The Romance of a Plain Man

by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

  CHAPTER XXXI

  THE DEEPEST SHADOW

  As I entered the house, the sound of Aunt Euphronasia's crooning fell onmy ears, and going into the nursery, I found Sally sitting by thewindow, with the child on her knees, while the old negress waved apalm-leaf fan back and forth with a slow, rhythmic movement. Anight-lamp burned, with lowered wick, on the bureau, and as Sally lookedup at me, I saw that her face had grown wan and haggard since I had lefther.

  "The baby was taken very ill just after you went," she said; "we feareda convulsion, and I sent one of the neighbours' children for the doctor.It may be only the heat, he says, but he is coming again at midnight."

  "I had hoped you would be able to get off in the morning."

  "No, not now. The baby is too ill. In a few days, perhaps, if he isbetter."

  Her voice broke, and kneeling beside her, I clasped them both in myarms, while the anguish in my heart rose suddenly like a wild beast tomy throat.

  "What can I do, Sally?" I asked passionately. "What can I do?"

  "Nothing, dear, nothing. Only be quiet."

  Only be quiet! Rising to my feet I walked softly to the end of the room,and then turning came back again to the spot where I had knelt. At themoment I longed to knock down something, to strangle something, to pullto earth and destroy as a beast destroys in a rage. Through the openwindow I could see a full moon shining over a magnolia, and the verysoftness and quiet of the moonlight appeared, in some strange way, toincrease my suffering. A faint breeze, scented with jessamine, blewevery now and then from the garden, rising, dying away, and risingagain, until it waved the loosened tendrils of hair on Sally's neck. Theodour, also, like the moonlight, mingled, while I stood there, and wasmade one with the anguish in my thoughts. Again I walked the length ofthe room, and again I turned and came back to the window beside whichSally sat. My foot as I moved stumbled upon something soft and round,and stooping to pick it up, I saw that it was a rubber doll, dropped bylittle Benjamin when he had grown too ill or too tired to play. I laidit in Sally's work-basket on the table, and then throwing off my coat,flung myself into a chair in one corner. A minute afterwards I rose, andwalking gently through the long window, looked on the garden, which laydim and fragrant under the moonlight. On the porch, twining in and outof the columns, the star jessamine, riotous with its second blooming,swayed back and forth like a curtain; and as I bent over, the small,white, deadly sweet blossoms caressed my face. A white moth whirred byme into the room, and when I entered again, I saw that it was flyingswiftly in circles, above the flame of the night-lamp on the bureau.Sally was sitting just as I had left her, her arm under the child'shead, her face bent forward as if listening to a distant, almostinaudible sound. She appeared so still, so patient, that I wondered inamazement if she had sat there for hours, unchanged, unheeding,unapproachable? There was in her attitude, in her pensive quiet,something so detached and tragic, that I felt suddenly that I had neverreally seen her until that minute; and instead of going to her as I hadintended, I drew away, and stood on the threshold watching her almost asa stranger might have done. Once the child stirred and cried, liftinghis little hands and letting them fall again with the same short cry ofdistress. The flesh of my heart seemed to tear suddenly asunder, and Isprang forward. Sally looked up at me, shook her head with a slow, quietmovement, and I stopped short as if rooted there by the single step Ihad taken. After ten years I remember every detail, every glimmer oflight, every fitful rise and fall of the breeze, as if, not visualobjects only, but scents, sounds, and movements, were photographedindelibly on my brain. I know that the white moth fluttered about myhead, and that raising my hand, I caught it in my palm, which closedover it with violence. Then the cry from little Benjamin came again, andopening my palm, I watched the white moth fall dead, with crushed wings,to the floor. When I forget all else in my life, I shall still see Sallysitting motionless, like a painted figure, in the faint, reddish glow ofthe night-lamp, while above her, and above the little waxen face on herknee, the shadow, of the palm-leaf fan, waved by Aunt Euphronasia,flitted to and fro like the wing of a bat.

  At midnight the doctor came, and when he left, I followed him to thefront steps.

  "I'll come again at dawn," he said, "and in the meantime look out foryour wife. She's been strained to the point of breaking."

  "You think, then, that the child is--is hopeless?"

  "Not hopeless, but very serious. I'll be back in a few hours. If there'sa change, send for me, and remember, as I said, look out for your wife."

  I went indoors, found some port wine left in Miss Mitty's bottles,poured out a glass, and carried it to her.

  "Drink this, darling," I said.

  As I held it to her lips, she swallowed it obediently, and then, lookingup, she thanked me with her unfailing smile.

  "Oh, we'll drink outer de healin' fountain, by en bye, lil' chillun,"

  crooned Aunt Euphronasia softly, and the tune has rung ever afterwardssomewhere in my brain. To escape from it at the time, I went out uponthe front steps, closed the door, and walked, restless as a caged tiger,up and down the deserted pavement. A homeless dog or two, panting fromthirst, lay in the gutter; otherwise there was not a sound, not a livingthing, from end to end of the long dusty street.

  For two hours I walked up and down there, entering the house from timeto time to see if Sally needed me, or if she had moved. Then, as thelight broke feebly, the doctor came, and we went in together. Sally wasstill sitting there, as she had sat all night, rigid in the dim glow ofthe lamp, and over her Aunt Euphronasia still waved the palm-leaf fanwith its black, flitting shadow. Then, as we crossed the threshold,there was a sudden sharp cry, and when I sprang forward and caught themboth in my arms, I found that Sally had fainted and the child was deadon her knees.

  * * * * *

  We buried the child in the old Bland section at Hollywood, where asingle twisted yew-tree grew between the graves, obliterated by ivy, ofEdmond Bland and his wife, Caroline Matilda, born Fairfax. On the wayhome Sally sat rigid and tearless, with her hand in mine, and her eyesfixed on the drawn blinds of the carriage, as though she were staringintently through the closed window at something that fascinated and heldher gaze in the dusty street.

  "Does your head ache, darling?" I asked once, and she made a quick,half-impatient gesture of denial, with that strained, rapt look, as ifshe were seeing a vision, still in her face. Only when we reached home,and Aunt Euphronasia met her with outstretched arms on the threshold,did this agonised composure break down in passionate weeping on the oldnegress's shoulder.

  The strength which had upheld her so long seemed suddenly to havedeparted, and all night she wept on my breast, while I fanned her in thehot air, which had grown humid and close. Not until the dawn had brokendid my arm drop powerless with sleep, and the fan fell on the pillow.Then I slept for an hour, worn out with grief and exhaustion, and whenpresently I awoke with a start, I saw that she had left my side, andthat her muslin dressing-gown was missing from the chintz-covered chairwhere it had lain. When I called her in alarm, she came through thedoorway that led to the kitchen, freshly dressed, with a coffeepot inher hand.

  "For God's sake, Sally," I implored, "don't make coffee for me!"

  "I've made it, dear," she answered. "I couldn't let you go out without amouthful to eat. You did not sleep a wink."

  "And you?" I demanded.

  "I didn't sleep either, but then I can rest all day." Her lip trembledand she pressed her teeth into it. "By the time you are dressed, Ben,breakfast will be ready."

  Her eyes were red and swollen, her mouth pale and tremulous, all herradiant energy seemed beaten out of her; yet she spoke almostcheerfully, and there was none of the slovenliness of sorrow in herfresh and charming appearance. I dressed quickly, and going into thesitting-room, drank the coffee she had made because I knew it wouldplease her. When it was time for me to start, she went with me to thedoor, and turning midway of the block, I saw her standing on the ste
ps,smiling after me, with the sun in her eyes, like the ghost of herself asshe had stood and smiled the morning after my failure. In the evening Ifound her paler, thinner, more than ever like the wan shadow of herself,yet meeting me with the same brave cheerfulness with which she had sentme forth. Could I ever repay her? I asked myself passionately, could Iever forget?

  The dreary summer weeks dragged by like an eternity; the autumn came andpassed, and at the first of the year I was sent down, with a salary often thousand dollars, to build up traffic on the Tennessee and CarolinaRailroad, which the Great South Midland and Atlantic had absorbed. Sallywent with me, but she was so languid and ill that the change, instead ofinvigorating her, appeared to exhaust her remaining vitality. She livedonly when I was with her, and when I came in unexpectedly, as I didsometimes, I would find her lying so still and cold on the couch that Iwould gather her to me in a passion of fear lest she should elude thelighter grasp with which I had held her. Never, not even in hergirlhood, had I loved her with the intensity, the violence, of thosemonths when I hardly dared clasp her to me in my terror that she mightdissolve and vanish from my embrace. Then, at last, when the springcame, and the woods were filled with flowering dogwood and red-bud, sheseemed to revive a little, to bloom softly again, like a flower thatopens the sweeter and fresher after the storm.

  "Is it the mild air, or the spring flowers?" I asked one afternoon, aswe drove through the Southern woods, along a narrow deserted road thatsmelt of the budding pines.

  "Neither, Ben, it is you," she replied. "I have had you all thesemonths. Without that I could not have lived."

  "You have had me," I answered, "ever since the first minute I saw yourface. You have had me always."

  "Not always. During those years of your great success I thought I hadlost you."

  "How could you, Sally, when it was all for you, and you knew it?"

  "It may have been for me in the beginning, but success, when it came,crowded me out. It left me no room. That's why I didn't really mind thefailure, dear, and the poverty--that's why I don't now really mind thisburden of debt. Success took you away from me, failure brings you thecloser. And when you go from me, Ben, there's something in me, I don'tknow what--something, like Aunt Matoaca in my blood--that rises up andrebels. If things had gone on like that, if you hadn't come back, Ishould have grown hard and indifferent. I should have found some otherinterest."

  "Some other interest?" I repeated, while my heart throbbed as if a spasmof memory contracted it.

  "Oh, of course, I don't know now just what I mean--but when I look back,I realise that I couldn't have stood many years like that with nothingto fill them. I'd have done something desperate, if it was only goingover gates after Bonny. There's one thing they taught me, though, Ben,"she added, "and that is that poor Aunt Matoaca was right."

  "Right in what, Sally?"

  "Right in believing that women must have larger lives--that they mustn'tbe expected to feed always upon their hearts. You tell them to let lovefill their lives, and then when the lives are swept bare and clean ofeverything else, in place of love you leave mere vacancy--just merevacancy and nothing but that. How can they fill their lives with lovewhen love isn't there--when it's off in the stock market or therailroad, or wherever its practical affairs may be?"

  "But it comes back in the evening."

  "Yes, it comes back in the evening and falls asleep over its cigar."

  "Well, you've got me now," I responded cheerfully, "there's no doubt ofthat, you've got me now."

  "That's why I'm getting well. How delicious the pines are! and look atthe red-bud flowering there over the fence! It may be wicked of me, but,do you know--I've never been really able to regret that you lost yourmoney."

  "It is rather wicked, dear, to rejoice in my misery."

  "I didn't say I 'rejoiced'--only that I couldn't regret. How can Iregret it when the money came so between us?"

  "But it didn't, Sally, if you could only understand! I loved you just asmuch all that time as I do now."

  "But how was I to be sure, when you didn't want to be with me?"

  "I did want to be with you--only there was always something else thathad to be done."

  "And the something else came always before me. But my life, you see, wasswept bare and clean of everything except you."

  "I had to work, Sally, I had to follow my ambition."

  "You work now, but it is different. I don't mind this because it isn'tworking with madness. Just as you felt that you wanted your ambition,Ben, I felt that I wanted love. I was made so, I can't help it. LikeAunt Matoaca, my life has been swept and garnished for that one guest,and if it were ever to fail me, I'd--I'd go wild like Aunt Matoaca, Isuppose."

  A red bird flew out of the pines across the road, and lifting her eyes,she followed its flight with a look in which there was a curiousblending of sadness with passion. The truth of her words came home tome, with a quiver of apprehension, while I looked at her face, and bysome curious freak of memory there flashed before me the image of GeorgeBolingbroke as he had bent over to lay the blossom of sweet alyssumbeside her plate. In all those months George, not I, had been there, Iremembered, and some fierce resentment, which was half jealousy, halfremorse, made me answer her almost with violence as my arm went abouther.

  "But you had the big things always, and it is the big things that countin the end."

  "Yes, the big things count in the end. I used to tell myself that whenyou forgot all the anniversaries. You remember them now."

  "I have time to think now, then I hadn't." As I uttered the words I wasconscious of a sudden depression, of a poignant realisation of what this"time to think" signified in my life. The smart of my failure was stillthere, and I had known hours of late when my balked ambition was like awild thing crying for freedom within me. The old lust of power, thepassion for supremacy, still haunted my dreams, or came back to me atmoments like this, when I drove with Sally through the restless pines,and smelt those vague, sweet scents of the spring, which stirredsomething primitive and male in my heart. The fighter and the dreamer,having fought out their racial battle to a finish, were now merged intoone.

  We drove home slowly, the lights of the little Southern village shiningbrightly through a cloudless atmosphere ahead--and the lights, like thespring scents and the restless soughing of the pines, deepened the senseof failure, of incompleteness, from which I suffered. My career showedto me as suddenly cut off and broken, like a road the making of whichhas stopped short halfway up a hill. Did she discern this restlessnessin me, I wondered, this ceaseless ache which resembled the ache ofmuscles that have been long unused?

  After this the months slipped quietly by, one placid week succeedinganother in a serene and cloudless monotony. Sally had few friends, therewere no women of her own social position in the place; yet she was neverlonely, never bored, never in search of distraction.

  "I love it here, Ben," she said once, "it is so peaceful, just you andI."

  "You'd tire of it before long, and you'll be glad enough to go back toRichmond when next spring comes."

  At the time she did not protest, but when the following spring began tounfold, and we prepared to return to Virginia in May, there wassomething pensive and wistful in her parting from the little village andfrom the people who had been kind to her in the year she had spentthere. We had taken several rooms in the house of Dr. Theophilus, whowas supported in his prodigality in roses only by the strenuous picklingand preserving of Mrs. Clay; and as we drove, on a warm May afternoon,up the familiar street from the station, I tried in vain to arouse inher some of the interest, the animation, that she had lost.

  "You'll be glad to see the doctor and Bonny and George," I said.

  "Yes, I'll be glad to see the doctor and Bonny and George. There is thehouse now, and look, the doctor is in his garden."

  He had seen us before she spoke, for glancing up meditatively fromworking a bed of bleeding hearts near the gate, his dim old eyes, overtheir lowered spectacles, had been attract
ed to the approachingcarriage. Rising to his feet, he came rapidly to the pavement, histrowel still in hand, his outstretched arms trembling with pleasure.

  "Well, well, so here you are. It's good to see you. Tina, they have comesooner than we expected them. Moses" (to a little negro, who appearedfrom behind the currant bushes, where he had been digging), "take thebags upstairs to the front rooms and tell your Miss Tina that they havecome sooner than we expected them."

  As Moses darted off on his errand, in which he was assisted by the negrocoachman, Dr. Theophilus led us back into the garden, and placed Sallyin a low canvas chair, which he had brought from the porch to a shadyspot between a gorgeous giant of battle rose-bush and a bed of bleedinghearts in full bloom.

  "Come and sit down, my dear, come and sit down," he repeated, fussingabout her. "Tina will give you a cup of tea out here before you go toyour rooms, and Ben and I will take our juleps before supper. I've beenworking in my garden, you see; there's nothing so satisfying in old ageas a taste for flowers. It's more absorbing than chess, as I tellGeorge--old George, I mean--and it's more soothing than children. Wereyou far enough South, my dear, to see the yellow jessamine grow wild?They tell me, too, that the Marshal Niel rose runs there up to the roofsof the houses. With us it is a very delicate rose. I have never beenable to do anything with it,--but I have had a great success this yearwith my bleeding hearts, you will notice. Ah, there's Tina! So you see,Tina, here they are. They came sooner than we expected."

  From the low white porch, under a bower of honeysuckle, Mrs. Clayappeared, with a cup of tea and a silver basket of sponge snowballswhich she placed before Sally on a small green table; and immediately atroop of slate-coloured pigeons fluttered from the mimosa tree and theclipped yew at the end of the garden, and began pecking greedily in thegravelled walk.

  "I'm glad you've come, my dears," remarked the old lady in her brusque,honest manner, "and I hope to heaven that you will be able to takeTheophilus's mind off his flowers. I declare he has grown so besottedabout them that I believe he'd sell the very clothes off his back to buya new variety of rose or lily. Only a week ago he took back a dozensocks I had given him because he said he'd rather have the money tospend in a strange kind of iris he'd just heard of."

  "A most remarkable plant," observed the doctor, with enthusiasm, "thepeculiarity of which is that it is smaller and less attractive to thevulgar eye than the common iris, of which I have a great number growingat the end of the garden. Don't listen to Tina, my children, she's acynic, and no cynic can understand the philosophy of gardening. It wasone of the wisest of men, though a trifle unorthodox, I admit, whoadvised us to cultivate our garden. A pessimist he may have been beforehe took up the trowel, but a cynic--never."

  "I am not complaining of the trowel, Theophilus," observed Mrs. Clay,"though when it comes to that I don't see why a trowel and a bed ofroses is any more philosophic than a ladle and a kettle of pickles."

  "Perhaps not, Tina, perhaps not," chuckled the doctor, "but yours is apractical mind, and there's nothing, I've always said, like a practicalmind for seeing things crooked. It suits a crooked world, I suppose, andthat's why it usually manages to get on so well in it."

  "And I'd like to know how you see things, Theophilus," sniffed Mrs.Clay, whose temper was rising.

  "I see them as they are, Tina, which isn't in the very least as theyappear," rejoined the good man, unruffled.

  He bent forward, made a lunge with his trowel at a solitary blade ofgrass growing in the bed of bleeding hearts, and after uprooting it,returned with a tranquil face to his garden chair.

  But Mrs. Clay, having, as he had said, a practical mind, merely sniffedwhile she wiped off the small green table with a red-bordered napkin andscattered the crumbs of sponge-cake to the greedy slate-colouredpigeons.

  "If I judged you by what you appear, Theophilus," she retorted,crushingly, "I should have judged you for a fool on the day you wereborn."

  This sally, which was delivered with spirit, afforded the doctor anevident relish.

  "If you knew your Juvenal, my dear," he responded, with perfect goodhumour, "you would remember: _Fronti nulla fides_."

  Rising from his seat, he stooped fondly over the bed of bleeding hearts,and gathering a few blossoms, presented them to Sally, with a courtlybow.

  "A favourite flower of mine. My poor mother was always very partial toit," he remarked.