Chapter 23. In Which I Walk On Thin Ice

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_ CHAPTER XXIII. IN WHICH I WALK ON THIN ICE

On a November evening, when we had been married several years, I came home after seven o'clock, and found Sally standing before the bureau while she fastened a bunch of violets to the bosom of her gown.

"I'm sorry I couldn't get up earlier, but there's a good deal of excitement over a failure in Wall Street," I said. "Are you going out?"

Her hands fell from her bosom, and as she turned toward me, I saw that she was dressed as though for a ball.

"Not to-night, Ben. I had an engagement, but I broke it because I wanted to spend the evening with you. I thought we might have a nice cosy time all by ourselves."

"What a shame, darling. I've promised Bradley I'd do a little work with him in my study. He's coming at half-past eight and will probably keep me till midnight. I'll have to hurry. Did you put on that gorgeous gown just for me?"

"Just for you." There was an expression on her face, half humorous, half resentful, that I had never seen there before. "What day is this, Ben?" she asked, as I was about to enter my dressing-room.

"The nineteenth of November," I replied carelessly, looking back at her with my hand on the door.

"The nineteenth of November," she echoed slowly, as if saying the words to herself.

I was already on the threshold when light broke on me in a flash, and I turned, blind with remorse, and seized her in my arms.

"Sally, Sally, I am a brute!"

She laughed a little, drawing away, not coming closer.

"Ben, are you happy?"

"As happy as a king. I'll telephone Bradley not to come."

"Is it important?"

"Yes, very important. That failure I told you of is a pretty serious matter."

"Then let him come. All days are the same, after all, when one comes to think of it."

Her hand went to the violets at her breast, and as my eyes followed it, a sudden intuitive dread entered my mind like an impulse of rage.

"I intended to send you flowers, Sally, but in the rush, I forgot. Whose are those you are wearing?"

She moved slightly, and the perfume of the violets floated from the cloud of lace on her bosom.

"George sent them," she answered quietly.

Before she spoke I had known it--the curse of my life was to be that George would always remember--and the intuitive dread I had felt changed, while I stood there, to the dull ache of remorse.

"Take them off, and I'll get you others if there's a shop open in the city," I said. Then, as she hesitated, wavering between doubt and surprise, I left the room, descended the steps with a rush, and picking up my hat, hurried in search of a belated florist who had not closed. At the corner a man, going out to dine, paused to fasten his overcoat under the electric light, which blazed fitfully in the wind; and as I approached and he looked up, I saw that it was George Bolingbroke.

"It's time all sober married men were at home dressing for dinner," he observed in a whimsical tone.

The wind had brought a glow of colour into his face, and he looked very handsome as he stood there, in his fur-lined coat, under the blaze of light.

"I was kept late down town," I replied. "The General and I get all the hard knocks while you take it easy."

"Well, I like an easy world, and I believe your world is pretty much about what you make it. Where are you rushing? Do you go my way?"

"No, I'm turning off here. There's something I forgot this morning and I came out to attend to it."

"Don't fall into the habit of forgetting. It's a bad one and it's sure to grow on you--and whatever you forget," he added with a laugh as we parted, "don't forget for a minute of your life that you've married Sally."

He passed on, still laughing pleasantly, and quickening my steps, I went to the corner of Broad Street, where I found a florist's shop still lighted and filled with customers. There were no violets left, and while I waited for a sheaf of pink roses, with my eyes on the elaborate funeral designs covering the counter, I heard a voice speaking in a low tone beyond a mass of flowering azalea beside which I stood.

"Yes, her mother married beneath her, also," it said; "that seems to be the unfortunate habit of the Blands."

I turned quickly, my face hot with anger, and as I did so my eyes met those of a dark, pale lady, through the thick rosy clusters of the azalea. When she recognised me, she flushed slightly, and then moving slowly around the big green tub that divided us, she held out her hand with a startled and birdlike flutter of manner.

"I missed you at the reception last night, Mr. Starr," she said; "Sally was there, and I had never seen her looking so handsome."

Then as the sheaf of roses was handed to me, she vanished behind the azaleas again, while I turned quickly away and carried my fragrant armful out into the night.

When I reached home, I was met on the staircase by Jessy, who ran, laughing, before me to Sally, with the remark that I had come back bringing an entire rose garden in my hands.

"There weren't any violets left, darling," I said, as I entered and tossed the flowers on the couch, "and even these roses aren't fresh."

"Well, they're sweet anyway, poor things," she returned, gathering them into her lap, while her hands caressed the half-opened petals. "It was like you, Ben, when you did remember, to bring me the whole shopful."

Breaking one from the long stem, she fastened it in place of the violets in the cloud of lace on her bosom.

"Pink suits me better, after all," she remarked gayly; "and now you must let Bradley come, and Jessy and I will go to the theatre."

"I suppose he'll have to come," I said moodily, "but I'll be up earlier to-morrow, Sally, if I wreck the bank in order to do it."

All the next day I kept the importance of fulfilling this promise in my mind, and at five o'clock, I abruptly broke off a business appointment to rush breathlessly home in the hope of finding Sally ready to walk or to drive. As I turned the corner, however, I saw, to my disappointment, that several riding horses were waiting under the young maples beside the pavement, and when I entered the house, I heard the merry flutelike tones of Bonny Page from the long drawing-room, where Sally was serving tea.

For a minute the unconquerable shyness I always felt in the presence of women held me, rooted in silence, on the threshold. Then, "Is that you, Ben?" floated to me in Sally's voice, and pushing the curtains aside, I entered the room and crossed to the little group gathered before the fire. In the midst of it, I saw the tall, almost boyish figure of Bonny Page, and the sight of her gallant air and her brilliant, vivacious smile aroused in me instantly the oppressive self-consciousness of our first meeting. I remembered suddenly that I had dressed carelessly in the morning, that I had tied my cravat in a hurry, that my coat fitted me badly and I had neglected to send it back. All the innumerable details of life--the little things I despised or overlooked--swarmed, like stinging gnats, into my thoughts while I stood there.

"You're just in time for tea, Ben," said Sally; "it's a pity you don't drink it."

"And you're just in time for a scolding," remarked Bonny. "Do you know, if I had a husband who wouldn't ride with me, I'd gallop off the first time I went hunting with another man."

"You'd better start, Ben. It wouldn't take you three days to follow Bonny over a gate," said Ned Marshall, one of her many lovers, eager, I detected at once, to appear intimate and friendly. He was a fine, strong, athletic young fellow, with a handsome, smooth-shaven face, a slightly vacant laugh, and a figure that showed superbly in his loose-fitting riding clothes.

"When I get the time, I'll buy a horse and begin," I replied; "but all hours are working hours to me now, Sally will tell you."

"It's exactly as if I'd married a railroad engine," remarked Sally, laughing, and I realised by the strained look in their faces, that this absorption in larger matters--this unchangeable habit of thought that I could not shake off even in a drawing-room--puzzled them, because of their inherent incapacity to understand how it could be. My mind, which responded so promptly to the need for greater exertions, was reduced to mere leaden weight by this restless movement of little things. And this leaden weight, this strained effort to become something other than I was by nature, was reflected in the smiling faces around me as in a mirror. The embarrassment in my thoughts extended suddenly to my body, and I asked myself the next minute if Sally contrasted my heavy silence with the blithe self-confidence and the sportive pleasantries of Ned Marshall? Was she beginning already, unconsciously to her own heart, perhaps, to question if the passion I had given her would suffice to cover in her life the absence of the unspoken harmony in outward things? With the question there rose before me the figure of George Bolingbroke, as he bent over and laid the blossom of sweet alyssum beside her plate; and, as at the instant in which I had watched him, I felt again the physical soreness which had become a part of my furious desire to make good my stand.

When Bonny and Ned Marshall had mounted and ridden happily away in the dusk, Sally came back with me from the door, and stood, silent and pensive, for a moment, while she stroked my arm.

"You look tired, Ben. If you only wouldn't work so hard."

"I must work. It's the only thing I'm good for."

"But I see so little of you and--and I get so lonely."

"When I've won out, I'll stop, and then you shall see me every living minute of the day, if you choose."

"That's so far off, and it's now I want you. I'd like you to take me away, Ben--to take me somewhere just as you did when we were married."

Her face was very soft in the firelight, and stooping, I kissed her cheek as she looked up at me, with a grave, almost pensive smile on her lips.

"I wish I could, sweetheart, but I'm needed here so badly that I don't dare run off for a day. You've married a working-man, and he's obliged to stick to his place."

She said nothing more to persuade me, but from that evening until the spring, when our son was born, it seemed to me that she retreated farther and farther into that pale dream distance where I had first seen and desired her. With the coming of the child I got her back to earth and to reality, and when the warm little body, wrapped in flannels, was first placed in my arms, it seemed to me that the thrill of the mere physical contact had in it something of the peculiar starlike radiance of my bridal night. Sally, lying upon the pillow under a blue satin coverlet, smiled up at me with flushed cheeks and eyes shining with love, and while I stood there, some divine significance in her look, in her helplessness, in the oneness of the three of us drawn together in that little circle of life, moved my heart to the faint quiver of apprehension that had come to me while I stood by her side before the altar in old Saint John's.

When she was well, and the long, still days of the summer opened, little Benjamin was wrapped in a blue veil and taken in Aunt Euphronasia's arms to visit Miss Mitty in the old grey house.

"What did she say, mammy? How did she receive him?" asked Sally eagerly, when the old negress returned.

"She ain' said nuttin' 'tall, honey, cep'n 'huh,'" replied Aunt Euphronasia, in an aggrieved and resentful tone. "Dar she wuz a-settin' jes' ez prim by de side er dat ar box er sweet alyssum, en ez soon ez I lay eyes on her, I said, 'Howdy, Miss Mitty, hyer's Marse Ben's en Miss Sally's baby done come to see you.' Den she kinder turnt her haid, like oner dese yer ole wedder cocks on a roof, en she looked me spang in de eye en said 'huh' out right flat jes' like dat."

"But didn't you show her his pretty blue eyes, mammy?" persisted Sally.

"Go way f'om hyer, chile, Miss Mitty done seen de eyes er a baby befo' now. I knowed dat, en I lowed in my mind dat you ain' gwinter git aroun' her by pretendin' you kin show her nuttin'. So I jes' begin ter sidle up ter her en kinder talk sof ez ef'n I 'uz a-talkin' ter myself. 'Dish yer chile is jes' de spi't er Marse Bland,' I sez, 'en dar ain' noner de po' wite trash in de look er him needer.'"

"Aunt Euphronasia, how dare you!" said Sally, sternly.

"Well, 'tis de trufe, ain't hit? Dar ain' nuttin er de po' wite trash in de look er him, is dar?"

"And what did she say then, Aunt Euphronasia?"

"Who? Miss Mitty? She sez 'huh' again jes' ez she done befo'. Miss Mitty ain't de kind dat's gwinter eat her words, honey. W'at she sez, she sez, en she's gwinter stick up ter hit. The hull time I 'uz dar, I ain' never yearn nuttin' but 'huh!' pass thoo her mouf."

"I knew she was proud, Ben, but I didn't know she was so cruel as to visit it on this precious angel," said Sally, on the point of tears; "and I believe Jessy is the same way. Nobody cares about him except his doting mother."

"What's become of his doting father?"

"Oh, his doting father is entirely too busy with his darling stocks."

"Sally," I asked seriously, "don't you understand that all this--everything I'm doing--is just for you and the boy?"

"Is it, Ben?" she responded, and the next minute, "Of course, I understand it. How could I help it?"

She was always reasonable--it was one of her greatest charms, and I knew that if I were to open my mind to her at the moment, she would enter into my troubles with all the insight of her resourceful sympathy. But I kept silence, restrained by some masculine instinct that prompted me to shut the business world outside the doors of home.

"Well, I must go downtown, dear; I don't see much of you these days, do I?"

"Not much, but I know you're here to stay and that's a good deal of comfort."

"I'm glad you've got the baby. He keeps you company."

She looked up at me with the puzzling expression, half humour, half resentment, I had seen frequently in her face of late. If she stopped to question whether I really imagined that a child of three months was all the companionship required by a woman of her years, she let no sign of it escape the smiling serenity of her lips. On her knees little Benjamin lay perfectly quiet while he stared straight up at the ceiling with his round blue eyes like the eyes of an animated doll.

"Yes, he is company," she answered gently; and stooping to kiss them both, I ran downstairs, hurried into my overcoat, and went out into the street.

As I closed the door behind me, I saw the General's buggy turning the corner, and a minute later he drew up under the young maples beside the pavement, and made room for me under the grey fur rug that covered his knees.

"I don't like the way things are behaving in Wall Street, Ben," he said. "Did that last smash cost you anything?"

"About two hundred thousand dollars, General, but I hadn't spoken of it."

"I hope the bank hasn't been loaning any more money to the Cumberland and Tidewater. I meant to ask you about that several days ago."

"The question comes up before the directors this afternoon. We'll probably refuse to advance any further loans, but they've already drawn on us pretty heavily, you understand, and we may have to go in deeper to save what we've got."

"Well, it looks pretty shaky, that's all I've got to say. If Jenkins doesn't butt in and reorganise it, it will probably go into the hands of a receiver before the year is up. Is it the bank or your private investments you've been worrying over?"

"My own affairs entirely. You see I'd dealt pretty largely through Cross and Hankins, and I don't know exactly what their failure will mean to me."

"A good many men in the country are asking themselves that question. A smash like that isn't over in a day or a night. But I'm afraid you've been spending too much money, Ben. Is your wife extravagant?"

"No, it's my own fault. I've never liked her to consider the value of money."

"It's a bad way to begin. Women have got it in their blood, and I remember my poor mother used to say she never felt that a dollar was worth anything until she spent it. If I were you, I'd pull up and go slowly, but it's mighty hard to do after you've once started at a gallop."

"I don't think I'll have any trouble, but I hate like the deuce to speak of it to Sally."

"That's your damned delicacy. It puts me in mind of my cousin, Jenny Tyler, who married that scamp who used to throw his boots at her. Once when she was a girl she stayed with us for a summer, and old Judge Lacy, one of the ugliest men of his day, fell over head and heels in love with her. She couldn't endure the sight of him, and yet, if you'll believe my word, though she was as modest as an angel, I actually found him kissing her one day in a summer-house. 'Bless my soul, Jenny!' I exclaimed, 'why didn't you tell that old baboon to stop hugging you and behave himself?' 'O Cousin George,' she replied, blushing the colour of a cherry, 'I didn't like to mention it.' Now, that's the kind of false modesty you've got, Ben."

"Well, you see, General," I responded when he had finished his sly chuckle, "I've always felt that money was the only thing that I had to offer."

"You may feel that way, Ben, but I don't believe that Sally does. My honest opinion is that it means a lot more to you than it does to her. There never was a Bland yet that didn't look upon money as a vulgar thing. I've known Sally's grandfather to refuse to invite a man to his house when the only objection he had to him was that he was too rich to be a gentleman. If you think it's wealth or luxury or their old house that the Blands pride themselves on, you haven't learned a thing about 'em in spite of the fact that you've married into the family. What they're proud of is that they can do without any of these things; they've got something else--whatever it is--that they consider a long sight better. Miss Mitty Bland would still have it if she went in rags and did her own cooking, and it's this, not any material possessions, that makes her so terribly important. Look here, now, you take my advice and go home and tell Sally to stop spending money. How's that boy of yours? Is he wanting to become a bank president already?"

The old grey horse, rounding the corner at an amble, came suddenly to a stop as he recognised the half-grown negro urchin waiting upon the pavement. As if moved by a mechanical spring, the General's expression changed at once from its sly and jolly good nature to the look of capable activity which marked the successful man of affairs. The twinkle in his little bloodshot eyes narrowed to a point of steel, the loose lines of his mouth, which was the mouth of a generous libertine, grew instantly sober, and even his crimson neck, sprawling over his puffy, magenta-coloured tie, stiffened into an appearance of pompous dignity.

"Look sharp about the Cumberland and Tidewater, Ben," he remarked as he turned to limp painfully into the railroad office. Then the glass doors swung together behind him, and he forgot my existence, while I crossed the street in a rush and entered the Union Bank, which was a block farther down on the opposite side.

On the way home that afternoon, I told myself with determination that I would tell Sally frankly about the money I had lost; but when a little later she slipped her hand into my arm, and led me into the nursery to show me a trunk filled with baby's clothes that had come down from New York, my courage melted to air, and I could not bring myself to dispel the pretty excitement with which she laid each separate tiny garment upon the bed.

"Oh, of course, you don't enjoy them, Ben, as I do, but isn't that little embroidered cloak too lovely?"

"Lovely, dear, only I've had a bad day, and I'm tired."

"Poor boy, I know you are. Here, we'll put them away. But first there's something really dreadful I've got to tell you."

"Dreadful, Sally?"

"Yes, but it isn't about us. Do you know, I honestly believe that Jessy intends to marry Mr. Cottrel."

"What? That old rocking-horse? Why, he's a Methusalah, and knock-kneed into the bargain."

"It doesn't matter. Nothing matters to her except clothes. I've heard of women who sold themselves for clothes, and I believe she's one of them."

"Well, we're an eccentric family," I said wearily, "and she's the worst."

At any other time the news would probably have excited my indignation, but as I sat there, in the wicker rocking-chair, by the nursery fire, I was too exhausted to resent any manifestation of the family spirit. The last week had been a terrible strain, and there were months ahead which I knew would demand the exercise of every particle of energy that I possessed. In the afternoon there was to be a meeting of the directors of the bank, called to discuss the advancing of further loans to the Cumberland and Tidewater Railroad, and at eight o'clock I had promised to work for several hours with Bradley, my secretary. To go slowly now was impossible. My only hope was that by going fast enough I might manage to save what remained of the situation.

As the winter passed I went earlier to my office and came up later. Failure succeeded failure in Wall Street, and the whole country began presently to send back echoes of the prolonged crash. The Cumberland and Tidewater Railroad, to which we had refused a further loan, went into the hands of a receiver, and the Great South Midland and Atlantic immediately bought up the remnants at its own price. The General, who had been jubilant about the purchase, relapsed into melancholy a week later over the loss of "a good third" of his personal income.

"I'm an old fool or I'd have stopped dabbling in speculations and put away a nest-egg for my old age," he remarked, wiping his empurpled lids on his silk handkerchief. "No man over fifty ought to be trusted to gamble in stocks. Thank God, I'm the one to suffer, however, and not the road. If there's a more solid road in the country, Ben, than the South Midland, I've got to hear of it. It's big, but it's growing--swallowing up everything that comes in its way, like a regular boa constrictor. Think what it was when I came into it immediately after the war; and to-day it's one of the few roads that is steadily increasing its earnings in spite of this blamed panic."

"You worked regeneration, General, as I've often told you."

"Well, I'm too old to see what it's coming to. I hope a good man will step into my place after I'm gone. I'm sometimes sorry you didn't stick by me, Ben."

He spoke of the great road in a tone of regretful sentiment which I had never found in his allusions to his lost Matoaca. The romance of his life, after all, was not a woman, but a railroad, and his happiest memory was, I believe, not the Sunday upon which he had stood beside the rose-lined bonnet of his betrothed and sung lustily out of the same hymn-book, but the day when the stock of the Great South Midland and Atlantic had sold at 180 in the open market.

"I'll tell you what, my boy," he remarked with a quiver of his lower lip, which hung still farther away from his bloodless gum, "a woman may go back on you, and the better the woman the more likely she is to do it,--but a road won't,--no, not if it is a good road."

"Well, I'm not getting much return out of the West Virginia and Wyanoke just now," I replied. "It's no fun being a little road at the mercy of a big one when the big one is a boa constrictor. Even if you get a fair division of the rates, you don't get your cars when you want them."

"The moral of that," returned the General, with a chuckle, "is, to quote from my poor old mammy again, 'Don't hatch until you're ready to hatch whole.'"

We parted with a laugh, and I dismissed the affairs of the little railroad as I entered my office at the bank, where my private wire immediately ticked off the news of a state of panic in the money market. That was in February, and it was not until the end of March that the ice on which I was walking cracked under my feet and I went through. _

Read next: Chapter 24. In Which I Go Down

Read previous: Chapter 22. The Man And The Class

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