A MEETING IN THE ENCHANTED GARDEN
I spoke no word of love in that brisk walk up Franklin Street, and when
I remembered this a month afterwards, it seemed to me that I had let the
opportunity of a lifetime slip by. Since that afternoon I had not seen
Sally again--some fierce instinct held me back from entering the doors
that would have closed against me--and as the days passed, crowded with
work and cheered by the immediate success of the National Oil Company, I
felt that Miss Mitty and Miss Matoaca, and even Sally, whom I loved, had
faded out of the actual world into a vague cloud-like horizon. To women
it is given, I suppose, to merge the ideal into everyday life, but with
men it is different. I saw Sally still every minute that I lived, but I
saw her as a star, set high above the common business world in which I
had my place--above the strain and stress of the General's office, above
the rise and fall of the stock market, above the brisk triumphant war
with competitors for the National Oil Company, above even the hope of
the future presidency of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad.
Between my love and its fulfilment, stretched, I knew, hard years of
struggle, but bred in me, bone and structure, the instinct of democracy
was still strong enough to support me in the hour of defeat. Never
once--not even when I sat, condescendingly plied with coffee and
partridges, face to face with the wonder expressed in Miss Mitty's eyes,
had I admitted to myself that I was obliged to remain in the class from
which I had sprung. Courage I had never lost for an instant; the present
might embarrass me, but the future, I felt always, I held securely
grasped in my own hands. The birthright of a Republic was mine as well
as the General's, and I knew that among a free people it was the mettle
of the man that would count in the struggle. In the fight between
democratic ideals and Old World institutions I had no fear, even to-day,
of what the future would bring. The right of a man to make his own
standing was all that I asked.
And yet the long waiting! As I walked one Sunday afternoon over to
Church Hill, after a visit to Jessy (who was living now with a friend of
the doctor's), I asked myself again and again if Sally had read my heart
that last afternoon and had seen in it the reason of my fierce reserve.
Jessy had been affectionate and very pretty--she was a cold, small,
blond woman, with a perfect face and the manner of an indifferent
child--but she had been unable to wean me from the thought which
returned to take royal possession as soon as the high pressure of my
working day was relaxed. It controlled me utterly from the moment I put
the question of the stock market aside; and it was driving me now, like
the ghost of an unhappy lover, back for a passionate hour in the
enchanted garden.
The house was half closed when I reached it, though the open shutters to
the upper windows led me to believe that some of the rooms, at least,
were tenanted. When I entered the gate and passed the stuccoed wing to
the rear piazza, I saw that the terraces were blotted and ruined as if
an invading army had tramped over them. The magnolias and laburnums,
with the exception of a few lonely trees, had already fallen; the
latticed arbours were slowly rotting away; and several hardy
rose-bushes, blooming bravely in the overgrown squares, were the only
survivals of the summer splendour that I remembered. Turning out of the
path, I plucked one of these gallant roses, and found it pale and
sickly, with a November blight at the heart. Only the great elms still
arched their bared branches unchanged against a red sunset; and now as
then the small yellow leaves fluttered slowly down, like wounded
butterflies, to the narrow walks.
I had left the upper terrace and had descended the sunken green steps,
when the dry rustle of leaves in the path fell on my ears, and turning a
fallen summer house, I saw Sally approaching me through the broken maze
of the box. A colour flamed in her face, and pausing in the leaf-strewn
path, she looked up at me with shining and happy eyes.
"It has been so long since I saw you," she said, with her hand
outstretched.
I took her hand, and turning we moved down the walk while I still held
it in mine. Out of the blur of her figure, which swam in a mist, I saw
only her shining and happy eyes.
"It has been a thousand years," I answered, "but I knew that they would
pass."
"That they would pass?" she repeated.
"That they must pass. I have worked for that end every minute since I
saw you. I have loved you, as you surely know," I blurted out, "every
instant of my life, but I knew that I could offer you nothing until I
could offer you something worthy of your acceptance."
Reaching out her hand, which she had withdrawn from mine, she caught
several drifting elm leaves in her open palm.
"And what," she asked slowly, "do you consider to be worthy of my
acceptance?"
"A name," I answered, "that you would be proud to bear. Not only the
love of a man's soul and body, but the soul and body themselves after
they have been tried and tested. Wealth, I know, would not count with
you, and I believe, birth would not, even though you are a Bland--but I
must have wealth, I must have honour, so that at least you will not
appear to stoop. I must give you all that it lies in my power to
achieve, or I must give you nothing."
"Wealth! honour!" she said, with a little laugh, "O Ben Starr! Ben
Starr!"
"So that, at least, you will not appear to stoop," I repeated.
"I stoop to you?" she responded, and again she laughed.
"You know that I love you?" I asked.
"Yes," she replied, and lifted her eyes to mine, "I know that you love
me."
"Beyond love I have nothing at the moment."
A light wind swept the leaves from her hand, and blew the ends of her
white veil against my breast.
"And suppose," she demanded in a clear voice, "that love was all that I
wanted?"
Her lashes did not tremble; but in her eyes, in her parted red lips, and
in her whole swift and expectant figure, there was something noble and
free, as if she were swept forward by the radiant purpose which shone in
her look.
"Not my love--not yet--my darling," I said.
At the word her blush came.
"You say you have only yourself to give," she went on with an effort.
"Is it possible that in the future--in any future--you could have more
than yourself?"
"Not more love, Sally, not more love."
"Then more of what?"
"Of things that other men and women count worth the having!"
The sparkle returned to her eyes, and I watched the old childish
archness play in her face.
"Do I understand that you are proposing to other men and women or to me,
sir?" she enquired, above her muff, in the prim tone of Miss Mitty.
"To neither the one nor the other," I answered stubbornly, though I
longed to kiss the mockery away from her curving lips. "When the time
comes I shall return to you."
"And you are doing this for the sake of other people, not for me," she
said. "I suppose, indeed, that it's Aunt Mitty and Aunt Matoaca you are
putting before me. They would be flattered, I am sure, if they could
only know of it--but they can't. As a matter of fact, they also put
something before me, so I don't appear to come first with anybody. Aunt
Mitty prefers her pride and Aunt Matoaca prefers her principles, and you
prefer both--"
"I am only twenty-six," I returned. "In five years--in ten at most--I
shall be far in the race--"
"And quite out of breath with the running," she observed, "by the time
you turn and come back for me."
"I don't dare ask you to wait for me."
"As a matter of fact," she responded serenely, "I don't think I shall. I
could never endure waiting."
Her calmness was like a dash of cold water into my face.
"Don't laugh at me whatever you do," I implored.
"I'm not laughing--it's far too serious," she retorted. "That scheme of
yours," she flashed out suddenly, "is worthy of the great brain of the
General."
"Now I'll stand anything but that!" I replied, and turned squarely on
her; "Sally, do you love me?"
"Love a man who puts both his pride and his principles before me?"
"If you don't love me--and, of course you can't--why do you torment me?"
"It isn't torment, it's education. When next you start to propose to the
lady of your choice, don't begin by telling her you are lovesick for the
good opinion of her maiden aunts."
"Sally, Sally!" I cried joyfully. My hand went out to hers, and then as
she turned away--my arm was about her, and the little fur hat with the
bunch of violets was on my breast.
"O, Ben Starr, were you born blind?" she said with a sob.
"Sally, am I mad or do you love me?" I asked, and the next instant,
bending over as she looked up, I kissed her parted lips.
For a minute she was silent, as if my kiss had drawn her strength
through her tremulous red mouth. Her body quivered and seemed to melt in
my arms--and then with a happy laugh, she yielded herself to my embrace.
"A little of both, Ben," she answered, "you are mad, I suppose, and so
am I--and I love you."
"But how could you? When did you begin?"
"I could because I would, and there was no beginning. I was born that
way."
"You meant you have cared for me, as I have for you--always?"
"Not always, perhaps--but--well, it started in the churchyard, I think,
when I gave you Samuel. Then when I met you again it might have been
just the way you look--for oh, Ben, did you ever discover that you are
splendid to look at?"
"A magnificent animal," I retorted.
She blushed, recognising the phrase. "To tell the truth, though, it
wasn't the way you look," she went on impulsively, "it was, I think,--I
am quite sure,--the time you pushed that wheel up the hill. I adored
you, Ben, at that moment. If you'd asked me to marry you on the spot I'd
have responded, 'Yes, thank you, sir,' as one of my great-grandmothers
did at the altar."
"And to think I didn't even know you were there. I'd forgotten it, but I
remember now the General told me I made a spectacle of myself."
"Well, I always liked a spectacle, it's in my blood. I like a man, too,
who does things as if he didn't care whether anybody was looking at him
or not--and that's you, Ben."
"It's not my business to shatter your ideals," I answered, and the next
minute, "O Sally, how is it to end?"
"That depends, doesn't it," she asked, "whether you want to marry me or
my maiden aunts?"
"Do you mean that you will marry me?"
"I mean, Ben, that if you aren't so obliging as to marry me, I'll pine
away and die a lovelorn death."
"Be serious, Sally."
"Could anything on earth be more serious than a lovelorn death?"
I would have caught her back to my breast, but eluding my arms, she
stood poised like the fleeting-spirit of gaiety in the little path.
"Will you promise to marry me, Ben Starr?" she asked.
"I'll promise anything on earth," I answered.
"Not to talk any more about my stooping to a giant?"
"I won't talk about it, darling, I'll let you do it."
"And if you're poor you'll let me be poor too? And if you're rich you'll
give me a share of the money?"
"Both--all."
"And you'll make a sacrifice for me--as the General said George
wouldn't--whenever I happen particularly to want one?"
"A million of them--anything, everything."
She came a step nearer, and raised her smiling lips to mine.
"Anything--everything, Ben, together," she said.
Presently we walked back slowly, hand in hand, through the maze of box.
"Will you tell your aunts, or shall I, Sally?" I asked.
"We'll go to them together."
"Now, at this instant?"
"Now--at this instant," she agreed, "but I thought you were so patient?"
"Patient? I'm as patient as an engine on the Great South Midland."
"A minute ago you were prepared to wait ten years."
"Oh, ten years!" I echoed, as I followed her out of the enchanted
garden.
At the corner the surrey was standing, and the face of old Shadrach, the
negro driver, stared back at me, transfixed with amazement.
"Whar you gwine now, Miss Sally?" he demanded defiantly of his young
mistress, as I took my place under the fur rug beside her.
"Home, Uncle Shadrach," she replied.
"Ain't I gwine drap de gent'man some whar on de way up?"
"No, Uncle Shadrach, home,"--and for home we started merrily with a
flick of the whip over the backs of the greys.
Sitting beside her for the first time in my life, I was conscious, as we
drove through the familiar streets, only of an acute physical delight in
her presence. As she turned toward me, her breath fanned my cheek, the
touch of her arm on mine was a rapture, and when the edge of her white
veil was blown into my face, I felt my blood rush to meet it. Never
before had I been so confident, so strong, so assured of the future. Not
the future alone, but the whole universe seemed to lie in the closed
palm of my hand. I knew that I was plain, that I was rough beside the
velvet softness of the woman who had promised to share my life; but this
plainness, this roughness, no longer troubled me since she had found in
it something of the power that had drawn her to me. My awkwardness had
dropped from me in the revelation of my strength which she had brought.
The odour of burning leaves floated up from the street, and I saw again
her red shoes dancing over the sunken graves in the churchyard. Oh,
those red shoes had danced into my life and would stay there forever!