The Romance of a Plain Man Read online

  CHAPTER VII

  IN WHICH I MOUNT THE FIRST RUNG OF THE LADDER

  As I passed through the gate and turned down Franklin Street under agreat sycamore that grew midway of the pavement, I vowed passionately inmy heart that I would remain "a common boy" no longer. With the plumcake in my hand, and the delicious taste of it in my mouth, I placed mybasket on the ground and leaned against the silvery body of the tree,with my eyes on Samuel, sitting very erect, with his paws held up, histail wagging, and his expectant gaze on my face.

  "What can we do about it, Samuel? How can we begin? Are we common to thebone, I wonder? and how are we going to change?"

  But Samuel's thoughts were on the last bit of cake, and when I gave itto him, he stopped begging like a wise dog that has what he wanted, andlay down on the sidewalk with his eyes closed and his nose between hisoutstretched paws.

  A gentle wind stirred overhead, and I smelt the sharp sweet fragrance ofthe sycamore, which cast a delicate lace-work of shadows on the crookedbrick pavement. Not only the great sycamore and myself and Samuel, butthe whole blossoming city appeared to me in a dream; and as I glanceddown the quiet street, over which the large, slow shadows moved to andfro, I saw through a mist the blurred grey-green foliage in the CapitolSquare. In the ground the seeds of the new South, which was in truth butthe resurrected spirit of the old, still germinated in darkness. But theair, though I did not know it, was already full of the promise of theindustrial awakening, the constructive impulse, the recovered energy,that was yet to be, and in which I, leaning there a barefooted marketboy, was to have my part.

  An aged negress, in a red bandanna turban, with a pipe in her mouth,stopped to rest in the shadow of the sycamore, placing her basket, fullof onions and tomatoes, on the pavement beside my empty one.

  "Do you know who lives in that grey house, Mammy?" I asked.

  Twisting the stem of her pipe to the corner of her mouth, she satnodding at me, while the wind fluttered the wisps of grizzled hairescaping from beneath her red and yellow head-dress.

  "Go 'way, chile, whar you done come f'om?" she demanded suspiciously."Ain't you ever hyern er Marse Bland? He riz me."

  I shook my head, sufficiently humbled by my plebeian ignorance.

  "Are the two old ladies his daughters?"

  "Wat you call Miss Mitty en Miss Matoaca ole fur? Dey ain' ole," sheresponded indignantly. "I use'n ter b'long ter Marse Bland befo' de war,en I kin recollect de day dat e'vy one er dem wuz born. Dey's all daidnow cep'n Miss Mitty en Miss Matoaca, en Marse Bland he's daid, too."

  "Then who is the little girl? Where did she come from?"

  There was a dandelion blooming in a tuft of grass between the loosenedbricks of the pavement, and I imprisoned it in my bare toes while Iwaited impatiently for her answer.

  "Dat's Miss Sary's chile. She ran away wid Marse Harry Mickleborough, inMarse Bland's lifetime, en he 'ouldn't lay eyes on her f'om dat day terhis deaf. Miss Mitty en Miss Matoaca dey ain' ole, but Miss Sary shewant nuttin' mo'n a chile w'en she went off."

  "But why did her father never see her again?"

  "Dat was 'long er Marse Mickleborough, boy, but I ain' gwine inter deens en de outs er dat. Hit mought er been becaze er MarseMickleborough's fiddle, but I ain' sayin' dat hit wuz er dat hit wuzn't.Dar's some folks dat cyarn' stan' de squeak er a fiddle, en he sutneydid fiddle a mont'ous lot. He usen ter beat Miss Sary, too, I hyerntell, jes es you mought hev prognosticate er a fiddlin' man; but sheain' never come home twel atter her pa wuz daid en buried over yonder inHollywood. Den w'en de will wuz read Marse Bland had lef ev'y las' centclean away f'om her en de chile. Atter Miss Mitty en Miss Matoaca die dehull pa'cel er hit's er gwine ter some no 'count hospital whar dey takelive folks ter pieces en den put 'em tergedder agin."

  "You mean the little girl won't get a blessed cent?" I asked, and mytoes pinched the head of the dandelion until it dropped from its stem.

  "Ain't I done tole you how 'tis?" demanded the negress in exasperation,rising from her seat on the curbing, "en wat mek you keep on axin' overwat I done tole you?"

  She went off muttering to herself, while she clenched the stem of hercorncob pipe between her toothless gums; and picking up my basket andwhistling to Samuel, I walked slowly downhill, with the problem of thefuture working excitedly in my brain.

  "A market boy is obliged to be a common boy," I thought, andimmediately: "Then I will not be a market boy any longer."

  So hopeless the next instant did my present condition of abjectignorance appear to me, that I found myself regretting that I had notasked advice of the aged negress who had rested beside me in the shadowof the sycamore. I wondered if she would consider the selling ofnewspapers a less degrading employment than the hawking of vegetables,and with the thought, I saw stretching before me, in all its alluringbrightness, that royal road of success which leads from the castle ofdreams. One instant I resolved to start life as a fruit vender on thetrain, and the next I was wildly imagining myself the president of theGreat South Midland and Atlantic Railroad, with a jingling bunch ofseals and a gold-headed stick. When at last I reached the Old Market Ifound that the gayety had departed from it, and it appeared slovenly anddisgusting to my awakened eyes. The fruit and vegetables, so fresh andinviting in the early morning, were now stale and wilted; a swarm offlies hung like a black cloud around the joint suspended before thestall of Perkins, the butcher; and as I passed the stand of the fishdealer, the odour of decaying fish entered my nostrils. Was it the sameplace I had left only a few hours before, or what sudden change inmyself had revealed to me the grim ugliness of its aspect? "He's acommon boy," the little girl had said of me almost four years ago, and Ifelt now, as I had felt then, the sting of a whip on my bare flesh ather words. Come what might I would cease to be "a common boy" from thathour.

  In the afternoon I bought an armful of "The Evening Planet," andwandered up Franklin Street on a venture, crying the papers aloud withan agreeable assurance that I had deserted huckstering to enterjournalism. As I passed the garden of the old grey house my voice rangout shrilly, yet with a quavering note in it, "Eve-ning Pla-net!" andalmost before the sound had passed under the sycamores, the gate in thewall opened cautiously and one of the ladies called to me timidly withher face pressed to the crack. The two sisters were so much alike thatit was a minute before I discovered the one who spoke to be MissMatoaca.

  "Will you please let me have a paper," she said apologetically, "we donot take it. There is no gentleman in the house. I--I am interested inthe marriages and deaths," she added, in a louder tone as if some onewere standing close to her beyond the garden gate.

  As I gave her the paper she stretched out her hand, under its yellowedlace ruffle, and dropped the money into my palm.

  "I shall be obliged to you if you will call out every day when you passhere," she remarked, after a minute; "I am almost always in the gardenat this hour."

  I promised her that I should certainly remember, and she was about todraw inside the garden with a gentle, flower-like motion of her head,when a gentleman, with a gold-headed walking-stick in his hand, lungedsuddenly round the smaller sycamore at the corner, and entrapped herbetween the wall and the gate before she had time to retreat.

  "So I've caught you at it, eh, Miss Matoaca!" he exclaimed, shaking apudgy forefinger into her face, with an air of playful gallantry."Buying newspapers!"

  Poor Miss Matoaca, fluttering like a leaf before this onslaught ofchivalry, could only drop her bright brown eyes to the ground and flusha delicate pink, which the General must have admired.

  "They--they are excellent to keep away moths!" she stammered.

  The sly and merry look, which I discovered afterwards to be hisinvincible weapon with the ladies, appeared instantly in his watery greyeyes.

  "And you don't even glance at the political headlines? Ah, confess, MissMatoaca."

  He was very stout, very red in the face, very round in the stomach, veryroguish in the eyes, yet I realised even then that some twenty yearsbefore--
when the results of his sportive masculinity had not becomevisible in his appearance--he must have been handsome enough to havemelted even Miss Matoaca's heart. Like a faint lingering beam of autumnsunshine, this comeliness, this blithe and unforgettable charm of youth,still hovered about his heavy and plethoric figure. Across his expansivefront there stretched a massive gold chain of a unique pattern, and fromthis chain, I saw now, there hung a jingling and fascinating bunch ofseals. The gentleman I might have forgotten, but that bunch of seals hadoccupied for three long years a particular corner of my memory; and inthe instant that my eyes fell upon it, I saw again the ragged hillcovered with pokeberry, yarrow, and stunted sumach, the anchored vesseloutlined against the rosy sunset, and the panting stranger, who hadstopped to rest with his hand on my shoulder. I remembered suddenly thatI wanted to become the president of the Great South Midland and AtlanticRailroad.

  He stood there now in all his redundant flesh before me, his largemottled cheeks inflated with laughter, his full red lips pursed into agay and mocking expression. To me he personified success, happiness,achievement--the other shining extreme from my own obscurity andcommonness; but the effect upon poor little Miss Matoaca was quite theopposite, I judged the next minute, from the one that he had intended. Iwatched her fragile shoulders straighten and a glow rather than a flashof spirit pass into her uplifted face.

  "With your record, General Bolingbroke," she said, in a quavering yetcourageous voice, "you may refuse your approval, but not your respect,to a matter of principle."

  The roguish twinkle, which was still so charming, appealed like the lostspirit of youth in the General's eyes.

  "Ah, Miss Matoaca," he rejoined, in his most gallant manner, "principlesdo not apply to ladies!"

  At this Miss Matoaca drew herself up almost haughtily, and I felt as Ilooked at her that only her sex had kept her from becoming a generalherself.

  "It is very painful to me to disagree with the gentlemen I know," shesaid, "but when it is a matter of conviction I feel that even therespect of gentlemen should be sacrificed. My sister Mitty considers mequite indelicate, but I cannot conceal from you that--" her voice brokeand dropped, but rose again instantly with a clear, silvery sound, "Iconsider that taxation without representation is tyranny."

  A virgin martyr refusing to sacrifice a dove to Venus might have utteredher costly heresy in such a voice and with such a look; but the Generalmet it suavely with a flourish of his wide-brimmed hat and a blandishingsmile. He was one of those gentlemen of the old school, I came to knowlater, to whom it was an inherent impossibility to appear withoutaffectation in the presence of a member of the opposite sex. A highliver, and a good fellow every inch of him, he could be natural, racy,charming, and without vanity, when in the midst of men; but let so muchas the rustle of a petticoat sound on the pavement, and he would beginto strut and plume himself as instinctively as the cock in the barnyard.

  "But what would you do with a vote, my dear Miss Matoaca," he protestedairily. "Put it into a pie?"

  His witticism, which he hardly seemed aware of until it was uttered,afforded him the next instant an enjoyment so hilarious that I saw hiswaist shake like a bowl of jelly between the flapping folds of hisalpaca coat. While he stood there with his large white cravat twistedawry by the swelling of his crimson neck, and his legs, in a pair ofduck trousers, planted very far apart on the sidewalk, he presented theaspect of a man who felt himself to be a graduate in the experimentalscience of what he probably would have called "the sex." When I heardhim frequently alluded to afterwards as "a gay old bird," I wonderedthat I had not fitted the phrase to him as he fixed his swimming,parrot-like eyes on the flushed face of Miss Matoaca.

  "If that's all the use you'd make of it, I think we might safely trustit to you," he observed with a flattering glance. "A woman who can makeyour mince pies, dear lady, need not worry about her rights."

  "How is George, General?" asked Miss Matoaca, with an air of gentle,offended dignity. "I heard he had come to live with you since hismother's death."

  "So he has, the rascal," responded the General, "and a nephew undertwelve years of age is a severe strain on the habits of an elderlybachelor."

  The corners of Miss Matoaca's mouth grew suddenly prim.

  "I suppose you could hardly close the door on your sister's orphan son,"she observed, in a severer tone than I had yet heard her use.

  He sighed, and the sigh appeared to pass in the form of a tremor throughhis white-trousered legs.

  "Ah, that's it," he rejoined. "You ladies ought to be thankful that youhaven't our responsibilities. No, no, thank you, I won't come in. Myrespects to Miss Mitty and to yourself."

  The gate closed softly as if after a love tryst, Miss Matoacadisappeared into the garden, and the General's expression changed fromits jocose and smiling flattery to a look of genuine annoyance.

  "No, I don't want a paper, boy!" he exclaimed.

  With a wave of his gold-headed cane in my direction, he would havepassed on his way, but at his first step, happily for me, his toe struckagainst a loosened brick, and the pain of the shock caused him to bendover and begin rubbing his gouty foot, with an exclamation that soundedsuspiciously like an oath. Where was the roguish humour now in the smallwatery grey eyes? The gout, not "the sex," had him ignominiously by theheel.

  "If you please, General, do you remember me?" I enquired timidly.

  Still clasping his foot, he turned a crimson glare upon me."Damnation!--I mean Good Lord, have mercy on my toe, why should Iremember you?"

  "It was on Church Hill almost four years ago, you promised," I suggestedas a gentle spur to his memory.

  "And you expect me to remember what I promised four years ago?" herejoined with a sly twinkle. "Why, bless my soul, you're worse than awoman."

  "You asked me, sir, if I wanted to grow up and be President," Ireturned, not without resentment.

  Releasing his ankle abruptly, he stood up and slapped his thigh.

  "Great Jehosaphat! If you ain't the little chap who was content to benothing less than God Almighty!" he exclaimed. "I've told that story ahundred times if I've told it once."

  "Then perhaps you'll help me a little, sir," I suggested.

  "Help you to become God Almighty?" he chuckled.

  "No, sir, help me to be the president of the Great South Midland andAtlantic Railroad."

  "Then you'll be satisfied with the lesser office, eh?"

  "I shall, sir, if--if there isn't anything better."

  Again he slapped his thigh and again he chuckled. "But I've got one boyalready. I don't want another," he protested. "Good Lord, one is badenough when he's not your own."

  Whether or not he really supposed that I was a serious applicant foradoption, I cannot say, but his face put on immediately an harassed andsuffering look.

  "Have you ever had a twinge of gout, boy?" he enquired.

  "No, sir."

  "Then you're lucky--damned lucky. When you go to bed to-night you getdown on your knees and thank the Lord that you've never had a twinge ofgout. You can even eat a strawberry without feeling it, I reckon?"

  I replied humbly that I certainly could if I ever got the chance.

  "And yet you ain't satisfied--you're asking to be president of a damnedrailroad--a boy who can eat a strawberry without feeling it!"

  He moved on, limping slightly, and like a small persistent devil oftemptation, I kept at his elbow.

  "Isn't there anything that you can do for me, sir?" I asked, at thepoint of tears.

  "Do for you? Bless my soul, boy, if I had your joints I shouldn't wantanything that anybody could do for me. Can't you walk, hop, skip, jump,all you want to?"

  This was so manifestly unfair that I retorted stubbornly, "But I don'twant to."

  He glanced down on me with a flicker of his still charming smile.

  "Well, you would if you were president of the Great South Midland andAtlantic and had looked into the evening paper," he said.

  "Are you president of it still, sir?"r />
  "Eh? eh? You'll be wanting to push me out of my job next, I suppose?"

  "I'd like to have it when you are dead, sir," I replied.

  But this instead of gratifying the General appeared plainly to annoyhim. "There now, you'd better run along and sell your papers," heremarked irritably. "If I give you a dime, will you quit bothering me?"

  "I'd rather you'd give me a start, sir, as you promised."

  "Good Lord! There you are again! Do you know the meaning ofn-u-i-s-a-n-c-e, boy?"

  "No, sir."

  "Well, ask your teacher the next time you go to school."

  "I don't go to school. I work."

  "You work, eh? Well, look here, let's see. What do you want of me?"

  "I thought you might tell me how to begin. I don't want to stay common."

  For a moment his attention seemed fixed on a gold pencil which he hadtaken from his waistcoat pocket. Then opening his card-case he scribbleda line on a card and handed it to me. "If you choose you may take thatto Bob Brackett at the Old Dominion Tobacco Works, on Twenty-fifthStreet, near the river," he said, not unkindly. "If he happens to want aboy, he may give you a job; but remember, I don't promise you that hewill want one,--and if he does, it isn't likely he'd make you presidenton the spot," he concluded, with a chuckle.

  Waving a gesture of dismissal he started off at a hobble; then catchingthe eye of a lady in a passing carriage, he straightened himself, bowedwith a gallant flourish of his wide-brimmed hat, and went on with a lookof agony but a jaunty pace. As I turned, a minute later, to discover whocould have wrought this startling change in the behaviour of theGeneral, an open surrey, the bottom filled with a pink cloud of wildazaleas, stopped at the curbing before the grey house, and the faces ofMiss Mitty and Sally shone upon me over the blossoms. The child wascoloured like a flower from the sun and wind, and there was a soft dewylook about her flushed cheeks, and her very full red lips. At the cornerof her mouth, near her square little chin, a tiny white scar showed likea dimple, giving to her lower lip when she laughed an expression ofcharming archness. I remember these things now--at the moment there wasno room for them in my whirling thoughts.

  "Oh!" cried the little girl in a burst of happiness, "there's my boy!"

  The next minute she had leaped out of the carriage and was boundingacross the pavement. Her arms were filled with azalea, and loosenedpetals fluttered like a swarm of pink and white moths around her.

  "What are you doing, boy?" she asked. "Where is your basket?"

  "It's at the market. I'm selling papers."

  "Come, Sally," commanded Miss Mitty, stepping out of the surrey with therest of the flowers. "You must not stop in the street to talk to peopleyou don't know."

  "But I do know him, Aunt Mitty, he brings our marketing."

  "Well, come in anyway. You are breaking the flowers."

  The strong, heady perfume filled my nostrils, though when I remember itnow it changes to the scent of wallflowers, which clings always about mymemory of the old grey house, with its delicate lace curtains drapedback from the small square window-panes as if a face looked out on thecrooked pavement.

  "Please, Aunt Mitty, let me buy a paper," begged the child.

  "A paper, Sally! What on earth would you do with a paper?"

  "Couldn't I roll up my hair in it, Auntie?"

  "You don't roll up your hair in newspapers. Here, come in. I can't waitany longer."

  Lingering an instant, Sally leaned toward me over the pink cloud ofazalea. "I'd just love to play with you and Samuel," she said with thesparkling animation I remembered from our first meeting, "but dear AuntMitty has so much pride, you know."

  She bent still lower, gave Samuel an impassioned hug with her free arm,and then turning quickly away ran up the short flight of steps anddisappeared into the house. The next instant the door closed sharplyafter her, and only the small rosy petals fluttering in the wind wereleft to prove to me that I was really awake and it was not a dream.