The Romance of a Plain Man Part 44

Leaning over her, I gathered her to me with a hunger for comfort, kissing her eyes, her mouth, her throat, and the loosened braid on her bosom.

"Oh, you witch, you've almost made me happy!" I said.

"I am happy, Ben."

"Happy? The horses must go, and the carriage and the furniture even.

We'll have to move into some cheap place. I'll get a position of some kind with the railroad, and then we'll have to scrimp and save for an eternity, until we pay off this d.a.m.ned burden of debt."

She laughed softly, her mouth at my ear. "I'm happy, Ben."

"We shan't be able to keep servants. You'll have to wear old clothes, and I'll go so shabby that you'll be ashamed of me. We'll forget what a bottle of wine looks like, and if we were ever to see a decent dinner, we shouldn't recognise it."

Again she laughed, "I'm still happy, Ben."

"We'll live in some G.o.d-forsaken, out-of-the-way little hole, and never even dare ask a person in to a meal for fear there wouldn't be enough potatoes to go around. It will be a daily uphill grind until I've managed to pay off honestly every cent I owe."

Her arms tightened about my neck, "Oh, Ben, I'm so happy."

"Then you are a perfectly abandoned creature," I returned, lifting her from the rug until she nestled against my heart. "I've given up trying to make you as miserable as a self-respecting female ought to be. If you won't be proper and wretched, I can't help it, for I've done my best.

And the most ridiculous part of it is, darling, that I actually believe I'm happy, too!"

She laughed like a child between her kisses. "Then, you see, it isn't really the thing, but the way you take it that matters."

"I'm not sure about the logic of that--but I'm inclined to think just now that the only thing I've ever taken is you."

"If you'll try to remember that, you'll be always happy."

"But I must remember also that I've brought you to poverty--I, who had only money to give you."

"Do you dare to tell me to my face that I married you for money?"

"You couldn't very well have married me without it."

"I don't know about the 'very well,' but I know that I'd have done it."

"Do you think that, Sally?"

Turning in my arms, she lifted her head, and looked steadily into my face.

"Have I ever lied to you since we were married, Ben?"

"No, darling."

"Have I ever deceived you?"

"Never, I am sure," I responded with a desperate levity, "except for my good."

"Have I ever deceived you," she demanded sternly, "even for your good?"

"To tell the truth, I don't believe you ever have."

The warm pressure of her body was withdrawn, and rising to her feet, she stood before me under the blazing light.

"Then I'm not lying to you when I say that I'd have married you if you hadn't possessed a penny to your name--I'd have married you if--if I'd had to take in washing."

"Sally!" I cried, and made a movement to recapture her; but pushing me back, she stood straight and tall, with the fingers of her outstretched hand touching my breast.

"No, listen to me, listen to me," she said gravely. "As long as I have you and you love me, Ben, nothing can break my spirit, because the thing that makes life of value to me will still be mine. If you ever ceased to love me, I might get desperate, and do something wild and foolish--even run off with another man, I believe--I don't know, but I am my father's daughter, as well as my mother's. Until that time comes, I can bear anything, and bear it with courage--with gaiety even. I can imagine myself without everything else, but not without you. I love my child--you know I love my child--but even my child isn't you. If I had to choose to-night between my baby and you, I'd give him up,--and cling the closer to you. You are myself, and if I had to choose between everything else I've ever known in my life and you, I'd let everything else go and follow you anywhere--anywhere. There is nothing that you can endure that I cannot share with you. I can bear poverty, I could even have borne shame. If we had to go to some strange country far away from all I have ever known, I could go and go cheerfully. I can work beside you, I can work for you--oh, my dear, my dearest, I am your wife, do you still doubt me?"

I had fallen on my knees before her, with her open palms pressed to my forehead, in which my very brain seemed throbbing. As I looked up at her, she stooped and gathered me to her bosom.

"Do you know me now?" she asked in a whisper.

Then her voice broke, and the next instant she would have sunk down beside me, if I had not sprung to my feet and lifted her in my arms.

While I held her thus, pressed close against me, something of her radiant strength entered into me, and I was aware of a power in myself that was neither hers nor mine, but the welding of the finer qualities in both our natures.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE RED FLAG AT THE GATE

Sally was not beside me when I awoke in the morning, nor was she sipping her coffee by the window, as I had sometimes found her doing when I slept late. Going downstairs an hour afterwards, I discovered her, for the first time since our marriage, awaiting me in the dining-room. In her dainty breakfast jacket of blue silk, with a bit of lace and ribbon framing her wreath of plaits, she appeared to my tired eyes as the embodied freshness and buoyancy of the morning. Would her sparkling gaiety endure, I wondered, through the monotonous days ahead, when poverty became, not a child's play, not a game tricked out by the imagination, but the sordid actuality of hard work and hourly self-denial?

"I am practising early rising, Ben," she said, "and it's astonishing what an appet.i.te it gives one. I've made the coffee myself, and Aunt Mehitable has just taught me how to make yeast. One can never tell what may come useful, you know, and if we go to live somewhere in a jungle, which I'm quite prepared to do, you'd be glad to know that I could make yeast, wouldn't you?"

"I suppose so, sweetheart, and as a matter of fact," I added presently, "this is the best cup of coffee I've had for many a month."

Laughing merrily, she perched herself on the arm of my chair, and sipped out of the cup I held toward her. "Of course it is. So you've gained that much by losing everything. It's very strange, Ben, and you may consider it presumptuous, but I've a profound conviction somewhere in the bottom of my heart that I can do everything better than anybody else, if I once turn my hand to it. At this minute I haven't a doubt that my yeast is better than Aunt Mehitable's. I'm going to cook dinner, too, and she'll be positively jealous of my performance. How do we know whether or not we'll meet any cooks in the jungle? And if we do, they'll probably be tigers--"

"Oh, Sally, Sally! You think it play now, but what will you feel when you know it's earnest?"

"Of course it's earnest. Do you imagine I'd get out of my bed at seven o'clock and cut up a slimy potato if it wasn't earnest? That may be your idea of play, but it's not mine."

"And you expect to flutter about a stove in a pale blue breakfast jacket and a lace cap?"

"Just as long as they last. When they go, I suppose I'll have to take to calico, but it will be pretty calico, and pink. Pink calico don't cost a penny more than drab--and there's one thing I positively decline to do, even in a jungle, and that is look ugly."

"You couldn't if you tried, my beauty."

"Oh, yes, I could--I could look hideous--any woman could if she tried.

But as long as it doesn't cost any more, you've no objection to my cooking in pink instead of drab, I suppose?"

"I've an objection to your cooking in anything. Another cup of coffee, please."

"Ben."