I AM THE WONDER OF THE HOUR
During the first year of my marriage I was already spoken of as the most
successful speculator in the state. The whirlpool of finance had won me
from the road, and I had sacrificed the single allegiance to the bolder
moves of the game. Yet if I could be bold, I was cautious, too,--and
that peculiar quality which the General called "financial genius," and
the world named "the luck of the speculator," had enabled me to act
always between the two dangerous extremes of timidity and rashness. "To
get up when others sat down, and to sit down when others got up," I told
the General one day, had been the rule by which I had played.
"They were talking of you at the club last night, Ben," he said. "You
were the only one of us who had sense enough to load up with A. P. & C.
stock when it was selling at 80, and now it's jumped up to 150. Jim
Randolph was fool enough to remark that you'd had the easiest success of
any man he knew."
"Easy? Does he think so?"
"So you call that easy, gentlemen?' I responded. 'Well, I tell you that
boy has sweated for it since he was seven years old. It's the only way,
too, I'm sure of it. If you want to succeed, you've got to begin by
sweating.'"
"Thank you, General, but I suppose most things look easy until you've
tried them."
"It doesn't look easy to me, Ben, when I've seen you at it all day and
half the night since you were a boy. What I said to those fellows at the
club is the Gospel truth--there's but one way to get anything in this
world, and that is by sweating for it."
We were in his study, to which he was confined by an attack of the gout,
and at such times he loved to ramble on in his aging, reminiscent habit.
"You know, General," I said, "that they want me to accept the presidency
of the Union Bank in Jennings' place. I've been one of the directors,
you see, for the last three or four years."
"You'd be the youngest bank president in the country. It's a good thing,
and you'd control enough money to keep you awake at night. But remember,
Ben, as my dear old coloured mammy used to say to me, 'to hatch first
ain't always to crow last.'"
"Do you call it hatching or crowing to become president of the Union
Bank?"
"That depends. If you're shrewd and safe, as I think you are, it may
turn out to be both. It would be a good plan, though, to say to yourself
every time you come up Franklin Street, 'I've toted potatoes up this
hill, and not my own potatoes either.' It's good for you, sir, to
remember it, damned good."
"I'm not likely to forget it--they were heavy."
"It was the best thing that ever happened to you--it was the making of
you. There's nothing I know so good for a man as to be able to remember
that he toted somebody else's potatoes. Now, look at that George of
mine. He never toted a potato in his life--not even his own. If he had,
he might have been a bank president to-day instead of the pleasant,
well-dressed club-man he is, with a mustache like wax-work. I've an
idea, Ben, but don't let it get any farther, that he never got over not
having Sally, and that took the spirit out of him. She's well, ain't
she?"
"Yes, she's very well and more beautiful than ever."
"Hasn't developed any principles yet, eh? I always thought they were in
her."
"None that interfere with my comfort at any rate."
"Keep an eye on her and keep her occupied all the time. That's the way
to deal with a woman who has ideas--don't leave her a blessed minute to
sit down and hatch 'em out. Pet her, dress her, amuse her, and whenever
she begins to talk about a principle, step out and buy her a present to
take her mind off it. Anything no bigger than a thimble will turn a
woman's mind in the right direction if you spring it on her like a
surprise. Ah, that's the way her Aunt Matoaca ought to have been
treated. Poor Miss Matoaca, she went wrong for the want of a little
simple management like that. You never saw Miss Matoaca Bland when she
was a girl, Ben?"
"I have heard she was beautiful."
"Beautiful ain't the word, sir! I tell you the first time I ever saw her
she came to church in a white poke bonnet lined with cherry-coloured
silk, and her cheeks exactly a match to her bonnet lining." He got out
his big silk handkerchief, and blew his nose loudly, after which he
wiped his eyes, and sat staring moodily at his foot bandaged out of all
proportion to its natural size.
"Who'd have thought to look at her then," he pursued, "that she'd go
cracked over this Yankee abolition idea before she died."
"Why, I thought they owned slaves up to the end, General."
"Slaves? What have slaves got to do with it? Ain't the abolitionists and
the woman suffragists and the rest of those damned fire-eating Yankees
all the same? What they want to do is to overturn the Constitution, and
it makes no difference to 'em whether they overturn it under one name or
the other. I tell you, Ben, as sure's my name's George Bolingbroke,
Matoaca Bland couldn't have told me to the day of her death whether she
was an abolitionist or a woman's suffragist. When a woman goes cracked
like that, all she wants is to be a fire-eater, and I doubt if she ever
knows what she is eating it about. Women ain't like men, my boy, there
isn't an ounce of moderation to the whole sex, sir. Why, look at the way
they're always getting their hearts broken or their heads cracked. They
can't feel an emotion or think an idea that something inside of 'em
doesn't begin to split. Now, did you ever hear of a man getting his
heart broken or his brain cracked?"
The canker was still there, doing its bitter work. For forty years Miss
Matoaca had had her revenge, and even in the grave her ghost would not
lie quiet and let him rest. In his watery little eyes and his
protruding, childish lip, I read the story of fruitless excesses and of
vain retaliations.
When I reached home, I found Sally in her upstairs sitting-room with
Jessy, who was trying on an elaborate ball gown of white lace. Since the
two years of mourning were over, the little sister had come to stay with
us, and Sally was filled with generous plans for the girl's pleasure.
Jessy, herself, received it all with her reserved, indifferent manner,
turning her beautiful profile upon us with an expression of saintly
serenity. It amused me sometimes to wonder what was behind the brilliant
red and white of her complexion--what thoughts? what desires? what
impulses? She went so placidly on her way, gaining what she wanted,
executing what she planned, accepting what was offered to her, that
there were moments when I felt tempted to arouse her by a burst of
anger--to discover if a single natural instinct survived the shining
polish of her exterior. Sally had worked a miracle in her manner, her
speech, her dress; and yet in all that time I had never seen the ripple
of an impulse cross the exquisite vacancy of her face. Did she feel? Did
she think? Did she care? I demanded. Once or twice I had spoken of
President, trying to excite a look of gratitude, if not of affection;
but even then no change had come in the mirror-like surface of her blue
eyes. President, I was aware, had sacrificed himself to her while I was
still a child, had slaved and toiled and denied himself that he might
make her a lady. Yet when I asked her if she ever wrote to him, she
smiled quietly and shook her head.
"Why don't you write to him, Jessy? He was always fond of you."
"He writes such dreadful letters--just like a working-man's--that I hate
to get them," she answered, turning to catch the effect of her train in
the long mirror.
"He is a working-man, Jessy, and so am I."
She accepted the statement without demur, as she accepted
everything--neither denying nor disputing, but apparently indifferent to
its truth or falseness. My eyes met Sally's in the glass, and they held
me in a long, compassionate gaze.
"All men are working-men, Jessy, if they are worth anything," she said,
"and any work is good work if it is well done."
"He is a miner," responded Jessy.
"If he is, it is because he prefers to do the work he knows to being
idle," I answered sharply. "What you must remember is that when he had
little, and I had nothing, he gave you freely all that he had."
She did not answer, and for a moment I thought I had convinced her.
"Will you write to President to-night?" I asked.
"But we are having a dinner party. How can I?"
"To-morrow, then?"
"I am going to the theatre with Mrs. Blansford. Mr. Cottrel has taken a
box for her. He is one of the richest men in the West, isn't he?"
"There are a great many rich men in the West. How can it concern you?"
"Oh, it's beautiful to be rich," she returned, in the most enthusiastic
phrase I had ever heard her utter; and gathering her white lace train
over her arm she went into her bedroom to remove the dress.
"What is she made of, Sally?" I asked, in sheer desperation; "flesh and
blood, do you think?"
"I don't know, Ben, not your flesh and blood, certainly."
"But for President--why wasn't my father hanged before he gave him such
a name!--she would have remained ignorant and common with all her
beauty. He almost starved himself in order to send her to a good school
and give her pretty clothes."
"I know, I know, it seems terribly ungrateful--but perhaps she's excited
over her first dinner."
That evening we were to give our first formal dinner, and when I came
downstairs a little before eight o'clock, I found the rooms a bower of
azaleas, over which the pink-shaded lamps shed a light that touched
Jessy's lace gown with pale rose.
"It's like fairyland, isn't it?" she said, "and the table is so
beautiful. Come and see the table."
She led me into the dining-room and we stood gazing down on the
decorations, while we waited for Sally.
"Who is coming, Jessy?"
"Twelve in all. General Bolingbroke and Mr. Bolingbroke, Mrs. Fitzhugh,
Governor Blenner, Miss Page," she went on reading the cards, "Mr. Mason,
Miss Watson, Colonel Henry, Mrs. Preston, Mrs. Tyler--"
"That will do. I'll know them when I see them. Do you like it, Jessy?"
"Yes, I like it. Isn't my dress lovely?"
"Very, but don't get spoiled. You see Sally has had this all her life,
and she isn't spoiled."
"I don't believe she could be," she responded, for her admiration for
Sally was the most human thing I had ever discovered about her, "and
she's so beautiful--more beautiful, I think, than Bonny Page, though of
course nobody would agree with me."
"Well, she's perfect, and she always was and always will be," I
returned.
"You're a great man, aren't you?" she asked suddenly, turning away from
the table.
"Why, no. What in the world put that into your head?"
"Well, the General told Mr. Cottrel you were a genius, and Mr. Cottrel
said you were the first genius he had ever heard of who measured six
feet two in his stockings."
"Of course I'm not a genius. They were joking."
"You're rich anyway, and that's just as good."
I was about to make some sharp rejoinder, irritated by her insistence on
the distinction of wealth, when the sound of Sally's step fell on my
ears, and a moment later she came down the brilliantly lighted
staircase, her long black lace train rippling behind her. As she moved
among the lamps and azaleas, I thought I had never seen her more
radiant--not even on the night of her first party when she wore the
white rose in her wreath of plaits. Her hair was arranged to-night in
the same simple fashion, her mouth was as vivid, her grey eyes held the
same mingling of light with darkness. But there was a deeper serenity in
her face, brought there by the untroubled happiness of her marriage, and
her figure had grown fuller and nobler, as if it had moulded itself to
the larger and finer purposes of life.
"The house is charming, Jessy is lovely, and you, Ben, are magnificent,"
she said, her eyebrows arching merrily as she slipped her hand in my
arm. "And it's a good dinner, too," she went on; "the terrapin is
perfect. I sent into the country for the game, and the man from
Washington came down with the decorations and the ices. Best of all, I
made the salad myself, so be sure to eat it. We'll begin to be gay now,
shan't we? Are you sure we have money enough for a ball?"
"We've money enough for anything that you want, Sally."
"Then I'll spend it--but oh! Ben, promise me you won't mention stocks
to-night until the women have left the table."
"I'll promise you, and keep it, too. I don't believe I ever introduced a
subject in my life to any woman but you."
"I'm glad, at least, there's one subject you didn't introduce to any
other."
Then the door-bell rang, and we hurried into the drawing-room in time to
receive Governor Blenner and the General, who arrived together.
"I almost got a fall on your pavement, Ben," said the General, "it's
beginning to sleet. You'd better have some sawdust down."
It took me a few minutes to order the sawdust, and when I returned, the
other guests were already in the room, and Sally was waiting to go in to
dinner on the arm of Governor Blenner, a slim, nervous-looking man, with
a long iron-grey mustache. I took in Mrs. Tyler, a handsome widow, with
a young face and snow-white hair, and we were no sooner seated than she
began to tell me a story she had heard about me that morning.
"Carry James told me she gave her little boy a penny and asked him what
he meant to do with it. 'Ath Mithter Starr to thurn it into, a
quarther,' he replied."
"Oh, he thinks that easy now, but he'll find out differently some day,"
I returned.
She nodded brightly, with the interested, animated manner of a woman who
realises that the burden of conversation lies, not on the man's
shoulders, but on hers. While she ate her soup I knew that her alert
mind was working over the subject which she intended to introduce with
the next course. From the other end of the table Sally's eyes were
raised to mine over the basket of roses and lilies. Jessy was listening
to George Bolingbroke, who was telling a story about the races, while
his eyes rested on Sally, with a dumb, pained look that made me suddenly
feel very sorry for him. I knew that he still loved her, but until I saw
that look in his eyes I had never understood what the loss of her must
have meant in his life. Suppose I had lost her, and he had won, and I
had sat and stared at her across her own dinner table with my secret
written in my eyes for her husband to read. A fierce sense of possession
swept over me, and I felt angered because his longing gaze was on her
flushed cheeks and bare shoulders.
"No, no wine. I've drunk my last glass of wine unless I may hope for it
in heaven," I heard the General say; "a little Scotch whiskey now and
then will see me safely to my grave."
"From champagne to Scotch whiskey was a flat fall, General," observed
Mrs. Tyler, my sprightly neighbour.
"It's not so flat as the fall to Lithia water, though," retorted the
General.
I was about to join vacantly in the laugh, when a sound in the doorway
caused me to lift my eyes from my plate, and the next instant I sat
paralysed by the figure that towered there over the palms and azaleas.
"Why, Benjy boy!" cried a voice, in a tone of joyous surprise, and while
every head turned instantly in the direction of the words, the candles
and the roses swam in a blur of colour before my eyes. Standing on the
threshold, between two flowering azaleas, with a palm branch waving
above his head, was President, my brother, who was a miner. Twenty years
ago I had last seen him, and though he was rougher and older and greyer
now, he had the same honest blue eyes and the same kind, sheepish face.
The clothes he wore were evidently those in which he dressed himself for
church on Sunday, and they made him ten times more awkward, ten times
more ill at ease, than he would have looked in his suit of jeans.
"Why, Benjy boy!" he burst out again; "and little Jessy!"
I sprang to my feet, while a hot wave swept over me at the thought that
for a single dreadful instant I had been ashamed of my brother. Already
I had pushed back my chair, but before I could move from my place, Sally
had walked the length of the table, and stood, tall and queenly, between
the flowering azaleas, with her hand outstretched. There was no shame in
her face, no embarrassment, no hesitation. Before I could speak she had
turned and come back to us, with her arm through President's, and never
in my eyes had she appeared so noble, so high-bred, so thoroughly a
Bland and a Fairfax as she did at that moment.
"Governor, this is my brother, Mr. Starr," she said in her low, clear
voice. "Ben has not seen him for twenty years, so if you will pardon
him, he will go upstairs with him to his room."
As I went toward her my glance swept the table for Jessy, and I saw that
she was sitting perfectly still and colourless, crumbling a small piece
of bread, while her eyes clung to the basket of roses and lilies.
"Well, Benjy boy!" exclaimed President, too full for speech, "and little
Jessy!"
In spite of his awkwardness and his Sunday clothes, he looked so happy,
so uplifted by the sincerity of his affection above any false feeling of
shame, that the tears sprang to my eyes as I clasped his hand.
The governor had risen to speak to him, the General had done likewise.
By their side Sally stood with a smile on her face and her hand on the
table. She was a Bland, after all, and the racial instinct within her
had risen to meet the crisis. They recognised it, I saw, and they, whose
blood was as blue as hers, responded generously to the call. Not one had
failed her! Then my eyes fell on Jessy, sitting cold and silent, while
she crumbled her bit of bread.