IN WHICH MY FORTUNES RISE
The winter began with a heavy snow-storm and ended in a long April rain,
and in all those swiftly moving months I had seen Sally barely a dozen
times. Not only my pride, but Miss Mitty's rigid commands had kept me
from her house, and the girl had promised that for the first six months
she would not meet me except by chance.
"In the spring--oh, in the spring," she wrote, "I shall be free. My
promise was given and I could not recall it, but I believe now that it
was pride, not love, that made them exact it. Do you know, I sometimes
think that they do not love me at all. They have both told me that they
would rather see me dead than married, as they call it, beneath me.
Beneath me, indeed! Ah, dearest, dearest, how can one lower one's self
to a giant? When I think of all that you are, of all that you have made
yourself, I feel so humble and proud. The truth is, Ben, I'm not
suffering half so much from love as I am from indignation. If it keeps
up, some day I'll burst out like Aunt Matoaca, for I've got it in me.
And she of all people! Why, she goes about in her meek, sanctified
manner distributing pamphlets on the emancipation of woman, and yet she
actually told me the other day that, of course, she would prefer to have
only 'ladies' permitted to vote. 'In that case, however,' she added, 'I
should desire to restrict the franchise to gentlemen, also.' Did you
ever in your whole life hear of anything so absurd, and she really meant
it. She's a martyr, and filled with a holy zeal to get burned or racked.
But it's awful, every bit of it. Oh, lift me up, Ben! Lift me up!" And
in a postscript, "What does the General say to you? Aunt Mitty has told
the General."
The General had said nothing to me, but when I drove him up from his
office the next day, he invited me to dine with him, and talked
incessantly through the three simple courses about the prospects of the
National Oil Company.
"So you're sweeping the whole South?" he said.
"Yes, Sam has made a big thing of it. We've knocked out everybody else
in the oil business in this part of the world."
"Mark my word, then, you've been cutting into the interest of the oil
trust, and it will come along presently and try to knock you out. When
it does, Ben, make it pay, make it pay."
"Oh, I'll make it pay," I answered. "The consolidated interests may
sweep out the independent companies, but they can't overturn the Great
South Midland and Atlantic Railroad."
"It's the road, of course, that has made such a success possible."
"Yes, it's the road--everything is the road, General."
"And to think that when I got control of it, it was bankrupt."
Rising from the table he took my arm, and limped painfully into his
study, where he lit a cigar and sank back in his easy chair.
"Look here, Ben," he began suddenly, with a change of tone, "what's this
trouble brewing between you and Miss Mitty Bland?"
"There's no trouble, sir, except that her niece has promised to marry
me."
"Promised to marry you, eh? Sally Mickleborough? Are you sure it's Sally
Mickleborough?"
"I'm hardly likely to be mistaken, General, about the identity of my
future wife."
"No, I suppose you ain't," he admitted, "but, good Lord, Ben, how did
you make her do it?"
"I didn't make her. She was good enough to do it of her own accord."
"So she did it of her own accord? Well, confound you, boy, how did it
ever occur to you to ask her?"
"That's what I can't answer, General, I don't believe it ever occurred
to me any more than it occurred to me to fall in love with her."
"You've fallen in love with Sally Mickleborough, Miss Matoaca's niece.
She refused George, you know?"
I replied that I didn't know it, but I never supposed that she would
engage herself to two men at the same time.
"And she's seriously engaged to you?" he demanded, still unconvinced.
"Are you precious sure she isn't flirting? Girls will flirt, and I don't
reckon you've had much experience of 'em. Why, even Miss Mitty was known
to flirt in a prim, stiff-necked fashion in her time, and as for Sarah
Bland, they say she promised to marry a whole regiment before the battle
of Seven Pines. A little warning beforehand ain't going to do any harm,
Ben."
"I'm much obliged to you, General, but I don't think in this case it's
needed. Sally is staunch and true."
"Sally? Do you call her 'Sally'? It used to be the custom to address the
lady you were engaged to as 'Miss Sally' up to the day of the marriage."
I laughed and shook my head. "Oh, we move fast!"
"Yes, I'm an old man," he admitted sadly, "and I was brought up in a
different civilisation. It's funny, my boy, how many customs were swept
away with the institution of slavery."
"There'd have been little room for me in those days."
"Oh, you'd have got into some places quick enough, but you'd never have
crossed the Blands' threshold when they lived down on James River. There
isn't much of that nonsense left now, but Miss Mitty has got it and
Theophilus has got it; and, when all's said, they, might have something
considerably worse. Why, look at Miss Matoaca. When I first saw her
you'd never have imagined there was an idea inside her head."
"I can understand that she must have been very pretty."
"Pretty? She was as beautiful as an angel. And to think of her
distributing those damned woman's rights pamphlets! She left one on my
desk," he added, sticking out his lower lip like a crying child, and
wiping his bloodshot eyes on the hem of his silk handkerchief. "I tell
you if she'd had a husband this would never have happened."
"We can't tell--it might have been worse, if she believes it."
"Believes what, sir?" gasped the great man, enraged. "Believes that
outlandish Yankee twaddle about a woman wanting any rights except the
right to a husband! Do you think she'd be running round loose in this
crackbrained way if she had a home she could stay in and a husband she
could slave over? I tell you there's not a woman alive that ain't
happier with a bad husband than with none at all."
"That's a comfortable view, at any rate."
"View? It's not a view, it's a fact--and what business has a lady got
with a view anyway? If Miss Matoaca hadn't got hold of those heathenish
views, she'd be a happy wife and mother this very minute."
"Does it follow, General, that she would have been a happy one?" I asked
a little unfairly.
"Of course it follows. Isn't every wife and mother happy? What more does
she want unless she's a Yankee Abolitionist?"
"Who's a Yankee?" enquired young George, in his amiable voice from the
hall. "I'm surprised to hear you calling names when the war is over,
sir."
"I wasn't calling names, George. I was just saying that Miss Matoaca
Bland was a Yankee. Did you ever hear of a Virginia lady who wasn't
content to be what the Lord and the men intended her?"
"No, sir, I never did--but it seems to me that Miss Matoaca has managed
to secure a greater share of your attention than the more amenable
Virginia ladies."
"Well, isn't it a sad enough sight to see any lady going cracked?"
retorted the General, hotly; "do you know, George, that Sally
Mickleborough--he says he's sure it's Sally Mickleborough--has promised
to marry Ben Starr?"
"Oh, it's Sally all right," responded George, "she has just told me."
He came over and held out his hand, smiling pleasantly, though there was
a hurt look in his eyes.
"I congratulate you, Ben," he observed in his easy, good-natured way,
"the best man comes in ahead."
His face wore the frown, not from temper, but from pain, that I had seen
on it at the club when his favourite hunter had dropped dead, and he had
tried to appear indifferent. He was a superb horseman, a typical man
about town, a bit of a sport, also, as Dr. Theophilus said. I knew he
loved Sally, just as I had known he loved his hunter, by a sympathetic
reading of his character rather than by any expression of regret on his
long, highly coloured, slightly wooden countenance, with its set mouth
over which drooped a mustache so carefully trimmed that it looked almost
as if it were glued on his upper lip.
"By the way, uncle, have you heard the last news?" he asked, "Barclay is
buying all the A. P. & C. Stock he can lay hands on. It's selling at--"
"Hello! What's that? Barclay, did you say? I knew it was coming, and
that he'd spring it. Here, Hatty, give me my cape, I'm going back to the
office!"
"George, George, the doctor told you not to excite yourself,"
remonstrated Miss Hatty, appearing in the doorway with a glass of
medicine in her hand.
"Excite myself? Pish! Tush!" retorted the General, "I ain't a bit more
excited than you are yourself. Do you think if I hadn't had a cool head
they'd have made me president of the South Midland? But I tell you
Barclay's trying to get control of the A. P. & C., and I'll be blamed if
he shall! Do you want him to snatch a railroad out of my very mouth,
madam?"
By this time he had got into his cape and slouch hat, turning at the
last moment to swallow Miss Hatty's dose of medicine with a wry mouth.
Then with one arm in George's and one in mine, he descended the steps
and limped as far as the car line on Main Street.
On that same afternoon I walked out to meet Sally on her ride in one of
the country roads to what was called "the Pump House," and when she had
dismounted, we strolled together along the little path under the scarlet
buds of young maples. At the end of the path there was a rude bench
placed beside the stream, which broke from the dam above with a sound
that was like laughing water. The grass was powdered with small spring
flowers, and overhead a sycamore drooped its silvery branches to the
sparkling waves. Spring was in the air, in the scarlet buds of maples,
in the song of birds, in the warm wind that played on Sally's flushed
cheek and lifted a loosened curl on her forehead. And spring was in my
heart, too, as I sat there beside her, on the old bench, with her hand
in mine.
"You will marry me in November, Sally?"
"On the nineteenth of November, as I promised. Aunt Mitty and Aunt
Matoaca have forbidden me to mention your name to them, so I shall walk
with you to church some morning--to old Saint John's, I think, Ben."
"Then may God punish me if I ever fail you," I answered.
Her look softened. "You will never fail me."
"You will trust me now and in all the future?"
"Now and in all the future."
As we strolled back a little later to her horse that was tethered to a
maple on the roadside, I told her of the success of the National Oil
Company and of the possibility that I might some day be a rich man.
"As things go in the South, sweetheart, I'm a rich man now for my
years."
"I am glad for your sake, Ben, but I have never expected to have wealth,
you know."
"All the same I want you to have it, I want to give it to you."
"Then I'll begin to love it for your sake--if it means that to you?"
"It means nothing else. But what do you think it will mean to your aunts
next November?"
She shook her head, while I untethered Dolly, the sorrel mare.
"They haven't a particle of worldliness, either of them, and I don't
believe it will make any great difference if we have millions. Of course
if you were, for instance, the president of the South Midland they would
not have refused to receive you, but they would have objected quite as
strongly to your marrying into the family. What you are yourself might
concern them if they were inviting you to dinner, but when it is a
question of connecting yourself with their blood, it is what your father
was that affects them. I really believe," she finished half angrily,
half humorously, "that Aunt Mitty--not Aunt Matoaca--would honestly
rather I'd marry a well-born drunkard or libertine than you, whom she
calls 'quite an extraordinary-looking young man.'"
"Then if they can neither be cajoled nor bought, I see no hope for
them," I replied, laughing, as she sprang from my hand into her saddle.
The red flame of the maple was in her face as she looked back at me.
"Everything will come right, Ben, if we only love enough," she said.