IN WHICH I GROW UP
In my eighteenth year, when I had achieved a position and a salary in
the tobacco factory, I left the Old Market forever, and moved into a
room, which Mrs. Clay had offered to rent to me, in the house of Dr.
Theophilus. During the next twelve months my intimacy with young George,
who was about to enter the University, led to an acquaintance, though a
slight one, with that great man, the General. As the years passed my
dream of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad, instead of
evaporating, had become fixed in my mind as the fruition of all my toil,
the end of all my ambition. I saw in it still, as I had seen in it that
afternoon against the rosy sunset and the anchored vessel, the one
glorious possibility, the great adventure. The General's plethoric
figure, with his big paunch and his gouty toe, had never lost in my eyes
the legendary light in which I had enveloped it; and when George
suggested to me carelessly one spring afternoon that I should stop by
his house and have a look at his uncle's classical library, I felt my
cheeks burn, while my heart beat an excited tattoo against my ribs. The
house I knew by sight, a grave, low-browed mansion, with a fringe of
purple wistaria draping the long porch; and it was under a pendulous
shower of blossoms that we found the General seated with the evening
newspaper in his hand and his bandaged foot on a wicker stool. As we
entered the gate he was making a face over a glass of water, while he
complained fretfully to Dr. Theophilus, who sat in a rocking-chair, with
Robin, the pointer, stretched on a rug at his feet.
"I'll never get used to the taste of water, if I live to be a hundred,"
the great man was saying peevishly. "To save my soul I can't understand
why the Lord made anything so darn flat!"
A single lock of hair, growing just above the bald spot on his head,
stirred in the soft wind like a tuft of bleached grass, while his lower,
slightly protruding lip pursed itself into an angry and childish
expression. He was paying the inevitable price, I gathered, for his
career as "a gay old bird"; but even in the rebuking glance which Dr.
Theophilus now bent upon him, I read the recognition that the president
of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad must be dosed more
sparingly than other men. Under his loose, puffy chin he wore a loose,
puffy tie of a magenta shade, in the midst of which a single black pearl
reposed; and when he turned his head, the creases in his neck looked
like white cords sunk deep in the scarlet flesh.
"There's no use, Theophilus, I can't stand it," he protested. "Delilah,
bring me a sip of whiskey to put a taste in my mouth."
"No whiskey, Delilah, not a drop," commanded the doctor sternly. "It's
the result of your own imprudence, George, and you've got to pay for it.
You've been eating strawberries, and I told you not to touch one with a
ten-foot pole."
"You didn't say a word about strawberry shortcake," rejoined the
General, like a guilty child, "and this attack is due to an entirely
different cause. I dined at the Blands' on Sunday, and Miss Mitty gave
me mint sauce on my lamb. I never could abide mint sauce."
Taking out his prescription book the doctor wrote down a prescription in
a single word, which looked ominously like "calomel" from a distance.
"How did Miss Matoaca seem?" he asked, while Robin, the old pointer,
came and sniffed at my ankles, and I thought of Samuel, sleeping under a
flower bed in the doctor's garden. "She has a touch of malaria, and I
ordered her three grains of quinine every morning."
A purple flush mounted to the General's face, which, if I could have
read it by the light of history, would have explained the scornful
flattery in his attitude toward "the sex." It was easy to catch the
personal note in his piquant allusions to "the ladies," though an
instinct, which he would probably have called a principle, kept them
always within the bounds of politeness. Later I was to learn that Miss
Matoaca had been the most ardent, if by no means the only, romance of
his youth; and that because of some headstrong and indelicate opinions
of hers on the subject of masculine morals, she had, when confronted
with tangible proofs of the General's airy wanderings, hopelessly
severed the engagement within a few weeks of the marriage. To a gay
young bird the prospect of a storm in a nest had been far from
attractive; and after a fierce quarrel, he had started dizzily down the
descent of his bachelorhood, while she had folded her trembling wings
and retired into the shadow. That Miss Matoaca possessed "headstrong
opinions," even the doctor, with all his gallantry, would have been the
last to deny. "She seems to think men are made just like women," he
remarked now, wonderingly, "but, oh, Lord, they ain't!"
"I tell you it's those outlandish heathen notions of hers that are
driving us all crazy!" exclaimed the General, making a face as he had
done over his glass of water. "Talks about taxes without representation
exactly as if she were a man and had rights! What rights does a woman
want, anyway, I'd like to know, except the right to a husband? They all
ought to have husbands--God knows I'm not denying them that!--the state
ought to see to it. But rights! Pshaw! They'll get so presently they
won't know how to bear their wrongs with dignity. And I tell you,
doctor, if there's a more edifying sight than a woman bearing her wrongs
beautifully, I've never seen it. Why, I remember my Cousin Jenny
Tyler--you know she married that scamp who used to drink and throw his
boots at her. 'What do you do, Jenny?' I asked, in a boiling rage, when
she told me, and I never saw a woman look more like an angel than she
did when she answered, 'I pick them up.' Why, she made me cry, sir;
that's the sort of woman that makes a man want to marry."
"I dare say you're right," sighed the doctor, "but Miss Matoaca is made,
of a different stuff. I can't imagine her picking up any man's boots,
George."
"No more can I," retorted the General, "it serves her right that she
never got a husband. No gentleman wants to throw his boots at his wife,
but, by Jove, he likes to feel that if he were ever to do such a thing,
she'd be the kind that would pick them up. He doesn't want to think
everlastingly that he's got to walk a chalk-line or catch a flea in his
ear. Now, what do you suppose Miss Matoaca said to me on Sunday? We were
talking of Tom Frost's running for governor, and she said she hoped he
wouldn't be elected because he led an impure life. An impure life! Will
you tell me what business it is of an unmarried lady's whether a man
leads an impure life or not? It isn't ladylike--I'll be damned if it is!
I could see that Miss Mitty blushed for her. What's the world coming to,
I ask, when a maiden lady isn't ashamed to know that a man leads an
impure life?"
He raged softly, and I could see that Dr. Theophilus was growing sterner
over his flippancy.
"Well, you're a gay old bird, George," he remarked, "and I dare say you
think me something of a prude."
Tearing off a leaf from his prescription book, he laid it on the table,
and held out his hand. Then he stood for a minute with his eyes on
Robin, who was marching stiffly round a bed of red geraniums near the
gate. "It's time to go," he added; "that old dog of mine is getting
ready to root up your geraniums."
"You'd better keep a cat," observed the General, "they do less damage."
Young George and I, who had stood in the shadow of the wistaria awaiting
the doctor's departure, came forward now, and I made my awkward bow to
the General's bandaged foot.
"Any relative of Jack Starr?" he enquired affably as he shook my hand.
I towered so conspicuously above him, while I stood there with my hat in
my hand, that I was for a moment embarrassed by my mere physical
advantages.
"No, sir, not that I ever heard of," I answered.
"Then you ought to be thankful," he returned peevishly, "for the first
time I ever met the fellow he deliberately trod on my toe--deliberately,
sir. And now they're wanting to nominate him for governor--but I say
they shan't do it. I've no idea of allowing it. It's utterly out of the
question."
"Uncle George, I've brought Ben to see your library," interrupted young
George at my elbow.
"Library, eh? Are you going to be a lawyer?" demanded the General.
I shook my head.
"A preacher?" in a more reverent voice.
"No, sir, I'm in the Old Dominion Tobacco Works. You got me my first
job."
"I got you your job--did I? Then you're the young chap that discovered
that blend for smoking. I told Bob you ought to have a royalty on that.
Did he give it to you?"
"I'm to have ten per cent of the sales, sir. They've just begun."
"Well, hold on to it--it's a good blend. I tried it. And when you get
your ten per cent, put it into the Old South Chemical Company, if you
want to grow rich. It isn't everybody I'd give that tip to, but I like
the looks of you. How tall are you?"
"Six feet one in my stockings."
"Well, I wouldn't grow any more. You're all right, if you can only
manage to keep your hands and feet down. You've got good eyes and a good
jaw, and it's the jaw that tells the man. Now, that's the trouble with
that Jack Starr they want to nominate for governor. He lacks jaw. 'You
can't make a governor out of a fellow who hasn't jaw,' that's what I
said. And besides, he deliberately trod on my toe the first time I ever
met him. Didn't know it was gouty, eh? What right has he got, I asked,
to suppose that any gentleman's toe isn't gouty?"
His lower lip protruded angrily, and he sat staring into his glass of
water with an enquiring and sulky look. It is no small tribute to my
capacity for hero-worship to say that it survived even this nearer
approach to the gouty presence of my divinity. But the glamour of
success--the only glamour that shines without borrowed light in the
hard, dry atmosphere of the workaday world--still hung around him; and
his very dissipations--yes, even his fleshly frailties--reflected, for
the moment at least, a romantic interest. I began to wonder if certain
moral weaknesses were, indeed, the inevitable attributes of the great
man, and there shot into my mind, with a youthful folly of regret, the
memory of a drink I had declined that morning, and of a pretty maiden at
the Old Market whom I might have kissed and did not. Was the doctor's
teaching wrong, after all, and had his virtues made him a failure in
life, while the General's vices had but helped him to his success? I was
very young, and I had not yet reached the age when I could perceive the
expediency of the path of virtue unless in the end it bordered on
pleasant places. "The General is a bigger man than the doctor," I
thought, half angrily, "and yet the General will be a gay old bird as
long as the gout permits him to hobble." And it seemed to me suddenly
that the moral order, on which the doctor loved to dilate, had gone
topsy-turvy while I stood on the General's porch. As if reading my
thoughts the great man looked up at me, with his roguish twinkle.
"Now there's Theophilus!" he observed. "Whatever you are, sir, don't be
a damned mollycoddle."
Young George, plucking persistently at my sleeve, drew me at last out of
the presence and into the house, where I smelt the fragrance of
strawberries, freshly gathered.
"Here're the books," said George, leading me to the door of a long room,
filled with rosewood bookcases and family portraits of departed
Bolingbrokes. Then as I was about to cross the threshold, the sound of a
bright voice speaking to the General on the porch caused me to stop
short, and stand holding my breath in the hall.
"Good afternoon, General! You look as if you needed exercise."
"Exercise, indeed! Do you take me for your age, you minx?"
"Oh, come, General! You aren't old--you're lazy."
By this time George and I had edged nearer the porch, and even before he
breathed her name in a whisper, I knew in the instant that her sparkling
glance ran over me, that she was my little girl of the red shoes just
budding into womanhood. She was standing in a square patch of sunlight,
midway between the steps and a bed of red geraniums near the gate, and
her dress of some thin white material was blown closely against the
curves of her bosom and her rounded hips. Over her broad white forehead,
with its heavily arched black eyebrows, the mass of her pale brown hair
spread in the strong breeze and stood out like the wings of a bird in
flight, and this gave her whole, finely poised figure a swift and
expectant look, as of one who is swept forward by some radiant impulse.
Her face, too, had this same ardent expression; I saw it in her eyes,
which fixed me the next moment with her starry and friendly gaze; in her
very full red lips that broke the pure outline of her features; and in
her strong, square chin held always a little upward with a proud and
impatient carriage. So vivid was my first glimpse of her, that for a
single instant I wondered if the radiance in her figure was not produced
by some fleeting accident of light and shadow. When I knew her better I
learned that this quality of brightness belonged neither to the mind nor
to an edge of light, but to the face itself--to some peculiar mingling
of clear grey with intense darkness in her brow and eyes.
As she stood there chatting gayly with the General, young George eyed
her from the darkened hall with a glance in which I read, when I turned
to him, a touch of his uncle's playful masculine superiority.
"She'll be a stunner, if she doesn't get too big," he observed. "I don't
like big girls--do you?"
Then as I made no rejoinder, he added after a moment, "Do you think her
mouth spoils her? Aunt Hatty calls her mouth coarse."
"Coarse?" I echoed angrily. "What does she mean by coarse?"
"Oh, too red and too full. She says a lady's mouth ought to be a
delicate bow."
"I never saw a delicate bow--"
"No more did I--but I'd call Sally a regular stunner now, mouth and all.
Sally!" he broke out suddenly, and stepped out on the porch. "I'll go
riding with you some day," he said, "if you want me."
She laughed up at him. "But I don't want you."
"You wanted me bad enough a year ago."
"That was a year ago."
Running hurriedly down the steps, he stood talking to her beside the bed
of scarlet geraniums, while I felt a burning embarrassment pervade my
body to the very palms of my hands.
"Where's the other fellow, George?" called the General, suddenly.
"What's become of him?"
As he turned his head in my direction, I left the hall, and came out
upon the porch, acutely conscious, all the time, that there was too much
of me, that my hands and feet got in my way, that I ought to have put on
a different shirt in the afternoon.
Sally was stooping over to snip off the head of a geranium, and when she
looked up the next instant, with her hair blown back from her forehead,
her starry, expectant gaze rested full on my own.
"Why, it's the boy I used to know," she exclaimed, moving toward me.
"Boy, how do you do?" She put out her hand, and as I took it in mine, I
saw for the first time that she was a large girl for her age, and would
be a large woman. Her figure was already ripening under her thin white
gown, but her hands and feet were still those of a child, and moulded, I
saw, with that peculiar delicacy, which, I had learned from the doctor,
was the distinguishing characteristic of the Virginian aristocracy.
"It is a long time since--since I saw you," she remarked in a cordial
voice.
"It's been eight years," I answered. "I wonder that you remember me."
"Oh, I never forget. And besides, if I didn't see you for eight years
more, I should still recognise you by your eyes. There aren't many
boys," she said merrily, "who have eyes like a blue-eyed collie's."
With this she turned from me to George, and after a word or two to the
General, and a nod in my direction, they passed through the gate, and
went slowly along the street, her pale brown hair still blown like a
bird's wing behind her.
The General's sister, young George's Aunt Hatty, a severe little lady,
with a very flat figure, had come out on the porch, and was offering her
brother a dose of medicine.
"A good girl, Hatty," remarked the great man, in an affable mood. "A
little too much of her Aunt Matoaca's spirit for a wife, but a very good
girl, as long as you ain't married to her."
"She would be handsome, George, except for her mouth. It's a pity her
mouth spoils her."
"What's the matter with her mouth? I haven't got your eyesight, Hatty,
but it appears a perfectly good mouth to me."
"That's because you have naturally coarse tastes, George. A lady's mouth
should be a delicate bow."
A delicate bow, indeed! Those full, sensitive lips that showed like a
splash of carmine in the clear pallor of her face! As I walked home
under the broad, green leaves of the sycamores, I remembered the
features of the pretty maiden at the Old Market, and they appeared to me
suddenly divested of all beauty. It was as if a bright beam of sunshine
had fallen on a blaze of artificial light, and extinguished it forever.
Henceforth I should move straight toward a single love, as I had already
begun to move straight toward a single ambition.