new motor car with a red lining and I"ll take you out every blessed afternoon I can get off from the office.
You"ll like that, won"t you?" I asked eagerly.
"Yes, I"ll like that," she replied, with an effort at animation, while she bent her face over the rose in her hand.
A week later I bought the motor car, the handsomest I could find, with the softest red lining; and when May came, I went out with her whenever I could break away from my work. But the pressure was great, the General was failing and leaned on me, and I was over head and ears in a dozen outside schemes that needed only my amazing energy to push them to success. Never had my financial insight appeared so infallible, never had my "genius" for affairs shone so brilliantly. The years of poverty had increased, not dissipated, my influence, and I had come up all the stronger for the experience that had sent me down. The lesson that a weaker man might have succ.u.mbed beneath, I had absorbed into myself, and was now making use of as I had made use of every incident, bad or good, in my life. I pa.s.sed on, I acc.u.mulated, but I did not squander. Little things, as well as great things, served me for material, and during those first years of my recovery, I became by far the most brilliant figure in my world of finance. "Pile all the bu"sted stocks in the market on his shoulders, and he"ll still come out on top," chuckled the General. "The best thing that ever happened to you, Ben, barring the toting of potatoes, was the blow on the head that sent you under water.
A little fellow would have drowned, but you knew how to float."
"I"d agree with you about its being the best thing, except--except for Sally."
"What"s the matter with Sally? Is she going cracked? You know I always said she was the image of her aunt--Miss Matoaca Bland."
"She has never recovered. Her health seems to have given way."
"She needs coddling, that"s the manner of women and babies. Do you coddle her? It"s worth while, though some men don"t know how to do it.
Lord, Lord, I remember when my poor mother was on her death-bed and my father got on his knees and asked her if he"d been a good husband (she was his third wife and died of her tenth child), she looked at him with a kind of gentle resentment and replied: "You were a saint, I suppose, Samuel, but I"d rather have had a sinner that would have coddled me."
She was the prim, flat-bosomed type, too, just like Miss Mitty Bland, and my father said afterwards, crying like a baby, that he had so much respect for her he would as soon have thought of trying to coddle a Lombardy poplar. Poplar or mimosa tree, I tell you, they are all made that way, every last one of them--and nothing on earth made poor Miss Matoaca a fire-eater and a disturber of the peace except that she didn"t have a man to coddle her."
"I give Sally everything under heaven I can think of, but she doesn"t appear to want it."
"Keep on giving, it"s the only way. You"ll see her begin to pick up presently before you know it. They ain"t rational, my boy, that"s the whole truth about "em, they ain"t rational. If Miss Matoaca had belonged to a rational s.e.x, do you think she"d have killed herself trying to get on an equality with us? You can"t make a pullet into a rooster by teaching it to crow, as my old mammy used to say." For a minute he was silent, and appeared to be meditating. "I tell you what I"ll do, Ben,"
he said at last, with a flash of inspiration, "I"ll go in with you and see if I can"t cheer up Sally a bit."
When we reached my door, he let the reins fall over the back of his old horse, and getting out, hobbled, with my a.s.sistance, upstairs, and into Sally"s sitting-room, where we found George Bolingbroke, looking depressed and sullen.
She was charmingly dressed, as usual, and as the General entered, she came forward to meet him with the gracious manner which some one had told me was a part, not of her Bland, but of her Fairfax inheritance.
"That"s a pretty tea-gown you"ve got on," observed the great man, in the playful tone in which he might have remarked to a baby that it was wearing a beautiful bib. "You haven"t been paying much attention to fripperies of late, Ben tells me. Have you seen any hats? I don"t know anything better for a woman"s low spirits, my dear, than a trip to New York to buy a hat."
She laughed merrily, while her eyes met George Bolingbroke"s over the General"s head.
"I bought six hats last month," she replied.
"And you didn"t feel any better?"
"Not permanently. Then Ben got me a diamond bracelet." She held out her arm, with the bracelet on her wrist, which looked thin and transparent.
The General bent his bald head over the trinket, which he examined as attentively as if it had been a report of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad.
"Ben"s got good taste," he observed; "that"s a pretty bracelet."
"Yes, it"s a pretty bracelet."
"But that didn"t make you feel any brighter?"
"Oh, I"m well," she responded, laughing. "I"ve just been telling George I"m so well I"m going to a ball with him."
"To a ball," I said; "are you strong enough for that, Sally?"
"I"m quite strong, I"m well, I feel wildly gay."
"It"s the best thing for her," remarked the General. "Don"t stop her, Ben, let her go."
At dinner that night, in a gorgeous lace gown, with pearls on her throat and in her hair, she was cheerful, animated, almost, as she had said, wildly gay. When George came for her, I put her into the carriage.
"Are you all right?" I asked anxiously. "Are you sure you are strong enough, Sally?"
"Quite strong. What will you do, Ben?"
"I"ve got to work. There are some papers to draw up. Don"t let her stay late, George."