LADY BALTIMORE

By Owen Wister

 To S. Weir Mitchell With the Affection and Memories of All My Life

To the Reader

You know the great text in Burns, I am sure, where he wishes he couldsee himself as others see him. Well, here lies the hitch in many a workof art: if its maker--poet, painter, or novelist--could but have becomeits audience too, for a single day, before he launched it irrevocablyupon the uncertain ocean of publicity, how much better his boat wouldoften sail! How many little touches to the rigging he would give, howmany little drops of oil to the engines here and there, the need ofwhich he had never suspected, but for that trial trip! That's where theship-builders and dramatists have the advantage over us others: they candock their productions and tinker at them. Even to the musician comesthis useful chance, and Schumann can reform the proclamation which openshis B-flat Symphony. 

Still, to publish a story in weekly numbers previously to its appearanceas a book does sometimes give to the watchful author an opportunity tolearn, before it is too late, where he has failed in clearness; and itbrings him also, through the mails, some few questions that are pleasantand proper to answer when his story sets forth united upon its journeyof adventure among gentle readers. 

How came my hero by his name?

If you will open a book more valuable than any I dare hope to write, andmore entertaining too, The Life of Paul Jones, by Mr. Buell, you willfind the real ancestor of this imaginary boy, and fall in love with JohnMayrant the First, as did his immortal captain of the Bon Homme Richard. He came from South Carolina; and believing his seed and name wereperished there to-day, I gave him a descendant. I have learned that thename, until recently, was in existence; I trust it will not seem takenin vain in these pages. 

Whence came such a person as Augustus?

Our happier cities produce many Augustuses, and may they long continueto do so! If Augustus displeases any one, so much the worse for thatone, not for Augustus. To be sure, he doesn't admire over heartilythe parvenus of steel or oil, whose too sudden money takes them to thedivorce court; he calls them the 'yellow rich'; do you object to that?Nor does he think that those Americans who prefer their pockets to theirpatriotism, are good citizens. He says of such people that 'eternalvigilance cannot watch liberty and the ticker at the same time. ' Do youobject to that? Why, the young man would be perfect, did he but attendhis primaries and vote more regularly, --and who wants a perfect youngman?

What would John Mayrant have done if Hortense had not challenged him asshe did?

I have never known, and I fear we might have had a tragedy. 

Would the old ladies really have spoken to Augustus about the lovedifficulties of John Mayrant?

I must plead guilty. The old ladies of Kings Port, like Americangentlefolk everywhere, keep family matters sacredly inside the familycircle. But you see, had they not told Augustus, how in the world couldI have told--however, I plead guilty. 

Certain passages have been interpreted most surprisingly to signify afeeling against the colored race, that is by no means mine. My only wishregarding these people, to whom we owe an immeasurable responsibility, is to see the best that is in them prevail. Discord over this seems onthe wane, and sane views gaining. The issue sits on all our shoulders, but local variations call for a sliding scale of policy. So admirablydispassionate a novel as The Elder Brother, by Mr. Jervey, forwards theunderstanding of Northerners unfamiliar with the South, and also thatfriendliness between the two places, which is retarded chiefly bytactless newspapers. 

Ah, tact should have been one of the cardinal virtues; and if I didn'tpossess a spice of it myself, I should here thank by name certain twomembers of the St. Michael family of Kings Port for their patience withthis comedy, before ever it saw the light. Tact bids us away from manypleasures; but it can never efface the memory of kindness. 

LADY BALTIMORE

I: A Word about My Aunt

Like Adam, our first conspicuous ancestor, I must begin, and lay theblame upon a woman; I am glad to recognize that I differ from the fatherof my sex in no important particular, being as manlike as most of hissons. Therefore it is the woman, my Aunt Carola, who must bear the wholereproach of the folly which I shall forthwith confess to you, since sheit was who put it into my head; and, as it was only to make Eve happythat her husband ever consented to eat the disastrous apple, so I, saveto please my relative, had never aspired to become a Selected SalicScion. I rejoice now that I did so, that I yielded to her temptation. Ours is a wide country, and most of us know but our own corner of it, while, thanks to my Aunt, I have been able to add another corner. This, among many other enlightenments of navel and education, do I owe her;she stands on the threshold of all that is to come; therefore I werelacking in deference did I pass her and her Scions by without duemention, --employing no English but such as fits a theme so stately. Although she never left the threshold, nor went to Kings Port with me, nor saw the boy, or the girl, or any part of what befell them, she knewquite well who the boy was. When I wrote her about him, she rememberedone of his grandmothers whom she had visited during her own girlhood, long before the war, both in Kings Port and at the family plantation;and this old memory led her to express a kindly interest in him. How oddand far away that interest seems, now that it has been turned to colddispleasure!

Some other day, perhaps, I may try to tell you much more than I can tellyou here about Aunt Carola and her Colonial Society--that apple whichEve, in the form of my Aunt, held out to me. Never had I expected tofeel rise in me the appetite for this particular fruit, though I hadknown such hunger to exist in some of my neighbors. Once a worthy dameof my town, at whose dinner-table young men and maidens of fashion sitconstantly, asked me with much sentiment if I was aware that she wasdescended from Boadicea. Why had she never (I asked her) revealed thisto me before? And upon her informing me that she had learned itonly that very day, I exclaimed that it was a great distance to havedescended so suddenly. To this, after a look at me, she assented, addingthat she had the good news from the office of The American Almanach deGotha, Union Square, New York; and she recommended that publicationto me. There was but a slight fee to pay, a matter of fifty dollars orupwards, and for this trifling sum you were furnished with your rightfulcoat-of-arms and with papers clearly tracing your family to the Druids, the Vestal Virgins, and all the best people in the world. Therefore Ifelicitated the Boadicean lady upon the illustrious progenitrixwith whom the Almanach de Gotha had provided her for so small aconsideration, and observed that for myself I supposed I should continueto rest content with the thought that in our enlightened Republic everyAmerican was himself a sovereign. But that, said the lady, after givingme another look, is so different from Boadicea! And to this I perfectlyagreed. Later I had the pleasure to hear in a roundabout way that shehad pronounced me one of the most agreeable young men in society, thoughsophisticated. I have not cherished this against her; my gift of humorpuzzles many who can see only my refinement and my scrupulous attentionto dress. 

Yes, indeed, I counted myself proof against all Boadiceas. But you havenoticed--have you not?--how, whenever a few people gather together andstyle themselves something, and choose a president, and eight or ninevice-presidents, and a secretary and a treasurer, and a committee onelections, and then let it be known that almost nobody else is qualifiedto belong to it, that there springs up immediately in hundreds andthousands of breasts a fiery craving to get into that body? You maytry this experiment in science, law, medicine, art, letters, society, farming, I care not what, but you will set the same craving afire indoctors, academicians, and dog breeders all over the earth. Thus, whenmy Aunt--the president, herself, mind you!--said to me one day thatshe thought, if I proved my qualifications, my name might be favorablyconsidered by the Selected Salic Scions--I say no more; I blush, thoughyou cannot see me; when I am tempted, I seem to be human, after all. 

At first, to be sure, I met Aunt Carola's suggestion in the way that Iam too ready to meet many of her remarks; for you must know she once, with sincere simplicity and good-will, told my Uncle Andrew (herhusband; she is only my Aunt by marriage) that she had married beneathher; and she seemed unprepared for his reception of this candidstatement: Uncle Andrew was unaffectedly merry over it. Ever since thenall of us wait hopefully every day for what she may do or say next. 

She is from old New York, oldest New York; the family manor is stillhabitable, near Cold Spring; she was, in her youth, handsome, I amassured by those whose word I have always trusted; her appearance evento-day causes people to turn and look; she is not tall in feet andinches--I have to stoop considerably when she commands from me thefamiliarity of a kiss; but in the quality which we call force, in moralstature, she must be full eight feet high. When rebuking me, she canpronounce a single word, my name, "Augustus!" in a tone that rendersfurther remark needless; and you should see her eye when she says ofcertain newcomers in our society, "I don't know them. " She can makeher curtsy as appalling as a natural law; she knows also how to "takeumbrage, " which is something that I never knew any one else to takeoutside of a book; she is a highly pronounced Christian, holding allUnitarians wicked and all Methodists vulgar; and once, when she wastalking (as she does frequently) about King James and the Englishreligion and the English Bible, and I reminded her that the Jewswrote it, she said with displeasure that she made no doubt King Jameshad--"well, seen to it that all foreign matter was expunged"--I give youher own words. Unless you have moved in our best American society (andby this I do not at all mean the lower classes with dollars and nograndfathers, who live in palaces at Newport, and look forward toevery-thing and back to nothing, but those Americans with grandfathersand no dollars, who live in boarding-houses, and look forward tonothing and back to everything)--unless you have known this haughty andimproving milieu, you have never seen anything like my Aunt Carola. Of course, with Uncle Andrew's money, she does not live in aboarding-house; and I shall finish this brief attempt to place herbefore you by adding that she can be very kind, very loyal, verypublic-spirited, and that I am truly attached to her. 

"Upon your mother's side of the family, " she said, "of course. "

"Me!" I did not have to feign amazement. 

My Aunt was silent. "Me descended from a king?"

My Aunt nodded with an indulgent stateliness. "There seems to be thepossibility of it. "

"Royal blood in my veins, Aunt?"

"I have said so, Augustus. Why make me repeat it?"

It was now, I fear, that I met Aunt Carola in that unfitting spirit, that volatile mood, which, as I have said already, her remarks oftenrouse in me. 

"And from what sovereign may I hope that I--?"

"If you will consult a recent admirable compilation, entitled TheAmerican Almanach de Gotha, you will find that Henry the Seventh--"

"Aunt, I am so much relieved! For I think that I might have hesitatedto trace it back had you said--well--Charles the Second, for example, orElizabeth. "

At this point I should have been wise to notice my Aunt's eye; but I didnot, and I continued imprudently:--

"Though why hesitate? I have never heard that there was anybody presentto marry Adam and Eve, and so why should we all make such a to-doabout--"

"Augustus!"

She uttered my name in that quiet but prodigious tone to which I havealluded above. 

It was I who was now silent. 

"Augustus, if you purpose trifling, you may leave the room. "

"Oh, Aunt, I beg your pardon. I never meant--"

"I cannot understand what impels you to adopt such a manner to me, whenI am trying to do something for you. "

I hastened to strengthen my apologies with a manner becoming thepossible descendant of a king toward a lady of distinction, and my Auntwas pleased to pass over my recent lapse from respect. She now broachedher favorite topic, which I need scarcely tell you is genealogy, beginning with her own. 

"If your title to royal blood, " she said, "were as plain as mine(through Admiral Bombo, you know), you would not need any carefulresearch. "

She told me a great deal of genealogy, which I spare you; it was notone family tree, it was a forest of them. It gradually appeared thata grandmother of my mother's grandfather had been a Fanning, and therewere sundry kinds of Fannings, right ones and wrong ones; the point forme was, what kind had mine been? No family record showed this. If it wasFanning of the Bon Homme Richard variety, or Fanning of the Alamance, then I was no king's descendant. 

"Worthy New England people, I understand, " said my Aunt with her nod ofindulgent stateliness, referring to the Bon Homme Richard species, "butof entirely bourgeois extraction--Paul Jones himself, you know, wasa mere gardener's son--while the Alamance Fanning was one of thoseinfamous regulators who opposed Governor Tryon. Not through any suchcattle could you be one of us, " said my Aunt. 

But a dim, distant, hitherto uncharted Henry Tudor Fanning had foughtin some of the early Indian wars, and the last of his known blood wasreported to have fallen while fighting bravely at the battle of Cowpens. In him my hope lay. Records of Tarleton, records of Marion's men, thesewere what I must search, and for these I had best go to Kings Port. If Ireturned with Kinship proven, then I might be a Selected Salic Scion, achosen vessel, a royal seed, one in the most exalted circle of menand women upon our coasts. The other qualifications were already mine:ancestors colonial and bellicose upon land and sea--

"--besides having acquired, " my Aunt was so good as to say, "sufficientpersonal presentability since your life in Paris, of which I had rathernot know too much, Augustus. It is a pity, " she repeated, "that you willhave so much research. With my family it was all so satisfactorily clearthrough Kill-devil Bombo--Admiral Bombo's spirited, reckless son. "

You will readily conceive that I did not venture to betray my ignoranceof these Bombos; I worked my eyebrows to express a silent and timewornfamiliarity. 

"Go to Kings Port. You need a holiday, at any rate. And I, " my Aunthandsomely finished, "will make the journey a present to you. "

This generosity made me at once, and sincerely, repentant for myflippancy concerning Charles the Second and Elizabeth. And so, partlyfrom being tempted by this apple of Eve, and partly because recentoverwork had tired me, but chiefly for her sake, and not to thwart atthe outset her kindly-meant ambitions for me, I kissed the hand of myAunt Carola and set forth to Kings Port. 

"Come back one of us, " was her parting benediction. 

II: I Vary My Lunch

Thus it was that I came to sojourn in the most appealing, the mostlovely, the most wistful town in America; whose visible sadness anddistinction seem also to speak audibly, speak in the sound of the quietwaves that ripple round her Southern front, speak in the church-bellson Sunday morning, and breathe not only in the soft salt air, but in theperfume of every gentle, old-fashioned rose that blooms behind thehigh garden walls of falling mellow-tinted plaster: Kings Port theretrospective, Kings Port the belated, who from her pensive porticoeslooks over her two rivers to the marshes and the trees beyond, thelive-oaks, veiled in gray moss, brooding with memories! Were she mycity, how I should love her!

But though my city she cannot be, the enchanting image of her is mine tokeep, to carry with me wheresoever I may go; for who, having seen her, could forget her? Therefore I thank Aunt Carola for this gift, and forwhat must always go with it in my mind, the quiet and strange romancewhich I saw happen, and came finally to share in. Why it is that my Auntno longer wishes to know either the boy or the girl, or even to heartheir names mentioned, you shall learn at the end, when I have finishedwith the wedding; for this happy story of love ends with a wedding, and begins in the Woman's Exchange, which the ladies of Kings Port haveestablished, and (I trust) lucratively conduct, in Royal Street. 

Royal Street! There's a relevance in this name, a fitness to my errand;but that is pure accident. 

The Woman's Exchange happened to be there, a decorous resort for thosewho became hungry, as I did, at the hour of noon each day. In my verypleasant boarding-house, where, to be sure, there was one dreadfulboarder, a tall lady, whom I soon secretly called Juno--but letunpleasant things wait--in the very pleasant house where I boarded (Ihad left my hotel after one night) our breakfast was at eight, and ourdinner not until three: sacred meal hours in Kings Port, as inviolable, I fancy, as the Declaration of Independence, but a gap quite beyond thestretch of my Northern vitals. Therefore, at twelve, it was my habit toleave my Fanning researches for a while, and lunch at the Exchange uponchocolate and sandwiches most delicate in savor. As, one day, I wasluxuriously biting one of these, I heard his voice and what he wassaying. Both the voice and the interesting order he was giving causedme, at my small table, in the dim back of the room, to stop and watchhim where he stood in the light at the counter to the right of theentrance door. Young he was, very young, twenty-two or three at themost, and as he stood, with hat in hand, speaking to the pretty girlbehind the counter, his head and side-face were of a romantic andhigh-strung look. It was a cake that he desired made, a cake for awedding; and I directly found myself curious to know whose wedding. Evena dull wedding interests me more than other dull events, because itcan arouse so much surmise and so much prophecy; but in this weddingI instantly, because of his strange and winning embarrassment, becamequite absorbed. How came it he was ordering the cake for it? Blushinglike the boy that he was entirely, he spoke in a most engaging voice:"No, not charged; and as you don't know me, I had better pay for itnow. "

Self-possession in his speech he almost had; but the blood in his cheeksand forehead was beyond his control. 

A reply came from behind the counter: "We don't expect payment untildelivery. "

"But--a--but on that morning I shall be rather particularly engaged. "His tones sank almost away on these words. 

"We should prefer to wait, then. You will leave your address. Inhalf-pound boxes, I suppose?"

"Boxes? Oh, yes--I hadn't thought--no--just a big, round one. Like this, you know!" His arms embraced a circular space of air. "With plenty oficing. "

I do not think that there was any smile on the other side of thecounter; there was, at any rate, no hint of one in the voice. "And howmany pounds?"

He was again staggered. "Why--a--I never ordered one before. I wantplenty--and the very best, the very best. Each person would eat a pound, wouldn't they? Or would two be nearer? I think I had better leave itall to you. About like this, you know. " Once more his arms embraced acircular space of air. 

Before this I had never heard the young lady behind the counter enterinto any conversation with a customer. She would talk at length aboutall sorts of Kings Port affairs with the older ladies connected with theExchange, who were frequently to be found there; but with a customer, never. She always took my orders, and my money, and served me, with asilence and a propriety that have become, with ordinary shopkeepers, alost art. They talk to one indeed! But this slim girl was a lady, andconsequently did the right thing, marking and keeping a distance betweenherself and the public. To-day, however, she evidently felt it herofficial duty to guide the hapless young, man amid his errors. He nowappeared to be committing a grave one. 

"Are you quite sure you want that?" the girl was asking. 

"Lady Baltimore? Yes, that is what I want. "

"Because, " she began to explain, then hesitated, and looked at him. Perhaps it was in his face; perhaps it was that she remembered at thispoint the serious difference between the price of Lady Baltimore (bymy small bill-of-fare I was now made acquainted with its price) and thecost of that rich article which convention has prescribed as the cakefor weddings; at any rate, swift, sudden delicacy of feeling preventedher explaining any more to him, for she saw how it was: his means weretoo humble for the approved kind of wedding cake! She was too young, toounskilled yet in the world's ways, to rise above her embarrassment; andso she stood blushing at him behind the counter, while he stood blushingat her in front of it. 

At length he succeeded in speaking. "That's all, I believe. Good-morning. "

At his hastily departing back she, too, murmured: "Good-morning. "

Before I knew it I had screamed out loudly from my table: "But he hasn'ttold you the day he wants it for!"

Before she knew it she had flown to the door--my cry had set her going, as if I had touched a spring--and there he was at the door himself, rushing back. He, too, had remembered. It was almost a collision, andnothing but their good Southern breeding, the way they took it, saved itfrom being like a rowdy farce. 

"I know, " he said simply and immediately. "I am sorry to be so careless. It's for the twenty-seventh. "

She was writing it down in the order-book. "Very well. That is Wednesdayof next week. You have given us more time than we need. " She putcomplete, impersonal business into her tone; and this time he marchedoff in good order, leaving peace in the Woman's Exchange. 

No, not peace; quiet, merely; the girl at the counter now proceeded togrow indignant with me. We were alone together, we two; no young man, or any other business, occupied her or protected me. But if you supposethat she made war, or expressed rage by speaking, that is not it atall. From her counter in front to my table at the back she made herdispleasure felt; she was inaudibly crushing; she did not do it evenwith her eye, she managed it--well, with her neck, somehow, and by theway she made her nose look in profile. Aunt Carola would have embracedher--and I should have liked to do so myself. She could not stand theidea of my having, after all these days of official reserve that she hadplaced between us, startled her into that rush to the door annihilatedher dignity at a blow. So did I finish my sandwiches beneath herinvisible but eloquent fire. What affair of mine was the cake? Andwhat sort of impertinent, meddlesome person was I, shrieking out mysuggestions to people with whom I had no acquaintance? These were thethings that her nose and her neck said to me the whole length of theExchange. I had nothing but my own weakness to thank; it was my interestin weddings that did it, made me forget my decorum, the public place, myself, everything, and plunge in. And I became more and more delightedover it as the girl continued to crush me. My day had been dull, myresearches had not brought me a whit nearer royal blood; I looked atmy little bill-of-fare, and then I stepped forward to the counter, adventurous, but polite. 

"I should like a slice, if you please, of Lady Baltimore, " I said withextreme formality. 

I thought she was going to burst; but after an interesting second shereplied, "Certainly, " in her fit Regular Exchange tone; only, I thoughtit trembled a little. 

I returned to the table and she brought me the cake, and I had my firstfelicitous meeting with Lady Baltimore. Oh, my goodness! Did you evertaste it? It's all soft, and it's in layers, and it has nuts--but Ican't write any more about it; my mouth waters too much. 

Delighted surprise caused me once more to speak aloud, and with my mouthfull. "But, dear me, this Is delicious!"

A choking ripple of laughter came from the counter. "It's I who makethem, " said the girl. "I thank you for the unintentional compliment. "Then she walked straight back to my table. "I can't help it, " she said, laughing still, and her delightful, insolent nose well up; "how canI behave myself when a man goes on as you do?" A nice white curly dogfollowed her, and she stroked his ears. 

"Your behavior is very agreeable to me, " I remarked. 

"You'll allow me to say that you're not invited to criticise it. Iwas decidedly put out with you for making me ridiculous. But you haveadmired my cake with such enthusiasm that you are forgiven. And--may Ihope that you are getting on famously with the battle of Cowpens?"

I stared. "I'm frankly very much astonished that you should know aboutthat!"

"Oh, you're just known all about in Kings Port. "

I wish that our miserable alphabet could in some way render the softSouthern accent which she gave to her words. But it cannot. I couldeasily misspell, if I chose; but how, even then, could I, for instance, make you hear her way of saying "about"? "Aboot" would magnify it; andbesides, I decline to make ugly to the eye her quite special English, that was so charming to the ear. 

"Kings Port just knows all about you, " she repeated with a sweet andmocking laugh. 

"Do you mind telling me how?"

She explained at once. "This place is death to all incognitos. "

The explanation, however, did not, on the instant, enlighten me. "This?The Woman's Exchange, you mean?"

"Why, to be sure! Have you not heard ladies talking together here?"

I blankly repealed her words. "Ladies talking?"

She nodded. 

"Oh!" I cried. "How dull of me! Ladies talking! Of course!"

She continued. "It was therefore widely known that you were consultingour South Carolina archives at the library--and then that notebook youbring marked you out the very first day. Why, two hours after your firstlunch we just knew all about you!"

"Dear me!" said I. 

"Kings Port is ever ready to discuss strangers, " she further explained. "The Exchange has been going on five years, and the resident familieshave discussed each other so thoroughly here that everything is known;therefore a stranger is a perfect boon. " Her gayety for a momentinterrupted her, before she continued, always mocking and always sweet:"Kings Port cannot boast intelligence offices for servants; but if youwant to know the character and occupation of your friends, come to theExchange!" How I wish I could give you the raciness, the contagion, ofher laughter! Who would have dreamed that behind her primness all thisfrolic lay in ambush? "Why, " she said, "I'm only a plantation girl; it'smy first week here, and I know every wicked deed everybody as done since1812!"

She went back to her counter. It had been very merry; and as I wassettling the small debt for my lunch I asked: "Since this is the properplace for information, will you kindly tell me whose wedding that cakeis for?"

She was astonished. "You don't know? And I thought you were quite aclever Ya--I beg your pardon--Northerner. 

"Please tell me, since I know you're quite a clever Reb--I beg yourpardon--Southerner. "

"Why, it's his own! Couldn't you see that from his bashfulness?"

"Ordering his own wedding cake?" Amazement held me. But the door opened, one of the elderly ladies entered, the girl behind the counter stiffenedto primness in a flash, and I went out into Royal Street as the curlydog's tail wagged his greeting to the newcomer. 

III: Kings Port Talks

Of course I had at once left the letters of introduction which AuntCarola had given me; but in my ignorance of Kings Port hours I hadfound everybody at dinner when I made my first round of calls betweenhalf-past three and five--an experience particularly regrettable, sinceI had hurried my own dinner on purpose, not then aware that the hours atmy boarding-house were the custom of the whole town. (These hourseven since my visit to Kings Port, are beginning to change. But suchbacksliding is much condemned. ) Upon an afternoon some days later, having seen in the extra looking-glass, which I had been obliged toprovide for myself, that the part in my back hair was perfect, I setforth again, better informed. 

As I rang the first doorbell, another visitor came up the steps, abeautiful old lady in widow's dress, a cardcase in her hand. 

"Have you rung, sir?" said she, in a manner at once gentle andvoluminous. 

"Yes, madam. "

Nevertheless she pulled it again. "It doesn't always ring, " sheexplained, "unless one is accustomed to it, which you are not. "

She addressed me with authority, exactly like Aunt Carola, and with evengreater precision in her good English and good enunciation. Unlike thegirl at the Exchange, she had no accent; her language was simplythe perfection of educated utterance; it also was racy with the freecensoriousness which civilized people of consequence are apt to exercisethe world over. "I was sorry to miss your visit, " she began (she knewme, you see, perfectly); "you will please to come again soon, andconsole me for my disappointment. I am Mrs. Gregory St. Michael, and myhouse is in Le Maire Street (Pronounced in Kings Port, Lammarree) as youhave been so civil as to find out. And how does your Aunt Carola do inthese contemptible times? You can tell her from me that vulgarization isdescending, even upon Kings Port. "

"I cannot imagine that!" I exclaimed. 

"You cannot imagine it because you don't know anything about it, younggentleman! The manners of some of our own young people will soon be asdishevelled as those in New York. Have you seen our town yet, or is itall books with you? You should not leave without a look at what isstill left of us. I shall be happy if you will sit in my pew on Sundaymorning. Your Northern shells did their best in the bombardment--didyou say that you rang? I think you had better pull it again; all theway out; yes, like that--in the bombardment, but we have our oldchurch still, in spite of you. Do you see the crack in that wall? Theearthquake did it. You're spared earthquakes in the North, as you seemto be spared pretty much everything disastrous--except the prosperitythat's going to ruin you all. We're better off with our poverty thanyou. Just ring the bell once more, and then we'll go. I fancy Julia--Ifancy Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael--has run out to stare at the Northernsteam yacht in the harbor. It would be just like her. This house ishistoric itself. Shabby enough now, to be sure! The great-aunt of mycousin, John Mayrant (who is going to be married next Wednesday, to sucha brute of a girl, poor boy!), lived here in 1840, and made an answerto the Earl of Mainridge that put him in his place. She was our famousKings Port wit, and at the reception which her father (my mother'suncle) gave the English visitor, he conducted himself as so manyEnglishmen seem to think they can in this country. Miss Beaufain(pronounced in Kings Port, Bowfayne), as she was then, asked the Earlhow he liked America; and he replied, very well, except for the people, who were so vulgar. 'What can you expect?' said Miss Beaufain; 'we'redescended from the English. ' Mrs. St. Michael is out, and the servanthas gone home. Slide this card under the door, with your own, and comeaway. "

She took me with her, moving through the quiet South Place with aleisurely grace and dignity at which my spirit rejoiced; she was sobeautiful, and so easy, and afraid of nothing and nobody! (This must bemodified. I came later to suspect that they all stood in some dread oftheir own immediate families. )

In the North, everybody is afraid of something: afraid of thelegislature, afraid of the trusts, afraid of the strikes, afraid of whatthe papers will say, of what the neighbors will say, of what the cookwill say; and most of all, and worst of all, afraid to be differentfrom the general pattern, afraid to take a step or speak a syllable thatshall cause them to be thought unlike the monotonous millions of theirfellow-citizens; the land of the free living in ceaseless fear! Well, I was already afraid of Mrs. Gregory St. Michael. As we walked and shetalked, I made one or two attempts at conversation, and speedily foundthat no such thing was the lady's intention: I was there to listen; andtruly I could wish nothing more agreeable, in spite of my desire to hearfurther about next Wednesday's wedding and the brute of a girl. But tothis subject Mrs. St. Michael did not return. We crossed Worship Streetand Chancel Street, and were nearing the East Place where a cannon wasbeing shown me, a cannon with a history and an inscription concerningthe "war for Southern independence, which I presume your prejudice callsthe Rebellion, " said my guide. "There's Mrs. St. Michael now, cominground the corner. Well, Julia, could you read the yacht's name withyour naked eye? And what's the name of the gambler who owns it? He'sa gambler, or he couldn't own a yacht--unless his wife's a gambler'sdaughter. "

"How well you're feeling to-day, Maria!" said the other lady, with agentle smile. 

"Certainly. I have been talking for twenty minutes. " I was now presentedto Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael, also old, also charming, in widow's dressno less in the bloom of age than Mrs. Gregory, but whiter and verydiminutive. She shyly welcomed me to Kings Port. "Take him home withyou, Julia. We pulled your bell three times, and it's too damp for youto be out. Don't forget, " Mrs. Gregory said to me, "that you haven'ttold me a word about your Aunt Carola, and that I shall expect you tocome and do it. " She went slowly away from us, up the East Place, tall, graceful, sweeping into the distance like a ship. No haste about herdignified movement, no swinging of elbows, nothing of the present hour!

"What a beautiful girl she must have been!" I murmured aloud, unconsciously. 

"No, she was not a beauty in her youth, " said my new guide in her shyvoice, "but always fluent, always a wit. Kings Port has at times thoughther tongue too downright. We think that wit runs in her family, foryoung John Mayrant has it; and her first-cousin-once-removed put theEarl of Mainridge in his place at her father's ball in 1840. MissBeaufain (as she was then) asked the Earl how he liked America; and hereplied, very well, except for the people, who were so vulgar. 'What canyou expect?' said Miss Beaufain; 'we're descended from the English. 'I am very sorry for Maria--for Mrs. St. Michael--just at present. Heryoung cousin, John Mayrant, is making an alliance deeply vexatious toher. Do you happen to know Miss Hortense Rieppe?"

I had never heard of her. 

"No? She has been North lately. I thought you might have met her. Herfather takes her North, I believe, whenever any one will invite them. They have sometimes managed to make it extend through an unbroken year. Newport, I am credibly informed, greatly admires her. We in KingsPort have never (except John Mayrant, apparently) seen anything in herbeauty, which Northerners find so exceptional. "

"What is her type?" I inquired. 

"I consider that she looks like a steel wasp. And she has the assuranceto call herself a Kings Port girl. Her father calls himself a general, and it is repeated that he ran away at the battle of Chattanooga. I hopeyou will come to see me another day, when you can spare time from thebattle of Cowpens. I am Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael, the other lady isMrs. Gregory St. Michael. I wonder if you will keep us all straight?"And smiling, the little lady, whose shy manner and voice I had found toveil as much spirit as her predecessor's, dismissed me and went up hersteps, letting herself into her own house. 

The boy in question, the boy of the cake, John Mayrant, was coming outof the gate at which I next rang. The appearance of his boyish figureand well-carried head struck me anew, as it had at first; from his wholeperson one got at once a strangely romantic impression. He looked at me, made as if he would speak, but passed on. Probably he had been hearingas much about me as I had been hearing about him. At this house theblack servant had not gone home for the night, and if the mistress hadbeen out to take a look at the steam yacht, she had returned. 

"My sister, " she said, presenting me to a supremely fine-looking oldlady, more chiselled, more august, than even herself. I did not catchthis lady's name, and she confined herself to a distant, though perhapsnot unfriendly, greeting. She was sitting by a work-table, and sheresumed some embroidery of exquisite appearance, while my hostess talkedto me. 

Both wore their hair in a simple fashion to suit their years, which musthave been seventy or more; both were dressed with the dignity that suchyears call for; and I may mention here that so were all the ladies abovea certain age in this town of admirable old-fashioned propriety. In NewYork, in Boston, in Philadelphia, ladies of seventy won't be old ladiesany more; they're unwilling to wear their years avowedly, in quietdignity by their firesides; they bare their bosoms and gallopegregiously to the ball-rooms of the young; and so we lose a particulargraciousness that Kings Port retains, a perspective of generations. We happen all at once, with no background, in a swirl of haste andsimilarity. 

One of the many things which came home to me during the conversationthat now began (so many more things came home than I can tell you!) wasthat Mrs. Gregory St. Michael's tongue was assuredly "downright" forKings Port. This I had not at all taken in while she talked to me, andher friend's reference to it had left me somewhat at a loss. That betterprecision and choice of words which I have mentioned, and the mannerin which she announced her opinions, had put me in mind of several fineladles whom I had known in other parts of the world; but hers was anindividual manner, I was soon to find, and by no means the Kings Portconvention. This convention permitted, indeed, condemnations of one'sneighbor no less sweeping, but it conveyed them in a phraseology farmore restrained. 

"I cannot regret your coming to Kings Port, " said my hostess, after wehad talked for a little while, and I had complimented the balmy Marchweather and the wealth of blooming flowers; "but I fear that Fanning isnot a name that you will find here. It belongs to North Carolina. "

I smiled and explained that North Carolina Fannings were useless to me. "And, if I may be so bold, how well you are acquainted with my errand!"

I cannot say that my hostess smiled, that would be too definite; but Ican say that she did not permit herself to smile, and that she letme see this repression. "Yes, " she said, "we are acquainted with yourerrand, though not with its motive. "

I sat silent, thinking of the Exchange. 

My hostess now gave me her own account of why all things were knownto all people in this town. "The distances in your Northern cities aregreater, and their population is much greater. There are but few of usin Kings Port. " In these last words she plainly told me that those "few"desired no others. She next added: "My nephew, John Mayrant, has spokenof you at some length. "

I bowed. "I had the pleasure to see and hear him order a wedding cake. "

"Yes. From Eliza La Heu (pronounced Layhew), my niece; he is my nephew, she is my niece on the other side. My niece is a beginner at theExchange. We hope that she will fulfil her duties there in aworthy manner. She comes from a family which is schooled to meetresponsibilities. "

I bowed again; again it seemed fitting. "I had not, until now, known thecharming girl's name, " I murmured. 

My hostess now bowed slightly. "I am glad that you find her charming. "

"Indeed, yes!" I exclaimed. 

"We, also, are pleased with her. She is of good family--for theup-country. "

Once again our alphabet fails me. The peculiar shade of kindness, ofrecognition, of patronage, which my agreeable hostess (and all KingsPort ladies, I soon noticed) imparted to the word "up-country" cannot beconveyed except by the human voice--and only a Kings Port voice at that. It is a much lighter damnation than what they make of the phrase "fromGeorgia, " which I was soon to hear uttered by the lips of the lady. "Andso you know about his wedding cake?"

"My dear madam, I feel that I shall know about everything. "

Her gray eyes looked at me quietly for a moment. "That is possible. Butalthough we may talk of ourselves to you, we scarcely expect you to talkof ourselves to us. "

Well, my pertness had brought me this quite properly! And I received itproperly. "I should never dream--" I hastened to say; "even without yourwarning. I find I'm expected to have seen the young lady of his choice, "I now threw out. My accidental words proved as miraculous as the staffwhich once smote the rock. It was a stream, indeed, which now brokeforth from her stony discretion. She began easily. "It is evident thatyou have not seen Miss Rieppe by the manner in which you allude toher--although of course, in comparison with my age, she is a younggirl. " I think that this caused me to open my mouth. 

"The disparity between her years and my nephew's is variously stated, "continued the old lady. "But since John's engagement we have all of usrealized that love is truly blind. "

I did not open my mouth any more; but my mind's mouth was wide open. 

My hostess kept it so. "Since John Mayrant was fifteen he has had manyloves; and for myself, knowing him and believing in him as I do, I feelconfident that he will make no connection distasteful to the family whenhe really comes to marry. "

This time I gasped outright. "But--the cake!--next Wednesday!"

She made, with her small white hand, a slight and slighting gesture. "The cake is not baked yet, and we shall see what we shall see. " Fromthis onward until the end a pinkness mounted in her pale, delicatecheeks, and deep, strong resentment burned beneath her discreetlyexpressed indiscretions. "The cake is not baked, and I, at least, am notsolicitous. I tell my cousin, Mrs. Gregory St. Michael, that she mustnot forget it was merely his phosphates. That girl would never havelooked at John Mayrant had it not been for the rumor of his phosphates. I suppose some one has explained to you her pretensions of birth. Awayfrom Kings Port she may pass for a native of this place, but they comefrom Georgia. It cannot be said that she has met with encouragementfrom us; she, however, easily recovers from such things. The presentgeneration of young people in Kings Port has little enough to remind usof what we stood for in manners and customs, but we are not accountablefor her, nor for her father. I believe that he is called a general. Hisconduct at Chattanooga was conspicuous for personal prudence. Both ofthem are skillful in never knowing poor people--but the Northernersthey consort with must really be at a loss how to bestow their money. Of course, such Northerners cannot realize the difference between KingsPort and Georgia, and consequently they make much of her. Her featuresdo undoubtedly possess beauty. A Newport woman--the new kind--has eventaken her to Worth! And yet, after all, she has remained for John. Weheard a great deal of her men, too. She took care of that, of course. John Mayrant actually followed her to Newport. 

"But, " I couldn't help crying out, "I thought he was so poor!"

"The phosphates, " my hostess explained. "They had been discovered on hisland. And none of her New York men had come forward. So John rushedback happy. " At this point a very singular look came over the face ofmy hostess, and she continued: "There have been many false reports (andfalse hopes in consequence) based upon the phosphate discoveries. It wasI who had to break it to him--what further investigation had revealed. Poor John!"

"He has, then, nothing?" I inquired. 

"His position in the Custom House, and a penny or two from his mother'sfortune. "

"But the cake?" I now once again reminded her. 

My hostess lifted her delicate hand and let it fall. Her resentment atthe would-be intruder by marriage still mounted. "Not even from thatpair would I have believed such a thing possible!" she exclaimed; andshe went into a long, low, contemplative laugh, looking not at me, butat the fire. Our silent companion continued to embroider. "That girl, "my hostess resumed, "and her discreditable father played on my nephew'syouth and chivalry to the tune of--well, you have heard the tune. "

"You mean--you mean--?" I couldn't quite take it in. 

"Yes. They rattled their poverty at him until he offered and theyaccepted. "

I must have stared grotesquely now. "That--that--the cake--and that sortof thing--at his expense?

"My dear sir, I shall be glad if you can find me anything that they haveever done at their own expense!"

I doubt if she would ever have permitted her speech such freedom hadnot the Rieppes been "from Georgia"; I am sure that it was anger--familyanger, race anger--which had broken forth; and I think that hersilent, severe sister scarcely approved of such breaking forth to me, a stranger. But indignation had worn her reticence thin, and I hadhappened to press upon the weak place. After my burst of exclamation Icame back to it. "So you think Miss Rieppe will get out of it?"

"It is my nephew who will 'get out of it, ' as you express it. "

I totally misunderstood her. "Oh!" I protested stupidly. "He doesn'tlook like that. And it takes all meaning from the cake. "

"Do not say cake to me again!" said the lady, smiling at last. "And--will you allow me to tell you that I do not need to have mynephew, John Mayrant, explained to me by any one? I merely meant to saythat he, and not she, is the person who will make the lucky escape. Ofcourse, he is honorable--a great deal too much so for his own good. Itis a misfortune, nowadays, to be born a gentleman in America. But, asI told you, I am not solicitous. What she is counting on--becauseshe thinks she understands true Kings Port honor, and does not in theleast--is his renouncing her on account of the phosphates--the badnews, I mean. They could live on what he has--not at all in her way, though--and besides, after once offering his genuine, ardent, foolishlove--for it was genuine enough at the time--John would never--"

She stopped; but I took her up. "Did I understand you to say that hislove was genuine at the lime?"

"Oh, he thinks it is now--insists it is now! That is just precisely whatwould make him--do you not see?--stick to his colors all the closer. "

"Goodness!" I murmured. "What a predicament!"

But my hostess nodded easily. "Oh, no. You will see. They will all see. "

I rose to take my leave; my visit, indeed, had been, for very interest, prolonged beyond the limits of formality--my hostess had attended quitethoroughly to my being entertained. And at this point the other, themore severe and elderly lady, made her contribution to my entertainment. She had kept silence, I now felt sure, because gossip was neitherher habit nor to her liking. Possibly she may have also felt that herdispleasure had been too manifest; at any rate, she spoke out of hersilence in cold, yet rich, symmetrical tones. 

"This, I understand, is your first visit to Kings Port?"

I told her that it was. 

She laid down her exquisite embroidery. "It has been thought a placeworth seeing. There is no town of such historic interest at the North. "

Standing by my chair, I assured her that I did not think there could be. 

"I heard you allude to my half-sister-in-law, Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael. It was at the house where she now lives that the famous Miss Beaufain(as she was then) put the Earl of Mainridge in his place, at thereception which her father gave the English visitor in 1840. The Earlconducted himself as so many Englishmen seem to think they can in thiscountry; and on her asking him how he liked America, he replied, verywell, except for the people, who were so vulgar. 

"'What can you expect?' said Miss Beaufain; 'we're descended from theEnglish. '"

"But I suppose you will tell me that your Northern beauties can easilyoutmatch such wit. "

I hastened to disclaim any such pretension; and having expressed myappreciation of the anecdote, I moved to the door as the stately ladyresumed her embroidery. 

My hostess had a last word for me. "Do not let the cake worry you. "

Outside the handsome old iron gate I looked at my watch and found thatfor this day I could spend no more time upon visiting. 

IV: THE GIRL BEHIND THE COUNTER--I

I fear--no; to say one "fears" that one has stepped aside from thenarrow path of duty, when one knows perfectly well that one has doneso, is a ridiculous half-dodging of the truth; let me dismiss frommy service such a cowardly circumlocution, and squarely say that Ineglected the Cowpens during certain days which now followed. Nay, more;I totally deserted them. Although I feel quite sure that to discover oneis a real king's descendant must bring an exultation of no mean order tothe heart, there's no exultation whatever in failing to discover this, day after day. Mine is a nature which demands results, or at anyrate signs of results coming sooner or later. Even the most abandonedfisherman requires a bite now and then; but my fishing for Fannings hadnot yet brought me one single nibble--and I gave up the sad sport fora while. The beautiful weather took me out of doors over the land, andalso over the water, for I am a great lover of sailing; and I found alittle cat-boat and a little negro, both of which suited me very well. I spent many delightful hours in their company among the deeps andshallows of these fair Southern waters. 

And indoors, also, I made most agreeable use of my time, in spite ofone disappointment when, on the day following my visit to the ladies, Ireturned full of expectancy to lunch at the Woman's exchange, the girlbehind the counter was not there. I found in her stead, it is true, amost polite lady, who provided me with chocolate and sandwiches thatwere just as good as their predecessors; but she was of advanced years, and little inclined to light conversation. Beyond telling me that MissEliza La Heu was indisposed, but not gravely so, and that she was notlikely to be long away from her post of duty, this lady furnished mewith scant information. 

Now I desired a great deal of information. To learn of an imminentwedding where the bridegroom attends to the cake, and is suspected ofdiminished eagerness for the bride, who is a steel wasp--that is notenough to learn of such nuptials. Therefore I fear--I mean, I know--thatit was not wholly for the sake of telling Mrs. Gregory St. Michael aboutAunt Carola that I repaired again to Le Maire Street and rang Mrs. St. Michael's door-bell. 

She was at home, to be sure, but with her sat another visitor, the tall, severe lady who had embroidered and had not liked the freedom with whichher sister had spoken to me about the wedding. There was not a bit offreedom to-day; the severe lady took care of that. 

When, after some utterly unprofitable conversation, I managed to say ina casual voice, which I thought very well tuned for the purpose, "Whatpart of Georgia did you say that General Rieppe came from?" the severelady responded:--

"I do not think that I mentioned him at all. "

"Georgia?" said Mrs. Gregory St. Michael. "I never heard that they camefrom Georgia. "

And this revived my hopes. But the severe lady at once remarked toher:--

"I have received a most agreeable letter from my sister in Paris. "

This stopped Mrs. Gregory St. Michael, and dashed my hopes to earth. 

The severe lady continued to me:--

"My sister writes of witnessing a performance of the Lohengrin. Can youtell me if it is a composition of merit?"

I assured her that it was a composition of the highest merit. 

"It is many years since I have heard an opera, " she pursued. "In my daythe works of the Italians were much applauded. But I doubt if Mozartwill be surpassed. I hope you admire the Nozze?"

You will not need me to tell you that I came out of Mrs. Gregory St. Michael's house little wiser than I went in. My experience did not leadme to abandon all hope. I paid other visits to other ladies; but theseanswered my inquiries in much the same sort of way as had the lady whoadmired Mozart. They spoke delightfully of travel, books, people, andof the colonial renown of Kings Port and its leading families; but itis scarce an exaggeration to say that Mozart was as near the cake, thewedding, or the steel wasp as I came with any of them. By patience, however, and mostly at our boarding-house table, I gathered a certainknowledge, though small in amount. 

If the health of John Mayrant's mother, I learned, had allowed that ladyto bring him up Herself, many follies might have been saved the youth. His aunt, Miss Eliza St. Michael, though a pattern of good intentions, was not always a pattern of wisdom. Moreover, how should a spinsterbring up a boy fitly?

Of the Rieppes, father and daughter, I also learned a little more. Theydid not (most people believed) come from Georgia. Natchez and Mobileseemed to divide the responsibility of giving them to the world. It wasquite certain the General had run away from Chattanooga. Nobody disputedthis, or offered any other battle as the authentic one. Of late theRieppes were seldom to be seen in Kings Port. Their house (if it hadever been their own property, which I heard hotly argued both ways) hadbeen sold more than two years ago, and their recent brief sojourns inthe town were generally beneath the roof of hospitable friends--peopleby the name of Cornerly, "whom we do not know, " as I was carefullyinformed by more than one member of the St. Michael family. The girl haddisturbed a number of mothers whose sons were prone to slip out of thestrict hereditary fold in directions where beauty or champagne was tobe found; and the Cornerlys dined late, and had champagne. Miss Hortensehad "splurged it" a good deal here, and the measure of her successwith the male youth was the measure of her condemnation by their femaleelders. 

Such were the facts which I gathered from women and from the few menwhom I saw in Kings Port. This town seemed to me almost as empty of menas if the Pied Piper had passed through here and lured them magicallyaway to some distant country. It was on the happy day that saw MissEliza La Heu again providing me with sandwiches and chocolate that myknowledge of the wedding and the bride and groom began really to takesome steps forward. 

It was not I who, at my sequestered lunch at the Woman's Exchange, beganthe conversation the next time. That confection, "Lady Baltimore, " aboutwhich I was not to worry myself, had, as they say, "broken the ice"between the girl behind the counter and myself. 

"He has put it off!" This, without any preliminaries, was her direct andstimulating news. 

I never was more grateful for the solitude of the Exchange, where Ihad, before this, noted and blessed an absence of lunch customers asprevailing as the trade winds; the people I saw there came to talk, notto purchase. Well, I was certainly henceforth coming for both!

I eagerly plunged in with the obvious question:--

"Indefinitely?"

"Oh, no! Only Wednesday week. "

"But will it keep?"

My ignorance diverted her. "Lady Baltimore? Why, the idea!" And shelaughed at me from the immense distance that the South is from theNorth. 

"Then he'll have to pay for two?"

"Oh, no! I wasn't going to make it till Tuesday. 

"I didn't suppose that kind of thing would keep, " I muttered rathervaguely. 

Her young spirits bubbled over. "Which kind of thing? The wedding--orthe cake?"

This produced a moment of laughter on the part of us both; we giggledjoyously together amid the silence and wares for sale, the painted cups, the embroidered souvenirs, the new food, and the old family "pieces. "

So this delightful girl was a verbal skirmisher! Now nothing is moreto my liking than the verbal skirmish, and therefore I began oneimmediately. "I see you quite know, " was the first light shot that Ihazarded. 

Her retort to this was merely a very bland and inquiring stare. 

I now aimed a trifle nearer the mark. "About him--her--it! Since youpractically live in the Exchange, how can you exactly help yourself?"

Her laughter came back. "It's all, you know, so much later than 1812. "

"Later! Why, a lot of it is to happen yet!"

She leaned over the counter. "Tell me what you know about it, " she saidwith caressing insinuation. 

"Oh, well--but probably they mean to have your education progresschronologically. "

"I think I can pick it up anywhere. We had to at the plantation. "

It was from my table in the distant dim back of the room, where thingsstood lumpily under mosquito netting, that I told her my history. Shemade me go there to my lunch. She seemed to desire that our talk overthe counter should not longer continue. And so, back there, overmy chocolate and sandwiches, I brought out my gleaned and arrangedknowledge which rang out across the distance, comically, like a lecture. She, at her counter, now and then busy with her ledger, received it withthe attentive solemnity of a lecture. The ledger might have been notesthat she was dutifully and improvingly taking. After I had finished shewrote on for a little while in silence. The curly white dog rose intosight, looked amiably and vaguely about, stretched himself, and sank tosleep again out of sight. 

"That's all?" she asked abruptly. 

"So far, " I answered. 

"And what do you think of such a young man?" she inquired. 

"I know what I think of such a young woman. "

She was still pensive. "Yes, yes, but then that is so simple. "

I had a short laugh. "Oh, if you come to the simplicity!"

She nodded, seeming to be doing sums with her pencil. 

"Men are always simple--when they're in love. "

I assented. "And women--you'll agree?--are always simple when they'renot!"

She finished her sums. "Well, I think he's foolish!" she frankly stated. "Didn't Aunt Josephine think so, too?"

"Aunt Josephine?"

"Miss Josephine St. Michael--my greet-aunt--the lady who embroidered. She brought me here from the plantation. "

"No, she wouldn't talk about it. But don't you think it is your turnnow?"

"I've taken my turn!"

"Oh, not much. To say you think he's foolish isn't much. You've seen himsince?"

"Seen him? Since when?"

"Here. Since the postponement. I take it he came himself about it. "

"Yes, he came. You don't suppose we discussed the reasons, do you?"

"My dear young lady, I suppose nothing, except that you certainly musthave seen how he looked (he can blush, you know, handsomely), and thatyou may have some knowledge or some guess--"

"Some guess why it's not to be until Wednesday week? Of course he saidwhy. Her poor, dear father, the General, isn't very well. "

"That, indeed, must be an anxiety for Johnny, " I remarked. 

This led her to indulge in some more merriment. "But he does, " she thensaid, "seem anxious about something. "

"Ah, " I exclaimed. "Then you admit it, too!"

She resorted again to the bland, inquiring stare. 

"What he won't admit, " I explained, "even to his intimate Aunt, becausehe's so honorable. "

"He certainly is simple, " she commented, in soft and pensive tones. 

"Isn't there some one, " I asked, "who could--not too directly, ofcourse--suggest that to him?"

"I think I prefer men to be simple, " she returned somewhat quickly. 

"Especially when they're in love, " I reminded her somewhat slowly. 

"Do you want some Lady Baltimore to-day?" she inquired in the officialExchange tone. 

I rose obediently. "You're quite right, I should have gone back to thebattle of Cowpens long ago, and I'll just say this--since you asked mewhat I thought of him--that if he's descended from that John Mayrant whofought the Serapes under Paul Jones--"

"He is!" she broke in eagerly. 

"Then there's not a name in South Carolina that I'd rather have for myown. "

I intended that thrust to strike home, but she turned it off mostcompetently. "Oh, you mustn't accept us because of our ancestors. That'show we've been accepting ourselves, and only look where we are in therace!"

"Ah!" I said, as a parting attempt, "don't pretend you're not perfectlysatisfied--all of you--as to where you are in the race!"

"We don't pretend anything!" she flashed back. 

V: The Boy of the Cake

One is unthankful, I suppose, to call a day so dreary when one haslunched under the circumstances that I have attempted to indicate; thebright spot ought to shine over the whole. But you haven't an idea whata nightmare in the daytime Cowpens was beginning to be. 

I had thumbed and scanned hundreds of ancient pages, some of themmanuscript; I had sat by ancient shelves upon hard chairs, I had sneezedwith the ancient dust, and I had not put my finger upon a trace of theright Fanning. I should have given it up, left unexplored the territorythat remained staring at me through the backs of unread volumes, had itnot been for my Aunt Carola. To her I owed constancy and diligence, and so I kept at it; and the hermit hours I spent at Court and Chancelstreets grew worse as I knew better what rarely good company was readyto receive me. This Kings Port, this little city of oblivion, held, shutin with its lavender and pressed-rose memories, a handful of peoplewho were like that great society of the world, the high society ofdistinguished men and women who exist no more, but who touched historywith a light hand, and left their mark upon it in a host of memoirs andletters that we read to-day with a starved and home-sick longing inthe midst of our sullen welter of democracy. With its silent houses andgardens, its silent streets, its silent vistas of the blue water in thesunshine, this beautiful, sad place was winning my heart and makingit ache. Nowhere else in America such charm, such character, suchtrue elegance as here--and nowhere else such an overwhelming sense offinality!--the doom of a civilization founded upon a crime. And yet, howmuch has the ballot done for that race? Or, at least, how much has theballot done for the majority of that race? And what way was it to meetthis problem with the sudden sweeping folly of the Fifteenth Amendment?To fling the "door of hope" wide open before those within had learnedthe first steps of how to walk sagely through it! Ah, if it comes toblame, who goes scatheless in this heritage of error? I could haveshaped (we all could, you know) a better scheme for the universe, a planwhere we should not flourish at each other's expense, where the lionshould be lying down with the lamb now, where good and evil should notbe husband and wife, indissolubly married by a law of creation. 

With such highly novel thoughts as these I descended the steps from myresearches at the corner of Court and Chancel streets an hour earlierthan my custom, because--well, I couldn't, that day, stand Cowpens foranother minute. Up at the corner of Court and Worship the people weregoing decently into church; it was a sweet, gentle late Friday in Lent. I had intended keeping out-of-doors, to smell the roses in the gardens, to bask in the soft remnant of sunshine, to loiter and peep in throughthe Kings Port garden gates, up the silent walks to the silent verandas. But the slow stream of people took me, instead, into church with thedeeply veiled ladies of Kings Port, hushed in their perpetual mourningfor not only, I think, those husbands and brothers and sons whom thewar had turned to dust forty years ago, but also for the Cause, the lostCause, that died with them. I sat there among these Christians suckledin a creed outworn, envying them their well-regulated faith; it, too, was part of the town's repose and sweetness, together with theold-fashioned roses and the old-fashioned ladies. Men, also, were inthe congregation--not many, to be sure, but all unanimously wearing thatexpression of remarkable virtue which seems always to visit, when hegoes to church, the average good fellow who is no better than he shouldbe. I became, myself, filled with this same decorous inconsistency, andwas singing the hymn, when I caught sight of John Mayrant. What ladywas he with? It was just this that most annoyingly I couldn't makeout, because the unlucky disposition of things hid it. I caughtmyself craning my neck and singing the hymn simultaneously and with nodifficulty, because all my childhood was in that hymn; I couldn't tellwhen I hadn't known words and music by heart. Who was she? I tried fora clear view when we sat down, and also, let me confess, when we kneltdown; I saw even less of her so; and my hope at the end of the servicewas dashed by her slow but entire disappearance amid the engulfing exitsof the other ladies. I followed where I imagined she had gone, out bya side door, into the beautiful graveyard; but among the flowers andmonuments she was not, nor was he; and next I saw, through the irongate, John Mayrant in the street, walking with his intimate aunt and hermore severe sister, and Miss La Heu. I somewhat superfluously hastenedto the gate and greeted them, to which they responded with polite, masterly discouragement. He, however, after taking off his hat to them, turned back, and I watched them pursuing their leisurely, reticentcourse toward the South Place. Why should the old ladies strike me aslooking like a tremendously proper pair of conspirators? I was wonderingthis as I turned back among the tombs, when I perceived John Mayrantcoming along one of the churchyard paths. His approach was made at rightangles with that of another personage, the respectful negro custodianof the place. This dignitary was evidently hoping to lead me amongthe monuments, recite to me their old histories, and benefit by myconsequent gratitude; he had even got so far as smiling and removing hishat when John Mayrant stopped him. The young man hailed the negro by hisfirst name with that particular and affectionate superiority which fewNortherners can understand and none can acquire, and which resemblesnothing so much as the way in which you speak to your old dog who hasloved you and followed you, because you have cared for him. 

"Not this time, " John Mayrant said. "I wish to show our relics to thisgentleman myself--if he will permit me?" This last was a question put tome with a courteous formality, a formality which a few minutes more wereto see smashed to smithereens. 

I told him that I should consider myself undeservedly privileged. 

"Some of these people are my people, " he said, beginning to move. 

The old custodian stood smiling, familiar, respectful, disappointed. "Some of 'em my people, too, Mas' John, " he cannily observed. 

I put a little silver in his hand. "Didn't I see a box somewhere, " Isaid, "with something on it about the restoration of the church?"

"Something on it, but nothing in it!" exclaimed Mayrant; at whichmoderate pleasantry the custodian broke into extreme African merrimentand ambled away. "You needn't have done it, " protested the Southerner, and I naturally claimed my stranger's right to pay my respects in thismanner. Such was our introduction, agreeable and unusual. 

A silence then unexpectedly ensued and the formality fell colder thanever upon us. The custodian's departure had left us alone, looking ateach other across all the unexpressed knowledge that each knew the otherhad. Mayrant had come impulsively back to me from his aunts, withoutstopping to think that we had never yet exchanged a word; both of uswere now brought up short, and it was the cake that was speaking volublyin our self-conscious dumbness. It was only after this brief, deep gapof things unsaid that John Mayrant came to the surface again, and begana conversation of which, on both our parts, the first few steps weretaken on the tiptoes of an archaic politeness; we trod convention like apolished French floor; you might have expected us, after such deliberateand graceful preliminaries, to dance a verbal minuet. 

We, however, danced something quite different, and that conversationlasted during many days, and led us, like a road, up hill and down daleto a perfect acquaintance. No, not perfect, but delightful; to the endhe never spoke to me of the matter most near him, and I but honor himthe more for his reticence. 

Of course his first remark had to be about Kings Port and me; had heunderstood rightly that this was my first visit?

My answer was equally traditional. 

It was, next, correct that he should allude to the weather; and hisreference was one of the two or three that it seems a stranger's destinyalways to hear in a place new to him: he apologized for the weather--socold a season had not, in his memory, been experienced in Kings Port; itwas to the highest point exceptional. 

I exclaimed that it had been, to my Northern notions, delightfully mildfor March. "Indeed, " I continued, "I have always said that if Marchcould be cut out of our Northern climate, as the core is cut out ofan apple, I should be quite satisfied with eleven months, instead oftwelve. I think it might prolong one's youth. "

The fire of that season lighted in his eyes, but he still stepped uponpolished convention. He assured me that the Southern September hurricanewas more deplorable than any Northern March could be. "Our zone shouldbe called the Intemperate zone, " said he. 

"But never in Kings Port, " I protested; "with your rosesout-of-doors--and your ladies indoors!"

He bowed. "You pay us a high compliment. "

I smiled urbanely. "If the truth is a compliment!"

"Our young ladies are roses, " he now admitted with a delicate touch ofpride. 

"Don't forget your old ones! I never shall. "

There was pleasure in his face at this tribute, which, he could see, came from the heart. But, thus pictured to him, the old ladies broughta further idea quite plainly into his expression; and he announced it. "Some of them are not without thorns. "

"What would you give, " I quickly replied, "for anybody--man orwoman--who could not, on an occasion, make themselves sharply felt?"

To this he returned a full but somewhat absent-minded assent. He seemedto be reflecting that he himself didn't care to be the "occasion" uponwhich an old lady rose should try her thorns; and I was inclined tosuspect that his intimate aunt had been giving him a wigging. 

Anyhow, I stood ready to keep it up, this interchange oflofty civilities. I, too, could wear the courtly red-heels ofeighteenth-century procedure, and for just as long as his Southernup-bringing inclined him to wear them; I hadn't known Aunt Carola fornothing! But we, as I have said, were not destined to dance any minuet. 

We had been moving, very gradually, and without any attention to oursurroundings, to and fro in the beautiful sweet churchyard. Flowers wereeverywhere, growing, budding, blooming; color and perfume were parts ofthe very air, and beneath these pretty and ancient tombs, graven withold dates and honorable names, slept the men and women who had givenKings Port her high place is; in our history. I have never, in thiscountry, seen any churchyard comparable to this one; happy, serene dead, to sleep amid such blossoms and consecration! Good taste prevailed here;distinguished men lay beneath memorial stones that came no higher thanyour waist or shoulder; there was a total absence of obscure grocersreposing under gigantic obelisks; to earn a monument here you must wina battle, or do, at any rate, something more than adulterate sugar andoil. The particular monument by which young John Mayrant and I foundourselves standing, when we reached the point about the ladies and thethorns, had a look of importance and it caught his eye, bringing himback to where we were. Upon his pointing to it, and before we had spokenor I had seen the name, I inquired eagerly: "Not the lieutenant of theBon Homme Richard?" and then saw that Mayrant was not the name upon it. 

My knowledge of his gallant sea-fighting namesake visibly gratified him. "I wish it were, " he said; "but I am descended from this man, too. Hewas a statesman, and some of his brilliant powers were inherited byhis children--but they have not come so far down as me. In 1840, hisdaughter, Miss Beaufain--"

I laid my hand right on his shoulder. "Don't you do it, John Mayrant!"I cried. "Don't you tell me that. Last night I caught myself saying thatinstead of my prayers. "

Well, it killed the minuet dead; he sat flat down on the low stonecoping that bordered the path to which we had wandered back--and Isat flat down opposite him. The venerable custodian, passing along aneighboring path, turned his head and stared at our noise. 

"Lawd, see those chillun goin' on!" he muttered. "Mas' John, don't youget too scandalous, tellin' strangers 'bout the old famblies. "

Mayrant pointed to me. "He's responsible, Daddy Ben. I'm being just asgood as gold. Honest injun!"

The custodian marched slowly on his way, shaking his head. "Mas' Johnhe do go on, " he repeated. His office was not alone the care and theshowing off of the graveyard, but another duty, too, as native andpeculiar to the soil as the very cotton and the rice: this loyalservitor cherished the honor of the "old famblies, " and chide theiryoung descendants whenever he considered that they needed it. 

Mayrant now sat revived after his collapse of mirth, and he addressed mefrom his gravestone. "Yes, I ought to have foreseen it. "

"Foreseen--?" I didn't at once catch the inference. 

"All my aunts and cousins have been talking to you. "

"Oh, Miss Beaufain and the Earl of Mainridge! Well, but it's quiteworth--"

"Knowing by heart!" he broke in with new merriment. 

I kept on. "Why not? They tell those things everywhere--where they're solucky as to possess them! It's a flawless specimen. "

"Of 1840 repartee?" He spoke with increasing pauses. "Yes. We do atleast possess that. And some wine of about the same date--and evenconsiderably older. "

"All the better for age, " I exclaimed. 

But the blue eyes of Mayrant were far away and full of shadow. "PoorKings Port, " he said very slowly and quietly. Then he looked at me withthe steady look and the smile that one sometimes has when giving voiceto a sorrowful conviction against which one has tried to struggle. "PoorKings Port, " he affectionately repeated. His hand tapped lightly two orthree times upon the gravestone upon which he was seated. "Be honest andsay that you think so, too, " he demanded, always with his smile. 

But how was I to agree aloud with what his silent hand had expressed?Those inaudible taps on the stone spoke clearly enough; they said: "Herelies Kings Port, here lives Kings Port. Outside of this is our truedeath, on the vacant wharves, in the empty streets. All that we haveleft is the immortality which these historic names have won. " How couldI tell him that I thought so, too? Nor was I as sure of it then as hewas. And besides, this was a young man whose spirit was almost surely, in suffering; ill fortune both material and of the heart, I seemed tosuspect, had made him wounded and bitter in these immediate days; andthe very suppression he was exercising hurt him the more deeply. So Ireplied, honestly, as he had asked: "I hope you are mistaken. "

"That's because you haven't been here long enough, " he declared. 

Over us, gently, from somewhere across the gardens and the walls, camea noiseless water breeze, to which the roses moved and nodded among thetombs. They gave him a fanciful thought. "Look at them! They belong tous, and they know it. They're saying, 'Yes; yes; yes, ' all day long. Idon't know why on earth I'm talking in this way to you!" he broke offwith vivacity. "But you made me laugh so. "

VI: In the Churchyard

"Then it was a good laugh, indeed!" I cried heartily. 

"Oh, don't let's go back to our fine manners!" he begged comically. "We've satisfied each other that we have them! I feel so lonely; and myaunt just now--well, never mind about that. But you really must excuseus about Miss Beaufain, and all that sort of thing. I see it, becauseI'm of the new generation, since the war, and--well, I've been to otherplaces, too. But Aunt Eliza, and all of them, you know, can't see it. And I wouldn't have them, either! So I don't ever attempt to explainto them that the world has to go on. They'd say, 'We don't see thenecessity!' When slavery stopped, they stopped, you see, just like aclock. Their hand points to 1865--it has never moved a minute since. Andsome day"--his voice grew suddenly tender--"they'll go, one by one, tojoin the still older ones. And I shall miss them very much. "

For a moment I did not speak, but watched the roses nodding and moving. Then I said: "May I say that I shall miss them, too?"

He looked at me. "Miss our old Kings Port people?" He didn't inviteoutsiders to do that!

"Don't you see how it is?" I murmured. "It was the same thing once withus. "

"The same thing--in the North?" His tone still held me off. 

"The same sort of dear old people--I mean charming, peppery, refined, courageous people; in Salem, in Boston, in New York, in every place thathas been colonial, and has taken a hand in the game. " And, as certainbeloved memories of men and women rose in my mind, I continued: "If youknew some of the Boston elder people as I have known them, you wouldwarm with the same admiration that is filling me as I see your people ofKings Port. "

"But politics?" the young Southerner slowly suggested. 

"Oh, hang slavery! Hang the war!" I exclaimed. "Of course, we had afamily quarrel. But we were a family once, and a fine one, too! We kneweach other, we visited each other, we wrote letters, sent presents, keptup relations; we, in short, coherently joined hands from one generationto another; the fibres of the sons tingled with the current from theirfathers, back and back to the old beginnings, to Plymouth and Roanokeand Rip Van Winkle! It's all gone, all done, all over. You have to be asmall, well-knit country for that sort of exquisite personal unitedness. There's nothing united about these States any more, except Standard Oiland discontent. We're no longer a small people living and dying for agreat idea; we're a big people living and dying for money. And theseladies of yours--well, they have made me homesick for a national anda social past which I never saw, but which my old people knew. They'relike legends, still living, still warm and with us. In their quietclean-cut faces I seem to see a reflection of the old serene candlelightwe all once talked and danced in--sconces, tall mirrors, candles burninginside glass globes to keep them from the moths and the draft that, ofa warm evening, blew in through handsome mahogany doors; the good brightsilver; the portraits by Copley and Gilbert Stuart; a young girl at asquare piano, singing Moore's melodies--and Mr. Pinckney or CommodorePerry, perhaps, dropping in for a hot supper!"

John Mayrant was smiling and looking at the graves. "Yes, that's it;that's all it, " he mused. "You do understand. "

But I had to finish my flight. "Such quiet faces are gone now in thebreathless, competing North: ground into oblivion between the clashingtrades of the competing men and the clashing jewels and chandeliers oftheir competing wives--while yours have lingered on, spared by your veryadversity. And that's why I shall miss your old people when they followmine--because they're the last of their kind, the end of the chain, thebold original stock, the great race that made our glory grow and sawthat it did grow through thick and thin: the good old native blood ofindependence. "

I spoke as a man can always speak when he means it; and my listener'sface showed that my words had gone where meant words always go--home tothe heart. But he merely nodded at me. His nod, however, telling as itdid of a quickly established accord between us, caused me to bring outto this new acquaintance still more of those thoughts which I condescendto expose to very few old ones. 

"Haven't you noticed, " I said, "or don't you feel it, away down here inyour untainted isolation, the change, the great change, that has comeover the American people?"

He wasn't sure. 

"They've lost their grip on patriotism. "

He smiled. "We did that here in 1861. "

"Oh, no! You left the Union, but you loved what you considered was yourcountry, and you love it still. That's just my point, just my strangediscovery in Kings Port. You retain the thing we've lost. Our big menfifty years ago thought of the country, and what they could make it; ourbig men to-day think of the country and what they can make out of it. Rather different, don't you see? When I walk about in the North, Imerely meet members of trusts or unions--according to the length ofthe individual's purse; when I walk about in Kings Port, I meetAmericans. --Of course, " I added, taking myself up, "that's too sweepinga statement. The right sort of American isn't extinct in the North byany means. But there's such a commercial deluge of the wrong sort, thatthe others sometimes seem to me sadly like a drop in the bucket. "

"You certainly understand it all, " John Mayrant repeated. "It's amazingto find you saying things that I have thought were my own privatenotions. "

I laughed. "Oh, I fancy there are more than two of us in the country. "

"Even the square piano and Mr. Pinckney, " he went on. "I didn't supposeanybody had thought things like that, except myself. "

"Oh, " I again said lightly, "any American--any, that is, of theworld--who has a colonial background for his family, has thought, probably, very much the same sort of things. Of course it would be allGreek or gibberish to the new people. "

He took me up with animation. "The new people! My goodness, sir, yes!Have you seen them? Have you seen Newport, for instance?" His dictionnow (and I was to learn it was always in him a sign of heighteningintensity) grew more and more like the formal speech of his ancestors. "You have seen Newport?" he said. 

"Yes; now and then. "

"But lately, sir? I knew we were behind the times down here, sir, but Ihad not imagined how much. Not by any means! Kings Port has a longroad to go before she will consider marriage provincial and chastityobsolete. "

"Dear me, Mr. Mayrant! Well, I must tell you that it's not all quiteso--so advanced--as that, you know. That's not the whole of Newport. "

He hastened to explain. "Certainly not, sir! I would not insult thehonorable families whom I had the pleasure to meet there, and to whom myname was known because they had retained their good position sincethe days when my great-uncle had a house and drove four horses therehimself. I noticed three kinds of Newport, sir. "

"Three?"

"Yes. Because I took letters; and some of the letters were to peoplewho--who once had been, you know; it was sad to see the thing, sir, soplain against the glaring proximity of the other thing. And so you candivide Newport into those who leave to sell their old family pictures, those who have to buy their old family pictures, and the lucky few whoneed neither buy nor sell, who are neither goin' down nor bobbing up, but who have kept their heads above the American tidal wave from thebeginning and continue to do so. And I don't believe that there are anynicer people in the world than those. "

"Nowhere!" I exclaimed. "When Near York does her best, what'sbetter?--If only those best set the pace!"

"If only!" he assented. "But it's the others who get into the papers, who dine the drunken dukes, and make poor chambermaids envious athousand miles inland!"

"There should be a high tariff on drunken dukes, " I said. 

"You'll never get it!" he declared. "It's the Republican party whosedaughters marry them. "

I rocked with enjoyment where I sat; he was so refreshing. And I agreedwith him so well. "You're every bit as good as Miss Beaufain, " I cried. 

"Oh, no; oh, no! But I often think if we could only deport the negroesand Newport together to one of our distant islands, how happily our twochief problems would be solved!"

I still rocked. "Newport would, indeed, enjoy your plan for it. Do goon!" I entreated him But he had, for the moment, ceased; and I roseto stretch my legs and saunter among the old headstones and the waftedfragrance. 

His aunt (or his cousin, or whichever of them it had been) was certainlyright as to his inheriting a pleasant and pointed gift of speech; and aresponsive audience helps us all. Such an audience I certainly was foryoung John Mayrant, yet beneath the animation that our talk had filledhis eyes with lay (I seemed to see or feel) that other mood all thetime, the mood which had caused the girl behind the counter to say tome that he was "anxious about something. " The unhappy youth, I wasgradually to learn, was much more than that--he was in a tangle ofanxieties. He talked to me as a sick man turns in bed from pain; thepain goes on, but the pillow for a while is cool. 

Here there broke upon us a little interruption, so diverting, so utterlylike the whole quaint tininess of Kings Port, that I should tell itto you, even if it did not bear directly upon the matter which wasbeginning so actively to concern me--the love difficulties of JohnMayrant. 

It was the letter-carrier. 

We had come, from our secluded seats, round a corner, and so by thevestry door and down the walk beside the church, and as I read to myselfthe initials upon the stones wherewith the walk was paved, I drew nearthe half-open gateway upon Worship Street. The postman was descendingthe steps of the post-office opposite. He saw me through the gate andpaused. He knew me, too! My face, easily marked out amid the residentfaces he was familiar with, had at once caught his attention; verylikely he, too, had by now learned that I was interested in the battleof Cowpens; but I did not ask him this. He crossed over and handed me aletter. 

"No use, " he said most politely, "takin' it away down to MistressTrevise's when you're right here, sir. Northern mail eight hours lateto-day, " he added, and bowing, was gone upon his route. 

My home letter, from a man, an intimate running mate of mine, soon hadmy full attention, for on the second page it said:--

"I have just got back from accompanying her to Baltimore. One of uswent as far as Washington with her on the train. We gave her a dinneryesterday at the March Hare by way of farewell. She tried our newtoboggan fire-escape on a bet. Clean from the attic, my boy. I imagineour native girls will rejoice at her departure. However, nobody'sengaged to her, at least nobody here. How many may fancy themselves soelsewhere I can't say. Her name is Hortense Rieppe. "

I suppose I must have been silent after finishing this letter. 

"No bad news, I trust?" John Mayrant inquired. 

I told him no; and presently we had resumed our seats in the quiet charmof the flowers. 

I now spoke with an intention. "What a lot you seem to have seen andsuffered of the advanced Newport!"

The intention wrought its due and immediate effect. "Yes. There was nochoice. I had gone to Newport upon--upon an urgent matter, which took meamong those people. "

He dwelt upon the pictures that came up in his mind. But he took me awayagain from the "urgent matter. "

"I saw, " he resumed more briskly, "fifteen or twenty--most amazing, sir!--young men, some of them not any older than I am, who had so manymillions that they could easily--" he paused, casting about for someexpression adequate--"could buy Kings Port and put it under a glasscase in a museum--my aunts and all--and never know it!" He livened withdisrespectful mirth over his own picture of his aunts, purchased bymillionaire steel or coal for the purposes of public edification. 

"And a very good thing if they could be, " I declared. 

He wondered a moment. "My aunts? Under a glass case?"

"Yes, indeed--and with all deference be it said! They'd be moreinvaluable, more instructive, than the classics of a thousandlibraries. "

He was prepared not to be pleased. "May I ask to whom and for what?"

"Why, you ought to see! You've just been saying it yourself. They wouldteach our bulging automobilists, our unlicked boy cubs, ouralcoholic girls who shout to waiters for 'high-balls' on country clubporches--they would teach these wallowing creatures, whose money hasmerely gilded their bristles, what American refinement once was. Themanners we've lost, the decencies we've banished, the standards we'velowered, their light is still flickering in this passing generation ofyours. It's the last torch. That's why I wish it could, somehow, pass onthe sacred fire. "

He shook his head. "They don't want the sacred fire. They want thehigh-balls--and they have money enough to be drunk straight through thenext world!" He was thoughtful. "They are the classics, " he added. 

I didn't see that he had gone back to my word. "Roman Empire, you mean?"

"No, the others; the old people we're bidding good-by to. RomanRepublic! Simple lives, gallant deeds, and one great unitinginspiration. Liberty winning her spurs. They were moulded under that, and they are our true American classics. Nothing like them will happenagain. "

"Perhaps, " I suggested, "our generation is uneasily living in a 'badquarter-of-an-hour'--good old childhood gone, good new manhood not yetcome, and a state of chicken-pox between whiles. " And on this I made tohim a much-used and consoling quotation about the old order changing. 

"Who says that?" he inquired; and upon my telling him, "I hope so, " hesaid, "I hope so. But just now Uncle Sam 'aspires to descend. '"

I laughed at his counter-quotation. "You know your classics, if youdon't know Tennyson. "

He, too, laughed. "Don't tell Aunt Eliza!"

"Tell her what?"

"That I didn't recognize Tennyson. My Aunt Eliza educated me--and shethinks Tennyson about the only poet worth reading since--well, sinceByron and Sir Walter at the very latest!"

"Neither she nor Sir Walter come down to modern poetry--or to alcoholicgirls. " His tone, on these last words, changed. 

Again, as when he had said "an urgent matter, " I seemed to feel hoveringabove us what must be his ceaseless preoccupation; and I wondered if hehad found, upon visiting Newport, Miss Hortense sitting and calling for"high-balls. "

I gave him a lead. "The worst of it is that a girl who would liketo behave herself decently finds that propriety puts her out of therunning. The men flock off to the other kind. "

He was following me with watching eyes. 

"And you know, " I continued, "what an anxious Newport parent does onfinding her girl on the brink of being a failure. "

"I can imagine, " he answered, "that she scolds her like the dickens. "

"Oh, nothing so ineffectual! She makes her keep up with the others, youknow. Makes her do things she'd rather not do. "

"High-balls, you mean?"

"Anything, my friend; anything to keep up. "

He had a comic suggestion. "Driven to drink by her mother! Well, it's, at any rate, a new cause for old effects. " He paused. It seemedstrangely to bring to him some sort of relief. "That would explain agreat deal, " he said. 

Was he thus explaining to himself his lady-love, or rather certainNewport aspects of her which had, so to speak, jarred upon his KingsPort notions of what a lady might properly do? I sat on my gravestonewith my wonder, and my now-dawning desire to help him (if improbably Icould), to get him out of it, if he were really in it; and he sat on hisgravestone opposite, with the path between us, and the little noiselessbreeze rustling the white irises, and bearing hither and thither thesoft perfume of the roses. His boy face, lean, high-strung, brooding, was full of suppressed contentions. I made myself, during our silence, state his possible problem: "He doesn't love her any more, he won'tadmit this to himself; he intends to go through with it, and he'scatching at any justification of what he has seen in her that haschilled him, so that he may, poor wretch! coax back his lost illusion. "Well, if that was it, what in the world could I, or anybody, do aboutit?

His next remark was transparent enough. "Do you approve of young ladiessmoking?"

I met his question with another: "What reasons can be urged against it?"

He was quick. "Then you don't mind it?" There was actual hope in the wayhe rushed at this. 

I laughed. "I didn't say I didn't mind it. " (As a matter of fact I domind it; but it seemed best not to say so to him. )

He fell off again. "I certainly saw very nice people doing it up there. "

I filled this out. "You'll see very nice people doing it everywhere. "

"Not in Kings Port! At least, not my sort of people!" He stifflyproclaimed this. 

I tried to draw him out. "But is there, after all, any valid objectionto it?"

But he was off on a preceding speculation. "A mother or any parent, " hesaid, "might encourage the daughter to smoke, too. And the girl mighttake it up so as not to be thought peculiar where she was, and then shemight drop it very gladly. "

I became specific. "Drop it, you mean, when she came to a place wheredoing it would be thought--well, in bad style?"

"Or for the better reason, " he answered, "that she didn't really like itherself. "

"How much you don't 'really like it' yourself!" I remarked. 

This time he was slow. "Well--well--why need they? Are not their lipsmore innocent than ours? Is not the association somewhat--?"

"My dear fellow, " I interrupted, "the association is, I think you'llhave to agree, scarcely of my making!"

"That's true enough, " he laughed. "And, as you say, very nice peopledo it everywhere. But not here. Have you ever noticed, " he now inquiredwith continued transparency, "how much harder they are on each otherthan we are on them?"

"Oh, yes! I've noticed that. " I surmised it was this sort of thinghe had earlier choked himself off from telling me in his unfinishedcomplaint about his aunt; but I was to learn later that on this occasionit was upon the poor boy himself and not on the smoking habits of MissRieppe, that his aunt had heavily descended. I also reflected that ifcigarettes were the only thing he deprecated in the lady of his choice, the lost illusion might be coaxed back. The trouble was that deprecatedsomething fairly distant from cigarettes. The cake was my quitesufficient trouble; it stuck in my throat worse than the probablymagnified gossip I had heard; this, for the present, I could manage toswallow. 

He came out now with a personal note. "I suppose you think I'm a ninny. "

"Never in the wildest dream!"

"Well, but too innocent for a man, anyhow. "

"That would be an insult, " I declared laughingly. 

"For I'm not innocent in the least. You'll find we're all men here, justas much as any men in the North you could pick out. South Carolinahas never lacked sporting blood, sir. But in Newport--well, sir, wegentlemen down here, when we wish a certain atmosphere and all that, have always been accustomed to seek the demi-monde. "

"So it was with us until the women changed it. "

"The women, sir?" He was innocent!

"The 'ladies, ' as you Southerners so chivalrously continue to stylethem. The rich new fashionable ladies became so desperate in theircompetition for men's allegiance that they--well, some of them would, inthe point of conversation, greatly scandalize the smart demi-monde. "

He nodded. "Yes. I heard men say things in drawing-rooms to ladies thata gentleman here would have been taken out and shot for. And don't youagree with me, sir, that good taste itself should be a sort of religion?I don't mean to say anything sacrilegious, but it seems to me that evenif one has ceased to believe some parts of the Bible, even if one doesnot always obey the Ten Commandments, one is bound, not as a believerbut as a gentleman, to remember the difference between grossness andrefinement, between excess and restraint--that one can have and keepjust as the pagan Greeks did, a moral elegance. "

He astonished me, this ardent, ideal, troubled boy; so innocentregarding the glaring facts of our new prosperity, so finely penetratingas to some of the mysteries of the soul. But he was of old Huguenotblood, and of careful and gentle upbringing; and it was delightfulto find such a young man left upon our American soil untainted by thepresent fashionable idolatries. 

"I bow to your creed of 'moral elegance, '" I cried. "It never dies. Ithas outlasted all the mobs and all the religions. "

"They seemed to think, " he continued, pursuing his Newport train ofthought, "that to prove you were a dead game sport you must behavelike--behave like--"

"Like a herd of swine, " I suggested. 

He was merry. "Ah, if they only would--completely!"

"Completely what?"

"Behave so. Rush over a steep place into the sea. "

We sat in the quiet relish of his Scriptural idea, and the westerncrimson and the twilight began to come and mingle with the perfumes. John Mayrant's face changed from its vivacity to a sort of pensivewistfulness, which, for all the dash and spirit in his delicatefeatures, was somehow the final thing one got from the boy's expression. It was as though the noble memories of his race looked out of his eyes, seeking new chances for distinction, and found instead a soil laidwaste, an empty fatherland, a people benumbed past rousing. Had he notsaid, "Poor Kings Port!" as he tapped the gravestone? Moral elegancecould scarcely permit a sigh more direct. 

"I am glad that you believe it never dies, " he resumed. "And I am gladto find somebody to--talk to, you know. My friends here are everythingfriends and gentlemen should be, but they don't--I suppose it's becausethey have not had my special experiences. "

I sat waiting for the boy to go on with it. How plainly he was tellingme of his "special experiences"! He and his creed were not merely inrevolt against the herd of swine; there would be nothing special inthat; I had met people before who were that; but he was tied by honor, and soon to be tied by the formidable nuptial knot, to a specimendevotee of the cult. He shouldn't marry her if he really did not wantto, and I could stop it! But how was I to begin spinning the first faintweb of plan how I might stop it, unless he came right out with the wholething? I didn't believe he was the man to do that ever, even under theloosening inspiration of drink. In wine lies truth, no doubt; but withinhim, was not moral elegance the bottom truth that would, even in hiscups, keep him a gentleman, and control all such revelations? He mightsmash the glasses, but he would not speak of his misgivings as toHortense Rieppe. 

He began again, "Nor do I believe that a really nice girl would continueto think as those few do, if she once got safe away from them. Why, mydear sir, " he stretched out his hand in emphasis, "you do not have todo anything untimely and extreme if you are in good earnest a dead gamesport. The time comes, and you meet the occasion as the duck swims. There was one of them--the right kind. "

"Where?" I asked. 

"Why--you're leaning against her headstone!"

The little incongruity made us both laugh, but it was only for theinstant. The tender mood of the evening, and all that we had said, sustained the quiet and almost grave undertone of our conference. My ownquite unconscious act of rising from the grave and standing before himon the path to listen brought back to us our harmonious pensiveness. 

"She was born in Kings Port, but educated in Europe. I don't supposeuntil the time came that she ever did anything harder than speak French, or play the piano, or ride a horse. She had wealth and so had herhusband. He was killed in the war, and so were two of her sons. Thethird was too young to go. Their fortune was swept away, but theplantation was there, and the negroes were proud to remain faithful tothe family. She took hold of the plantation, she walked the rice-banksin high boots. She had an overseer, who, it was told her, would possiblytake her life by poison or by violence. She nevertheless lived in thatlonely spot with no protector except her pistol and some directionsabout antidotes. She dismissed him when she had proved he was cheatingher; she made the planting pay as well as any man did after the war;she educated her last son, got him into the navy, and then, one evening, walking the river-banks too late, she caught the fever and died. You will understand she went with one step from cherished ease tosingle-handed battle with life, a delicately nurtured lady, with nopreparation for her trials. "

"Except moral elegance, " I murmured. 

"Ah, that was the point, sir! To see her you would never have guessedit! She kept her burdens from the sight of all. She wore tribulation asif it were a flower in her bosom. We children always looked forwardto her coming, because she was so gay and delightful to us, tellingus stories of the old times--old rides when the country was wild, oldjourneys with the family and servants to the Hot Springs before thesteam cars were invented, old adventures, with the battle of New Orleansor a famous duel in them--the sort of stories that begin with (for youseem to know something of it yourself, sir) 'Your grandfather, mydear John, the year that he was twenty, got himself into seriousembarrassments through paying his attentions to two reigning beautiesat once. ' She was full of stories which began in that sort of pleasantway. "

I said: "When a person like that dies, an impoverishment falls upon us;the texture of life seems thinner. "

"Oh, yes, indeed! I know what you mean--to lose the people one hasalways seen from the cradle. Well, she has gone away, she has takenher memories out of the world, the old times, the old stories. Nobody, except a little nutshell of people here, knows or cares anything abouther any more; and soon even the nutshell will be empty. " He paused, andthen, as if brushing aside his churchyard mood, he translated into hischanged thought another classic quotation: "But we can't dawdle overthe 'tears of things'; it's Nature's law. Only, when I think of therice-banks and the boots and the pistol, I wonder if the Newport ladies, for all their high-balls, could do any better!"

The crimson had faded, the twilight was altogether come, but the littlenoiseless breeze was blowing still; and as we left the quiet tombsbehind us, and gained Worship Street, I could not help looking backwhere slept that older Kings Port about which I had heard and had saidso much. Over the graves I saw the roses, nodding and moving, as if inacquiescent revery. 

VII: The Girl Behind the Counter--II

"Which of them is idealizing?" This was the question that I askedmyself, next morning, in my boarding-house, as I dressed for breakfast;the next morning is--at least I have always found it so--an excellenttime for searching questions; and to-day I had waked up no longerbeneath the strong, gentle spell of the churchyard. A bright sun wasshining over the eastern waters of the town, I could see from my upperveranda the thousand flashes of the waves; the steam yacht rode placidlyand competently among them, while a coastwise steamer was sailing byher, out to sea, to Savannah, or New York; the general world was goingon, and--which of them was idealizing? It mightn't be so bad, afterall. Hadn't I, perhaps, over-sentimentalized to myself the case of JohnMayrant? Hadn't I imagined for him ever so much more anxiety than theboy actually felt? For people can idealize down just as readily asthey can idealize up. Of Miss Hortense Rieppe I had now two partialportraits--one by the displeased aunts, the other by their chivalricnephew; in both she held between her experienced lips, a cigarette;there the similarity ceased. And then, there was the tobogganfire-escape. Well, I must meet the living original before I could decidewhether (for me, at any rate) she was the "brute" as seen by the eyesof Mrs. Gregory St. Michael, or the "really nice girl" who was goingto marry John Mayrant on Wednesday week. Just at this point my thoughtsbrought up hard again at the cake. No; I couldn't swallow that anybetter this morning than yesterday afternoon! Allow the gentleman to payfor the feast! Better to have omitted all feast; nothing simpler, andit would have been at least dignified, even if arid. But then, there wasthe lady (a cousin or an aunt--I couldn't remember which this morning)who had told me she wasn't solicitous. What did she mean by that? Andshe had looked quite queer when she spoke about the phosphates. Oh, yes, to be sure, she was his intimate aunt! Where, by the way, was MissRieppe?

By the time I had eaten my breakfast and walked up Worship Street tothe post-office I was full of it all again; my searching thoughtshadn't simplified a single point. I always called for my mail atthe post-office, because I got it sooner; it didn't come to theboarding-house before I had departed on my quest for royal blood, whereas, this way, I simply got my letters at the corner of Court andWorship streets and walked diagonally across and down Court a fewsteps to my researches, which I could vary and alleviate by reading andanswering news from home. 

It was from Aunt Carola that I heard to-day. Only a little of whatshe said will interest you. There had been a delightful meeting of theSelected Salic Scions. The Baltimore Chapter had paid her Chapter avisit. Three ladies and one very highly connected young gentleman hadcome--an encouragingly full and enthusiastic meeting. They had lunchedupon cocoa, sherry, and croquettes, after which all had been more thanglad to listen to a paper read by a descendant of Edward the Third andthe young gentleman, a descendant of Catherine of Aragon, had reciteda beautiful original poem, entitled "My Queen Grandmother. " Aunt Carolaregretted that I could not have had the pleasure and the benefit of thismeeting, the young gentleman had turned out to be, also, a refined andtasteful musician, playing, upon the piano a favorite gavotte of Louisthe Thirteenth "And while you are in Kings Port, " my aunt said; "Iexpect you to profit by associating with the survivors of our goodAmerican society--people such as one could once meet everywhere whenI was young, but who have been destroyed by the invasion of theproletariat. You are in the last citadel of good-breeding. By the way, find out, if you can, if any of the Bombo connection are extant; asthrough them I should like, if possible, to establish a chapter ofthe Scions in South Carolina. Have you, met a Miss Rieppe, a decidedlystriking young woman, who says she is from Kings Port, and who recentlypassed through here with a very common man dancing attendance on her? Heowns the Hermana, and she is said to be engaged to him. "

This wasn't as good as meeting Miss Rieppe myself; but the new angle atwhich I got her from my Aunt was distinctly a contribution toward theyoung woman's likeness; I felt that I should know her at sight, if evershe came within seeing distance. And it would be entertaining to findthat she was a Bombo; but that could wait; what couldn't wait was theHermana. I postponed the Fannings, hurried by the door where they waitedfor me, and, coming to the end of Court Street, turned to the right andsought among the wharves the nearest vista that could give me a view ofthe harbor. Between the silent walls of commerce desolated, and by theempty windows from which Prosperity once looked out, I threaded my wayto a point upon the town's eastern edge. Yes, that was the steam yacht'sname: the Hermana. I didn't make it out myself, she lay a trifle too farfrom shore; but I could read from a little fluttering pennant that herowner was not on board; and from the second loafer whom I questioned Ilearned, besides her name, that she had come from New York here tomeet her owner, whose name he did not know and whose arrival was stillindefinite. This was not very much to find out; but it was so much morethan I had found out about the Fannings that, although I now faithfullyreturned to my researches, and sat over open books until noon, Icouldn't tell you a word of what I read. Where was Miss Rieppe, andwhere was the owner of the Hermana? Also, precisely how ill was the heroof Chattanooga, her poor dear father?

At the Exchange I opened the door upon a conversation which, inconsequence, broke off abruptly; but this much I came in for:--

"Nothing but the slightest bruise above his eye. The other one is inbed. "

It was the severe lady who said this; I mean that lady who, among allthe severe ones I had met, seemed capable of the highest exercise ofthis quality, although she had not exercised it in my presence. Shelooked, in her veil and her black street dress, as aloof, and as coldlyscornful of the present day, as she had seemed when sitting over herembroidery; but it was not of 1818, or even 1840, that she had beentalking just now: it was this morning that somebody was bruised, somebody was in bed. 

The handsome lady acknowledged my salutation completely, but notencouragingly, and then, on the threshold, exchanged these partingsentences with the girl behind the counter:--

"They will have to shake hands. He was not very willing, but he listenedto me. Of course, the chastisement was right--but it does not affect myopinion of his keeping on with the position. "

"No, indeed, Aunt Josephine!" the girl agreed. "I wish he wouldn't. Didyou say it was his right eye?"

"His left. " Miss Josephine St. Michael inclined her head once more to meand went out of the Exchange. I retired to my usual table, and thegirl read in my manner, quite correctly, the feelings which I had notsupposed I had allowed to be evident. She said:--

"Aunt Josephine always makes strangers think she's displeased withthem. "

I replied like the young ass which I constantly tell myself I haveceased to be: "Oh, displeasure is as much notice as one is entitled tofrom Miss St. Michael. "

The girl laughed with her delightful sweet mockery. 

"I declare, you're huffed! Now don't tell me you're not. But you mustn'tbe. When you know her, you'll know that that awful manner means AuntJosephine is just being shy. Why, even I'm not afraid of her GeorgeWashington glances any more!"

"Very well, " I laughed, "I'll try to have your courage. " Over mychocolate and sandwiches I sat in curiosity discreditable, but natural. Who was in bed--who would have to shake hands? And why had they stoppedtalking when I came in? Of course, I found myself hoping that JohnMayrant had put the owner of the Hermana in bed at the slight cost ofa bruise above his left eye. I wondered if the cake was againcountermanded, and I started upon that line. "I think I'll have to-day, if you please, another slice of that Lady Baltimore. " And I made readyfor another verbal skirmish. 

"I'm so sorry! It's a little stale to-day. You can have the last slice, if you wish. "

"Thank you, I will. " She brought it. "It's not so very stale, " I said. "How long since it has been made?"

"Oh, it's the same you've been having. You're its only patron just now. "

"Well, no. There's Mr. Mayrant. "

"Not for a week yet, you remember. "

So the wedding was on yet. Still, John might have smashed the owner ofthe Hermana. 

"Have you seen him lately?" I asked. 

There was something special in the way she looked. "Not to-day. Haveyou?"

"Never in the forenoon. He has his duties and I have mine. "

She made a little pause, and then, "What do you think of the President?"

"The President?" I was at a loss. 

"But I'm afraid you would take his view--the Northern view, " she mused. 

It gave me, suddenly, her meaning. "Oh, the President of the UnitedStates! How you do change the subject!"

Her eyes were upon me, burning with sectional indignation, but sheseemed to be thinking too much to speak. Now, here was a topic that Ihad avoided, and she had plumped it at me. Very well; she should have myview. 

"If you mean that a gentleman cannot invite any respectable member ofany race he pleases to dine privately in his house--"

"His house!" She was glowing now with it. "I think he is--I thinkhe is--to have one of them--and even if he likes it, not toremember--cannot speak about him!" she wound up "I should say unbecomingthings. " She had walked out, during these words, from behind the counterand as she stood there in the middle of the long room you might havethought she was about to lead a cavalry charge. Then, admirably, sheput it all under, and spoke on with perfect self-control. "Why can'tsomebody explain it to him? If I knew him, I would go to him myself, andI would say, Mr. President, we need not discuss our different tastes asto dinner company. Nor need we discuss how much you benefit the coloredrace by an act which makes every member of it immediately think thathe is fit to dine with any king in the world. But you are staying ina house which is partly our house, ours, the South's, for we, too, paytaxes, you know. And since you also know our deep feeling--you may evencall it a prejudice, if it so pleases you--do you not think that, solong as you are residing in that house, you should not gratuitouslyshock our deep feeling?" She swept a magnificent low curtsy at the air. 

"By Jove, Miss La Heu!" I exclaimed, "you put it so that it's ratherhard to answer. "

"I'm glad it strikes you so. "

"But did it make them all think they were going to dine?"

"Hundreds of thousands. It was proof to them that they were as good asanybody--just as good, without reading or writing or anything. The verynext day some of the laziest and dirtiest where we live had a new strut, like the monkey when you put a red flannel cap on him--only the monkeydoesn't push ladies off the sidewalk. And that state of mind, you know, "said Miss La Heu, softening down from wrath to her roguish laugh, "isn'tthe right state of mind for racial progress! But I wasn't thinking ofthis. You know he has appointed one of them to office here. "

A light entered my brain: John Mayrant had a position at the CustomHouse! John Mayrant was subordinate to the President's appointee! Shehadn't changed the subject so violently, after all. 

I came squarely at it. "And so you wish him to resign his position?"

But I was ahead of her this time. 

"The Chief of Customs?" she wonderingly murmured. 

I brought her up with me now. "Did Miss Josephine St. Michael say it wasover his left eye?"

The girl instantly looked everything she thought. "I believe you werepresent!" This was her highly comprehensive exclamation, accompaniedalso by a blush as splendidly young as John Mayrant had been while heso stammeringly brought out his wishes concerning the cake. I at oncedecided to deceive her utterly, and therefore I spoke the exact truth:"No, I wasn't present. "

They did their work, my true words; the false impression flowed out ofthem as smoothly as California claret from a French bottle. 

"I wonder who told you?" my victim remarked. "But it doesn't reallymatter. Everybody is bound to know it. You surely were the last personwith him in the churchyard?"

"Gracious!" I admitted again with splendidly mendacious veracity. "Howwe do find each other out in Kings Port!"

It was not by any means the least of the delights which I took in thecompany of this charming girl that sometimes she was too much forme, and sometimes I was too much for her. It was, of course, just theaccident of our ages; in a very few years she would catch up, wouldpass, would always be too much for me. Well, to-day it was happily myturn; I wasn't going to finish lunch without knowing all she, at anyrate, could tell me about the left eye and the man in bed. 

"Forty years ago, " I now, with ingenuity, remarked, "I suppose it wouldhave been pistols. "

She assented. "And I like that better--don't you--for gentlemen?"

"Well, you mean that fists are--"

"Yes, " she finished for me. 

"All the same, " I maintained, "don't you think that there ought to besome correspondence, some proportion, between the gravity of the causeand the gravity of--"

"Let the coal-heavers take to their fists!" she scornfully cried. "People of our class can't descend--"

"Well, but, " I interrupted, "then you give the coal-heavers the palm fordiscrimination. "

"How's that?"

"Why, perfectly! Your coal-heaver kills for some offenses, while forlighter ones he--gets a bruise over the left eye. "

"You don't meet it, you don't meet it! What is an insult ever but aninsult?"

"Oh, we in the North notice certain degrees--insolence, impudence, impertinence, liberties, rudeness--all different. "

She took up my phrase with a sudden odd quietness. "You in the North. "

"Why, yes. We have, alas! to expect and allow for rudeness sometimes, even in our chosen few, and for liberties in their chosen few; it's onlythe hotel clerk and the head waiter from whom we usually get impudence;while insolence is the chronic condition of the Wall Street rich. "

"You in the North!" she repeated. "And so your Northern eyes can'tsee it, after all!" At these words my intelligence sailed into a greatblank, while she continued: "Frankly--and forgive me for saying it--Iwas hoping that you were one Northerner who would see it. "

"But see what?" I barked in my despair. 

She did not help me. "If I had been a man, nothing could have insultedme more than that. And that's what you don't see, " she regretfullyfinished. "It seems so strange. "

I sat in the midst of my great blank, while her handsome eyes restedupon me. In them was that look of a certain inquiry and a certainremoteness with which one pauses, in a museum, before some specimen ofthe cave-dwelling man. 

"You comprehend so much, " she meditated slowly, aloud; "you've been suchan agreeable disappointment, because your point of view is so often thesame as ours. " She was still surveying me with the specimen expression, when it suddenly left her. "Do you mean to sit there and tell me, " shebroke out, "that you wouldn't have resented it yourself?"

"O dear!" my mind lamentably said to itself, inside. Of what may havebeen the exterior that I presented to her, sitting over my slice of LadyBaltimore, I can form no impression. 

"Put yourself in his place, " the girl continued. 

"Ah, " I gasped, "that is always so easy to say and so hard to do. "

My remark proved not a happy one. She made a brief, cold pause overit, and then, as she wheeled round from me, back to the counter: "NoSoutherner would let pass such an affront. "

It was final. She regained her usual place, she resumed her ledger; thecurly dog, who had come out to hear our conversation, went in again; Iwas disgraced. Not only with the profile of her short, belligerentnose, but with the chilly way in which she made her pencil move over theledger, she told me plainly that my self-respect had failed to meether tests. This was what my remarkable ingenuity had achieved for me. Iswallowed the last crumbs of Lady Baltimore, and went forward to settlethe account. 

"I suppose I'm scarcely entitled to ask for a fresh one to-morrow, " Iventured. "I am so fond of this cake. "

Her officialness met me adequately. "Certainly the public is entitled towhatever we print upon our bill-of-fare. "

Now this was going to be too bad! Henceforth I was to rank merely as"the public, " no matter how much Lady Baltimore I should lunch upon! Ahappy thought seized me, and I spoke out instantly on the strength ofit. 

"Miss La Heu, I've a confession to make. "

But upon this beginning of mine the inauspicious door opened and youngJohn Mayrant came in. It was all right about his left eye; anybody couldsee that bruise!

"Oh!" he exclaimed, hearty, but somewhat disconcerted. "To think offinding you here! You're going? But I'll see you later?"

"I hope so, " I said. "You know where I work. "

"Yes--yes. I'll come. We've all sorts of things more to say, haven't we?We--good-by!"

Did I hear, as I gained the street, something being said about theGeneral, and the state of his health?

VIII: Midsummer-Night's Dream

You may imagine in what state of wondering I went out of that place, andhow little I could now do away with my curiosity. By the droll looks andhead-turnings which followed me from strangers that passed me by in thestreet, I was made aware that I must be talking aloud to myself, and thewords which I had evidently uttered were these: "But who in the worldcan he have smashed up?"

Of course, beneath the public stare and smile I kept the rest ofmy thoughts to myself; yet they so possessed and took me from mysurroundings, that presently, while crossing Royal Street, I was nearlyrun down by an electric car. Nor did even this serve to disperse mypreoccupation; my walk back to Court and Chancel streets is as if it hadnot been; I can remember nothing about it, and the first account thatI took of external objects was to find myself sitting in my accustomedchair in the Library, with the accustomed row of books about the battleof Cowpens waiting on the table in front of me. How long we had thusbeen facing each other, the books and I, I've not a notion. And withsuch mysterious machinery are we human beings filled--machinery that isin motion all the while, whether we are aware of it or not--that now, with some part of my mind, and with my pencil assisting, I composedseveral stanzas to my kingly ancestor, the goal of my fruitless search;and yet during the whole process of my metrical exercise I was reallythinking and wondering about John Mayrant, his battles and his loves. 

 ODE ON INTIMATIONS OF ROYALTY

 I sing to thee, thou Great Unknown, Who canst connect me with a throne Through uncle, cousin, aunt, or sister, But not, I trust, through bar sinister. 

 Chorus: Gules! Gules! and a cuckoo peccant!

Such was the frivolous opening of my poem, which, as it progressed, greweven less edifying; I have quoted this fragment merely to show you howlittle reverence for the Selected Salic Scions was by this time leftin my spirit, and not because the verses themselves are in the leastmeritorious; they should serve as a model for no serious-minded singer, and they afford a striking instance of that volatile mood, not to saythat inclination to ribaldry, which will at seasons crop out in me, dowhat I will. It is my hope that age may help me to subdue this, althoughI have observed it in some very old men. 

I did not send my poem to Aunt Carola, but I wrote her a letter, even there and then, couched in terms which I believe were altogetherrespectful. I deplored my lack of success in discovering the link thatwas missing between me and king's blood; I intimated my convictionthat further effort on my part would still be met with failure; and Irenounced with fitting expressions of disappointment my candidateshipfor the Scions thanking Aunt Carola for her generosity, by which I mustnow no longer profit. I added that I should remain in Kings Port for thepresent, as I was finding the climate of decided benefit to my health, and the courtesy of the people an education in itself. 

Whatever pain at missing the glory of becoming a Scion may have lingeredwith me after this was much assuaged in a few days by my reading anarticle in a New York paper, which gave an account of a meeting of myAunt's Society, held in that city. My attention was attracted to thisarticle by the prominent heading given to it: THEY WORE THEIR CROWNS. This in very conspicuous Roman capitals, caused me to sit up. There musthave been truth in some of it, because the food eaten by the Scionswas mentioned as consisting of sandwiches, sherry and croquettes; yet Ithink that the statement that the members present addressed eachother according to the royal families from which they severally traceddescent, as, for example, Brother Guelph and Sister Plantagenet, canscarce have beers aught but an exaggeration; nevertheless, the articlebrought me undeniable consolation for my disappointment. 

After finishing my letter to Aunt Carola I should have hastened out topost it and escape from Cowpens, had I not remembered that John Mayranthad more or less promised to meet me here. Now, there was but aslender chance that he boy would speak to me on the subject of his lateencounter; this I must learn from other sources; but he might speak tome about something that would open a way for my hostile preparationsagainst Miss Rieppe. So far he had not touched upon his impendingmarriage in any way, but this reserve concerning a fact generally knownamong the people whom I was seeing could hardly go on long withoutbecoming ridiculous. If he should shun mention of it to-day, I wouldtake this as a plain sign that he did not look forward to it with theenthusiasm which a lover ought to feel for his approaching bliss; andon such silence from him I would begin, if I could, to undermine hisintention of keeping an engagement of the heart when the heart no longerentered into it. 

While my thoughts continued to be busied over this lover and hisconcerns, I noticed the works of William Shakespeare close beside meupon a shelf; and although it was with no special purpose in mind thatI took out one of the volumes and sat down with it to wait for JohnMayrant, in a little while an inspiration came to me from its pages, so that I was more anxious than ever the boy should not fail to meet mehere in the Library. 

Was it the bruise on his forehead that had perturbed his manner just nowwhen he entered the Exchange? No, this was not likely to be the reason, since he had been full as much embarrassed that first day of my seeinghim there, when he had given his order for Lady Baltimore so lamely thatthe girl behind the counter had come to his aid. And what could it havebeen that he had begun to tell her to-day as I was leaving the place?Was the making of that cake again to be postponed on account of theGeneral's precarious health? And what had been the nature of the insultwhich young John Mayrant had punished and was now commanded to shakehands over? Could it in truth be the owner of the Hermana whom he hadthrashed so well as to lay him up in bed? That incident had damaged twopeople at least, the unknown vanquished combatant in his bodily welfare, and me in my character as an upstanding man in the fierce feminineestimation of Miss La Heu; but this injury it was my intention to setright; my confession to the girl behind the counter was merely delayed. As I sat with Shakespeare open in my lap, I added to my store ofreasoning one little new straw of argument in favor of my opinion thatJohn Mayrant was no longer at ease or happy about his love affair. Ihad never before met any young man in whose manner nature was so finelytempered with good bringing-up; forwardness and shyness were alikeabsent from him, and his bearing had a sort of polished unconsciousnessas far removed from raw diffidence as it was from raw conceit; itwas altogether a rare and charming address in a youth of such trueyouthfulness, but it had failed him upon two occasions which I havealready mentioned. Both times that he had come to the Exchange he hadstumbled in his usually prompt speech, lost his habitual ease, andbetrayed, in short, all the signs of being disconcerted. The matterseemed suddenly quite plain to me: it was the nature of his errands tothe Exchange. The first time he had been ordering the cake for his ownwedding, and to-day it was something about the wedding again. Evidentlythe high mettle of his delicacy and breeding made him painfullyconscious of the view which others must take of the part that MissRieppe was playing in all this--a view from which it was out of hispower to shield her; and it was this consciousness that destroyedhis composure. From what I was soon to learn of his fine and unmoveddisregard for unfavorable opinion when he felt his course to be theright one, I know that it was no thought at all of his own scarcelyheroic role during these days, but only the perception that outsidersmust detect in his affianced lady some of those very same qualitieswhich had chilled his too precipitate passion for her, and lefthim alone, without romance, without family sympathy, without socialacclamations, with nothing indeed save his high-strung notion of honorto help him bravely face the wedding march. How appalling must thewedding march sound to a waiting bridegroom who sees the bride, that heno longer looks at except with distaste and estrangement, coming nearerand nearer to him up the aisle! A funeral march would be gayer than thatmusic, I should think! The thought came to me to break out bluntly andsay to him: "Countermand the cake! She's only playing with you whilethat yachtsman is making up his mind. " But there could be but oneoutcome of such advice to John Mayrant: two people, instead of one, would be in bed suffering from contusions. As I mused on the boy andhis attractive and appealing character, I became more rejoiced than everthat he had thrashed somebody, I cared not very much who nor yet verymuch why, so long as such thrashing had been thorough, which seemedquite evidently and happily the case. He stood now in my eyes, in someway that is too obscure for me to be able to explain to you, saved fromsome reproach whose subtlety likewise eludes my powers of analysis. 

It was already five minutes after three o'clock, my dinner hour, when heat length appeared in the Library; and possibly I put some reproach intomy greeting: "Won't you walk along with me to Mrs. Trevise's?" (That wasmy boarding house. )

"I could not get away from the Custom House sooner, " he explained;and into his eyes there came for a moment that look of unrest andpreoccupation which I had observed at times while we had discussedNewport and alcoholic girls. The two subjects seemed certainly farenough apart! But he immediately began upon a conversation brisklyenough--so briskly that I suspected at once he had got his subject readyin advance; he didn't want me to speak first, lest I turn the talk intochannels embarrassing, such as bruised foreheads or wedding cake. Well, this should not prevent me from dropping in his cup the wholesomebitters which I had prepared. 

"Well, sir! Well, sir!" such was his hearty preface. "I wonder if you'refeeling ashamed of yourself?"

"Never when I read Shakespeare, " I answered restoring the plume to itsplace. 

He looked at the title. "Which one?"

"One of the unsuitable love affairs that was prevented in time. "

"Romeo and Juliet?"

"No; Bottom and Titania--and Romeo and Juliet were not prevented intime. They had their bliss once and to the full, and died before theycaused each other anything but ecstasy. No weariness of routine, notears of disenchantment; complete love, completely realized--and finis!It's the happiest ending of all the plays. "

He looked at me hard. "Sometimes I believe you're ironic!"

I smiled at him. "A sign of the highest civilization, then. Butplease to think of Juliet after ten years of Romeo and his pin-headedintelligence and his preordained infidelities. Do you imagine that herpredecessor, Rosamond, would have had no successors? Juliet would havebeen compelled to divorce Romeo, if only for the children's sake. 

"The children!" cried John Mayrant. "Why, it's for their sake desertedwomen abstain from divorce!"

"Juliet would see deeper than such mothers. She could not have herlittle sons and daughters grow up and comprehend their father'sabsences, and see their mother's submission to his returns for suchdiscovery would scorch the marrow of any hearts they had. "

At this, as we came out of the Library, he made an astonishingrejoinder, and one which I cannot in the least account for: "SouthCarolina does not allow divorce. "

"Then I should think, " I said to him, "that all you people here wouldbe doubly careful as to what manner of husbands and wives you chose foryourselves. "

Such a remark was sailing, you may say, almost within three points ofthe wind; and his own accidental allusion to Romeo had brought it aboutwith an aptness and a celerity which were better for my purpose thananything I had privately developed from the text of Bottom and Titania;none the less, however, did I intend to press into my service that fondcouple also as basis for a moral, in spite of the sharp turn which thoselast words of mine now caused him at once to give to our conversation. His quick reversion to the beginning of the talk seemed like a dodgingof remarks that hit too near home for him to relish hearing pursued. 

"Well, sir, " he resumed with the same initial briskness, "I was ashamedif you were not. "

"I still don't make out what impropriety we have jointly committed. "

"What do you think of the views you expressed about our country?"

"Oh! When we sat on the gravestones. "

"What do you think about it to-day?"

I turned to him as we slowly walked toward Worship Street. "Did you sayanything then that you would take back now?"

He pondered, wrinkling his forehead. "Well, but all the same, didn't wegive the present hour a pretty black eye?"

"The present hour deserves a black eye, and two of them!"

He surveyed me squarely. "I believe you're a pessimist!"

"That is the first trashy thing I've heard you say. "

"Thank you! At least admit you're scarcely an optimist. "

"Optimist! Pessimist! Why, you're talking just like a newspaper!"

He laughed. "Oh, don't compare a gentleman to a newspaper. "

"Then keep your vocabulary clean of bargain-counter words. A while agothe journalists had a furious run upon the adjective 'un-American. 'Anybody or anything that displeased them was 'un-American. ' They ran itinto the ground, and in its place they have lately set up 'pessimist, 'which certainly has a threatening appearance. They don't know itsmeaning, and in their mouths it merely signifies that what a man sayssnakes them feel personally uncomfortable. The word has become a dustyrag of slang. The arrested burglar very likely calls the policeman apessimist; and, speaking reverently and with no intention to shockyou, the scribes and Pharisees would undoubtedly have called Christ apessimist when He called them hypocrites, had they been acquainted withthe word. "

Once more my remarks drew from the boy an unexpected rejoinder. We hadturned into Worship Street, and, as we passed the churchyard, he stoppedand laid his hand upon the railing of the pate. 

"You don't shock me, " he said; and then: "But you would shock my aunts. "He paused, gazing into the churchyard, before he continued more slowly:"And so should I--if they knew it--shock them. "

"If they knew what?" I asked. 

His hand indicated a sculptured crucifix near by. 

"Do you believe everything still?" he answered. "Can you?"

As he looked at me, I suppose that he read negation in my eyes. 

"No more can I, " he murmured. Again he looked in among the tombstonesand flowers, where the old custodian saw us and took off his hat. "Howdy, Daddy Ben!" John Mayrant returned pleasantly, and then resumingto me: "No more can I believe everything. " Then he gave a brief, comicallaugh. "And I hope my aunts won't find that out! They would think megone to perdition indeed. But I always go to church here" (he pointed tothe quiet building, which, for all its modest size and simplicity, hada stately and inexpressible charm), "because I like to kneel wheremy mother said her prayers, you know. " He flushed a little over thisconfidence into which he had fallen, but he continued: "I like the wordsof the service, too, and I don't ask myself over-curiously what Ido believe; but there's a permanent something within us--a GreaterSelf--don't you think?"

"A permanent something, " I assented, "which has created all thereligions all over the earth from the beginning, and of whichChristianity itself is merely one of the present temples. "

He made an exclamation at my word "present. "

"Do you think anything in this world is final?" I asked him. 

"But--" he began, somewhat at a loss. 

"Haven't you found out yet that human nature is the one indestructiblereality that we know?"

"But--" he began again. 

"Don't we have the 'latest thing' all the time, and never theultimate thing, never, never? The latest thing in women's hats is thathuge-brimmed affair with the veil as voluminous as a double-bed mosquitonetting. That hat will look improbable next spring. The latest thingin science is radium. Radium has exploded the conservation of energytheory--turned it into a last year's hat. Answer me, if Christianity isthe same as when it wore among its savage ornaments a devil with hornsand a flaming Hell! Forever and forever the human race reaches out itshand and shapes some system, some creed, some government, and declares:'This is at length the final thing, the cure-all, ' and lo and behold, something flowing and eternal in the race itself presently splits thecreed and the government to pieces! Truth is a very marvelous thing. Wefeel it; it can fill our eyes with tears, our hearts with joy, it canmake us die for it; but once our human lips attempt to formulate andthus imprison it, it becomes a lie. You cannot shut truth up in anywords. "

"But it shall prevail!" the boy exclaimed with a sort of passion. 

"Everything prevails, " I answered him. 

"I don't like that, " he said. 

"Neither do I, " I returned. "But Jacob got Esau's inheritance by a meantrick. "

"Jacob was punished for it. "

"Did that help Esau much?"

"You are a pessimist!"

"Just because I see Jacob and Esau to-day, alive and kicking in WallStreet, Washington, Newport, everywhere?"

"You're no optimist, anyhow!"

"I hope I'm blind in neither eye. "

"You don't give us credit--"

"For what?"

"For what we've accomplished since Jacob. "

"Printing, steam, and electricity, for instance? They spread the Bibleand the yellow journal with equal velocity. "

"I don't mean science. Take our institutions. "

"Well, we've accomplished hospitals and the stock market--a pretty evenset-off between God and the devil. "

He laughed. "You don't take a high view of us!"

"Nor a low one. I don't play ostrich with any of the staring permanencesof human nature. We're just as noble to-day as David was sometimes, and just as bestial to-day as David was sometimes, and we've everypossibility inside us all the time, whether we paint our naked skins, orwear steel armor or starched shirts. "

"Well, I believe good is the guiding power in the world. "

"Oh, John Mayrant! Good and evil draw us on like a span of horses, sometimes like a tandem, taking turns in the lead. Order has melted intodisorder, and disorder into new order--how many times?"

"But better each time. "

"How can you know, who never lived in any age but your own?"

"I know we have a higher ideal. "

"Have we? The Greek was taught to love his neighbor as himself. He gavehis great teacher a cup of poison. We gave ours the cross. "

Again he looked away from me into the sweet old churchyard. "I can'tanswer you, but I don't believe it. "

This brought me to gayety. "That's unanswerable, anyhow!"

He still stared at the graves. "Those people in there didn't think allthese uncomfortable things. "

"Ah! no! They belonged in the first volume of the history of ournational soul, before the bloom was off us. "

"That's an odd notion! And pray what volume are we in now?"

"Only the second. "

"Since when?"

"Since that momentous picnic, the Spanish War!"

"I don't see how that took the bloom off us. "

"It didn't. It merely waked Europe up to the facts. "

"Our battleships, you mean?"

"Our steel rails, our gold coffers, our roaring affluence. "

"And our very accurate shooting!" he insisted; for he was a Southerner, and man's gallantry appealed to him more than man's industry. 

I laughed. "Yes, indeed! We may say that the Spanish War closed ourfirst volume with a bang. And now in the second we bid good-by to thevirgin wilderness, for it's explored; to the Indian, for he's conquered;to the pioneer, for he's dead; we've finished our wild, romanticadolescence and we find ourselves a recognized world power of eightymillion people, and of general commercial endlessness, and playtimeover. "

I think, John Mayrant now asserted, "that it is going too far to say thebloom is off us. "

"Oh, you'll find snow in the woods away into April and May. Thefreedom-loving American, the embattled farmer, is not yet extinct in thefar recesses. But the great cities grow like a creeping paralysis overfreedom, and the man from the country is walking into them all the timebecause the poor, restless fellow believes wealth awaits him on theirpavements. And when he doesn't go to them, they come to him. The WallStreet bucket-shop goes fishing in the woods with wires a thousand mileslong; and so we exchange the solid trailblazing enterprise of Volume Onefor Volume Two's electric unrest. In Volume One our wagon was hitchedto the star of liberty. Capital and labor have cut the traces. The laborunion forbids the workingman to labor as his own virile energy and skillprompt him. If he disobeys, he is expelled and called a 'scab. ' Don'tlet us call ourselves the land of the free while such things go on. We're all thinking a deal too much about our pockets nowadays. Eternalvigilance cannot watch liberty and the ticker at the same time. 

"Well, " said John Mayrant, "we're not thinking about our pockets inKings Port, because" (and here there came into his voice and face thatsudden humor which made him so delightful)--"because we haven't got anypockets to think of!"

This brought me down to cheerfulness from my flight among the coldclouds. 

He continued: "Any more lamentations, Mr. Jeremiah?"

"Those who begin to call names, John Mayrant--but never mind! Icould lament you sick if I chose to go on about our corporations andcorruption that I see with my pessimistic eye; but the other eye seesthe American man himself--the type that our eighty millions on the wholemelt into and to which my heart warms each time I land again from morepolished and colder shores--my optimistic eye sees that American dealingadequately with these political diseases. For stronger even than hiskindness, his ability, and his dishonesty is his self-preservation. He'sgoing to stand up for the 'open shop' and sit down on the 'trust'; and Iassure you that I don't in the least resemble the Evening Post. "

A look of inquiry was in John Mayrant's features. 

"The New York Evening Post, " I repeated with surprise. Still the inquiryof his face remained. 

"Oh, fortunate youth!" I cried. "To have escaped the New York EveningPost!"

"Is it so heinous?"

"Well!... Well!... How exactly describe it?... Make you see it?... It's partially tongue-tied, a sad victim of its own excesses. Habitualover-indulgence in blaming has given it a painful stutter whenattempting praise; it's the sprucely written sheet of the supercilious;it's the after-dinner pill of the American who prefers Europe; it's ourRepublic's common scold, the Xantippe of journalism, the paper without acountry. "

"The paper without a country! That's very good!"

"Oh, no! I'll tell you something much better, but it is not mine. Aclever New Yorker said that what with The Sun--"

"I know that paper. "

"--what with The Sun making vice so attractive in the morning and thePost making virtue so odious in the evening, it was very hard for a manto be good in New York. "

"I fear I should subscribe to The Sun, " said John Mayrant. He took hishand from the church-gate railing, and we had turned to stroll downWorship Street when he was unexpectedly addressed. 

For some minutes, while John Mayrant and I had been talking, I had grownaware, without taking any definite note of it, that the old custodianof the churchyard, Daddy Ben, had come slowly near us from the distantcorner of his demesne, where he had been (to all appearances) engaged insome trifling activity among the flowers--perhaps picking off the fadedblossoms. It now came home to me that the venerable negro had reallybeen, in a surreptitious way, watching John Mayrant, and waiting forsomething--either for the right moment to utter what he now uttered, orhis own delayed decision to utter it at all. 

"Mas' John!" he called quite softly. His tone was fairly padded withcaution, and I saw that in the pause which followed, his eye shota swift look at the bruise on Mayrant's forehead, and another look, equally swift, at me. 

"Well, Daddy Ben, what is it?"

The custodian shunted close to the gate which separated him from us. "Mas' John, I speck de President he dun' know de cullud people like weknows 'um, else he nebber bin 'pint dat ar boss in de Cussum House, no, sah. "

After this effort he wiped his forehead and breathed hard. 

To my astonishment, the effort brought immediately a stern change overJohn Mayrant's face; then he answered in the kindest tones, "Thank you, Daddy Ben. "

This answer interpreted for me the whole thing, which otherwise wouldhave been obscure enough: the old man held it to be an indignity thathis young "Mas' John" should, by the President's act, find himself thesubordinate of a member of the black race, and he had just now, inhis perspiring effort, expressed his sympathy! Why he had chosen thisparticular moment (after quite obvious debate with himself) I did notsee until somewhat later. 

He now left us standing at the gate; and it was not for some momentsthat John Mayrant spoke again, evidently closing, for our two selves, this delicate subject. 

"I wish we had not got into that second volume of yours. "

"That's not progressive. "

"I hate progress. "

"What's the use? Better grow old gracefully!

 "'Qui no pas l'esprit de son age De son age a tout le malheur. '"

"Well, I'm personally not growing old, just yet. "

"Neither is the United States. "

"Well, I don't know. It's too easy for sick or worthless people tosurvive nowadays. They are clotting up our square miles very fast. Philanthropists don't seem to remember that you can beget children agreat deal faster than you can educate them; and at this rate I believeuniversal suffrage will kill us off before our time. "

"Do not believe it! We are going to find out that universal suffrage islike the appendix--useful at an early stage of the race's evolution butto-day merely a threat to life. "

He thought this over. "But a surgical operation is pretty serious, youknow. "

"It'll be done by absorption. Why, you've begun it yourselves, and sohas Massachusetts. The appendix will be removed, black and white--andI shouldn't much fear surgery. We're not nearly civilized enough yet tohave lost the power Of recuperation, and in spite of our express-trainspeed, I doubt if we shall travel from crudity to rottenness without apause at maturity. "

"That is the old, old story, " he said. 

"Yes; is there anything new under the sun?"

He was gloomy. "Nothing, I suppose. " Then the gloom lightened. "Nothingnew under the sun--except the fashionable families of Newport!"

This again brought us from the clouds of speculation down to WorshipStreet, where we were walking toward South Place. It also unexpectedlyfurnished me with the means to lead back our talk so gently, withouta jolt or a jerk, to my moral and the delicate topic of matrimony fromwhich he had dodged away, that he never awoke to what was coming untilit had come. He began pointing out, as we passed them, certain houseswhich were now, or had at some period been, the dwellings of his manyrelatives: "My cousin Julia So-and-so lives there, " he would say; or, "My great-uncle, known as Regent Tom, owned that before the War"; andonce, "The Rev. Joseph Priedieu, my great-grandfather, built that houseto marry his fifth wife in, but the grave claimed him first. "

So I asked him a riddle. "What is the difference between Kings Port andNewport?"

This he, of course, gave up. 

"Here you are all connected by marriage, and there they are allconnected by divorce. "

"That's true!" he cried, "that's very true. I met the mostembarrassingly cater-cornered families. "

"Oh, they weren't embarrassed!" I interjected. 

"No, but I was, " said John. 

"And you told me you weren't innocent!" I exclaimed. "They are goingto institute a divorce march, " I continued. "'Lohengrin' or'Midsummer-Night's Dream' played backward. They have not settled whichit is to be taught in the nursery with the other kindergarten melodies. "

He was still unsuspectingly diverted; and we walked along until weturned in the direction of my boarding-house. 

"Did you ever notice, " I now said, "what a perpetual allegory'Midsummer-Night's Dream' contains?"

"I thought it was just a fairy sort of thing. "

"Yes, but when a great poet sets his hand to a fairy sort of thing, youget--well, you get poor Titania. "

"She fell in love with a jackass, " he remarked. "Puck bewitched her. "

"Precisely. A lovely woman with her arms around a jackass. Does thatnever happen in Kings Port?"

He began smiling to himself. "I'm afraid Puck isn't all dead yet. "

I was now in a position to begin dropping my bitters. "Shakespeare wasprobably too gallant to put it the other way, and make Oberon fall inlove with a female jackass. But what an allegory!"

"Yes, " he muttered. "Yes. "

I followed with another drop. "Titania got out of it. It is not alwayssolved so easily. "

"No, " he muttered. "No. " It was quite evident that the flavor of mybitters reached him. 

He was walking slowly, with his head down, and frowning hard. We had nowcome to the steps of my boarding-house, and I dropped my last drop. "Buta disenchanted woman has the best of it--before marriage, at least. "

He looked up quickly. "How?"

I evinced surprise. "Why, she can always break off honorably, and wenever can, I suppose. "

For the third time this day he made me an astonishing rejoinder: "Wouldyou like to take orders from a negro?"

It reduced me to stammering. "I have never--such a juncture has never--"

"Of course you wouldn't. Even a Northerner!"

His face, as he said this, was a single glittering piece of fierceness. I was still so much taken aback that I said rather flatly: "But who hasto?"

"I have to. " With this he abruptly turned on his heel and left mestanding on the steps. For a moment I stared after him; and then, as Irang the bell, he was back again; and with that formality which at timesovertook him he began: "I will ask you to excuse my hasty--"

"Oh, John Mayrant! What a notion!"

But he was by no means to be put off, and he proceeded with stifferformality: "I feel that I have not acted politely just now, and I beg toassure you that I intended no slight. "

My first impulse was to lay a hand upon his shoulder and say to him:"My dear fellow, stuff and nonsense!" Thus I should have treated anyNorthern friend; but here was no Northerner. I am glad that I hadthe sense to feel that any careless, good-natured putting away of hisdeliberate and definitely tendered apology would seem to him a "slight"on my part. His punctilious value for certain observances betweenman and man reached me suddenly and deeply, and took me far from thefamiliarity which breeds contempt. 

"Why, John Mayrant, " I said, "you could never offend me unless I thoughtthat you wished to, and how should I possibly think that?"

"Thank you, " he replied very simply. 

I rang the bell a second time. "If we can get into the house, " Isuggested, "won't you stop and dine with me?"

He was going to accept. "I shall be--" he had begun, in tones ofgratification, when in one instant his face was stricken with completedismay. "I had forgotten, " he said; and this time he was gone indeed, and in a hurry most apparent. It resembled a flight. 

What was the matter now? You will naturally think that it was anappointment with his ladylove which he had forgotten; this was certainlymy supposition as I turned again to the front door. There stood one ofthe waitresses, glaring with her white eyes half out of her black faceat the already distant back of John Mayrant. 

"Oh!" I thought; but, before I could think any more, the tall, dreadfulboarder--the lady whom I secretly called Juno--swept up the steps, andby me into the house, with a dignity that one might term deafening. 

The waitress now muttered, or rather sang, a series of piousapostrophes. "Oh, Lawd, de rampages and de ructions! Oh, Lawd, sinner isin my way, Daniel!" She was strongly, but I think pleasurably, excited;and she next turned to me with a most natural grin, and saying, "Chick'n's mos' gone, sah, " she went back to the dining room. 

This admonition sent me upstairs to make as hasty a toilet as I could. 

IX: Juno

Each recent remarkable occurrence had obliterated its predecessor, andit was with difficulty that I made a straight parting in my hair. Had itbeen Miss Rieppe that John so suddenly ran away to? It seemed now moreas if the boy had been running away from somebody. The waitress hadstared at him with extraordinary interest; she had seen his bruise;perhaps she knew how he had got it. Her excitement--had he smashed uphis official superior at the custom house? That would be an impossiblething, I told myself instantly; as well might a nobleman cross swordswith a peasant. Perhaps the stare of the waitress had reminded him ofhis bruise, and he might have felt disinclined to show himself with itin a company of gossiping strangers. Still, that would scarcely accountfor it--the dismay with which he had so suddenly left me. Was Junothe cause--she had come up behind me; he must have seen her and herportentous manner approaching--had the boy fled from her?

And then, his fierce outbreak about taking orders from a negro when Iwas moralizing over the misfortune of marrying a jackass! I got a sortof parting in my hair, and went down to the dining room. 

Juno was there before me, with her bonnet, or rather her headdress, still on, and I heard her making apologies to Mrs. Trevise for being solate. Mrs. Trevise, of course, sat at the head of her table, and Junosat at her right hand. I was very glad not to have a seat near Juno, because this lady was, as I have already hinted, an intolerable personto me. Either her Southern social position or her rent (she took thewhole second floor, except Mrs. Trevise's own rooms) was of importanceto Mrs. Trevise; but I assure you that her ways kept our landlady'scold, impervious tact watchful from the beginning to the end of almostevery meal. Juno was one of those persons who possess so many and suchstrong feelings themselves that they think they have all the feelingsthere are; at least, they certainly consider no one's feelings buttheir own. She possessed an inexhaustible store of anecdote, but it wasexclusively about our Civil War; you would have supposed that nothingelse had ever happened in the world. When conversation among the rest ofus became general, she preserved a cold and acrid inattention; whenthe fancy took her to open her own mouth, it was always to begin somereminiscence, and the reminiscence always began: "In September, 1862, when the Northern vandals, " etc. , etc. , or "When the Northern vandalswere repulsed by my husband's cousin, General Braxton Bragg, " etc. , etc. Now it was not that I was personally wounded by the term, because at thetime of the vandals I was not even born, and also because I know thatvandals cannot be kept out of any army. Deeply as I believed the Marchto the Sea to have been imperative, of "Sherman's bummers" and theirexcesses I had a fair historic knowledge and a very poor opinion; andthis I should have been glad to tell Juno, had she ever given me thechance; but her immodest sympathy for herself froze all sympathy forher. Why could she not preserve a well-bred silence upon her sufferings, as did the other old ladies I had met in Kings Port? Why did she dragthem in, thrust them, poke them, shove them at you? Thus it was that forher insulting disregard of those whom her words might wound Idetested Juno; and as she was a woman, and nearly old enough to bemy grandmother, it was, of course, out of the question that I shouldretaliate. When she got very bad indeed, it was calm Mrs. Trevise'slast, but effective, resort to tinkle a little handbell and scold one ofthe waitresses whom its sound would then summon from the kitchen. Thisbell was tinkled not always by any means for my sake; other travellersfrom the North there were who came and went, pausing at Kings Portbetween Florida and their habitual abodes. 

At present our company consisted of Juno; a middle-class Englishmanemployed in some business capacity in town; a pair of very younghoneymooners from the "up-country"; a Louisiana poetess, who wore thelong, cylindrical ringlets of 1830, and who was attending a conventionthe Daughters of Dixie; two or three males and females, best describedas et ceteras; and myself. "I shall only take a mouthful for the sakeof nourishment, " Juno was announcing, "and then I shall return to hisbedside. "

"Is he very suffering?" inquired the poetess, in melodious accent. 

"It was an infamous onslaught, " Juno replied. 

The poetess threw up her eyes and crooned, "Noble, doughty champion!"

"You may say so indeed, madam, " said Juno. 

"Raw beefsteak's jolly good for your eye, " observed the Briton. 

This suggestion did not appear to be heard by Juno. 

"I had a row with a chap, " the Briton continued. He's my best friendnow. He made me put raw beefsteak--"

"I thank you, " interrupted Juno. "He requires no beefsteak, raw orcooked. "

The face of the Briton reddened. "Too groggy to eat, is he?"

Mrs. Trevise tinkled her bell. "Daphne! I have said to you twice to handthose yams. "

"I done handed 'em twice, ma'am. "

"Hand them right away, Daphne, and don't be so forgetful. " It was noteasy to disturb the composure of Mrs. Trevise. 

The poetess now took up the broken thread. "Had I a son, " she declared, "I would sooner witness him starve than hear him take orders from amenial race. "

"But mightn't starving be harder for him to experience than for you towitness, y' know?" asked the Briton. 

At this one of the et ceteras made a sort of snuffing noise, and ate hisdinner hard. 

It was the male honeymooner who next spoke. "Must have been quite atussle, ma'am. "

"It was an infamous onslaught!" repeated Juno. "Wish I'd seen it!"sighed the honeymooner. 

His bride smiled at him beamingly. "You'd have felt right lonesome to beout of it, David. "

"No apology has yet been offered, " continued Juno. 

"But must your nephew apologize besides taking a licking?" inquired theBriton. 

Juno turned an awful face upon hint. "It is from his brutal assailantthat apologies are due. Mr. Mayrant's family" (she paused here forblighting emphasis) "are well-bred people, and he will be coerced intobehaving like a gentleman for once. "

I checked an impulse here to speak out and express my doubts as tothe family coercion being founded upon any dissatisfaction with John'sconduct. 

"I wonder if reading or recitation might not soothe your nephew?" saidthe poetess, now. 

"I should doubt it, " answered Juno. "I have just come from his bedside. "

"I should so like to soothe him, if I could, " the poetess murmured. "Ifhe were well enough to hear my convention ode--"

"He is not nearly well enough, " said Juno. 

The et cetera here coughed and blew his nose so remarkably that we allstarted. 

A short silence followed, which Juno relieved. 

"I will give the young ruffian's family the credit they deserve, " shestated. "The whole connection despises his keeping the position. "

Another et cetera now came into it. "Is it known what exactlyprecipitated the occurrence?"

Juno turned to him. "My nephew is a gentleman from whose lips nounworthy word could ever fall. '

"Oh!" said the et cetera, mildly. "He said something, then?"

"He conveyed a well-merited rebuke in fitting terms. "

"What were the terms?" inquired the Briton. 

Juno again did not hear him. "It was after a friendly game of cards. My nephew protested against any gentleman remaining at the custom housesince the recent insulting appointment. "

I was now almost the only member of the party who had preserved strictsilence throughout this very interesting conversation, because, havingno wish to converse with Juno at any time, I especially did not desireit now, just after her seeing me (I thought she must have seen me) inamicable conference with the object of her formidable displeasure. 

"Every Mayrant is ferocious that I ever heard of, " she continued. "Youcannot trust that seemingly delicate and human exterior. His father hadit, too--deceiving exterior and raging interior, though I will say forthat one that he would never have stooped to humiliate the family nameas his son is doing. His regiment was near by when the Northern vandalsburned our courthouse, and he made them run, I can tell you! It's amercy for that poor girl that the scales have dropped from her eyes andshe has broken her engagement with him. "

"With the father?" asked a third et cetera. 

Juno stared at the intruder. 

Mrs. Trevise drawled a calm contribution. "The father died before thisboy was born. "

"Oh, I see!" murmured the et cetera, gratefully. 

Juno proceeded. "No woman's life would be safe with him. "

"But mightn't he be safer for a person's niece than for their nephew?"said the Briton. 

Mrs. Trevise's hand moved toward the bell. 

But Juno answered the question mournfully: "With such hereditarybloodthirstiness, who can tell?" And so Mrs. Trevise moved her hand awayagain. 

"Excuse me, but do you know if the other gentleman is laid up, too?"inquired the male honeymooner, hopefully. 

"I am happy to understand that he is, " replied Juno. 

In sheer amazement I burst out, "Oh!" and abruptly stopped. 

But it was too late. I had instantly become the centre of interest. Theet ceteras and honeymooners craned their necks; the Briton leaned towardme from opposite; the poetess, who had worn an absent expression sincebeing told that the injured champion was not nearly well enough tolisten to her ode, now put on her glasses and gazed at me kindly; whileJuno reared her headdress and spoke, not to me, but to the air in mygeneral neighborhood. 

"Has any one later intelligence than what I bring from my nephew'sbedside?"

So she hadn't perceived who my companion at the step had been! Well, sheshould be enlightened, they all should be enlightened, and vengeance wasmine. I spoke with gentleness:--

"Your nephew's impressions, I fear, are still confused by his deplorablemisadventure. "

"May I ask what you know about his impressions?"

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the hand of Mrs. Trevise move towardher bell; but she wished to hear all about it more than she wishedconcord at her harmonious table; and the hand stopped. 

Juno spoke again. "Who, pray, has later news than what I bring?"

My enemy was in my hand; and an enemy in the hand is worth I don't knowhow many in the bush. 

I answered most gently: "I do not come from Mr. Mayrant's bedside, because I have just left him at the front door in sound health--saving abruise over his left eye. "

During a second we all sat in a high-strung silence, and then Junobecame truly superb. "Who sees the scars he brazenly conceals?"

It took away my breath; my battle would have been lost, when the Britonsuggested: "But mayn't he have shown those to his Aunt?"

We sat in no silence now; the first et cetera made extraordinary soundson his plate, Mrs. Trevise tinkled her handbell with more unction than Ihad ever yet seen in her; and while she and Daphne interchanged streamsof severe words which I was too disconcerted to follow, the other etceteras and the honeymooners hectically effervesced into small talk. Ipresently found myself eating our last course amid a reestablished calm, when, with a rustle, Juno swept out from among us, to return (I suppose)to the bedside. As she passed behind the Briton's chair, that invaluableperson kicked me under the table, and on my raising my eyes to him hegave me a large, robust wink. 

X: High Walk and the Ladies

I now burned to put many questions to the rest of the company. If, through my foolish and outreaching slyness with the girl behind thecounter, the door of my comprehension had been shut, Juno had now openedit sufficiently wide for a number of facts to come crowding in, so tospeak, abreast. Indeed, their simultaneous arrival was not a littleconfusing, as if several visitors had burst in upon me and at once begunspeaking loudly, each shouting a separate and important matter whichdemanded my intelligent consideration. John Mayrant worked in thecustom house, and Kings Port frowned upon this; not merely Kings Port ingeneral--which counted little with the boy, if indeed he noticed generalopinion at all--but the boy's particular Kings Port, his severe oldaunts, and his cousins, and the pretty girl at the Exchange, and themen he played cards with, all these frowned upon it, too; yet even thiscondemnation one could disregard if some lofty personal principle, somepledge to one's own sacred honor, were at stake--but here was no suchthing: John Mayrant hated the position himself. The salary? No, thesalary would count for nothing in the face of such a prejudice as I hadseen glitter from his eye! A strong, clever youth of twenty-three, withthe world before him, and no one to support--stop! Hortense Rieppe!There was the lofty personal principle, the sacred pledge to honor; hewas engaged presently to endow her with all his worldly goods; and toperform this faithfully a bridegroom must not, no matter how little heliked "taking orders from a negro, " fling away his worldly goods somefew days before he was to pronounce his bridegroom's vow. So here, atMrs. Trevise's dinner-table, I caught for one moment, to the full, avision of the unhappy boy's plight; he was sticking to a task which heloathed that he might support a wife whom he no longer desired. Such, ashe saw it, was his duty; and nobody, not even a soul of his kin or hiskind, gave him a word or a thought of understanding, gave him anythingexcept the cold shoulder. Yes; from one soul he had got a sign--fromaged Daddy Ben, at the churchyard gate; and amid my jostling surmisesand conclusions, that quaint speech of the old negro, that little act offidelity and affection from the heart of a black man, took on astrange pathos in its isolation amid the general harshness of his whitesuperiors. Over this it was that I was pausing when, all in a second, perplexity again ruled my meditations. Juno had said that the engagementwas broken. Well, if that were the case--But was it likely to be thecase? Juno's agreeable habit, a habit grown familiar to all of us in thehouse, was to sprinkle about, along with her vitriol, liberal quantitiesof the by-product of inaccuracy. Mingled with her latest illustrations, she had poured out for us one good dose of falsehood, the antidote forwhich it had been my happy office to administer on the spot. If JohnMayrant wasn't in bed from the wounds of combat, as she had given us tosuppose, perhaps Hortense Rieppe hadn't released him from his plightedtroth, as Juno had also announced; and distinct relief filled me when Ireasoned this out. I leave others to reason out why it was relief, andwhy a dull disappointment had come over me at the news that the matchwas off. This, for me, should have been good news, when you considerthat I had been so lately telling myself such a marriage must not be, that I must myself, somehow (since no one else would), step in andarrest the calamity; and it seems odd that I should have felt thisblankness and regret upon learning that the parties had happily settledit for themselves, and hence my difficult and delicate assistance wasnever to be needed by them. 

Did any one else now sitting at our table know of Miss Rieppe's reportedact? What particulars concerning John's fight had been given by Junobefore my entrance? It didn't surprise me that her nephew was in bedfrom Master Mayrant's lusty blows. One could readily guess the mannerin which young John, with his pent-up fury over the custom house, would"land" his chastisement all over the person of any rash critic! And whata talking about it must be going on everywhere to-day! If Kings Porttongues had been set in motion over me and my small notebook in alibrary, the whole town must be buzzing over every bruise given andtaken in this evidently emphatic battle. I had hoped to glean somemore precise information from my fellow-boarders after Juno haddisembarrassed us of her sonorous presence; but even if they werepossessed of all the facts which I lacked, Mrs. Trevise in some masterlyfashion of her own banished the subject from further discussion. Sheheld us off from it chiefly, I think, by adopting a certain uprightposture in her chair, and a certain tone when she inquired if we wisheda second help of the pudding. After thirty-five years of boarders andbutchers, life held no secrets or surprises for her; she was a mature, lone, disenchanted, able lady, and even her silence was like an arm ofthe law. 

An all too brief conversation, nipped by Mrs. Trevise at a stage evenearlier than the bud, revealed to me that perhaps my fellow-boarderswould have been glad to ask me questions, too. 

It was the male honeymooner who addressed me. "Did I understand you tosay, sir, that Mr. Mayrant had received a bruise over his left eye?"

"Daphne!" called out Mrs. Trevise, "Mr. Henderson will take an orange. "

And so we finished our meal without further reference to eyes, ornoses, or anything of the sort. It was just as well, I reflected, when Ireached my room, that I on my side had been asked no questions, since Imost likely knew less than the others who had heard all that Juno had tosay; and it would have been humiliating, after my superb appearance ofknowing more, to explain that John Mayrant had walked with me all theway from the Library, and never told me a word about the affair. 

This reflection increased my esteem for the boy's admirable reticence. What private matter of his own had I ever learned from him? It was otherpeople, invariably, who told me of his troubles. There had been thatsingle, quickly controlled outbreak about his position in the CustomHouse, and also he had let fall that touching word concerning his faithand his liking to say his prayers in the place where his mother had saidthem; beyond this, there had never yet been anything of all that must atthe present moment be intimately stirring in his heart. 

Should I "like to take orders from a negro?" Put personally, it came tome now as a new idea came as something which had never entered my mindbefore, not even as an abstract hypothesis I didn't have to think beforereaching the answer though; something within me, which you ma call whatyou please--convention, prejudice, instinct--something answered mostprompt and emphatically in the negative. I revolved in my mind as Itried to pack into a box a number of objects that I had bought in oneor to "antique" shops. They wouldn't go in, the objects; they were ofdefeating and recalcitrant shapes, and of hostile materials--glass andbrass--and I must have a larger box made, and in that case I would buythis afternoon the other kettle-supporter (I forget its right name) andhave the whole lot decently packed. Take orders from a colored man? Havehim give you directions, dictate you letters, discipline you if you wereunpunctual? No, indeed! And if such were my feeling, how must this youngSoutherner feel? With this in my mind, I made sure that the part in myback hair was right, and after that precaution soon found myself on myway, in a way somewhat roundabout, to the kettle-supporter saunteringnorthward along High Walk, and stopping often; the town, and the water, and the distant shores all were so lovely, so belonged to one another, so melted into one gentle impression of wistfulness and tenderness!I leaned upon the stone parapet and enjoyed the quiet which everysurrounding detail brought to my senses. How could John Mayrant enduresuch a situation? I continued to wonder; and I also continued to assuremyself it was absurd to suppose that the engagement was broken. 

The shutting of a front door across the street almost directly behindme attracted my attention because of its being the first sound that hadhappened in noiseless, empty High Walk since I had been strolling there;and I turned from the parapet to see that I was no longer the solitaryperson in the street. Two ladies, one tall and one diminutive, bothin black and with long black veils which they had put back from theirfaces, were evidently coming from a visit. As the tall one bowed to meI recognized Mrs. Gregory St. Michael, and took off my hat. It was notuntil they had crossed the street and come up the stone steps near whereI stood on High Walk that the little lady also bowed to me; she was Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael, and from something in her prim yet charming mannerI gathered that she held it to be not perfectly well-bred in a lady togreet a gentleman across the width of a public highway, and that shecould have wished that her tall companion had not thus greeted me, astranger likely to comment upon Kings Port manners. In her eyes, suchfree deportment evidently went with her tall companion's method ofspeech: hadn't the little lady informed me during our first briefmeeting that Kings Port at times thought Mrs. Gregory St. Michael'stongue "too downright"?

The two ladies having graciously granted me permission to join themwhile they took the air, Mrs. Gregory must surely have shocked Mrs. Weguelin by saying to me, "I haven't a penny for your thoughts, but I'llexchange. "

"Would you thus bargain in the dark, madam?"

"Oh, I'll risk that; and, to say truth, even your back, as we came outof that house, was a back of thought. "

"Well, I confess to some thinking. Shall I begin?"

It was Mrs. Weguelin who quickly replied, smiling: "Ladies first, youknow. At least we still keep it so in Kings Port. "

"Would we did everywhere!" I exclaimed devoutly; and I was quite awarethat beneath the little lady's gentle smile a setting down had lurked, asetting down of the most delicate nature, administered to me not inthe least because I had deserved one, but because she did not like Mrs. Gregory's "downright" tongue, and could not stop her. 

Mrs. Gregory now took the prerogative of ladies, and began. "I wasthinking of what we had all just been saying during our visit across theway--and with which you are not going to agree--that our young peoplewould do much better to let us old people arrange their marriages forthem, as it Is done in Europe. "

"O dear!"

"I said that you would not agree; but that is because you are so young. "

"I don't know that twenty-eight is so young. "

"You will know it when you are seventy-three. " This observation againcame from Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael, and again with a gentle andattractive smile. It was only the second time that she had spoken; andthroughout the talk into which we now fell as we slowly walked upand down High Walk, she never took the lead; she left that to the"downright" tongue--but I noticed, however, that she chose her momentsto follow the lead very aptly. I also perceived plainly that what wewere really going to discuss was not at all the European principle ofmarriage-making, but just simply young John and his Hortense; they werethe true kernel of the nut with whose concealing shell Mrs. Gregory waspresenting me, and in proposing an exchange of thoughts she would getback only more thoughts upon the same subject. It was pretty evident howmuch Kings Port was buzzing over all this! They fondly believed theydid not like it; but what would they have done without it? What, indeed, were they going to do when it was all over and done with, one way oranother? As a matter of fact, they ought to be grateful to Hortense forcontributing illustriously to the excitement of their lives. 

"Of course, I am well aware, " Mrs. Gregory pursued, "that the youngpeople of to-day believe they can all 'teach their grandmothers to suckeggs, ' as we say in Kings Port. "

"We say it elsewhere, too, " I mildly put in. 

"Indeed? I didn't know that the North, with its pest of Hebrew and otherlow immigrants, had retained any of the good old homely saws which webrought from England. But do you imagine that if the control of marriagerested in the hands of parents and grandparents (where it properlybelongs), you would be witnessing in the North this disgusting spectacleof divorce?"

"But, Mrs. St. Michael--"

"We didn't invite you to argue when we invited you to walk!" cried thelady, laughing. 

"We should like you to answer the question, " said Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael. 

"And tell us, " Mrs. Gregory continued, "if it's your opinion that a boywho has never been married is a better judge of matrimony's pitfallsthan his father. "

"Or than any older person who has bravely and worthily gone through withthe experience, " Mrs. Weguelin added. 

"Ladies, I've no mind to argue. But we're ahead of Europe; we don't needtheir clumsy old plan. "

Mrs. Gregory gave a gallant, incredulous snort. "I shall be interestedto learn of anything that is done better here than in Europe. "

"Oh, many things, surely! But especially the mating of the fashionableyoung. They don't need any parents to arrange for them; it's much bettermanaged through precocity. "

"Through precocity? I scarcely follow you. "

And Mrs. Weguelin softly added, "You must excuse us if we do not followyou. " But her softness nevertheless indicated that if there were any onepresent needing leniency, it was myself. 

"Why, yes, " I told them, "it's through precocity. The new-rich Americanno longer commits the blunder of keeping his children innocent. You'llsee it beginning in the dancing-class, where I heard an exquisite littlegirl of six say to a little boy, 'Go away; I can't dance with you, because my mamma says your mamma only keeps a maid to answer thedoorbell. ' When they get home from the dancing-class, tutors in pokerand bridge are waiting to teach them how to gamble for each other'slittle dimes. I saw a little boy in knickerbockers and a wide collarthrow down the evening paper--"

"At that age? They read the papers?" interrupted Mrs. Gregory. 

"They read nothing else at any age. He threw it down and said, 'Well, Iguess there's not much behind this raid on Steel Preferred. ' What needhas such a boy for parents or grandparents? Presently he is travellingto a fashionable boarding-school in his father's private car. At collegeall his adolescent curiosities are lavishly gratified. His sister athome reads the French romances, and by eighteen she, too, knows (in herhead at least) the whole of life, so that she can be perfectly trusted;she would no more marry a mere half-millionaire just because she lovedhim than she would appear twice in the same ball-dress. She and herball-dresses are described in the papers precisely as if she were ananimal at a show--which indeed is what she has become; and she's eagerto be thus described, because she and her mother--even if her motherwas once a lady and knew better--are haunted by one perpetual, sickeningfear, the fear of being left out. And if you desire to pay correctballroom compliments, you no longer go to her mother and tell her she'slooking every bit as young as her daughter; you go to the daughter andtell her she's looking every bit as old as her mother, for that's whatshe wishes to do, that's what she tries for, what she talks, dresses, eats, drinks, goes to indecent plays and laughs for. Yes, we manageit through precocity, and the new-rich American parent has achieved atleast one new thing under the sun, namely, the corruption of the child. "

My ladies silently consulted each other's expressions, after which, in equal silence, their gaze returned to me; but their equallyintent scrutiny was expressive of quite different things. It was withexpectancy that Mrs. Gregory looked at me--she wanted more. Not so Mrs. Weguelin; she gave me disapproval; it was shadowed in her beautiful, lustrous eyes that burned dark in her white face with as much fireas that of youth, yet it was not of youth, being deeply charged withretrospection. 

In what, then, had I sinned? For the little lady's next words, coldlymurmured, increased in me an uneasiness, as of sin:--

"You have told us much that we are not accustomed to hear in KingsPort. "

"Oh, I haven't begun to tell you!" I exclaimed cheerily. 

"You certainly have not told us, " said Mrs. Gregory, "how your'precocity' escapes this divorce degradation. "

"Escape it? Those people think it is--well, provincial--not to have beendivorced at least once!"

Mrs. Gregory opened her eyes, but Mrs. Weguelin shut her lips. 

I continued: "Even the children, for their own little reasons, likeit. Only last summer, in Newport, a young boy was asked how he enjoyedhaving a father and an ex-father. "

"Ex-father!" said Mrs. Gregory. "Vice-father is what I should call him. "

"Maria!" murmured Mrs. Weguelin, "how can you jest upon such topics?"

"I am far from jesting, Julia. Well, young gentleman, and what answerdid this precious Newport child make?"

"He said (if you will pardon my giving you his little sentiment in hisown quite expressive idiom), 'Me for two fathers! Double money birthdaysand Christmases. See?' That was how he saw divorce. "

Once again my ladies consulted each other's expressions; we moved alongHigh Walk in such silence that I heard the stiff little rustle whichthe palmettos were making across the street; even these trees, you mighthave supposed, were whispering together over the horrors that I hadrecited in their decorous presence. 

It was Mrs. Gregory who next spoke. "I can translate that last boy'slanguage, but what did the other boy mean about a 'raid on SteelPreferred'--if I've got the jargon right?"

While I translated this for her, I felt again the disapproval in Mrs. Weguelin's dark eyes; and my sins--for they were twofold--were presentlymade clear to me by this lady. 

"Are such subjects as--as stocks" (she softly cloaked this word in scornimmeasurable)--"are such subjects mentioned in your good society at theNorth?"

I laughed heartily. "Everything's mentioned!"

The lady paused over my reply. "I am afraid you must feel us to be veryold-fashioned in, Kings Port, " she then said. 

"But I rejoice in it!"

She ignored my not wholly dexterous compliment. "And some subjects, " shepursued, "seem to us so grave that if we permit ourselves to speak ofthem at all we cannot speak of them lightly. "

No, they couldn't speak of them lightly! Here, then, stood my two sinsrevealed; everything I had imparted, and also my tone of imparting it, had displeased Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael, not with the thing, but withme. I had transgressed her sound old American code of good manners, a code slightly pompous no doubt, but one in which no familiarity wasallowed to breed contempt. To her good taste, there were things inthe world which had, apparently, to exist, but which one banished fromdrawing-room discussion as one conceals from sight the kitchen andouthouses; one dealt with them only when necessity compelled, and neverin small-talk; and here had I been, so to speak, small-talking them inthat glib, modern, irresponsible cadence with which our brazen age ringsand clatters like the beating of triangles and gongs. Not triangles andgongs, but rather strings and flutes, had been the music to which KingsPort society had attuned its measured voice. 

I saw it all, and even saw that my own dramatic sense of Mrs. Weguelin'sdignity had perversely moved me to be more flippant than I actuallyfelt; and I promised myself that a more chastened tone should forthwithredeem me from the false position I had got into. 

"My dear, " said Mrs. Gregory to Mrs. Weguelin, "we must ask him toexcuse our provincialism. "

For the second time I was not wholly dexterous. "But I like it so much!"I exclaimed; and both ladies laughed frankly. 

Mrs. Gregory brought in a fable. "You'll find us all 'country mice'here. "

This time I was happy. "At least, then, there'll be no cat!" And thiscaused us all to make little bows. 

But the word "cat" fell into our talk as does a drop of some acid intoa chemical solution, instantly changing the whole to an unexpected newcolor. The unexpected new color was, in this instance, merely what hadbeen latently lurking in the fluid of our consciousness all through andnow it suddenly came out. 

Mrs. Gregory stared over the parapet at the harbor. "I wonder if anybodyhas visited that steam yacht?"

"The Hermana?" I said. "She's waiting, I believe, for her owner, who isenjoying himself very much on land. " It was a strong temptation to add, "enjoying himself with the cat, " but I resisted it. 

"Oh!" said Mrs. Gregory. "Possibly a friend of yours?"

"Even his name is unknown to me. But I gather that he may be coming toKings Port--to attend Mr. John Mayrant's wedding next Wednesday week. "

I hadn't gathered this; but one is at times driven to improvising. Iwished so much to know if Juno was right about the engagement beingbroken, and I looked hard at the ladies as my words fairly grazed the"cat. " This time I expected them to consult each other's expressions, and such, indeed, was their immediate proceeding. 

"The Wednesday following, you mean, " Mrs. Weguelin corrected. 

"Postponed again? Dear me!"

Mrs. Gregory spoke this time. "General Rieppe. Less well again, itseems. "

It would be like Juno to magnify a delay into a rupture. Then I had ahilarious thought, which I instantly put to the ladies. "If thepoor General were to die completely, would the wedding be postponedcompletely?"

"There would not be the slightest chance of that, " Mrs. Gregorydeclared. And then she pronounced a sentence that was truly oracular:"She's coming at once to see for herself. "

To which Mrs. Weguelin added with deeper condemnation than she had sofar employed at all: "There is a rumor that she is actually coming in anautomobile. "

My silence upon these two remarks was the silence of great and suddeninterest; but it led Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael to do my perceptionsa slight injustice, and she had no intention that I should miss thequality of her opinion regarding the vehicle in which Hortense wasreported to be travelling. 

"Miss Rieppe has the extraordinary taste to come here in an automobile, "said Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael, with deepened severity. 

Though I understood quite well, without this emphasizing, that thelittle lady would, with her unbending traditions, probably think it morerespectable to approach Kings Port in a wheelbarrow, I was absorbedby the vague but copious import of Mrs. Gregory's announcement. Theoracles, moreover, continued. 

"But she is undoubtedly very clever to come and see for herself, " wasMrs. Weguelin's next comment. 

Mrs. Gregory's face, as she replied to her companion, took on acensorious and superior expression. "You'll remember, Julia, that I toldJosephine St. Michael it was what they had to expect. "

"But it was not Josephine, my dear, who at any time approved of takingsuch a course. It was Eliza's whole doing. "

It was fairly raining oracles round me, and they quite resembled, forall the help and light they contained, their Delphic predecessors. 

"And yet Eliza, " said Mrs. Gregory, "in the face of it, this verymorning, repeated her eternal assertion that we shall all see themarriage will not take place. "

"Eliza, " murmured Mrs. Weguelin, "rates few things more highly than herown judgment. "

Mrs. Gregory mused. "Yet she is often right when she has no right to beright. "

I could not bear it any longer, and I said, "I heard to-day that MissRieppe had broken her engagement. "

"And where did you hear that nonsense?" asked Mrs. Gregory. 

My heart leaped, and I told her where. 

"Oh, well! you will hear anything in a boarding-house. Indeed, thatwould be a great deal too good to be true. "

"May I ask where Miss Rieppe is all this while?"

"The last news was from Palm Beach, where the air was said to benecessary for the General. "

"But, " Mrs. Weguelin repeated, "we have every reason to believe that sheis coming here in an automobile. "

"We shall have to call, of course, " added Mrs. Gregory to her, not tome; they were leaving me out of it. Yes, these ladies were forgettingabout me in their using preoccupation over whatever crisis it was thatnow hung over John Mayrant's love affairs--a preoccupation which wasevidently part of Kings Port's universal buzz to-day, and which myjoining them in the street had merely mitigated for a moment. I didnot wish to be left out of it; I cannot tell you why--perhaps it wascontagious in the local air--but a veritable madness of craving to knowabout it seized upon me. Of course, I saw that Miss Rieppe was, almosttoo grossly and obviously, "playing for time"; the health of people'sfathers did not cause weekly extensions of this sort. But what wasit that the young lady expected time to effect for her? Her release, formally, by her young man, on the ground of his worldly ill fortune? Orwas it for an offer from the owner of the Hermana that she was waiting, before she should take the step of formally releasing John Mayrant? No, neither of these conjectures seemed to furnish a key to the tacticsof Miss Rieppe and the theory that each of these affianced parties wasstrategizing to cause the other to assume the odium of breaking theirengagement, with no result save that of repeatedly countermanding awedding-cake, struck me as belonging admirably to a stage-comedy inthree acts, but scarcely to life as we find it. Besides, poor JohnMayrant was, all too plainly, not strategizing; he was playing asstraight a game as the honest heart of a gentleman could inspire. Andso, baffled at all points, I said (for I simply had to try somethingwhich might lead to my sharing in Kings Port's vibrating secret):--

"I can't make out whether she wants to marry him or not. "

Mrs. Gregory answered. "That is just what she is coming to see forherself. "

"But since her love was for his phosphates only--!" was my naturalexclamation. 

It caused (and this time I did not expect it) my inveterate ladies toconsult each other's expressions. They prolonged their silence so muchthat I spoke again:--

"And backing out of this sort of thing can be done, I should think, quite as cleverly, and much more simply, from a distance. "

It was Mrs. Weguelin who answered now, or, rather, who headed me off. "Have you been able to make out whether he wants to marry her or not?"

"Oh, he never comes near any of that with me!"

"Certainly not. But we all understand that he has taken a fancy to you, and that you have talked much with him. "

So they all understood this, did they? This, too, had played itslittle special part in the buzz? Very well, then, nothing of my privateimpressions should drop from my lips here, to be quoted and misquotedand battledored and shuttlecocked, until it reached the boy himself (asit would inevitably) in fantastic disarrangement. I laughed. "Oh, yes!I have talked much with him. Shakespeare, I think, was our latestsubject. "

Mrs. Weguelin was plainly watching for something to drop. "Shakespeare!"Her tone was of surprise. 

I then indulged myself in that most delightful sort of impertinence, which consists in the other person's not seeing it. "You wouldn't belikely to have heard of that yet. It occurred only before dinner to-day. But we have also talked optimism, pessimism, sociology, evolution--Mr. Mayrant would soon become quite--" I stopped myself on the edge ofsomething very clumsy. 

But sharp Mrs. Gregory finished for me. "Yes, you mean that if he didn'tlive in Kings Port (where we still have reverence, at any rate), he fitwould imbibe all the shallow quackeries of the hour and resemble all theclever young donkeys of the minute. "

"Maria!" Mrs. Weguelin murmurously expostulated. 

Mrs. Gregory immediately made me a handsome but equivocal apology. "I wasn't thinking of you at all!" she declared gayly; and it set medoubting if perhaps she hadn't, after all, comprehended my impertinence. "And, thank Heaven!" she continued, "John is one of us, in spite of hispresent stubborn course. "

But Mrs. Weguelin's beautiful eyes were resting upon me with thatdisapproval I had come to know. To her, sociology and evolution and all"isms" were new-fangled inventions and murky with offense; to touch themwas defilement, and in disclosing them to John Mayrant I was a corrupterof youth. She gathered it all up into a word that was radiant with akind of lovely maternal gentleness:--

"We should not wish John to become radical. "

In her voice, the whole of old Kings Port was enshrined: hereditaryfaith and hereditary standards, mellow with the adherence of generationspast, and solicitous for the boy of the young generation. I saw her eyessoften at the thought of him; and throughout the rest of our talk to itsend her gaze would now and then return to me, shadowed with disapproval. 

I addressed Mrs. Gregory. "By his 'present stubborn course' I supposeyou mean the Custom House. "

"All of us deplore his obstinacy. His Aunt Eliza has strongly but vainlyexpostulated with him. And after that, Miss Josephine felt obliged totell him that he need not come to see her again until he resigned aposition which reflects ignominy upon us all. "

I suppressed a whistle. I thought (as I have said earlier) that Ihad caught a full vision of John Mayrant's present plight. But myimagination had not soared to the height of Miss Josephine St. Michael'sact of discipline. This, it must have been, that the boy had checkedhimself from telling me in the churchyard. What a character of sternertimes was Miss Josephine! I thought of Aunt Carola, but even she was notquite of this iron, and I said so to Mrs. Gregory. "I doubt if therebe any old lady left in the North, " I said, "capable of such antiqueseverity. "

But Mrs. Gregory opened my eyes still further. "Oh, you'd have themif you had the negro to deal with as we have him. Miss Josephine, " sheadded, "has to-day removed her sentence of banishment. "

I felt on the verge of new discoveries. "What!" I exclaimed, "and didshe relent?"

"New circumstances intervened, " Mrs. Gregory loftily explained. "There was an occurrence--an encounter, in fact--in which John Mayrantfittingly punished one who had presumed. Upon hearing of it, thismorning, Miss Josephine sent a message to John that he might resumevisiting her. 

"But that is perfectly grand!" I cried in my delight over Miss Josephineas a character. 

"It is perfectly natural, " returned Mrs. Gregory, quietly. "John hasbehaved with credit throughout. He was at length made to see thatcircumstances forbade any breach between his family and that ofthe other young man. John held back--who would not, after such aninsult?--but Miss Josephine was firm, and he has promised to call andshake hands. My cousin, Doctor Beaugarcon, assures me that theyoung man's injuries are trifling--a week will see him restored andpresentable again. "

"A week? A mere nothing!" I answered "Do you know, " I now suggested, "that you have forgotten to ask me what I was thinking about when wemet?"

"Bless me, young gentleman! and was it so remarkable?"

"Not at all, but it partly answers what Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael askedme. If a young man does not really wish to marry a young woman there areways well known by which she can be brought to break the engagement. "

"Ah, " said Mrs. Gregory, "of course; gayeties and irregularities--"

"That is, if he's not above them, " I hastily subjoined. 

"Not always, by any means, " Mrs. Gregory returned. "Kings Port has beentreated to some episodes--"

Mrs. Weguelin put in a word of defence. "It is to be said, Maria, that John's irregularities have invariably been conducted with perfectpropriety. "

"Oh, " said Mrs. Gregory, "no Mayrant was ever known to be gross!"

"But this particular young lady, " said Mrs. Weguelin, "would not beestranged by an masculine irregularities and gayeties. Not many. "

"How about infidelities?" I suggested. "If he should flagrantly lose hisheart to another?"

Mrs. Weguelin replied quickly. "That answers very well where hearts arein question. "

"But, " said I, "since phosphates are no longer--?"

There was a pause. "It would be a new dilemma, " Mrs. Gregory then saidslowly, "if she turned out to care for him, after all. "

Throughout all this I was getting more and more the sense of how atotal circle of people, a well-filled, wide circle of interested people, surrounded and cherished John Mayrant, made itself the setting of whichhe was the jewel; I felt in it, even stronger than the manifestationof personal affection (which certainly was strong enough), a collectivesense of possession in him, a clan value, a pride and a guardianshipconcentrated and jealous, as of an heir to some princely estate, whomust be worthy for the sake of a community even before he was worthyfor his own sake. Thus he might amuse himself--it was in the code thatprincely heirs so should pour se deniaiser, as they neatly put it inParis--thus might he and must he fight when his dignity was assailed;but thus might he not marry outside certain lines prescribed, or departfrom his circle's established creeds, divine and social, especially tohold any position which (to borrow Mrs. Gregory's phrase) "reflectedignominy" upon them all. When he transgressed, their very value for himturned them bitter against him. I know that all of us are more or lesschained to our community, which is pleased to expect us to walk its way, and mightily displeased when we please ourselves instead by breakingthe chain and walking our own way; and I know that we are forgiven veryslowly; but I had not dreamed what a prisoner to communal criticism ayoung American could be until I beheld Kings Port over John Mayrant. 

And to what estate was this prince heir? Alas, his inheritance was allof it the Past and none of it the Future; was the full churchyard andthe empty wharves! He was paying dear for his princedom! And then, therewas yet another sense of this beautiful town that I got here completely, suddenly crystallized, though slowly gathering ever since my arrival:all these old people were clustered about one young one. That was it;that was the town's ultimate tragic note: the old timber of the forestdying and the too sparse new growth appearing scantily amid the tall, fine, venerable, decaying trunks. It had been by no razing to the groundand sowing with salt that the city had perished; a process less violentbut more sad had done away with it. Youth, in the wake of commerce, hadebbed from Kings Port, had flowed out from the silent, mourning houses, and sought life North and West, and wherever else life was to be found. Into my revery floated a phrase from a melodious and once favorite song:O tempo passato perche non ritorni?

And John Mayrant? Why, then, had he tarried here himself? That is a hardsaying about crabbed age and youth, but are not most of the sayingshard that are true? What was this young man doing in Kings Port withhis brains, and his pride, and his energetic adolescence? If the CustomHouse galled him, the whole country was open to him; why not have triedhis fortune out and away, over the hills, where the new cities lie, allfull of future and empty of past? Was it much to the credit of such ayoung man to find himself at the age of twenty-three or twenty-four, sound and lithe of limb, yet tied to the apron strings of MissJosephine, and Miss Eliza, and some thirty or forty other elderly femalerelatives?

With these thoughts I looked at the ladies and wondered how I might leadthem to answer me about John Mayrant, without asking questions whichmight imply something derogatory to him or painful to them. I could notever say to them a word which might mean, however indirectly, that Ithought their beautiful, cherished town no place for a young man to goto seed in; this cut so close to the quick of truth that discourse mustkeep wide away from it. What, then, could I ask them? As I pondered, Mrs. Weguelin solved it for me by what she was saying to Mrs. Gregory, of which, in my preoccupation, I had evidently missed a part:--

"--if he should share the family bad taste in wives. "

"Eliza says she has no fear of that. "

"Were I Eliza, Hugh's performance would make me very uneasy. "

"Julia, John does not resemble Hugh. "

"Very decidedly, in coloring, Maria. "

"And Hugh found that girl in Minneapolis, Julia, where there wasdoubtless no pick for the poor fellow. And remember that George chose alady, at any rate. "

Mrs. Weguelin gave to this a short assent. "Yes. " It portendedsomething more behind, which her next words duly revealed. "A lady; butdo--any--ladies ever seem quite like our own?

"Certainly not, Julia. "

You see, they were forgetting me again; but they had furnished me with aclue. 

"Mr. John Mayrant has married brothers?"

"Two, " Mrs. Gregory responded. "John is the youngest of three children. "

"I hadn't heard of the brothers before. "

"They seldom come here. They saw fit to leave their home and theirdelicate mother. "

"Oh!"

"But John, " said Mrs. Gregory, "met his responsibility like a Mayrant. "

"Whatever temptations he has yielded to, " said Mrs. Weguelin, "hisfilial piety has stood proof. "

"He refused, " added Mrs. Gregory, "when George (and I have neverunderstood how George could be so forgetful of their mother) wrotetwice, offering him a lucrative and rising position in the railroadcompany at Roanoke. "

"That was hard!" I exclaimed. 

She totally misapplied my sympathy. "Oh, Anna Mayrant, " she correctedherself, "John's mother, Mrs. Hector Mayrant, had harder things thanforgetful sons to bear! I've not laid eyes on those boys since thefuneral. "

"Nearly two years, " murmured Mrs. Weguelin. And then, to me, withsomething that was almost like a strange severity beneath her gentletone: "Therefore we are proud of John, because the better traits in hisnature remind us of his forefathers, whom we knew. "

"In Kings Port, " said Mrs. Gregory, "we prize those who ring true to theblood. "

By way of response to this sentiment, I quoted some French to her. "Bonchien chasse de race. "

It pleased Mrs. Weguelin. Her guarded attitude toward me relented. "Johnmentioned your cultivation to us, " she said. "In these tumble-downdays it is rare to meet with one who still lives, mentally, on thegentlefolks' plane--the piano nobile of intelligence!"

I realized how high a compliment she was paying me, and I repaid it witha joke. "Take care. Those who don't live there would call it the pianosnobile. "

"Ah!" cried the delighted lady, "they'd never have the wit!"

"Did you ever hear, " I continued, "the Bostonian's remark--'The missionof America is to vulgarize the world'?"

"I never expected to agree so totally with a Bostonian!" declared Mrs. Gregory. 

"Nothing so hopeful, " I pursued, "has ever been said of us. Forrefinement and thoroughness and tradition delay progress, and we aresweeping them out of the road as fast as we can. "

"Come away, Julia, " said Mrs. Gregory. "The young gentleman is gettingflippant again, and we leave him. "

The ladies, after gracious expressions concerning the pleasure of theirstroll, descended the steps at the north end of High Walk, where theparapet stops, and turned inland from the water through a little street. I watched them until they went out of my sight round a corner; but thetwo silent, leisurely figures, moving in their black and their veilsalong an empty highway, come back to me often in the pictures of mythoughts; come back most often, indeed, as the human part of what mymemory sees when it turns to look at Kings Port. For, first, it seesthe blue frame of quiet sunny water, and the white town within its framebeneath the clear, untainted air; and then it sees the high-slantedroofs, red with their old corrugated tiles, and the tops of leafyenclosures dipping below sight among quaint and huddled quadrangles;and, next, the quiet houses standing in their separate grounds, theirnarrow ends to the street and their long, two-storied galleries opento the south, but their hushed windows closed as if against the prying, restless Present that must not look in and disturb the motionlessmemories which sit brooding behind these shutters; and between all thesesilent mansions lie the narrow streets, the quiet, empty streets, alongwhich, as my memory watches them, pass the two ladies silently, in theirblack and their veils, moving between high, mellow-colored garden wallsover whose tops look the oleanders, the climbing roses, and all thetaller flowers of the gardens. 

And if Mrs. Gregory and Mrs. Weguelin seemed to me at moments as narrowas those streets, they also seemed to me as lovely as those serenegardens; and if I had smiled at their prejudices, I had loved theirinnocence, their deep innocence, of the poisoned age which has succeededtheir own; and if I had wondered this day at their powers for cruelty, Iwondered the next day at the glimpse I had of their kindness. For duringa pelting cold rainstorm, as I sat and shivered in a Royal Street car, waiting for it to start upon its north-bound course, the house-dooropposite which we stood at the end of the track opened, and Mrs. Weguelin's head appeared, nodding to the conductor as she sent her blackservant out with hot coffee for him! He took off his hat, and smiled, and thanked her; and when we had started and I, the sole passenger inthe chilly car, asked him about this, he said with native pride: "Theladies always watches out for us conductors in stormy weather, sir. That's Mistress Weguelin St. Michael, one of our finest. " And then hegave me careful directions how to find a shop that I was seeking. 

Think of this happening in New York! Think of the aristocracy of thatmetropolis warming up with coffee the--but why think of it, or of a NewYork conductor answering your questions with careful directions! It isnot New York's fault, it is merely New York's misfortune: New York is ina hurry; and a world of haste cannot be a world either of courtesy orof kindness. But we have progress, progress, instead; and that is atremendous consolation. 

XI: Daddy Ben and His Seed

But what was Hortense Rieppe coming to see for herself?

Many dark things had been made plain to me by my talk with the twoladies; yet while disclosing so much, they had still left this importantmatter in shadow. I was very glad, however, for what they had revealed. They had showed me more of John Mayrant's character, and more also ofthe destiny which had shaped his ends, so that my esteem for him hadincreased; for some of the words that they had exchanged shone likebright lanterns down into his nature upon strength and beauty lyingquietly there--young strength and beauty, yet already tempered by manlysacrifice. I saw how it came to pass through this, through renunciationof his own desires, through performance of duties which had fallen uponhim not quite fairly, that the eye of his spirit had been turned awayfrom self; thus had it grown strong-sighted and able to look far anddeep, as his speech sometimes revealed, while still his flesh was of hisyouthful age, and no saint's flesh either. This had the ladies taught meduring the fluttered interchange of their reminders and opinions, and bytheir eager agreements and disagreements, I was also grateful to them inthat I could once more correct Juno. The pleasure should be mine totell them in the public hearing of our table that Miss Rieppe was stillengaged to John Mayrant. 

But what was this interesting girl coming to see for herself?

This little hole in my knowledge gave me discomfort as I walked alongtoward the antiquity shop where I was to buy the other kettle-supporter. The ladies, with all their freedom of comment and censure, had keptsomething from me. I reviewed, I pieced together, their various remarks, those oracles, especially, which they had let fall, but it all came backto the same thing. I did not know, and they did, what Hortense Rieppewas coming to see for herself. At all events, the engagement was notbroken, the chance to be instrumental in having it broken was stillmine; I might still save John Mayrant from his deplorable quixotism; andas this reflection grew with me I took increasing comfort in it, andI stepped onward toward my kettle-supporter, filled with that sense ofmoral well-being which will steal over even the humblest of us when wefeel that we are beneficently minding somebody else's business. 

Whenever the arrangement did not take me too widely from my course, I somapped out my walks and errands in Kings Port that I might pass by thechurchyard and church at the corner of Court and Worship streets. Evenif I did not indulge myself by turning in to stroll and loiter among theflowers, it was enough pleasure to walk by that brick-wall. If you arewilling to wander curiously in our old towns, you may still find in manyof them good brick walls standing undisturbed, and equal in their colorand simple excellence to those of Kings Port; but fashion has pushedthese others out of its sight, among back streets and all sorts offorgotten purlieus and abandoned dignity, and takes its walks to-dayamid cold, expensive ugliness; while the old brick walls of Kings Portcontinually frame your steps with charm. No one workman famous for hisskill built them so well proportioned, so true to comeliness; it was thegeneral hand of their age that could shape nothing wrong, as the hand ofto-day can shape nothing right, save by a rigid following of the old. 

I gave myself the pleasure this afternoon of walking by the churchyardwall; and when I reached the iron gate, there was Daddy Ben. So full wasI of my thoughts concerning John Mayrant, and the vicissitudes of hisheart, and the Custom House, that I was moved to have words with the oldman upon the general topic. 

"Well, " I said, "and so Mr. John is going to be married. "

No attempt to start a chat ever failed more signally. He assented witha manner of mingled civility and reserve that was perfection, andafter the two syllables of which his answer consisted, he remained asimpenetrably respectful as before. I felt rather high and dry, but Itried it again:--

"And I'm sure, Daddy Ben, that you feel as sorry as any of the familythat the phosphates failed. "

Again he replied with his two syllables of assent, and again he stoodmute, respectful, a little bent with his great age; but now his goodmanners--and better manners were never seen--impelled him to breaksilence upon some subject, since he would not permit himself to speakconcerning the one which I had introduced. It was the phosphates whichinspired him. 

"Dey is mighty fine prostrate wukks heah, sah. "

"Yes, I've been told so, Daddy Ben. "

"On dis side up de ribber an' tudder side down de ribber 'cross de newbridge. Wuth visitin' fo' strangers, sah. "

I now felt entirely high and dry. I had attempted to enter intoconversation with him about the intimate affairs of a family to which hefelt that he belonged; and with perfect tact he had not only declinedto discuss them with me, but had delicately informed me that I was astranger and as such had better visit the phosphate works among theother sights of Kings Port. No diplomat could have done it better; andas I walled away from him I knew that he regarded me as an outsider, aNortherner, belonging to a race hostile to his people; he had seen Mas'John friendly with me, but that was Mas' John's affair. And so itwas that if the ladies had kept something from me, this cunning, old, polite, coal-black African had kept everything from me. 

If all the negroes in Kings Port were like Daddy Ben, Mrs. Gregory St. Michael would not have spoken of having them "to deal with, " and thegirl behind the counter would not have been thrown into such indignationwhen she alluded to their conceit and ignorance. Daddy Ben had, so farfrom being puffed up by the appointment in the Custom House, disapprovedof this. I had heard enough about the difference between the old and newgenerations of the negro of Kings Port to believe it to be true, and Ihad come to discern how evidently it lay at the bottom of many thingshere: John Mayrant and his kind were a band united by a number of strongties, but by nothing so much as by their hatred of the modern negroin their town. Yes, I was obliged to believe that the young Kings PortAfrican left to freedom and the ballot, was a worse African than hisslave parents; but this afternoon brought me a taste of it more pungentthan all the assurances in the world. 

I bought my kettle-supporter, and learned from the robber who sold itto me (Kings Port prices for "old things" are the most exorbitant thatI know anywhere) that a carpenter lived not far from Mrs. Trevise'sboarding-house, and that he would make for me the box in which I couldpack my various purchases. 

"That is, if he's working this week, " added the robber. 

"What else would he be doing?"

"It may be his week for getting drunk on what he earned the weekbefore. " And upon this he announced with as much bitterness as if he hadbeen John Mayrant or any of his aunts, "That's what Boston philanthropyhas done for him. "

I dared up at this. "I suppose that's a Southern argument forreestablishing slavery. "

"I am not Southern; Breslau is my native town, and I came from New Yorkhere to live five years ago. I've seen what your emancipation has donefor the black, and I say to you, my friend, honest I don't know a foolfrom a philanthropist any longer. "

He had much right upon his side; and it can be seen daily thatphilanthropy does not always walk hand-in-hand with wisdom. Doesanything or anybody always walk so? Moreover, I am a friend to not manysuperlatives, and have perceived no saying to be more true than the onethat extremes meet: they meet indeed, and folly is their meeting-place. Nor could I say in the case of the negro which folly were the moreridiculous;--that which expects a race which has lived no one knowshow many thousand years in mental nakedness while Confucius, Moses, and Napoleon were flowering upon adjacent human stems, should puton suddenly the white man's intelligence, or that other folly whichdeclares we can do nothing for the African, as if Hampton had notalready wrought excellent things for him. I had no mind to enterinto all the inextricable error with this Teuton, and it was he whocontinued:--

"Oh, these Boston philanthropists; oh, these know-it-alls! Why don'tthey stay home? Why do they come down here to worry us with theirignorance? See here, my friend, let me show you!"

He rushed about his shop in a search of distraught eagerness, and witha multitude of small exclamations, until, screeching jubilantly once, he pounced upon a shabby and learned-looking volume. This he brought me, thrusting it with his trembling fingers between my own, and shufflingthe open pages. But when the apparently right one was found, heexclaimed, "No, I have better! and dashed away to a pile of pamphletson the floor, where he began to plough and harrow. Wondering if I wascloseted with a maniac, I looked at the book in my passive hand, and sawdiagrams of various bones to me unknown, and men's names of which Iwas equally ignorant--Mivart, Topinard, and more, --but at last thatof Huxley. But this agreeable sight was spoiled at once by the quitehorrible words Nycticebidoe, platyrrhine, catarrhine, from which Iraised my eyes to see him coming at me with two pamphlets, and scoldingas he came. 

"Are you educated, yes? Have been to college, yes? Then perhaps you willunderstand. "

Certainly I understood immediately that he and his pamphlets were as badas the book, or worse, in their use of a vocabulary designed to causealmost any listener the gravest inconvenience. Common Eocene ancestorsoccurred at the beginning of his lecture; and I believed that if itgot no stronger than this, I could at least preserve the appearance ofcomprehending him; but it got stronger, and at sacro-iliac notch I maysay, without using any grossly exaggerated expression, that I becameunconscious. At least, all intelligence left me. When it returned, hewas saying. --

"But this is only the beginning. Come in here to my crania and jaws. "

Evidently he held me hypnotized, for he now hurried me unresistingthrough a back door into a dark little where he turned up the gas, and Isaw shelves as in a museum, to one of which he led me. I suppose thatit was curiosity that rendered me thus sheep-like. Upon the shelf were anumber of skulls and jaws in admirable condition and graded arrangement, beginning to the left with that flat kind of skull which one associateswith gorillas. He resumed his scolding harangue, and for a few briefmoments I understood him. Here, told by themselves, was as much of thestory of the skulls as we know, from manlike apes through glacial manto the modern senator or railroad president. But my intelligence wasdestined soon to die away again. 

"That is the Caucasian skull: your skull, " he said, touching a specimenat the right. 

"Interesting, " I murmured. "I'm afraid I know nothing about skulls. "

"But you shall know someding before you leave, " he retorted, wagging hishead at me; and this time it was not the book, but a specimen, that hepushed into my grasp. He gave it a name, not as bad as platyrrhine, butI feared worse was coming; then he took it away from me, gave me anotherskull, and while I obediently held it, pronounced something quite beyondme. 

"And what is the translation of that?" he demanded excitedly. 

"Tell me, " I feebly answered. 

He shouted with overweening triumph: "The translation of that is SouthCarolina nigger. Notice well this so egcellent specimen. Prognathous, megadont, platyrrhine. "

"Ha! Platyrrhine!" I saluted the one word I recognized as I drowned. 

"You have said it yourself!" was his extraordinary answer;--for whathad I said? Almost as if he were going to break into a dance for joy, hetook the Caucasian skull and the other two, and set the three togetherby themselves, away from the rest of the collection. The picture whichthey thus made spoke more than all the measurements and statistics whichhe now chattered out upon me, reading from his book as I contemplatedthe skulls. There was a similarity of shape, a kinship there betweenthe three, which stared you in the face; but in the contours of vaultedskull, the projecting jaws, and the great molar teeth--what was tobe seen? Why, in every respect that the African departed from theCaucasian, he departed in the direction of the ape! Here was zoologymutely but eloquently telling us why there had blossomed no Confucius, no Moses, no Napoleon, upon that black stem; why no Iliad, no Parthenon, no Sistine Madonna, had ever risen from that tropic mud. 

The collector touched my sleeve. "Have you now learned someding aboutskulls, my friend? Will you invite those Boston philanthropists to stayhome? They will get better results in civilization by giving votes tomonkeys than teaching Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to riggers. "

Retaliation rose in me. "Haven't you learned to call them negroes?" Iremarked. But this was lost upon the Teuton. I was tempted to tell himthat I was no philanthropist, and no Bostonian, and that he need notshout so loud, but my more dignified instincts restrained me. I withdrewmy sleeve from his touch (it was this act of his, I think, that hadmost to do with my displeasure), and merely bidding him observe that theenormous price of the kettle-supporter had been reduced for me byhis exhibition to a bagatelle, I left the shop of the screaminganatomist--or Afropath, or whatever it may seem most fitting that heshould be called. 

I bore the kettle-supporter with me, tied up objectionably in newspaper, and knotted with ungainly string; and it was this bundle which preventedmy joining the girl behind the counter, and ending by a walk with ayoung lady the afternoon that had begun by a walk with two old ones. Ishould have liked to make my confession to her. She was evidently outfor the sake of taking the air, and had with her no companion save thebig curly white dog; confession would have been very agreeable; but Ilooked again at my ugly newspaper bundle, and turned in a direction thatshe was not herself pursuing. 

Twice, as I went, I broke into laughter over my interview in the shop, which I fear has lost its comical quality in the relating. To enter adoor and come serenely in among dingy mahogany and glass objects, tobargain haughtily for a brass bauble with the shopkeeper, and to havea few exchanged remarks suddenly turn the whole place into a sort ofbedlam with a gibbering scientist dashing skulls at me to prove hisfixed idea, and myself quite furious--I laughed more than twice; but, by the time I had approached the neighborhood of the carpenter'sshop, another side of it had brought reflection to my mind. Here was aforeigner to whom slavery and the Lost Cause were nothing, whose wholeassociation with the South had begun but five years ago; and the racequestion had brought his feelings to this pitch! He had seen the KingsPort negro with the eyes of the flesh, and not with the eyes of theory, and as a result the reddest rag for him was pale beside a Bostonphilanthropist!

Nevertheless, I have said already that I am no lover of superlatives, and in doctrine especially is this true. We need not expect a Confuciusfrom the negro, nor yet a Chesterfield; but I am an enemy also of thatblind and base hate against him, which conducts nowhere save to thede-civilizing of white and black alike. Who brought him here? Did heinvite himself? Then let us make the best of it and teach him, leadhim, compel him to live self-respecting, not as statesman, poet, orfinancier, but by the honorable toil of his hand and sweat of his brow. Because "the door of hope" was once opened too suddenly for him is noreason for slamming it now forever in his face. 

Thus mentally I lectured back at the Teuton as I went through thestreets of Kings Port; and after a while I turned a corner which took meabruptly, as with one magic step, out of the white man's world into theblackest Congo. Even the well-inhabited quarter of Kings Port (and Ihad now come within this limited domain) holds narrow lanes and recesseswhich teem and swarm with negroes. As cracks will run through fineporcelain, so do these black rifts of Africa lurk almost invisibleamong the gardens and the houses. The picture that these places offered, tropic, squalid, and fecund, often caused me to walk through them andwatch the basking population; the intricate, broken wooden galleries, the rickety outside stair cases, the red and yellow splashes of color onthe clothes lines, the agglomerate rags that stuffed holes in decayingroofs or hung nakedly on human frames, the small, choked dwellings, bursting open at doors and windows with black, round-eyed babies as anoverripe melon bursts with seeds, the children playing marbles in thecourt, the parents playing cards in the room, the grandparents smokingpipes on the porch, and the great-grandparents stairs gazing out at youlike creatures from the Old Testament or the jungle. From the jungle wehad stolen them, North and South had stolen them together, long ago, tobe slaves, not to be citizens, and now here they were, the fruits ofour theft; and for some reason (possibly the Teuton was the reason) thatpassage from the Book of Exodus came into my head: "For I the Lord thyGod am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon thechildren. "

These thoughts were interrupted by sounds as of altercation. I hadnearly reached the end of the lane, where I should again emerge into theWhite man's world, and where I was now walking the lane spread into abroader space with ells and angles and rotting steps, and habitationsmostly too ruinous to be inhabited. It was from a sashless window in oneof these that the angry voices came. The first words which were distinctaroused my interest quite beyond the scale of an ordinary altercation:--

"Calls you'self a reconstuckted niggah?"

This was said sharply and with prodigious scorn. The answer which itbrought was lengthy and of such a general sullen incoherence that Icould make out only a frequent repetition of "custom house, " and thatsomebody was going to take care of somebody hereafter. 

Into this the first voice broke with tones of highest contempt andrapidity:--

"President gwine to gib brekfus' an' dinnah an suppah to de likes obyou fo' de whole remaindah oh youh wuthless nat'ral life? Get out ob mysight, you reconstuckted niggah. I come out oh de St. Michael. "

There came through the window immediately upon this sounds of scufflingand of a fall, and then cries for help which took me running into thedilapidated building. Daddy Ben lay on the floor, and a thick, youngsavage was kicking him. In some remarkable way I thought of the solidityof their heads, and before the assailant even knew that he had awitness, I sped forward, aiming my kettle-supporter, and with its sharpbrass edge I dealt him a crack over his shin with astonishing accuracy. It was a dismal howl that he gave, and as he turned he got from meanother crack upon the other shin. I had no time to be alarmed at mydeed, or I think that I should have been very much so; I am a man aboveall of peace, and physical encounters are peculiarly abhorrent to me;but, so far from assailing me, the thick, young savage, with the singlemuttered remark, "He hit me fuss, " got himself out of the house with themost agreeable rapidity. 

Daddy Ben sat up, and his first inquiry greatly reassured me as to hisstate. He stared at my paper bundle. "You done make him hollah wid dat, sah!"

I showed him the kettle-supporter through a rent in its wrapping, andI assisted him to stand upright. His injuries proved fortunately to beslight (although I may say here that the shock to his ancient body kepthim away for a few days from the churchyard), and when I began to talkto him about the incident, he seemed unwilling to say much in answer tomy questions. And when I offered to accompany him to where he lived, hedeclined altogether, assuring me that it was close, and that he couldwalk there as well as if nothing had happened to him; but upon my askinghim if I was on the right way to the carpenter's shop, he looked at mecuriously. 

"No use you gwine dab, sah. Dat shop close up. He not wukkin, dis week, and dat why fo' I jaw him jus' now when you come in an' stop him. He decahpentah, my gran'son, Cha's Coteswuth. "

XII: From the Bedside

Next morning when I saw the weltering sky I resigned myself to a day ofdullness; yet before its end I had caught a bright new glimpse ofJohn Mayrant's abilities, and also had come, through tribulation, to afurther understanding of the South; so that I do not, to-day, regret thetribulation. As the rain disappointed me of two outdoor expeditions, towhich I had been for some little while looking forward, I dedicated mostof my long morning to a sadly neglected correspondence, and trusted thatthe expeditions, as soon as the next fine weather visited Kings Port, would still be in store for me. Not only everybody in town here, butAunt Carola, up in the North also, had assured me that to miss the sightof Live Oaks when the azaleas in the gardens of that country seat werein flower would be to lose one of the rarest and most beautiful thingswhich could be seen anywhere; and so I looked out of my window at thefurious storm, hoping that it might not strip the bushes at Live Oaksof their bloom, which recent tourists at Mrs. Trevise's had describedas drawing near the zenith of its luxuriance. The other excursion toUdolpho with John Mayrant was not so likely to fall through. Udolphowas a sort of hunting lodge or country club near Tern Creek and an oldcolonial church, so old that it bore the royal arms upon a shieldstill preserved as a sign of its colonial origin. A note from Mayrant, received at breakfast, informed me that the rain would take allpleasure from such an excursion, and that he should seize the earliestopportunity the weather might afford to hold me to my promise. The wetgale, even as I sat writing, was beating down some of the full-blownflowers in the garden next Mrs. Trevise's house, and as the morning woreon I watched the paths grow more strewn with broken twigs and leaves. 

I filled my correspondence with accounts of Daddy Ben and his grandson, the carpenter, doubtless from some pride in my part in that, but alsobecause it had become, through thinking it over, even more interestingto-day than it had been at the moment of its occurrence; and in replyingto a sort of postscript of Aunt Carola's in which she hurriedly wrotethat she had forgotten to say she had heard the La Heu family in SouthCarolina was related to the Bombos, and should be obliged to me if Iwould make inquiries about this, I told her that it would be easy, and then described to her the Teuton, plying his "antiquity" tradeexternally while internally cherishing his collected skulls and nursinghis scientific rage. All my letters were the more abundant concerningthese adventures of mine from my having kept entirely silent upon themat Mrs. Trevise's tea-table. I dreaded Juno when let loose upon thenegro question; and the fact that I was beginning to understand herfeelings did not at all make me wish to be deafened by them. NeitherJuno, therefore, nor any of them learned a word from me about thekettle-supporter incident. What I did take pains to inform the assembledcompany was my gratification that the report of Mr. Mayrant's engagementbeing broken was unfounded; and this caused Juno to observe that inthat case Miss Rieppe must have the most imperative reasons for unitingherself to such a young man. 

Unintimidated by the rain, this formidable creature had taken herselfoff to her nephew's bedside almost immediately after breakfast; andlater in the day I, too, risked a drenching for the sake of ordering thepacking-box that I needed. When I returned, it was close on tea-time;I had seen Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael send out the hot coffee to theconductor, and I had found a negro carpenter whose week it happily wasto stay sober; and now I learned that, when tea should be finished, thepoetess had in store for us, as a treat, her ode. 

Our evening meal was not plain sailing, even for the veteran navigationof Mrs. Trevise; Juno had returned from the bedside very plainlydispleased (she was always candid even when silent) by something whichhad happened there; and before the joyful moment came when we alllearned what this was, a very gouty Boston lady who had arrived with herhusband from Florida on her way North--and whose nature you will readilygrasp when I tell you that we found ourselves speaking of the man asMrs. Braintree's husband and never as Mr. Braintree--this crippled lady, who was of a candor equal to Juno's, embarked upon a conversation withJuno that compelled Mrs. Trevise to tinkle her bell for Daphne afteronly two remarks had been exchanged. 

I had been sorry at first that here in this Southern boarding-houseBoston should be represented only by a lady who appeared to unite inherself all the stony products of that city, and none of the others;for she was as convivial as a statue and as well-informed as aspelling-book; she stood no more for the whole of Boston than did Junofor the whole of Kings Port. But my sorrow grew less when I foundthat in Mrs. Braintree we had indeed a capable match for her Southerncounterpart. Juno, according to her custom, had remembered somethingobjectionable that had been perpetrated in 1865 by the Northern vandals. 

"Edward, " said Mrs. Braintree to her husband, in a frightfully clearvoice, "it was at Chambersburg, was it not, that the Southern vandalsburned the house in which were your father's title-deeds?"

Edward, who, it appeared, had fought through the whole Civil War, andwas in consequence perfectly good-humored and peaceable in his feelingsupon that subject, replied hastily and amiably: "Oh, yes, yes! Why, Ibelieve it was!"

But this availed nothing; Juno bent her great height forward, andaddressed Mrs. Braintree. "This is the first time I have been toldSoutherners were vandals. "

"You will never be able to say that again!" replied Mrs. Braintree. 

After the bell and Daphne had stopped, the invaluable Briton addressed agenial generalization to us all: "I often think how truly awful your warwould have been if the women had fought it, y'know, instead of the men. "

"Quite so!" said the easy-going Edward "Squaws! Mutilation! Yes!" and helaughed at his little joke, but he laughed alone. 

I turned to Juno. "Speaking of mutilation, I trust your nephew is betterthis evening. "

I was rejoiced by receiving a glare in response. But still more joy wasto come. 

"An apology ought to help cure him a lot, " observed the Briton. 

Juno employed her policy of not hearing him. 

"Indeed, I trust that your nephew is in less pain, " said the poetess. 

Juno was willing to answer this. "The injuries, thank you, are themerest trifles--all that such a light-weight could inflict. " Andshe shrugged her shoulders to indicate the futility of young John'spugilism. 

"But, " the surprised Briton interposed, "I thought you said your nephewwas too feeble to eat steak or hear poetry. "

Juno could always stem the eddy of her own contradictions--but she didraise her voice a little. "I fancy, sir, that Doctor Beaugarcon knowswhat he is talking about. "

"Have they apologized yet?" inquired the male honeymooner from theup-country. 

"My nephew, sir, nobly consented to shake hands this afternoon. He didit entirely out of respect for Mr. Mayrant's family, who coerced himinto this tardy reparation, and who feel unable to recognize him sincehis treasonable attitude in the Custom House. "

"Must be fairly hard to coerce a chap you can't recognize, " said theBriton. 

An et cetera now spoke to the honeymoon bride from the up-country: "Iheard Doctor Beaugarcon say he was coming to visit you this evening. "

"Yais, " assented the bride. "Doctor Beaugarcon is my mother's fourthcousin. "

Juno now took--most unwisely, as it proved--a vindictive turn at me. "Iknew that your friend, Mr. Mayrant, was intemperate, " she began. 

I don't think that Mrs. Trevise had any intention to ring for Daphne atthis point--her curiosity was too lively; but Juno was going to risk nosuch intervention, and I saw her lay a precautionary hand heavily downover the bell. "But, " she continued, "I did not know that Mr. Mayrantwas a gambler. "

"Have you ever seen him intemperate?" I asked. 

"That would be quite needless, " Juno returned. "And of the gambling Ihave ocular proof, since I found him, cards, counters, and money, withmy sick nephew. He had actually brought cards in his pocket. "

"I suppose, " said the Briton, "your nephew was too sick to resist him. "

The male honeymooner, with two of the et ceteras, made such unsteadydemonstrations at this that Mrs. Trevise protracted our sitting nolonger. She rose, and this meant rising for us all. 

A sense of regret and incompleteness filled me, and finding the Britonat my elbow as our company proceeded toward the sitting room, I said:"Too bad!"

His whisper was confident. "We'll get the rest of it out of her yet. "

But the rest of it came without our connivance. 

In the sitting room Doctor Beaugarcon sat waiting, and at sight of Junoentering the door (she headed our irregular procession) he sprang upand lifted admiring hands. "Oh, why didn't I have an aunt like you!" heexclaimed, and to Mrs. Trevise as she followed: "She pays her nephew'spoker debts. "

"How much, cousin Tom?" asked the upcountry bride. 

And the gay old doctor chuckled, as he kissed her: "Thirty dollars thisafternoon, my darling. "

At this the Briton dragged me behind a door in the hall, and there wedanced together. 

"That Mayrant chap will do, " he declared; and we composed ourselves fora proper entrance into the sitting room, where the introductions hadbeen made, and where Doctor Beaugarcon and Mrs. Braintree's husband hadalready fallen into war reminiscences, and were discovering with mutualamiability that they had fought against each other in a number ofbattles. 

"And you generally licked us, " smiled the Union soldier. 

"Ah! don't I know myself how it feels to run!" laughed the Confederate. "Are you down at the club?"

But upon learning from the poetess that her ode was now to be readaloud, Doctor Beaugarcon paid his fourth cousin's daughter a brief, though affectionate, visit, lamenting that a very ill patient shouldcompel him to take himself away so immediately, but promising herpresently in his stead two visitors much more interesting. 

"Miss Josephine St. Michael desires to call upon you, " he said, "and Ifancy that her nephew will escort her. "

"In all this rain?" said the bride. 

"Oh, it's letting up, letting up! Good night, Mistress Trevise. Goodnight, sir; I am glad to have met you. " He shook hands with Mrs. Braintree's husband. "We fellows, " he whispered, "who fought in the warhave had war enough. " And bidding the general company good night, andkissing the bride again, he left us even as the poetess returned fromher room with the manuscript. 

I soon wished that I had escaped with him, because I feared what Mrs. Braintree might say when the verses should be finished; and so, I think, did her husband. We should have taken the hint which tactful DoctorBeaugarcon had meant, I began to believe, to give us in that whisperedremark of his. But it had been given too lightly, and so we sat andheard the ode out. I am sure that the poetess, wrapped in the thoughtsof her own composition, had lost sight of all but the phrasing of herpoem and the strong feelings which it not unmusically voiced; thereIs no other way to account for her being willing to read it in Mrs. Braintree's presence. 

Whatever gayety had filled me when the Boston lady had clashed with Junowas now changed to deprecation and concern. Indeed, I myself feltalmost as if I were being physically struck by the words, until merebewilderment took possession of me; and after bewilderment, a little, a very little, light, which, however, rapidly increased. We were thevictors, we the North, and we had gone upon our way with songs andrejoicing--able to forget, because we were the victors. We had ourvictory; let the vanquished have their memory. But here was the cry ofthe vanquished, coming after forty years. It was the time which atfirst bewildered me; Juno had seen the war, Juno's bitterness I couldcomprehend, even if I could not comprehend her freedom in expressing it, but the poetess could not be more than a year or two older than I was;she had come after it was all over. Why should she prolong such memoriesand feelings? But my light increased as I remembered she had not writtenthis for us, and that if she had not seen the flames of war, she hadseen the ashes; for the ashes I had seen myself here in Kings Port, andhad been overwhelmed by the sight, forty years later, more overwhelmedthan I could possibly say to Mrs. Gregory St. Michael, or Mrs. Weguelin, or anybody. The strain of sitting and waiting for the end made my handscold and my head hot, but nevertheless the light which had come enabledme to bend instantly to Mrs. Braintree and murmur a great and abusedquotation to her:--

 "Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner. "

But my petition could not move her. She was too old; she had seen theflames of war; and so she said to her husband:--

"Edward, will you please help me upstairs?"

And thus the lame, irreconcilable lady left the room with the assistanceof her unhappy warrior, who must have suffered far more keenly than Idid. 

This departure left us all in a constraint which was becoming unbearablewhen the blessed doorbell rang and delivered us, and Miss Josephine St. Michael entered with John Mayrant. He wore a most curious expression;his eyes went searching about the room, and at length settled upon Junowith a light in them as impish as that which had flickered in my ownmood before the ode. 

To my surprise, Miss Josephine advanced and gave me a special and markedgreeting. Before this she had always merely bowed to me; to-night sheheld out her hand. "Of course my visit is not to you; but I am very gladto find you here and express the appreciation of several of us for yourtimely aid to Daddy Ben. He feels much shame in having said nothing toyou himself. "

And while I muttered those inevitable modest nothings which fit suchoccasions, Miss St. Michael recounted to the bride, whom she wasostensibly calling upon, and to the rest of our now once more harmoniouscircle, my adventures in the alleys of Africa. These loomed, even withMiss St. Michael's perfectly quiet and simple rendering of them, almostof heroic size, thanks doubtless to Daddy Ben's tropical imagery when hefirst told the tale; and before they were over Miss St. Michael'smarked recognition of me actually brought from Juno some reflectedrecognition--only this resembled in its graciousness the original aboutas correctly as a hollow spoon reflects the human countenance divine. Still, it was at Juno's own request that I brought down from my chamberand displayed to them the kettle-supporter. 

I have said that Miss St. Michael's visit was ostensibly to the bride:and that is because for some magnetic reason or other I felt diplomacylike an undercurrent passing among our chairs. Young John's expressiondeepened, whenever he watched Juno, to a devilishness which his politemanners veiled no better than a mosquito netting; and I believe that hisaunt, on account of the battle between their respective nephews, had forfamily reasons deemed it advisable to pay, indirectly, under cover ofthe bride, a state visit to Juno; and I think that I saw Juno acceptingit as a state visit, and that the two together, without using a wordof spoken language, gave each other to understand that the recentdeplorable circumstances were a closed incident. I think that his AuntJosephine had desired young John to pay a visit likewise, and, to makesure of his speedy compliance, had brought him along with her--coercedhim, as Juno would have said. He wore somewhat the look of having been"coerced, " and he contributed remarkably few observations to the talk. 

It was all harmonious, and decorous, and properly conducted, this statevisit; yet even so, Juno and John exchanged at parting some verbalsweet-meats which rather stuck out from the smooth meringue ofdiplomacy. 

She contemplated his bruise. "You are feeling stronger, I hope, than youhave been lately? A bridegroom's health should be good. "

He thanked her. "I am feeling better to-night than for many weeks. "

The rascal had the thirty dollars visibly bulging that moment in hispocket. I doubt if he had acquainted his aunt with this episode, but shewas certain to hear it soon; and when she did hear it, I rather fancythat she wished to smile--as I completely smiled alone in my bed thatnight thinking young John over. 

But I did not go to sleep smiling; listening to the "Ode for theDaughters of Dixie" had been an ordeal too truly painful, because itdisclosed live feelings which I had thought were dead, or rather, itdisclosed that those feelings smouldered in the young as well as in theold. Doctor Beaugarcon didn't have them--he had fought them out, justas Mr. Braintree had fought them out; and Mrs. Braintree, like Juno, retained them, because she hadn't fought them out; and John Mayrantdidn't have them, because he had been to other places; and I didn't havethem--never had had them in my life, because I came into the world whenit was all over. Why then--Stop, I told myself, growing very wakeful, and seeing in the darkness the light which had come to me, you havebeheld the ashes, and even the sight has overwhelmed you; these otherswere born in the ashes, and have had ashes to sleep in and ashes to eat. This I said to myself; and I remembered that War hadn't been all; thatReconstruction came in due season; and I thought of the "reconstructed"negro, as Daddy Ben had so ingeniously styled him. These white people, my race, had been set beneath the reconstructed negro. Still, still, this did not justify the whole of it to me; my perfectly innocentgeneration seemed to be included in the unforgiving, unforgetting ode. "I must have it out with somebody, " I said. And in time I fell asleep. 

XIII: The Girl Behind the Counter--III

I was still thinking the ode over as I dressed for breakfast, for whichI was late, owing to my hair, which the changes in the weather hadrendered somewhat recalcitrant. Yes; decidedly I must have it out withsomebody. The weather was once more superb; and in the garden beneath mywindow men were already sweeping away the broken twigs and debris of thestorm. I say "already, " because it had not seemed to me to be the KingsPort custom to remove debris, or anything, with speed. I also had it inmy mind to perform at lunch Aunt Carola's commission, and learn if thefamily of La Heu were indeed of royal descent through the Bombos. Iintended to find this out from the girl behind the counter, but thecourse which our conversation took led me completely to forget about it. 

As soon as I entered the Exchange I planted myself in front of thecounter, in spite of the discouragement which I too plainly perceived inher countenance; the unfavorable impression which I had made upon her atour last interview was still in force. 

I plunged into it at once. "I have a confession to make. "

"You do me surprising honor. "

"Oh, now, don't begin like that! I suppose you never told a lie. "

"I'm telling the truth now when I say that I do not see why an entirestranger should confess anything to me. "

"Oh, my goodness! Well, I told you a lie, anyhow; a great, successful, deplorable lie. "

She opened her mouth under the shock of it, and I recited to herunsparingly my deception; during this recital her mouth graduallyclosed. 

"Well, I declare, declare, declare!" she slowly and deliciously breathedover the sum total; and she considered me at length, silently, beforeher words came again, like a soft soliloquy. "I could neverhave believed it in one who"--here gayety flashed in her eyessuddenly--"parts his back hair so rigidly. Oh, I beg your pardon forbeing personal!" And her gayety broke in ripples. Some habitual instinctmoved me to turn to the looking-glass. "Useless!" she cried, "you can'tsee it in that. But it's perfectly splendid to-day. "

Nature has been kind to me in many ways--nay, prodigal; it is not everyman who can perceive the humor in a jest of which he is himself thesubject. I laughed with her. "I trust that I am forgiven, " I said. 

"Oh, yes, you are forgiven! Come out, General, and give the gentlemanyour right paw, and tell him that he is forgiven--if only for the sakeof Daddy Ben. " With these latter words she gave me a gracious nod ofunderstanding. They were all thanking me for the kettle-supporter! Sheprobably knew also the tale of John Mayrant, the cards, and the bedside. 

The curly dog came out, and went through his part very graciously. 

"I can guess his last name, " I remarked. 

"General's? How? Oh, you've heard it! I don't believe in you any more. "

"That's not a bit handsome, after my confession. No, I'm getting tounderstand South Carolina a little. You came from the 'up-country, ' youcall your dog General; his name is General Hampton!"

Her laughter assented. "Tell me some more about South Carolina, " sheadded with her caressing insinuation. 

"Well, to begin with--"

"Go sit down at your lunch-table first. Aunt Josephine would nevertolerate my encouraging gentlemen to talk to me over the counter. "

I went back obediently, and then resumed: "Well, what sort of people arethose who own the handsome garden behind Mrs. Trevise's!"

"I don't know them. "

"Thank you; that's all I wanted. "

"What do you mean?"

"They're new people. I could tell it from the way you stuck your nose inthe air. "

"Sir!"

"Oh, if you talk about my hair, I can talk about your nose, I think. I suspected that they were: 'new people' because they cleaned up theirgarden immediately after the storm this morning. Now, I'll tell yousomething else: the whole South looks down on the whole North. "

She made her voice kind. "Do you mind it very much?"

I joined in her latent mirth. "It makes life not worth living! But morethan this, South Carolina looks down on the whole South. "

"Not Virginia. "

"Not? An 'entire stranger, ' you know, sometimes notices things whichescape the family eye--family likenesses in the children, for instance. "

"Never Virginia, " she persisted. 

"Very well, very well! Somehow you've admitted the rest, however. "

She began to smile. 

"And next, Kings Port looks down on all the rest of South Carolina. "

She now laughed outright. "An up-country girl will not deny that, anyhow!"

"And finally, your aunts--"

"My aunts are Kings Port. "

"The whole of it?"

"If you mean the thirty thousand negroes--"

"No, there are other white people here--there goes your nose again!"

"I will not have you so impudent, sir!"

"A thousand pardons, I'm on my knees. But your aunts--" There was such aflash of war in her eye that I stopped. 

"May I not even mention them?" I asked her. 

And suddenly upon this she became serious and gentle. "I thought thatyou understood them. Would you take them from their seclusion, too? Itis all they have left--since you burned the rest in 1865. "

I had made her say what I wanted! That "you" was what I wanted. Now Ishould presently have it out with her. But, for the moment, I did notdisclaim the "you. " I said:--

"The burning in 1865 was horrible, but it was war. "

"It was outrage. "

"Yes, the same kind as England's, who burned Washington in 1812, andwhom you all so deeply admire. "

She had, it seemed, no answer to this. But we trembled on the verge of areal quarrel. It was in her voice when she said:--

"I think I interrupted you. "

I pushed the risk one step nearer the verge, because of the words Iwished finally to reach. "In 1812, when England burned our White Housedown, we did not sit in the ashes; we set about rebuilding. "

And now she burst out. "That's not fair, that's perfectly inexcusable!Did England then set loose on us a pack of black savages and politiciansto help us rebuild? Why, this very day I cannot walk on the other sideof the river, I dare not venture off the New Bridge; and you who firstbeat us and then unleashed the blacks to riot in a new 'equality' thatthey were no more fit for than so many apes, you sat back at ease inyour victory and your progress, having handed the vote to the negro asyou might have handed a kerosene lamp to a child of three, and let uscrushed, breathless people cope with the chaos and destruction thatnever came near you. Why, how can you dare--" Once again, admirably shepulled herself up as she had done when she spoke of the President. "I mustn't!" she declared, half whispering, and then more clearly andcalmly, "I mustn't. " And she shook her head as if shaking something off. "Nor must you, " she finished, charmingly and quietly, with a smile. 

"I will not, " I assured her. She was truly noble. 

"But I did think that you understood us, " she said pensively. 

"Miss La Heu, when you talked to me about the President and the WhiteHouse, I said that you were hard to answer. Do you remember?"

"Perfectly. I said I was glad you found me so. '

"You helped me to understand you then, and now I want to be helped tofurther understanding. Last night I heard the 'Ode for the Daughters ofDixie. ' I had a bad time listening to that. "

"Do you presume to criticise it? Do we criticise your Grand Armyreunions, and your 'Marching through Georgia, ' and your 'John Brown'sBody, ' and your Arlington Museum? Can we not be allowed to celebrate ourheroes and our glories and sing our songs?"

She had helped me already! Still, still, the something I was gropingfor, the something which had given me such pain during the ode, remainedundissolved, remained unanalyzed between us; I still had to have it outwith her, and the point was that it had to be with her, and notsimply with myself alone. We must thrash out together the way to anunderstanding; an agreement was not in the least necessary--we couldagree to differ, for that matter, with perfect cordiality--but anunderstanding we must reach. And as I was thinking this my lightincreased, and I saw clearly the ultimate thing which lay at the bottomof my own feeling, and which had been strangely confusing me all along. This discovery was the key to the whole remainder of my talk; I neverlet go of it. The first thing it opened for me was that Eliza La Heudidn't understand me, which was quite natural, since I had only justthis moment become clear to myself. 

"Many of us, " I began, "who have watched the soiling touch of politicsmake dirty one clean thing after another, would not be wholly desolatedto learn that the Grand Army of the Republic had gone to another worldto sing its songs and draw its pensions. "

She looked astonished, and then she laughed. Down in the South here shewas too far away to feel the vile uses to which present politics hadturned past heroism. 

"But, " I continued, "we haven't any Daughters of the Union bandedtogether and handing it down. "

"It?" she echoed. "Well, if the deeds of your heroes are not a sacredtrust to you, don't invite us, please, to resemble you. "

I waited for more, and a little more came. 

"We consider Northerners foreigners, you know. "

Again I felt that hurt which hearing the ode had given me, but I nowknew how I was going to take it, and where we were presently coming out;and I knew she didn't mean quite all that--didn't mean it every day, atleast--and that my speech had driven her to saying it. 

"No, Miss La Heu; you don't consider Northerners, who understand you, tobe foreigners. "

"We have never met any of that sort. "

("Yes, " I thought, "but you really want to. Didn't you say you hoped Iwas one? Away down deep there's a cry of kinship in you; and that youdon't hear it, and that we don't hear it, has been as much our fault asyours. I see that very well now, but I'm afraid to tell you so, yet. ")

What I said was: "We're handing the 'sacred trust' down, I hope. "

"I understood you to say you weren't. "

"I said we were not handing 'it' down. "

I didn't wonder that irritation again moulded her reply. "You mustexcuse a daughter of Dixie if she finds the words of a son of the Unionbeyond her. We haven't had so many advantages. "

There she touched what I had thought over during my wakeful hours: thetale of the ashes, the desolate ashes! The war had not prevented myparents from sending me to school and college, but here the old had seenthe young grow up starved of what their fathers had given them, and theyoung had looked to the old and known their stripped heritage. 

"Miss La Heu, " I said, "I could not tell you, you would not wish me totell you, what the sight of Kings Port has made me feel. But you willlet me say this: I have understood for a long while about your oldpeople, your old ladies, whose faces are so fine and sad. "

I paused, but she merely looked at me, and her eyes were hard. 

"And I may say this, too. I thank you very sincerely for bringingcompletely home to me what I had begun to make out for myself. I hopethe Daughters of Dixie will go on singing of their heroes. "

I paused again, and now she looked away, out of the window into RoyalStreet. 

"Perhaps, " I still continued, "you will hardly believe me when I saythat I have looked at your monuments here with an emotion more poignanteven than that which Northern monuments raise in me. "

"Why?"

"Oh!" I exclaimed. "Need you have asked that? The North won. "

"You are quite dispassionate!" Her eyes were always toward the window. 

"That's my 'sacred trust. '"

It made her look at me. "Yours?"

"Not yours--yet! It would be yours if you had won. " I thought a slightchange came in her steady scrutiny. "And, Miss La Heu, it was awfulabout the negro. It is awful. The young North thinks so just as much asyou do. Oh, we shock our old people! We don't expect them to change, but they mustn't expect us not to. And even some of them have begun towhisper a little doubtfully. But never mind them--here's the negro. Wecan't kick him out. That plan is childish. So, it's like two men havingto live in one house. The white man would keep the house in repair, theblack would let it rot. Well, the black must take orders from the white. And it will end so. "

She was eager. "Slavery again, you think?"

"Oh, never! It was too injurious to ourselves. But something betweenslavery and equality. " And I ended with a quotation: "'Patience, cousin, and shuffle the cards. '"

"You may call me cousin--this once--because you have been, really, quitenice--for a Northerner. "

Now we had come to the place where she must understand me. 

"Not a Northerner, Miss La Heu. "

She became mocking. "Scarcely a Southerner, I presume?"

But I kept my smile and my directness. "No more a Southerner than aNortherner. "

"Pray what, then?"

"An American. "

She was silent. 

"It's the 'sacred trust'--for me. "

She was still silent. 

"If my state seceded from the Union tomorrow, I should side with theUnion against her. "

She was frankly astonished now. "Would you really?" And I think somelight about me began to reach her. A Northerner willing to side againsta Northern state! I was very glad that I had found that phrase to makeclear to her my American creed. 

I proceeded. "I shall help to hand down all the glories and all thesadnesses; Lee's, Lincoln's, everybody's. But I shall not hand 'it'down. "

This checked her. 

"It's easy for me, you know, " I hastily explained. "Nothing nobleabout it at all. But from noble people"--and I looked hard at her--"oneexpects, sooner or later, noble things. "

She repressed something she had been going to reply. 

"If ever I have children, " I finished, "they shall know 'Dixie' and'Yankee Doodle' by heart, and never know the difference. By that timeI should think they might have a chance of hearing 'Yankee Doodle' inKings Port. "

Again she checked a rapid retort. "Well, " she, after a pause, repeated, "you have been really quite nice. "

"May I tell you what you have been?"

"Certainly not. Have you seen Mr. Mayrant to-day?"

"We have an engagement to walk this afternoon. May I go walking with yousometime?"

"May he, General?" A wagging tail knocked on the floor behind thecounter. "General says that he will think about it. What makes you likeMr. Mayrant so much?"

This question struck me as an odd one; nor could I make out the importof the peculiar tone in which she put it. "Why, I should think everybodywould like him--except, perhaps, his double victim. "

"Double?"

"Yes, first of his fist and then of--of his hand!"

But she didn't respond. 

"Of his hand--his poker hand, " I explained. 

"Poker hand?" She remained honestly vague. 

It rejoiced me to be the first to tell her. "You haven't heard ofMaster John's last performance? Well, finding himself forced by thatimmeasurable old Aunt Josephine of yours to shake hands, he shook 'emall right, but he took thirty dollars away as a little set-off for hispious docility. "

"Oh!" she murmured, overwhelmed with astonishment. Then she broke intoone of her delicious peals of laughter. 

"Anybody, " I said, "likes a boy who plays a hand--and a fist--to thattune. " I continued to say a number of commendatory words about youngJohn, while her sparkling eyes rested upon me. But even as I talked Igrew aware that these eyes were not sparkling, were starry rather, and distant, and that she was not hearing what I said; so I stoppedabruptly, and at the stopping she spoke, like a person waking up. 

"Oh, yes! Certainly he can take care of himself. Why not?"

"Rather creditable, don't you think?"

"Creditable?"

"Considering his aunts and everything. "

She became haughty on the instant. "Upon my word! And do you supposethe women of South Carolina don't wish their men to be men? Why"--shereturned to mirth and that arch mockery which was her special charm--"weSouth Carolina women consider virtue our business, and we don't expectthe men to meddle with it!"

"Primal, perpetual, necessary!" I cried. "When that division getsblurred, society is doomed. Are you sure John can take care of himselfevery way?"

"I have other things than Mr. Mayrant to think about. " She said thisquite sharply. 

It surprised me. "To be sure, " I assented. "But didn't you once tell methat you thought he was simple?"

She opened her ledger. "It's a great honor to have one's words so wellremembered. "

I was still at a loss. "Anyhow, the wedding is postponed, " I continued;"and the cake. Of course one can't help wondering how it's all comingout. "

She was now working at her ledger, bending her head over it. "Haveyou ever met Miss Rieppe?" She inquired this with a sort of wonderfulsoftness--which I was to hear again upon a still more memorableoccasion. 

"Never, " I answered, "but there's nobody at present living whom I longto see so much. "

She wrote on for a little while before saying, with her pencil steadilybusy, "Why?"

"Why? Don't you? After all this fuss?"

"Oh, certainly, " she drawled. "She is so much admired--by Northerners. "

"I do hope John is able to take care of himself, " I purposely repeated. 

"Take care of yourself!" she laughed angrily over her ledger. 

"Me? Why? I understand you less and less!"

"Very likely. "

"Why, I want to help him!" I protested. "I don't want him to marry her. Oh, by the way do you happen to know what it is that she is coming hereto see for herself?"

In a moment her ledger was left, and she was looking at me straight. Coming? When?

"Soon. In an automobile. To see something for herself. "

She pondered for quite a long moment; then her eyes returned, searchingly, to me. "You didn't make that up?"

I laughed, and explained. "Some of them, at any rate, " I finished, "knowwhat she's coming for. They were rather queer about it, I thought. "

She pondered again. I noticed that she had deeply flushed, and that theflush was leaving her. Then she fixed her eyes on me once more. "Theywouldn't tell you?"

"I think that they came inadvertently near it, once or twice, andremembered just in time that I didn't know about it. "

"But since you do know pretty much about it!" she laughed. 

I shook my head. "There's something else, something that's turned up;the sort of thing that upsets calculations. And I merely hoped thatyou'd know. "

On those last words of mine she gave me quite an extraordinary look, andthen, as if satisfied with what she saw in my face. --

"They don't talk to me. "

It was an assurance, it was true, it had the ring of truth, that evidentgenuineness which a piece of real confidence always possesses; she meantme to know that we were in the same boat of ignorance to-day. And yet, as I rose from my lunch and came forward to settle for it, I was awareof some sense of defeat, of having been held off just as the ladies onHigh Walk had held me off. 

"Well, " I sighed, "I pin my faith to the aunt who says he'll never marryher. "

Miss La Heu had no more to say upon the subject. "Haven't you forgottensomething?" she inquired gayly; and, as I turned to see what I had leftbehind--"I mean, you had no Lady Baltimore to-day. "

"I clean forgot it!"

"No loss. It is very stale; and to-morrow I shall have a fresh supplyready. "

As I departed through the door I was conscious of her eyes followingme, and that she had spoken of Lady Baltimore precisely because she wasthinking of something else. 

XIV: The Replacers

She had been strange, perceptibly strange, had Eliza La Heu; that wasthe most which I could make out of it. I had angered her in some mannerwholly beyond my intention or understanding and not all at one fixedpoint in our talk; her irritation had come out and gone in again inspots all along the colloquy, and it had been a displeasure whollyapart from that indignation which had flashed up in her over the negroquestion. This, indeed, I understood well enough, and admired her for, and admired still more her gallant control of it; as for the other, Igave it up. 

A sense of guilt--a very slight one, to be sure--dispersed myspeculations when I was preparing for dinner, and Aunt Carola'spostscript, open upon my writing-table, reminded me that I had neverasked Miss La Heu about the Bombos. Well, the Bombos could keep! And Idescended to dinner a little late (as too often) to feel instantly inthe air that they had been talking about me. I doubt if any companyin the world, from the Greeks down through Machiavelli to the presentmoment, has ever been of a subtlety adequate to conceal from anobservant person entering a room the fact that he has been the subjectof their conversation. This company, at any rate, did not conceal itfrom me. Not even when the upcountry bride astutely greeted me with:--

"Why, we were just speaking of you! We were lust saying it would be aperfect shame if you missed those flowers at Live Oaks. " And, at this, various of the guests assured me that another storm would finish them;upon which I assured every one that to-morrow should see me embark uponthe Live Oaks excursion boat, knowing quite well in my heart that somedecidedly different question concerning me had been hastily dropped uponmy appearance at the door. It poked up its little concealed head, didthis question, when the bride said later to me, with immense archness:--

"How any gentleman can help falling just daid in love with that lovelyyoung girl at the Exchange, I don't see!"

"But I haven't helped it!" I immediately exclaimed. 

"Oh!" declared the bride with unerring perception, "that just showshe hasn't been smitten at all! Well, I'd be ashamed, if I was a singlegentleman. " And while I brought forth additional phrases concerning thedistracted state of my heart, she looked at me with large, limpid eyes. "Anybody could tell you're not afraid of a rival, " was her resultingcomment; upon which several of the et ceteras laughed more than seemedto me appropriate. 

I left them all free again to say what they pleased; for John Mayrantcalled for me to go upon our walk while we were still seated at table, and at table they remained after I had excused myself. 

The bruise over John's left eye was fading out, but traces of hisspiritual battle were deepening. During the visit which he had paid(under compulsion, I am sure) to Juno at our boarding-house in companywith Miss Josephine St. Michael, his recent financial triumph at thebedside had filled his face with diabolic elation as he confronted hisvictim's enraged but checkmated aunt; when to the thinly veiled venomof her inquiry as to a bridegroom's health he had retorted with venom asthinly veiled that he was feeling better that night than for many weeks, he had looked better, too; the ladies had exclaimed after his departurewhat a handsome young man he was, and Juno had remarked how ferventlyshe trusted that marriage might cure him of his deplorable tendencies. But to-day his vitality had sagged off beneath the weight of hispreoccupation: it looked to me as if, by a day or two more, the boy'sface might be grown haggard. 

Whether by intention, or, as is more likely, by the perfectly naturaland spontaneous working of his nature, he speedily made it plain tome that our relation, our acquaintance, had progressed to a stage morefriendly and confidential. He did not reveal this by imparting anyconfidence to me; far from it; it was his silence that indicatedthe ease he had come to feel in my company. Upon our last memorableinterview he had embarked at once upon a hasty yet evidentlypredetermined course of talk, because he feared that I might touch uponsubjects which he wished excluded from all discussion between us; to-dayhe embarked upon nothing, made no conventional effort of any sort, butwalked beside me, content with my mere society; if it should happen thateither of us found a thought worth expressing aloud, good! and if thisshould not happen, why, good also! And so we walked mutely and agreeablytogether for a long while. The thought which was growing clear in mymind, and which was decidedly worthy of expression, was also unluckilyone which his new reliance upon my discretion completely forbade myuttering in even the most shadowy manner; but it was a conviction whichMiss Josephine St. Michael should have been quick to force upon him forhis good. Quite apart from selfish reasons, he had no right to marry agirl whom he had ceased to care for. The code which held a "gentleman"to his plighted troth in such a case did more injury to the "lady" thanany "jilting" could possibly do. Never until now had I thought thisout so lucidly, and I was determined that time and my own tact shouldassuredly help me find a way to say it to him, if he continued in hispresent course. 

"Daddy Ben says you can't be a real Northerner. "

This was his first observation, and I think that we must have walked amile before he made it. 

"Because I pounded a negro? Of course, he retains your Southernante-bellum mythical notion of Northerners--all of us willing to havethem marry our sisters. Well, there's a lady at our boarding-house whosays you are a real gambler. "

The impish look came curling round his lips, but for a moment only, andit was gone. 

"That shook Daddy Ben up a good deal. "

"Having his grandson do it, do you mean?"

"Oh, he's used to his grandson! Grandsons in that race might just aswell be dogs for all they know or care about their progenitors. YetDaddy Ben spent his savings on educating Charles Cotesworth and twomore--but not one of them will give the old man a house to-day. If everI have a home--" John stopped himself, and our silence was no longereasy; our unspoken thoughts looked out of our eyes so that they couldnot meet. Yet no one, unless directly invited by him, had the right tosay to hint what I was thinking, except some near relative. Therefore, to relieve this silence which had ceased to be agreeable, I talkedabout Daddy Ben and his grandsons, and negro voting, and the huge lie of"equality" which our lips vociferate and our lives daily disprove. Thistook us comfortably away from weddings and cakes into the subjectof lynching, my violent condemnation of which surprised him; for ourdiscussion had led us over a wide field, and one fertile in well-knowndisputes of the evergreen sort, conducted by the North mostly with moretheory than experience, and by the South mostly with more heat thanlight; whereas, between John and me, I may say that our amiabilitywas surpassed only by our intelligence! Each allowed for the other'sstandpoint, and both met in many views: he would have voted againstthe last national Democratic ticket but for the Republican upholdingof negro equality, while I assured him that such stupid and criminalupholding was on the wane. He informed me that he did not believe thepure blooded African would ever be capable of taking the intellectualside of the white man's civilization, and I informed him that we mustpatiently face this probability, and teach the African whatever he couldprofitably learn and no more; and each of us agreed with the other. Ithink that we were at one, save for the fact that I was, after all, aNortherner--and that is a blemish which nobody in Kings Port can quiteget over. John, therefore, was unprepared for my wholesale denunciationof lynching. 

"With your clear view of the negro, " he explained. 

"My dear man, it's my clear view of the white! It's the white, theAmerican citizen, the 'hope of humanity, ' as he enjoys being called, who, after our English-speaking race has abolished public executions, degenerates back to the Stone Age. It's upon him that lynching works thetrue injury. "

"They're nothing but animals, " he muttered. 

"Would you treat an animal in that way?" I inquired. 

He persisted. "You'd do it yourself if you had to suffer from them. "

"Very probably. Is that an answer? What I'd never do would be to make ashow, an entertainment, a circus, out of it, run excursion trains to seeit--come, should you like your sister to buy tickets for a lynching?"

This brought him up rather short. "I should never take part myself, " hepresently stated, "unless it were immediate personal vengeance. "

"Few brothers or husbands would blame you, " I returned. "It would behard to wait for the law. But let no community which treats it as apublic spectacle presume to call itself civilized. "

He gave a perplexed smile, shaking his head over it. "Sometimes I thinkcivilization costs--"

"Civilization costs all you've got!" I cried. 

"More than I've got!" he declared. "I'm mortal tired of civilization. "

"Ah, yes! What male creature is not? And neither of us will live quitelong enough to see the smash-up of our own. "

"Aren't you sometimes inconsistent?" he inquired, laughing. 

"I hope so, " I returned. "Consistency is a form of death. The dead arethe only perfectly consistent people. "

"And sometimes you sound like a Socialist, " he pursued, still laughing. 

"Never!" I shouted. "Don't class me with those untrained puppies ofthought. And you'll generally observe, " I added, "that the more noblya Socialist vaporizes about the rights of humanity, the more wives andchildren he has abandoned penniless along the trail of his life. "

He was livelier than ever at this. "What date have you fixed for thesmash-up of our present civilization?"

"Why fix dates? Is it not diversion enough to watch, and step handsomelythrough one's own part, with always a good sleeve to laugh in?"

Pensiveness returned upon him. "I shall be able to step through my ownpart, I think. " He paused, and I was wondering secretly, "Does thatinclude the wedding?" when he continued: "What's there to laugh at?"

"Why, our imperishable selves! For instance: we swear by universalsuffrage. Well, sows' ears are an invaluable thing in their place, on the head of the animal; but send them to make your laws, and whathappens? Bribery, naturally. The silk purse buys the sow's ear. We swearby Christianity, but dishonesty is our present religion. That littlephrase 'In God We Trust' is about as true as the silver dollar it'sstamped on--worth some thirty-nine cents. We get awfully serious aboutwhether or no good can come of evil, when every sky-scraping thiefof finance is helping hospitals with one hand while the other's in mypocket; and good and evil attend each other, lead to each other, aresuch Siamese twins that if separated they would both die. We makephrases about peace, pity, and brotherhood, while every nation standsprepared for shipwreck and for the sinking plank to which two areclinging and the stronger pushes the weaker into the flood and thusfloats safe. Why, the old apple of wisdom, which Adam and Eve swallowedand thus lost their innocence, was a gentle nursery drug comparedwith the new apple of competition, which, as soon as chewed, instantlytransforms the heart into a second brain. But why worry, when nothing isfinal? Haven't you and I, for instance, lamented the present rottennessof smart society? Why, when kings by the name of George sat on thethrone of England, society was just as drunken, just as dissolute! Thena decent queen came, and society behaved itself; and now, here we comeround again to the Georges, only with the name changed! There's nothingfinal. So, when things are as you don't like them, remember that andbear them; and when they're as you do like them, remember it and makethe most of them--and keep a good sleeve handy!"

"Have you got any creed at all?" he demanded. 

"Certainly; but I don't live up to it. "

"That's not expected. May I ask what it is?"

"It's in Latin. "

"Well, I can probably bear it. Aunt Eliza had a classical tutor for me. "

I always relish a chance to recite my favorite poet, and I beganaccordingly:--

 "Laetus in praesens animus quod ultra est Oderit curare et--"

"I know that one!" he exclaimed, interrupting me. "The tutor made meput it into English verse. I had the severest sort of a time. I ran awayfrom it twice to a deer-hunt. " And he, in his turn, recited:--

 "Who hails each present hour with zest Hates fretting what may be the rest, Makes bitter sweet with lazy jest; Naught is in every portion blest. "

I complimented him, in spite of my slight annoyance at being deprived byhim of the chance to declaim Latin poetry, which is an exercise thatI approve and enjoy; but of course, to go on with it, after he hadintervened with his translation, would have been flat. 

"You have written good English, and very close to the Latin, too, " Itold him, "particularly in the last line. " And I picked up from thebridge which we were crossing, an oyster-shell, and sent it skimmingover the smooth water that stretched between the low shores, wide, blue, and vacant. 

"I suppose you wonder why we call this the 'New Bridge, '" he remarked. 

"I did wonder when I first came, " I replied. 

He smiled. "You're getting used to us!"

This long structure wore, in truth, no appearance of yesterday. It wasnewer than the "New Bridge" which it had replaced some fifteen yearsago, and which for forty years had borne the same title. Spanningthe broad river upon a legion of piles, this wooden causeway lieslow against the face of the water, joining the town with a serene andpensive country of pines and live oaks and level opens, where glimpsesof cabin and plantation serve to increase the silence and the soft, mysterious loneliness. Into this the road from the bridge goes straightand among the purple vagueness gently dissolves away. 

We watched a slow, deep-laden boat sliding down toward the draw, acrosswhich we made our way, and drew near the further end of the bridge. Thestraight avenue of the road in front of us took my eyes down its quietvista, until they were fixed suddenly by an alien object, a growingdot, accompanied by dust, whence came the small, distorted honks ofan automobile. These fat, importunate sounds redoubled as the machinerushed toward the bridge, growing up to its full staring, brazendimensions. Six or seven figures sat in it, all of the same dusty, shrouded likeness, their big glass eyes and their masked mouthssuggesting some fabled, unearthly race, a family of replete and biliousogres; so that as they flew honking by us I called out to John:--

"Behold the yellow rich!" and then remembered that his Hortense probablysat among them. 

The honks redoubled, and we turned to see that the drawbridge had nothought of waiting for them. We also saw a bewildered curly white dogand a young girl, who called despairingly to him as he disappearedbeneath the automobile. The engine of murder could not, as is usual, proceed upon its way, honking, for the drawbridge was visibly swingingopen to admit the passage of the boat. When John and I had run back nearenough to become ourselves a part of the incident, the white dog laystill behind the stationary automobile, whose passengers were craningtheir muffled necks and glass eyes to see what they had done, while oneof their number had got out, and was stooping to examine if the machinehad sustained any injuries. The young girl, with a face of anguish, wascalling the dog's name as she hastened toward him, and her voice arousedhim: he lifted his head, got on his legs, and walked over to her, whichaction on his part brought from the automobile a penetrating femalevoice:--

"Well, he's in better luck than that Savannah dog!"

But General was not in luck. He lay quietly down at the feet of hismistress and we soon knew that life had passed from his faithful body. The first stroke of grief, dealt her in such cruel and sudden form, overbore the poor girl's pride and reserve; she made no attempt toremember or heed surroundings, but kneeling and placing her arms aboutthe neck of her dead servant, she spoke piteously aloud:--

"And I raised him, I raised him from a puppy!"

The female voice, at this, addressed the traveller who was examining theautomobile: "Charley, a five or a ten spot is what her feelings need. "

The obedient and munificent Charley straightened up from his stoopingamong the mechanical entrails, dexterously produced money, and advancedwith the selected bill held out politely in his hand, while the glasseyes and the masks peered down at the performance. Eliza La Heu hadperceived none of this, for she was intent upon General; nor had JohnMayrant, who had approached her with the purpose of coming to heraid. But when Charley, quite at hand, began to speak words which wereinstantly obliterated from my memory by what happened, the young girlrealized his intention and straightened stiffly, while John, with therapidity of light, snatched the extended bill from Charley's hand, andtearing it in four pieces, threw it in his face. 

A foreign voice cackled from the automobile: "Oh la la! il a dupanache!"

But Charley now disclosed himself to be a true man of the world--thefinancial world--by picking the pieces out of the mud; and, whilehe wiped them and enclosed them in his handkerchief and with perfectdignity returned them to his pocket, he remarked simply, with a shrug:"As you please. " His accent also was ever so little foreign--that NewYork downtown foreign, of the second generation, which stamps so, manyof our bankers. 

The female now leaned from her seat, and with the tone of setting thewhole thing right, explained: "We had no idea it was a lady. "

"Doubtless you're not accustomed to their appearance, " said John toCharley. 

I don't know what Charley would have done about this; for while thecompletely foreign voice was delightedly whispering, "Toujoursle panache!" a new, deep, and altogether different female voiceexclaimed:--

"Why, John, it's you!"

So that was Hortense, then! That rich and quiet utterance was hers, aschooled and studied management of speech. I found myself surprised, and I knew directly why; that word of one of the old ladles, "I considerthat she looks like a steel wasp, " had implanted in me some definiteanticipations to which the voice certainly did not correspond. Howfervently I desired that she would lift her thick veil, while John, withhat in hand, was greeting her, and being presented to her companions!Why she had not spoken to John sooner was of course a reconditequestion, and beyond my power to determine with merely the givensituation to guide me. Hadn't she recognized him before? Had herthick veil, and his position, and the general slight flurry of themisadventure, intercepted recognition until she heard his voice whenhe addressed Charley. Or had she known her lover at once, and rapidlydecided that the moment was an unpropitious one for a first meetingafter absence, and that she would pass on to Kings Port unrevealed, butthen had found this plan become impossible through the collisionbetween Charley and John? It was not until certain incidents of the daysfollowing brought Miss Rieppe's nature a good deal further home to me, that a third interpretation of her delay in speaking to John dawned uponmy mind; that I was also made aware how a woman's understanding ofthe words "Steel wasp, " when applied by her to one of her own sex, maydiffer widely from a man's understanding of them; and that Miss Rieppe, through her thick veil, saw from her seat in the automobile somethingwhich my own unencumbered vision had by no means detected. 

But now, here on the bridge, even her outward appearance was as shroudedas her inward qualities--save such as might be audible in that voice, as her skilful, well-placed speeches to one and the other of the companytided over and carried off into ease this uneasy moment. All men, atsuch a voice, have pricked up their ears since the beginning; there wasmuch woman in it; each slow, schooled syllable called its challenge toquesting man. But I got no chance to look in the eye that went with thatvoice; she took all the advantages which her veil gave her; and how wellshe used them I was to learn later. 

In the general smoothing-out process which she was so capably effecting, her attention was about to reach me, when my name was suddenly calledout from behind her. It was Beverly Rodgers, that accomplished andinveterate bachelor of fashion. Ten years before, when I had seen muchof him, he had been more particular in his company, frequently declaringin his genial, irresponsible way that New York society was going to thedevil. But many tempting dances on the land, and cruises on the water, had taken him deep among our lower classes that have boiled up fromthe bottom with their millions--and besides, there would be nothingto marvel at in Beverly's presence in any company that should includeHortense Rieppe, if she carried out the promise of her voice. 

Beverly was his customary, charming, effusive self, coming out ofthe automobile to me with his "By Jove, old man, " and his "Who'd havethought it, old fellow?" and sprinkling urbane little drops of jocosityover us collectively, as the garden water-turning apparatus sprinklesa lawn. His knowing me, and the way he brought it out, and even thetumbling into the road of a few wraps and chattels of travel as hedescended from the automobile, and the necessity of picking these up andhanding them back with delightful little jocular apologies, such as, "ByJove, what a lout I am, " all this helped the meeting on prodigiously, and got us gratefully away from the disconcerting incident of the tornmoney. Charley was helpful, too; you would never have supposed from thepolite small-talk which he was now offering to John Mayrant that he hadwithin some three minutes received the equivalent of a slap across theeyes from that youth, and carried the soiled consequences in his pocket. And such a thing is it to be a true man of the world of finance, thatupon the arrival now of a second automobile, also his property, andcontaining a set of maids and valets, and also some live dogs sittingup, covered with glass eyes and wrappings like their owners, munificentCharley at once offered the dead dog and his mistress a place in it, andbegged she would let it take her wherever she wished to go. Everybodyexclaimed copiously and condolingly over the unfortunate occurrence. What a fine animal he was, to be sure! What breed was he? Of course, hewasn't used to automobiles! Was it quite certain that he was dead? Queldommage! And Charley would be so happy to replace him. 

And how was Eliza La Heu bearing herself amid these murmurouslychattered infelicities? She was listening with composure to the murmursof Hortense Rieppe, more felicitous, no doubt. Miss Rieppe, through herveil, was particularly devoting herself to Miss La Lieu. I could nothear what she said; the little chorus of condolence and suggestionintercepted all save her tone, and that, indeed, coherently sustainedits measured cadence through the texture of fragments uttered by Charleyand the others. Eliza La Heu had now got herself altogether in hand, and, saving her pale cheeks, no sign betrayed that the young girl'sfeelings had been so recently too strong for her. To these strangers, ignorant of her usual manner, her present strange quietness may verywell have been accepted as her habit. 

"Thank you, " she replied to munificent Charley's offer that she woulduse his second automobile. She managed to make her polite words cut likea scythe. "I should crowd it. "

"But they shall get out and walk; it will be good for them, " saidCharley, indicating the valets and maids, and possibly the dogs, too. 

Beverly Rodgers did much better than Charley. With a charming gestureand bow, he offered his own seat in the first automobile. "I am going towalk in any case, " he assured her. 

"One gentleman among them, " I heard John Mayrant mutter behind me. 

Miss La Heu declined, the chorus urged, but Beverly (who was indeed agentleman, every inch of him) shook his head imperceptibly at Charley;and while the little exclamations--"Do come! So much more comfortable!So nice to see more of you!"--dropped away, Miss La Heu had settledher problem quite simply for herself. A little procession of vehicles, townward bound, had gathered on the bridge, waiting until the closing ofthe draw should allow them to continue upon their way. From these mostof the occupants had descended, and were staring with avidity at us all;the great glass eyes and the great refulgent cars held them in timidityand fascination, and the poor lifeless white body of General, stretchedbeside the way, heightened the hypnotic mystery; one or two of theboldest had touched him, and found no outward injury upon him; and thishad sent their eyes back to the automobile with increased awe. Eliza LaHeu summoned one of the onlookers, an old negro; at some word she saidto him he hurried back and returned, leading his horse and empty cart, and General was lifted into this. The girl took her seat beside the olddriver. 

"No, " she said to John Mayrant, "certainly not. "

I wondered at the needless severity with which she declined his offer toaccompany her and help her. 

He stood by the wheel of the cart, looking up at her and protesting, andI joined him. 

"Thank you, " she returned, "I need no one. You will both oblige me bysaying no more about it. "

"John!" It was the slow, well-calculated utterance of Hortense Rieppe. Did I hear in it the caressing note of love?

John turned. 

The draw had swung to, the mast and sail of the vessel were separatingaway from the bridge with a stealthy motion, men with iron bars were atwork fastening the draw secure, and horses' hoofs knocked nervously uponthe wooden flooring as the internal churning of the automobiles burstupon their innocent ears. 

"John, if Mr. Rodgers is really not going with us--"

Thus Hortense; and at that Miss La Heu:--

"Why do you keep them waiting?" There was no caress in that note! It waspolished granite. 

He looked up at her on her high seat by the extremely dilapidated negro, and then he walked forward and took his place beside his veiledfiancee, among the glass eyes. A hiss of sharp noise spurted from theautomobiles, horses danced, and then, smoothly, the two huge engineswere gone with their cargo of large, distorted shapes, leaving behindthem--quite as our present epoch will leave behind it--a trail of power, of ingenuity, of ruthlessness, and a bad smell. 

"Hold hard, old boy!" chuckled Beverly, to whom I communicated thissentiment. "How do you know the stink of one generation does not becomethe perfume of the next?" Beverly, when he troubled to put a thingat all (which was seldom--for he kept his quite good brains well-nighperpetually turned out to grass--or rather to grass widows) always putit well, and with a bracing vocabulary. "Hullo!" he now exclaimed, andwalked out into the middle of the roadway, where he picked up a parasol. "Kitty will be in a jolly old stew. None of its expensive bones brokenhowever. " And then he hailed me by a name of our youth. "What are youdoing down here, you old sourbelly?"

"Watching you sun yourself on the fat cushions of the yellow rich. "

"Oh, shucks, old man, they're not so yellow!"

"Charley strikes me as yellower than his own gold. "

"Charley's not a bad little sort. Of course, he needs coaching a bithere and there--just now, for instance, when he didn't see that thatgirl wouldn't think of riding in the machine that had just killed herdog. By Jove, give that girl a year in civilization and she'd do! Whowas the young fire-eater?"

"Fire-eater! He's a lot more decent than you or I. "

"But that's saying so little, dear boy!"

"Seriously, Beverly. "

"Oh, hang it with your 'seriously'! Well, then, seriously, melodramawas the correct ticket and all that in 1840, but we've outgrown it; it'sdevilish demode to chuck things in people's faces. 

"I'm not sorry John Mayrant did it!" I brought out his name with dueemphasis. 

"All the same, " Beverly was beginning, when the automobile returnedrapidly upon us, and, guessing the cause of this, he waved the parasol. Charley descended to get it--an unnecessary act, prompted, I suppose, bythe sudden relief of finding that it was not lost. 

He made his thanks marked. "It is my sister's, " he concluded, to me, byway of explanation, in his slightly foreign accent. "It is not much, butit has got some stones and things in the handle. "

We were favored with a bow from the veiled Hortense, shrill thanks fromKitty, and the car, turning, again left us in a moment. 

"You've got a Frenchman along, " I said. 

"Little Gazza, " Beverly returned. "Italian; though from his morals you'dnever guess he wasn't Parisian. Great people in Rome. Hereditary rightto do something in the presence of the Pope--or not to do it, I forgetwhich. Not a bit of a bad little sort, Gazza. He has just sold a lot ofold furniture--Renaissance--Lorenzo du Borgia--that sort of jolly oldtruck--to Bohm, you know. "

I didn't know. 

"Oh, yes, you do, old boy. Harry Bohm, of Bohm & Cohn. Everybody knowsBohm, and we'll all be knowing Cohn by next year. Gazza has sold hima lot of furniture, too. Bohm's from Pittsfield, or South Lee, or EastCanaan, or West Stockbridge, or some of those other back-country ciderpresses that squirt some of the hardest propositions into Wall Street. He's just back from buying a railroad, and four or five mines in Mexico. Bohm represents Christianity in the firm. At Newport they call him themilitary attache to Jerusalem. He's the big chap that sat behind me inthe car. He'll marry Kitty as soon as she can get her divorce. Bohm's ajolly old sort--and I tell you, you old sourbelly, you're letting thisSouthern moss grow over you a bit. Hey? What? Yellow rich isn't halfbad, and I'll say it myself, and pretend it's mine; but hang it, old man, their children won't be worse than lemon-colored, and thegrandchildren will be white!"

"Just in time, " I exclaimed, "to take a back seat with their evaporatedfortunes!"

Beverly chuckled. "Well, if they do evaporate, there will be new ones. Now don't walk along making Mayflower eyes at me. I'm no Puritan, and mypeople have had a front seat since pretty early in the game, which I'mholding on to, you know. And by Jove, old man, I tell you, if you wishto hold on nowadays, you can't be drawing lines! If you don't want tosee yourself jolly well replaced, you must fall in with the replacers. Our blooming old republic is merely the quickest process of endlessreplacing yet discovered, and you take my tip, and back the replacers!That's where Miss Rieppe, for all her Kings Port traditions, showssense. "

I turned square on him. "Then she has broken it?"

"Broken what?"

"Her engagement to John Mayrant. You mean to say that you didn't--?"

"See here, old man. Seriously. The fire-eater?"

I was so very much bewildered that I merely stared at Beverly Rodgers. Of course, I might have known that Miss Rieppe would not feel the needof announcing to her rich Northern friends an engagement which she hadfallen into the habit of postponing. 

But Beverly had a better right to be taken aback. "I suppose you musthave some reason for your remark, " he said. 

"You don't mean that you're engaged to her?" I shot out. 

"Me? With my poor little fifteen thousand a year? Consider, dear boy!Oh, no, we're merely playing at it, she and I. She's a good player. ButCharley--"

"He is?" I shouted. 

"I don't know, old man, and I don't think he knows--yet. "

"Beverly, " said I, "let me tell you. " And I told him. 

After he had got himself adjusted to the novelty of it he began to takeit with a series of thoughtful chuckles. 

Into these I dropped with: "Where's her father, anyhow?" I began tofeel, fantastically, that she mightn't have a father. 

"He stopped in Savannah, " Beverly answered. "He's coming over by thetrain. Kitty--Charley's sister, Mrs. Bleecker--did the chaperoning forus. 

"Very expertly, I should guess, " I said. 

"Perfectly; invisibly, " said Beverly. And he returned to his thoughtsand his chuckles. 

"After all, it's simple, " he presently remarked. 

"Doesn't that depend on what she's here for?"

"Oh, to break it. "

"Why come for that?"

He took another turn among his cogitations. I took a number of turnsamong my own, but it was merely walking round and round in a circle. 

"When will she announce it, then?" he demanded. 

"Ah!" I murmured. "You said she was a good player. "

"But a fire-eater!" he resumed. "For her. Oh, hang it! She'll let himgo!"

"Then why hasn't she?"

He hesitated. "Well, of course her game could be spoiled by--"

His speech died away into more cogitation, and I had to ask him what hemeant. 

"By love getting into it somewhere. "

We walked on through Worship Street, which we had reached some whilesince, and the chief features of which I mechanically pointed out tohim. 

"Jolly old church, that, " said Beverly, as we reached my favorite cornerand brick wall. "Well, I'll not announce it!" he murmured gallantly. 

"My dear man, " I said, "Kings Port will do all the announcing for youto-morrow. "

XV: What She Came to See

But in this matter my prognostication was thoroughly at fault; yetsurely, knowing Kings Port's sovereign habit, as I had had good causeto know it, I was scarce beyond reasonable bounds in supposing that thearrival of Miss Rieppe would heat up some very general and very audibletalk about this approaching marriage, against which the prejudices ofthe town were set in such compact array. I have several times mentionedthat Kings Port, to my sense, was buzzing over John Mayrant's affairs;buzzing in the open, where one could hear it, and buzzing behind closeddoors, where one could somehow feel it; I can only say that henceforththis buzzing ceased, dropped wholly away, as if Gossip were watching sohard that she forgot to talk, giving place to a great stillness inher kingdom. Such occasional words as were uttered sounded oddly andegregiously clear in the new-established void. 

The first of these words sounded, indeed, quite enormous, issuing as itdid from Juno's lips at our breakfast-table, when yesterday's meeting onthe New Bridge was investing my mind with many thoughts. She addressedme in one of her favorite tones (I have met it, thank God! but in twoor three other cases during my whole experience), which always somehowconveyed to you that you were personally to blame for what she was goingto tell you. 

"I suppose you know that your friend, Mr. Mayrant, has resigned from theCustom House?"

I was, of course, careful not to give Juno the pleasure of seeing thatshe had surprised me. I bowed, and continued in silence to sip a littlecoffee; then, setting my coffee down, I observed that it would be somefew days yet before the resignation could take effect; and, noticingthat Juno was getting ready some new remark, I branched off and spoke toher of my excursion up the river this morning to see the azaleas in thegardens at Live Oaks. 

"How lucky the weather is so magnificent!" I exclaimed. 

"I shall be interested to hear, " said Juno, "what explanation he findsto give Miss Josephine for his disrespectful holding out against her, and his immediate yielding to Miss Rieppe. "

Here I deemed it safe to ask her, was she quite sure it had been at theinstance of Miss Rieppe that John had resigned?

"It follows suspiciously close upon her arrival, " stated Juno. She mighthave been speaking of a murder. "And how he expects to support awife now--well, that is no affair of mine, " Juno concluded, with awashing-her-hands-of-it air, as if up to this point she had alwaysdone her best for the wilful boy. She had blamed him savagely for notresigning, and now she was blaming him because he had resigned; andI ate my breakfast in much entertainment over this female acrobat incensure. 

No more was said; I think that my manner of taking Juno's news had beenperfectly successful in disappointing her. John's resignation, if ithad really occurred, did certainly follow very close upon the arrival ofHortense; but I had spoken one true thought in intimating that I doubtedif it was due to the influence of Miss Rieppe. It seemed to me to thehighest degree unlikely that the boy in his present state of feelingwould do anything he did not wish to do because his ladylove happened towish it--except marry her! There was apparently no doubt that he woulddo that. Did she want him, poverty and all? Was she, even now, with eyesopen, deliberately taking her last farewell days of automobiles andof steam yachts? That voice of hers, that rich summons, with its quietcertainty of power, sounded in my memory. "John, " she had called to himfrom the automobile; and thus John had gone away in it, wedged in amongCharley and the fat cushions and all the money and glass eyes. Andnow he had resigned from the Custom House! Yes, that was, whatever itsignified, truly amazing--if true. 

So I continued to ponder quite uselessly, until the up-country bridearoused me. She, it appeared, had been greatly carried away by thebeauty of Live Oaks, and was making her David take her there again thismorning; and she was asking me didn't I hope we shouldn't get stuck? Thepeople had got stuck yesterday, three whole hours, right on a bank inthe river; and wasn't it a sin and a shame to run a boat with ever somany passengers aground? By the doctrine of chances, I informed her, wehad every right to hope for better luck to-day; and, with the assuranceof how much my felicity was increased by the prospect of having her andDavid as company during the expedition, I betook myself meanwhile to myown affairs, which meant chiefly a call at the Exchange to inquire forEliza La Heu, and a visit to the post-office before starting upon aseveral hours' absence. 

A few steps from our front door I came upon John Mayrant, and saw atonce too plainly that no ease had come to his spirit during the hourssince the bridge. He was just emerging from an adjacent house. 

"And have you resigned?" I asked him. 

"Yes. That's done. You haven't seen Miss Rieppe this morning?"

"Why, she's surely not boarding with Mrs. Trevise?"

"No; stopping here with her old friend, Mrs. Cornerly. " He indicatedthe door he had come from. "Of course, you wouldn't be likely to see herpass!" And with that he was gone. 

That he was greatly stirred up by something there could be no doubt;never before had I seen him so abrupt; it seemed clear that anger hadtaken the place of despondency, or whatever had been his previous mood;and by the time I reached the post-office I had already imagined anddismissed the absurd theory that John was jealous of Charley, hadresigned from the Custom House as a first step toward breaking hisengagement, and had rung Mrs. Cornerly's bell at this early hour withthe purpose of informing his lady-love that all was over between them. Jealousy would not be likely to produce this set of manifestations inyoung, foolish John; and I may say here at once, what I somewhat laterlearned, that the boy had come with precisely the opposite purpose, namely, to repeat and reenforce his steadfast constancy, and that it wassomething far removed from jealousy which had spurred him to this. 

I found the girl behind the counter at her post, grateful to me forcoming to ask how she was after the shock of yesterday, but unwilling tospeak of it at all; all which she expressed by her charming manner, andby the other subjects she chose for conversation, and especially by theway in which she held out her hand when I took my leave. 

Near the post-office I was hailed by Beverly Rodgers, who proclaimed tome at once a comic but genuine distress. He had already walked, he said(and it was but half-past nine o'clock, as he bitterly bade meobserve on the church dial), more miles in search of a drink than hisunarithmetical brain had the skill to compute. And he confounded such atown heartily; he should return as soon as possible to Charley's yacht, where there was civilization, and where he had spent the night. Duringhis search he had at length come to a door of promising appearance, andgone in there, and they had explained to him that it was a dispensary. A beastly arrangement. What was the name of the razor-back hog theysaid had invented it? And what did you do for a drink in this confoundedwater-hole?

He would find it no water-hole, I told him; but there were methods whicha stranger upon his first morning could scarce be expected to grasp. "Icould direct you to a Dutchman, " I said, "but you're too well dressed towin his confidence at once. "

"Well, old man, " began Beverly, "I don't speak Dutch, but give me acrack at the confidence. "

However, he renounced the project upon learning what a Dutchman was. Since my hours were no longer dedicated to establishing the presenceof royal blood in my veins I had spent them upon various localinvestigations of a character far more entertaining and akin to mytaste. It was in truth quite likely that Beverly could in a very fewmoments, with his smile and his manner, find his way to any Dutchman'sheart; he had that divine gift of winning over to him quickly all sortsand conditions of men; and my account of the ingenious and law-bafflingcontrivances, which you found at these little grocery shops, at onceroused his curiosity to make a trial; but he decided that the club wasbetter, if less picturesque. And he told me that all the men of theautomobile party had received from John Mayrant cards of invitation tothe club. 

"Your fire-eater is a civil chap, " said Beverly. "And by the way, do youhappen to know, " here he pulled from his pocket a letter and consultedits address, "Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael?"

I was delighted that he brought an introduction to this lady; HortenseRieppe could not open for him any of those haughty doors; and I wishednot only that Beverly (since he was just the man to appreciate it andunderstand it) should see the fine flower of Kings Port, but also thatthe fine flower of Kings Port should see him; the best blood of theSouth could not possibly turn out anything better than Beverly Rodgers, and it was horrible and humiliating to think of the other Northernspecimens of men whom Hortense had imported with her. I was heresuddenly reminded that the young woman was a guest of the Cornerlys, the people who swept their garden, the people whom Eliza La Heu at theExchange did not "know"; and at this the remark of Mrs. Gregory St. Michael, when I had walked with her and Mrs. Weguelin, took on an addedlustre of significance:--

"We shall have to call. "

Call on the Cornerlys! Would they do that? Were they ready to stand bytheir John to that tune? A hotel would be nothing; you could call onanybody at a hotel, if you had to; but here would be a demarche indeed!Yet, nevertheless, I felt quite certain that, if Hortense, though theCornerlys' guest, was also the guaranteed fiancee of John Mayrant, theold ladies would come up to the scratch, hate and loathe it as theymight, and undoubtedly would: they could be trusted to do the rightthing. 

I told Beverly how glad I was that he would meet Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael. "The rest of your party, my friend, " I said, "are not verylikely to. " And I generalized to him briefly upon the town of KingsPort. "Supposing I take you to call upon Mrs. St. Michael when I comeback this afternoon?" I suggested. 

Beverly thought it over, and then shook his head. "Wouldn't do, old man. If these people are particular and know, as you say they do, hadn't Ibetter leave the letter with my card, and then wait till she sends someword?"

He was right, as he always was, unerringly. Consorting with all theCharleys, and the Bohms, and the Cohns, and the Kitties hadn't takenthe fine edge from Beverly's good inheritance and good bringing up; hisinstinct had survived his scruples, making of him an agile and charmingcynic, whom you could trust to see the right thing always, and neverdo it unless it was absolutely necessary; he would marry any amountof Kitties for their money, and always know that beside his mother andsisters they were as dirt; and he would see to it that his childrentook after their father, went to school in England for a good accent andenunciation, as he had done, went to college in America for the sakeof belonging in their own country, as he had done, and married as manyfortunes, and had as few divorces, as possible. 

"Who was that girl on the bridge?" he now inquired as we reached thesteps of the post-office; and when I had told him again, because hehad asked me about Eliza La Heu at the time, "She's the real thing, " hecommented. "Quite extraordinary, you know, her dignity, when poor oldawful Charley was messing everything--he's so used to mere money, youknow, that half the time he forgets people are not dollars, and you haveto kick him to remind him--yes, quite perfect dignity. Gad, it took alady to climb up and sit by that ragged old darky and take her dead dogaway in the cart! The cart and the darky only made her look what shewas all the more. Poor Kitty couldn't do that--she'd look like achambermaid! Well, old man, see you again. "

I stood on the post-office steps looking after Beverly Rodgers as hecrossed Court Street. His admirably good clothes, the easy finish ofhis whole appearance, even his walk, and his back, and the slope of hisshoulders, were unmistakable. The Southern men, going to their businessin Court Street, looked at him. Alas, in his outward man he was as arose among weeds! And certainly, no well-born American could unite withan art more hedonistic than Beverly's the old school and the nouveaujeu!

Over at the other corner he turned and stood admiring the church andgazing at the other buildings, and so perceived me still on the steps. With a gesture of remembering something he crossed back again. 

"You've not seen Miss Rieppe?"

"Why, of course I haven't!" I exclaimed. Was everybody going to ask methat?

"Well, something's up, old boy. Charley has got the launch away withhim--and I'll bet he's got her away with him, too. Charley lied thismorning. "

"Is lying, then, so rare with him?"

"Why, it rather is, you know. But I've come to be able to spot him whenhe does it. Those little bulgy eyes of his look at you particularlystraight and childlike. He said he had to hunt up a man on business--V-CChemical Company, he called it--"

"There is such a thing here, " I said. 

"Oh, Charley'd never make up a thing, and get found out in that way! Buthe was lying all the same, old man. "

"Do you mean they've run off and got married?"

"What do you take them for? Much more like them to run off and not getmarried. But they haven't done that either. And, speaking of that, Ibelieve I've gone a bit adrift. Your fire-eater, you know--she is anextraordinary woman!" And Beverly gave his mellow, little humorouschuckle. "Hanged if I don't begin to think she does fancy him. "

"Well!" I cried, "that would explain--no, it wouldn't. Whence comes yourtheory?"

"Saw her look at him at dinner once last night. We dined with somepeople--Cornerly. She looked at him just once. Well, if she intends--bygad, it upsets one's whole notion of her!"

"Isn't just one look rather slight basis for--"

"Now, old man, you know better than that!" Beverly paused to chuckle. "My grandmother Livingston, " he resumed, "knew Aaron Burr, and she usedto say that he had an eye which no honest woman could meet withouta blush. I don't know whether your fire-eater is a Launcelot, or aGalahad, but that girl's eye at dinner--"

"Did he blush?" I laughed. 

"Not that I saw. But really, old man, confound it, you know! He's nosort of husband for her. How can he make her happy and how can she makehim happy, and how can either of them hit it off with the other theleast little bit? She's expensive, he's not; she's up-to-date, he's not;she's of the great world, he's provincial. She's all derision, he's allfaith. Why, hang it, old boy, what does she want him for?"

Beverly's handsome brow was actually furrowed with his problem; and, asI certainly could furnish him no solution for it, we stood in silence onthe post-office steps. "What can she want him for?" he repeated. Thenhe threw it off lightly with one of his chuckles. "So glad I've nodaughters to marry! Well--I must go draw some money. "

He took himself off with a certain alacrity, giving an impatient cutwith his stick at a sparrow in the middle of Worship Street, nor didI see him again this day, although, after hurriedly getting my letters(for the starting hour of the boat had now drawn near), I followed wherehe had gone down Court Street, and his cosmopolitan figure wouldhave been easy to descry at any distance along that scantily peopledpavement. He had evidently found the bank and was getting his money. 

David of the yellow heir and his limpid-looking bride were on thehorrible little excursion boat, watching for me and keeping with somedifficulty a chair next themselves that I might not have to stand up allthe way; and, as I came aboard, the bride called out to me her relief, she had made sure that I would be late. 

"David said you wouldn't, " she announced in her clear up-country accentacross the parasols and heads of huddled tourists, "but I told him agentleman that's late to three meals aivry day like as not would forgetboats can't be kept hot in the kitchen for you. "

I took my place in the chair beside her as hastily as possible, forthere is nothing that I so much dislike as being made conspicuous forany reason whatever; and my thanks to her were, I fear, less gracious intheir manner than should have been the case. Nor did she find me, I mustsuppose, as companionable during this excursion--during the first partof it, at any rate--as a limpid-looking bride, who has kept at somepains a seat beside her for a single gentleman, has the right to expect;the brief hours of this morning had fed my preoccupation too richly, andI must often have fallen silent. 

The horrible little tug, or ferry, or wherry, or whatever itscontemptible inconvenience makes it fitting that this unclean andsnail-like craft should be styled, cast off and began to lumber alongthe edges of the town with its dense cargo of hats and parasols andlunch parcels. We were a most extraordinary litter of man and womankind. There was the severe New England type, improving each shining hour, anddoing it in bleak costume and with a thoroughly northeast expression;there were pink sunbonnets from (I should imagine) Spartanburg, orCharlotte, or Greenville; there were masculine boots which yet boreincrusted upon their heels the red mud of Aiken or of Camden; therewas one fat, jewelled exhalation who spoke of Palm Beach with the truestockyard twang, and looked as if she swallowed a million every morningfor breakfast, and God knows how many more for the ensuing repasts; shewas the only detestable specimen among us; sunbonnets, boots, and evenungenial New England proved on acquaintance kindly, simple, enterprisingAmericans; yet who knows if sunbonnets and boots and all of us wouldn'thave become just as detestable had we but been as she was, swollen andpuffy with the acute indigestion of sudden wealth?

This reflection made me charitable, which I always like to be, and Iimparted it to the bride. 

"My!" she said. And I really don't know what that meant. 

But presently I understood well why people endured the discomfort ofthis journey. I forgot the cinders which now and then showered upon us, and the heat of the sun, and the crowded chairs; I forgot the boat andmyself, in looking at the passing shores. Our course took us roundKings Port on three sides. The calm, white town spread out its widthand length beneath a blue sky softer than the tenderest dream; the whitesteeples shone through the enveloping brightness, taking to eachother, and to the distant roofs beneath them, successive and changingrelations, while the dwindling mass of streets and edifices followedmore slowly the veering of the steeples, folded upon itself, andrefolded, opened into new shapes and closed again, dwindling always, and always white and beautiful; and as the far-off vision of it heldthe eye, the few masts along the wharves grew thin and went out intoinvisibility, the spires became as masts, the distant drawbridge throughwhich we had passed sank down into a mere stretching line, and shiningKings Port was dissolved in the blue of water and of air. 

The curving and the narrowing of the river took it at last from view;and after it disappeared the spindling chimneys and their smoke, whichwere along the bank above the town and bridge, leaving us to progressthrough the solitude of marsh and wood and shore. The green levels ofstiff salt grass closed in upon the breadth of water, and we wound amongthem, looking across their silence to the deeper silence of the woodsthat bordered them, the brooding woods, the pines and the liveoaks, misty with the motionless hanging moss, and misty also in that Southernair that deepened when it came among their trunks to a caressing, mysterious, purple veil. Every line of this landscape, the straightforest top, the feathery breaks in it of taller trees, the curvingmarsh, every line and every hue and every sound inscrutably spokesadness. I heard a mocking-bird once in some blossoming wild fruit treethat we gradually reached and left gradually behind; and more than onceI saw other blossoms, and the yellow of the trailing jessamine; but thebird could not sing the silence away, and spring with all her abundancecould not hide this spiritual autumn. 

Dreams, a land of dreams, where even the high noon itself was dreamy; amelting together of earth and air and water in one eternal gentleness ofrevery! Whence came the melancholy of this? I had seen woods as solitaryand streams as silent, I had felt nature breathing upon me a greaterawe; but never before such penetrating and quiet sadness. I only knowthat this is the perpetual mood of those Southern shores, those riversthat wind in from the ocean among their narrowing marshes and theirhushed forests, and that it does not come from any memory of human hopesand disasters, but from the elements themselves. 

So did we move onward, passing in due time another bridge and a fewdwellings and some excavations, until the river grew quite narrow, andthere ahead was the landing at Live Oaks, with negroes idly watching forus, and a launch beside the bank, and Charley and Hortense Rieppe aboutto step into it. Another man stood up in the launch and talked to themwhere they were on the landing platform, and pointed down the river aswe approached; but evidently he did not point at us. I looked hastilyto see what he was indicating to them, but I could see nothing save thesolitary river winding away between the empty woods and marshes. 

So this was Hortense Rieppe! It was not wonderful that she had causedyoung John to lose his heart, or, at any rate, his head and his senses;nor was it wonderful that Charley, with his little bulging eyes, shouldtake her in his launch whenever she would go; the wonderful thing wasthat John, at his age and with his nature, should have got over it--ifhe had got over it! I felt it tingling in me; any man would. Steel waspindeed!

She was slender, and oh, how well dressed! She watched the passengersget off the boat, and I could not tell you from that first sight of herwhat her face was like, but only her hair, the sunburnt amber of itsmasses making one think of Tokay or Chateau-Yquem. She was watching me, I felt, and then saw; and as soon as I was near she spoke to me withoutmoving, keeping one gloved hand lightly posed upon the railing of theplatform, so that her long arm was bent with perfect ease and grace. I swear that none but a female eye could have detected any tobogganfire-escape. 

Her words dropped with the same calculated deliberation, the samecomposed and rich indifference. "These gardens are so beautiful. "

Such was her first remark, chosen with some purpose, I knew quitewell; and I observed that I hoped I was not too late for their fullperfection, if too late to visit them in her company. 

She turned her head slightly toward Charley. "We have been enjoying themso much. "

It was of absorbing interest to feel simultaneously in these briefspeeches he vouchsafed--speeches consummate in their inexpressiveflatness--the intentional coldness and the latent heat of the creature. Since Natchez and Mobile (or whichever of them it had been that hadwitnessed her beginnings) she had encountered many men and women, thosewho could be of use to her and those who could not; and in dealingwith them she had tempered and chiselled her insolence to a perfectinstrument, to strike or to shield. And of her greatest gift, also, she was entirely aware--how could she help being, with her evidentexperience? She knew that round her whole form swam a delicious, invisible sphere, a distillation that her veriest self sent forth, asgardenias do their perfume, moving where she moved and staying where shestayed, and compared with which wine was a feeble vapor for a man to getdrunk on. 

"Flowers are always so delightful. "

That was her third speech, pronounced just like the others, in a low, clear voice--simplicity arrived at by much well-practiced complexity. And she still looked at Charley. 

Charley now responded in his little banker accent. "It is a magnificentcollection. " This he said looking at me, and moving a highly polishedfinger-nail along a very slender mustache. 

The eyes of Hortense now for a moment glanced at the mixed company ofboat-passengers, who were beginning to be led off in pilgrim groups bythe appointed guides. 

"We were warned it would be too crowded, " she remarked. 

Charley was looking at her foot. I can't say whether or not the twolight taps that the foot now gave upon the floor of the landing broughtout for me a certain impatience which I might otherwise have missedin those last words of hers. From Charley it brought out, I feel quitesure, the speech which (in some form) she had been expecting from him asher confederate in this unwelcome and inopportune interview with me, and which his less highly schooled perceptions had not suggested to himuntil prompted by her. 

"I should have been very glad to include you in our launch party if Ihad known you were coming here to-day, " lied little Charley. 

"Thank you so much!" I murmured; and I fancy that after this Hortensehated me worse than ever. Well, why should I play her game? If anybodyhad any claim upon me, was it she? I would get as much diversion as Icould from this encounter. 

Hortense had looked at Charley when she spoke for my benefit, and it nowpleased me very much to look at him when I spoke for hers. 

"I could almost give up the gardens for the sake of returning with you, "I said to him. 

This was most successful in producing a perceptible silence beforeHortense said, "Do come. "

I wanted to say to her, "You are quite splendid--as splendid as youlook, through and through! You wouldn't have run away from any battle ofChattanooga!" But what I did say was, "These flowers here will fade, butmay I not hope to see you again in Kings Port?"

She was looking at me with eyes half closed; half closed for the sakeof insolence--and better observation; when eyes like that take ondrowsiness, you will be wise to leave all your secrets behind you, locked up in the bank, or else toss them right down on the open table. Well, I tossed mine down, thereto precipitated by a warning from thestranger in the launch:--

"We shall need all the tide we can get. "

"I'm sure you'd be glad to know, " I then said immediately (to Charley, of course), "that Miss La Heu, whose dog you killed, is back at her workas usual this morning. "

"Thank you, " returned Charley. "If there could be any chance for me toreplace--"

"Miss La Heu is her name?" inquired Hortense. "I did not catch ityesterday. She works, you say?"

"At the Woman's Exchange. She bakes cakes for weddings--among her otheractivities. "

"So interesting!" said Hortense; and bowing to me, she allowed thespellbound Charley to help her down into the launch. 

Each step of the few that she had to take was upon unsteady footing, andeach was taken with slow security and grace, and with a mastery of herskirts so complete that they seemed to do it of themselves, falling andfolding in the soft, delicate curves of discretion. 

For the sake of not seeming too curious about this party, I turned fromwatching it before the launch had begun to move, and it was immediatelyhidden from me by the bank, so that I did not see it get away. As Icrossed an open space toward the gardens I found myself far behind theother pilgrims, whose wandering bands I could half discern among windingwalks and bordering bushes. I was soon taken into somewhat reprimandingcharge by an admirable, if important, negro, who sighted me from a doorbeneath the porch of the house, and advanced upon me speedily. From himI learned at once the rule of the place, that strangers were not allowedto "go loose, " as he expressed it; and recognizing the perfect proprietyof this restriction, I was humble, and even went so far as to put myselfright with him by quite ample purchases of the beautiful flowers that hehad for sale; some of these would be excellent for the up-country bride, who certainly ought to have repentance from me in some form for mysilence as we had come up the river: the scenery had caused me mostungallantly to forget her. 

My rule-breaking turned out all to my advantage. The admirable andimportant negro was so pacified by my liberal amends that he not onlyplaced the flowers which I had bought in a bucket of water to wait infreshness until my tour of the gardens should be finished and the momentfor me to return upon the boat should arrive, but he also honored mewith his own special company; and instead of depositing me in one of thegroups of other travellers, he took me to see the sights alone, as ifI were somebody too distinguished to receive my impressions with thecommon herd. Thus I was able to linger here and there, and even toreturn to certain points for another look. 

I shall not attempt to describe the azaleas at Live Oaks. You willunderstand me quite well, I am sure, when I say that I had heard thepeople at Mrs. Trevise's house talk so much about them, and praise themso superlatively, that I was not prepared for much: my experienceof life had already included quite a number of azaleas. Moreover, mymeeting with Hortense and Charley had taken me far away from flowers. But when that marvelous place burst upon me, I forgot Hortense. I haveseen gardens, many gardens, in England, in France; in Italy; I have seenwhat can be done in great hothouses, and on great terraces; what can bedone under a roof, and what can be done in the open air with the aidof architecture and sculpture and ornamental land and water; but nohorticulture that I have seen devised by mortal man approaches theunearthly enchantment of the azaleas at Live Oaks. It was not likeseeing flowers at all; it was as if there, in the heart of the wildand mystic wood, in the gray gloom of those trees veiled and muffled intheir long webs and skeins of hanging moss, a great, magic flame ofrose and red and white burned steadily. You looked to see it vanish; youcould not imagine such a thing would stay. All idea of individualpetals or species was swept away in this glowing maze of splendor, this transparent labyrinth of rose and red and white, through which youlooked beyond, into the gray gloom of the hanging moss and the depths ofthe wild forest trees. 

I turned back as often as I could, and to the last I caught glimpsesof it, burning, glowing, and shining like some miracle, some rainbowexorcism, with its flooding fumes of orange-rose and red and white, merging magically. It was not until I reached the landing, and made myway on board again, that Hortense returned to my thoughts. She hadn'tcome to see the miracle; not she! I knew that better than ever. And whowas the other man in the launch?

"Wasn't it perfectly elegant!" exclaimed the up-country bride. And uponmy assenting, she made a further declaration to David: "It's just aivrybit as good as the Isle of Champagne. "

This I discovered to be a comic opera, mounted with spendthriftbrilliance, which David had taken her to see at the town of Gonzales, just before they were married. 

As we made our way down the bending river she continued to make manyobservations to me in that up-country accent of hers, which is a fashionof speech that may be said to differ as widely from the speech of thelow-country as cotton differs from rice. I began to fear that, in spiteof my truly good intentions, I was again failing to be as "attentive" asthe occasion demanded; and so I presented her with my floral tribute. 

She was immediately arch. "I'd surely be depriving somebody!" and onthis I got to the full her limpid look. 

I assured her that this would not be so, and pointed to the otherflowers I had. 

Accordingly, after a little more archness, she took them, as she had, of course, fully meant to do from the first; she also took a woman'srevenge. "I'll not be any more lonesome going down than I was comingup, " she said. "David's enough. " And this led me definitely to concludethat David had secured a helpmate who could take care of herself, inspite of the limpidity of her eyes. 

A steel wasp? Again that misleading description of Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael's, to which, since my early days in Kings Port, my imaginationmay be said to have been harnessed, came back into my mind. I turned itsinjustice over and over beneath the light which the total Hortense nowshed upon it--or rather, not the total Hortense, but my whole impressionof her, as far as I had got; I got a good deal further before we hadfinished. To the slow, soft accompaniment of these gliding river shores, where all the shadows had changed since morning, so that new lovelinessstood revealed at every turn, my thoughts dwelt upon this perfectedspecimen of the latest American moment--so late that she containednothing of the past, and a great deal of to-morrow. I basked myselfin the memory of her achieved beauty, her achieved dress, her achievedinsolence, her luxurious complexity. She was even later than those quitelate athletic girls, the Amazons of the links, whose big, hard footballfaces stare at one from public windows and from public punts, whosegiant, manly strides take them over leagues of country and square milesof dance-floor, and whose bursting, blatant, immodest health glares uponsea-beaches and round supper tables. Hortense knew that even now thehour of such is striking, and that the American boy will presently turnwith relief to a creature who will more clearly remind him that he is aman and that she is a woman. 

But why was the insolence of Hortense offensive, when the insolenceof Eliza La Heu was not? Both these extremely feminine beings couldexercise that quality in profusion, whenever they so wished; wherein didthe difference lie? Perhaps I thought, in the spirit of its exercise;Eliza was merely insolent when she happened to feel like it; and manhas always been able to forgive woman for that--whether the angels do ornot, but Hortense, the world-wise, was insolent to all people who couldnot be of use to her; and all I have to say is, that if the angels canforgive them, they're welcome; I can't!

Had I made sure of anything at the landing? Yes; Hortense didn't carefor Charley in the least, and never would. A woman can stamp her footat a man and love him simultaneously; but those two light taps, andthe measure that her eyes took of Charley, meant that she must love hispossessions very much to be able to bear him at all. 

Then, what was her feeling about John Mayrant? As Beverly had said, whatcould she want him for? He hadn't a thing that she valued or needed. Hisold-time notions of decency, the clean simplicity of his make, his goodSouthern position, and his collection of nice old relatives--what didthese assets look like from an automobile, or on board the launch ofa modern steam yacht? And wouldn't it be amusing if John should growneedlessly jealous, and have a "difficulty" with Charley? not a mereflinging of torn paper money in the banker's face, but some more decidedpunishment for the banker's presuming to rest his predatory eyes uponJohn's affianced lady. 

I stared at the now broadening river, where the reappearance of thebridge, and of Kings Port, and the nearer chimneys pouring out theirsmoke a few miles above the town, betokened that our excursion wasdrawing to its end. And then from the chimney's neighborhood, fromthe waterside where their factories stood, there shot out into thesmoothness of the stream a launch. It crossed into our course aheadof us, preceded us quickly, growing soon into a dot, went through thebridge, and so was seen no longer; and its occupants must have reachedtown a good half hour before we did. And now, suddenly, I was stunnedwith a great discovery. The bride's voice sounded in my ear. "Well, I'llalways say you're a prophet, anyhow!"

I looked at her, dull and dazed by the internal commotion the discoveryhad raised in me. 

"You said we wouldn't get stuck in the mud, and we didn't, " said thebride. 

I pointed to the chimneys. "Are those the phosphate works?"

"Yais. Didn't you know?"

"The V-C phosphate works?"

"Why, yais. Haven't you been to see them yet? He ought to, oughtn't he, David? 'Specially now they've found those deposits up the river werejust as rich as they hoped, after all. "

"Whose? Mr. Mayrant's?" I asked with such sharpness that the bride wassurprised. 

David hadn't attended to the name. It was some trust estate, he thought;Regent Tom, or some such thing. 

"And they thought it was no good, " said the bride. "And it's aivry bitas good as the Coosaw used to be. Better than Florida or Tennessee. "

My eyes instinctively turned to where they had last seen the launch; ofcourse it wasn't there any more. Then I spoke to David. 

"Do you know what a phosphate bed looks like? Can one see it?"

"This kind you can, " he answered. "But it's not worth your trouble. Just a kind of a square hole you dig along the river till you strike thestuff. What you want to see is the works. "

No, I didn't want to see even the works; they smelt atrociously, and Ido not care for vats, and acids, and processes: and besides, had I notseen enough? My eyes went down the river again where that launch hadgone; and I wondered if the wedding-cake would be postponed any more. 

Regent Tom? Oh, yes, to be sure! John Mayrant had pointed out to me thehouse where he had lived; he had been John's uncle. So the old gentlemanhad left his estate in trust! And now--! But certainly Hortense wouldhave won the battle of Chattanooga!

"Don't be too sure about all this, " I told myself cautiously. But thereare times when cautioning one's self is quite as useless as if somebodyelse had cautioned one; my reason leaped with the rapidity of intuition;I merely sat and looked on at what it was doing. All sorts of oddsand ends, words I hadn't understood, looks and silences I hadn'tinterpreted, little signs that I had thought nothing of at first, butwhich I had gradually, through their multiplicity, come to know meantsomething, all these broken pieces fitted into each other now, felltogether and made a clear pattern of the truth, without a crack init--Hortense had never believed in that story about the phosphateshaving failed--"pinched out, " as they say of ore deposits. There shehad stood between her two suitors, between her affianced John and thebesieging Charley, and before she would be off with the old love and onwith the new, she must personally look into those phosphates. Thereforeshe had been obliged to have a sick father and postpone the wedding twoor three times, because her affairs--very likely the necessity of makingcertain of Charley--had prevented her from coming sooner to Kings Port. And having now come hither, and having beheld her Northern and herSouthern lovers side by side--had the comparison done something to herhighly controlled heart? Was love taking some hitherto unknown libertieswith that well-balanced organ? But what an outrage had been perpetratedupon John! At that my deductions staggered in their rapid course. Howcould his aunts--but then it had only been one of them; Miss Josephinehad never approved of Miss Eliza's course; it was of that that Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael had so emphatically reminded Mrs. Gregory in mypresence when we had strolled together upon High Walk, and those twoladies had talked oracles in my presence. Well, they were oracles nolonger!

When the boat brought us back to the wharf, there were the rest of myflowers unbestowed, and upon whom should I bestow them? I thought firstof Eliza La Heu, but she wouldn't be at the Exchange so late as this. Then it seemed well to carry them to Mrs. Weguelin. Something, however, prompted me to pass her door, and continue vaguely walking on until Icame to the house where Miss Josephine and Miss Eliza lived; and here Irang the bell and was admitted. 

They were sitting as I had seen them first, the one with her embroidery, and the other on the further side of a table, whereon lay an openletter, which in a few moments I knew must have been the subject of thediscussion which they finished even as I came forward. 

"It was only prolonging an honest mistake. " That was Miss Eliza. 

"And it has merely resulted in clinching what you meant it to finish. "That was Miss Josephine. 

I laid my flowers upon the table, and saw that the letter was in JohnMayrant's hand. Of course. 

I avoided looking at it again; but what had he written, and why had hewritten? His daily steps turned to this house--unless Miss Josephine hadbanished him again. 

The ladies accepted my offering with gracious expressions, and while Itold them of my visit to Live Oaks, and poured out my enthusiasm, theservant was sent for and brought water and two beautiful old chinabowls, in which Miss Eliza proceeded to arrange the flowers with herdelicate white hands. She made them look exquisite with an old lady'sart, and this little occupation went on as we talked of indifferentsubjects. 

But the atmosphere of that room was charged with the subject of which wedid not speak. The letter lay on the table; and even as I struggled tosustain polite conversation, I began to know what was in it, though Inever looked at it again; it spoke out as clearly to me as the launchhad done. I had thought, when I first entered, to tell the ladiessomething of my meeting with Hortense Rieppe; I can only say that Ifound this impossible. Neither of them referred to her, or to John, orto anything that approached what we were all thinking of; for me to doso would have assumed the dimensions of a liberty; and in consequence ofthis state of things, constraint sat upon us all, growing worse, andso pervading our small-talk with discomfort that I made my visit a veryshort one. Of course they were civil about this when I rose, and beggedme not to go so soon; but I knew better. And even as I was getting myhat and gloves in the hall I could tell by their tones that they hadreturned to the subject of that letter. But in truth they had never leftit; as the front door shut behind me I felt as if they had read it aloudto me. 

XVI: The Steel Wasp

Certainly Hortense Rieppe would have won the battle of Chattanooga!I know not from which parent that young woman inherited her gift ofstrategy, but she was a master. To use the resources of one loverin order to ascertain if another lover had any; to lay tribute oneverything that Charley possessed; on his influence in the businessworld, which enabled him to walk into the V-C Chemical Company's officeand borrow an expert in the phosphate line; on his launch in which topop the expert and take him up the river, and see in his company andlearn from his lips just what resources of worldly wealth were likely tobe in-store for John Mayrant; and finally (which was the key to allthe rest) on his inveterate passion for her, on his banker-likedetermination through all the thick and thin of discouragement, andworse than discouragement, of contemptuous coquetry, to possess her atany cost he could afford;--to use all this that Charley had, in orderthat she might judiciously arrive at the decision whether she would takehim or his rival, left one lost in admiration. And then, not to wastea moment! To reach town one evening, and next morning by ten o'clockto have that expert safe in the launch on his way up the river to thephosphate diggings! The very audacity of such unscrupulousness commandedmy respect: successful dishonor generally wins louder applause thansuccessful virtue. But to be married to her! Oh! not for worlds! Charleymight meet such emergency, but poor John, never!

I nearly walked into Mrs. Weguelin and Mrs. Gregory taking theircustomary air slowly in South Place. 

"But why a steel wasp?" I said at once to Mrs. Weguelin. It was a morefamiliar way of beginning with the little, dignified lady than wouldhave been at all possible, or suitable, if we had not had that littlejoke about the piano snobile between us. As it was, she was not whollydispleased. These Kings Port old ladies grew, I suspect, very slowlyand guardedly accustomed to any outsider; they allowed themselves veryseldom to suffer any form of abruptness from him, or from any one, forthat matter. But, once they were reassured as to him, then they mightsometimes allow the privileged person certain departures from theirown rule of deportment, because his conventions were recognized to bedifferent from theirs. Moreover, in reminding Mrs. Weguelin of the steelwasp, I had put my abruptness in "quotations, " so to speak, by thetone I gave it, just as people who are particular in speech can ofteninterpolate a word of current slang elegantly by means of the shade ofemphasis which they lay upon it. 

So Mrs. Weguelin smiled and her dark eyes danced a little. "You rememberI said that, then?"

"I remember everything that you said. "

"How much have you seen of the creature?" demanded Mrs. Gregory, withher head pretty high. 

"Well, I'm seeing more, and more, and more every minute. She's ratherendless. "

Mrs. Weguelin looked reproachful. "You surely cannot admire her, too?"

Mrs. Gregory hadn't understood me. "Oh, if you really can keep her away, you're welcome!"

"I only meant, " I explained to the ladies, "that you don't really beginto see her till you have seen her: it's afterward, when you're out ofreach of the spell. " And I told them of the interview which I had notbeen able to tell to Miss Josephine and Miss Eliza. "I doubt if itlasted more than four minutes, " I assured them. 

"Up the river?" repeated Mrs. Gregory

"At the landing, " I repeated. And the ladies consulted each other'sexpressions. But that didn't bother me any more. 

"And you can admire her?" Mrs. Weguelin persisted. 

"May I tell you exactly, precisely?"

"Oh, do!" they both exclaimed. 

"Well, I think many wise men would find her immensely desirable--assomebody else's wife!"

At this remark Mrs. Weguelin dropped her eyes, but I knew they weredancing beneath their lids. "I should not have permitted myself to saythat, but I am glad that it has been said. "

Mrs. Gregory turned to her companion. "Shall we call to-morrow?"

"Don't you feel it must be done?" returned Mrs. Weguelin, and then sheaddressed me. "Do you know a Mr. Beverly Rodgers?"

I gave him a golden recommendation and took my leave of the ladies. 

So they were going to do the handsome thing; they would ring theCornerlys' bell; they would cross the interloping threshold, they wouldrecognize the interloping girl; and this meant that they had given itup. It meant that Miss Eliza had given it up, too, had at last abandonedher position that the marriage would never take place. And her own acthad probably drawn this down upon her. When the trustee of that estatehad told her of the apparent failure of the phosphates, she had hailedit as an escape for her beloved John, and for all of them, because shemade sure that Hortense would never marry a virtually penniless man. Andwhen the work went on, and the rich fortune was unearthed after all, herinfluence had caused that revelation to be delayed because she was soconfident that the engagement would be broken. But she had reckonedwithout Hortense; worse than that, she had reckoned without JohnMayrant; in her meddling attempt to guide his affairs in the way thatshe believed would be best for him, she forgot that the boy whom she hadbrought up was no longer a child, and thus she unpardonably ignored hisrights as a man. And now Miss Josephine's disapproval was vindicated, and her own casuistry was doubly punished. Miss Rieppe's astute journeyof investigation--for her purpose had evidently become suspected by someof them beforehand--had forced Miss Eliza to disclose the truth aboutthe phosphates to her nephew before it should be told him by the girlherself; and the intolerable position of apparent duplicity precipitatedtwo wholly inevitable actions on his part; he had bound himself morethan ever to marry Hortense, and he had made a furious breach with hisAunt Eliza. That was what his letter had contained; this time he hadbanished himself from that house. What was his Aunt Eliza going to doabout it? I wondered. She was a stiff, if indiscreet, old lady, and itcertainly did not fall within her view of the proprieties that youngpeople should take their elders to task in furious letters. But shehad been totally in the wrong, and her fault was irreparable, becauseimportant things had happened in consequence of it; she might repent thefault in sackcloth and ashes, but she couldn't stop the things. Wouldshe, then, honorably wear the sackcloth, or would she dishonestly shirkit under the false issue of her nephew's improper tone to her? Women canjustify themselves with more appalling skill than men. 

One drop there was in all this bitter bucket, which must have tastedsweet to John. He had resigned from the Custom House: Juno had gotit right this time, though she hadn't a notion of the real reason forJohn's act. This act had been, since morning, lost for me, so to speak, in the shuffle of more absorbing events; and it now rose to view againin my mind as a telling stroke in the full-length portrait that all hisacts had been painting of the boy during the last twenty-four hours. Notwithstanding a meddlesome aunt, and an arriving sweetheart, andimminent wedlock, he hadn't forgotten to stop "taking orders from anegro" at the very first opportunity which came to him; his phosphateshad done this for him, at least, and I should have the pleasure ofcorrecting Juno at tea. 

But I did not have this pleasure. They were all in an excitement oversomething else, and my own different excitement hadn't a chance againstthis greater one; for people seldom wish to hear what you have to say, even under the most favorable circumstances, and never when they haveanything to say themselves. With an audience so hotly preoccupied Icouldn't have sat on Juno effectively at all, and therefore I kept itto myself, and attended very slightly to what they were telling me aboutthe Daughters of Dixie. 

I bowed absently to the poetess. "And your poem?" I said. "A greatsuccess, I am sure?"

"Why, didn't you hear me say so?" said the upcountry bride; and then, after a smile at the others, "I'm sure your flowers were graciouslyaccepted. "

"Ask Miss Josephine St. Michael, " I replied. 

"Oh, oh, oh!" went the bride. "How would she know?"

I gave myself no pains to improve or arrest this tiresome joke, and theywent back to their Daughters of Dixie; but it is rather singular howsometimes an utterly absurd notion will be the cause of our taking astep which we had not contemplated. I did carry some flowers to Miss LaHeu the next day. I was at some trouble to find any; for in Kings Portshops of this kind are by no means plentiful, and it was not until I hadpaid a visit to a quite distant garden at the extreme northwestern edgeof the town that I lighted upon anything worthy of the girl behind thecounter. The Exchange itself was apt to have flowers for sale, but Ihardly saw my way to buying them there, and then immediately offeringthem to the fair person who had sold them to me. As it was, I did muchbetter; for what I brought her were decidedly superior to any that wereat the Exchange when I entered it at lunch time. 

They were, as the up-country bride would have put it, "graciouslyaccepted. " Miss La Heu stood them in water on the counter beside herledger. She was looking lovely. 

"I expected you yesterday, " she said. "The new Lady Baltimore wasready. "

"Well, if it is not all eaten yet--"

"Oh, no! Not a slice gone. "

"Ah, nobody does your art justice here!"

"Go and sit down at your table, please. "

It was really quite difficult to say to her from that distance the sortof things that I wished to say; but there seemed to be no help for it, and I did my best. 

"I shall miss my lunches here very much when I'm gone. "

"Did you say coffee to-day?"

"Chocolate. I shall miss--"

"And the lettuce sandwiches?"

"Yes. You don't realize how much these lunches--"

"Have cost you?" She seemed determined to keep laughing. 

"You have said it. They have cost me my--"

"I can give you the receipt, you know. "

"The receipt?"

"For Lady Baltimore, to take with you. "

"You'll have to give me a receipt for a lost heart. "

"Oh, his heart! General, listen to--" From habit she had turned towhere her dog used to lie; and sudden pain swept over her face and wasmastered. "Never mind!" she quickly resumed. "Please don't speak aboutit. And you have a heart somewhere; for it was very nice in you to comein yesterday morning after--after the bridge. "

"I hope I have a heart, " I began, rising; for, really, I could not go onin this way, sitting down away back at the lunch table. 

But the door opened, and Hortense Rieppe came into the Woman's Exchange. 

It was at me that she first looked, and she gave me the slightest bowpossible, the least sign of conventional recognition that a movementof the head could make and be visible at all; she didn't bend her headdown, she tilted it ever so little up. It wasn't new to me, this formof greeting, and I knew that she had acquired it at Newport, and that itdenoted, all too accurately, the size of my importance in her eyes; shedid it, as she did everything, with perfection. Then she turned to ElizaLa Heu, whose face had become miraculously sweet. 

"Good morning, " said Hortense. 

It sounded from a quiet well of reserve music; just a cupful ofmelodious tone dipped lightly out of the surface. Her face hadn'tbecome anything; but it was equally miraculous in its total void of allexpression relating to this moment, or to any moment; just her beauty, her permanent stationary beauty, was there glowing in it and through it, not skin deep, but going back and back into her lazy eyes, and shiningfrom within the modulated bloom of her color and the depths of her amberhair. She was choosing, for this occasion, to be as impersonal as someradiant hour in nature, some mellow, motionless day when the leaves haveturned, but have not fallen, and it is drowsily warm; but it wasn't somuch of nature that she, in her harmonious lustre, reminded me, as ofsome beautiful silken-shaded lamp, from which color rather than lightcame with subdued ampleness. 

I saw her eyes settle upon the flowers that I had brought Eliza La Heu. 

"How beautiful those are!" she remarked. 

"Is there something that you wish?" inquired Miss La Heu, alwaysmiraculously sweet. 

"Some of your good things for lunch; a very little, if you will be sokind. "

I had gone back to my table while the "very little" was being selected, and I felt, in spite of how slightly she counted me, that it would beinadequate in me to remain completely dumb. 

"Mr. Mayrant is still at the Custom House?" I observed. 

"For a few days, yes. Happily we shall soon break that connection. " Andshe smelt my flowers. 

"'We, '" I thought to myself, "is rather tremendous. "

It grew more tremendous in the silence as Eliza La Heu brought me myorders. Miss Rieppe did not seat herself to take the light refreshmentwhich she found enough for lunch. Her plate and cup were set for her, but she walked about, now with one, and now with the other, taking hertime over it, and pausing here and there at some article of the Exchangestock. 

Of course, she hadn't come there for any lunch; the Cornerlys had middaylunch and dined late; these innovated hours were a part of Kings Port'sdeep suspicion of the Cornerlys; but what now became interesting was herevident indifference to our perceiving that lunch was merely a pretextwith her; in fact, I think she wished it to be perceived, and I alsothink that those turns which she took about the Exchange--her apparentinspection of an old mahogany table, her examination of a pewterset--were a symbol (and meant to be a symbol) of how she had all thetime there was, and the possession of everything she wished includingthe situation, and that she enjoyed having this sink in while she wasrearranging whatever she had arranged to say, in consequence of findingthat I should also hear it. And how well she was worth looking at, nomatter whether she stood, or moved, or what she did! Her age lay beyondthe reach of the human eye; if she was twenty-five, she was marvelous inher mastery of her appearance; if she was thirty-four, she was marvelousin her mastery of perpetuating it, and by no other means than perfectdress personal to herself (for she had taken the fashion and welded itinto her own plasticity) and perfect health; for without a trace of theathletic, her graceful shape teemed with elasticity. There was a touchof "sport" in the parasol she had laid down; and with all her blendedserenity there was a touch of "sport" in her. Experience could teachher beauty nothing more; it wore the look of having been made love to bymany married men. 

Quite suddenly the true light flashed upon me. I had been slow-sightedindeed! So that was what she had come here for to-day! Miss Hortensewas going to pay her compliments to Miss La Heu. I believe that my sightmight still have been slow but for that miraculous sweetness uponthe face of Eliza. She was ready for the compliments! Well, I satexpectant--and disappointment was by no means my lot. 

Hortense finished her lunch. "And so this interesting place is where youwork?"

Eliza, thus addressed, assented. 

"And you furnish wedding cakes also?"

Eliza was continuously and miraculously sweet. "The Exchange includesthat. "

"I shall hope you will be present to taste some of yours on the day itis mine. "

"I shall accept the invitation if my friends send me one. "

No blood flowed from Hortense at this, and she continued with the samesmooth deliberation. 

"The list is of necessity very small; but I shall see that it includesyou. "

"You are not going to postpone it any more, then?"

No blood flowed at this, either. "I doubt if John--if Mr. Mayrant--wouldbrook further delay, and my father seems stronger, at last. How much doI owe you for your very good food?"

It is a pity that a larger audience could not have been there to enjoythis skilful duet, for it held me hanging on every musical word of it. There, at the far back end of the long room, I sat alone at mytable, pretending to be engaged over a sandwich that was no more inexistence--external, I mean--and a totally empty cup of chocolate. Ilifted the cup, and bowed over the plate, and used the paper Japanesenapkin, and generally went through the various discreet paces of eating, quite breathless, all the while, to know which of them was coming outahead. There was no fairness in their positions; Hortense had Eliza ina cage, penned in by every fact; but it doesn't do to go too near somebirds, even when they're caged, and, while these two birds had beengiving their sweet manifestations of song, Eliza had driven a peckor two home through the bars, which, though they did not draw visibleblood, as I have said, probably taught Hortense that a Newport educationis not the only instruction which fits you for drawing-room war to theknife. 

Her small reckoning was paid, and she had drawn on one long, tawnyglove. Even this act was a luxury to watch, so full it was of thefeminine, of the stretching, indolent ease that the flesh and the spiritof this creature invariably seemed to move with. But why didn't she go?This became my wonder now, while she slowly drew on the second glove. She was taking more time than it needed. 

"Your flowers are for sale, too?"

This, after her silence, struck me as being something planned out afterher original plan. The original plan had finished with that secondassertion of her ownership of John (or, I had better say, of hisownership in her), that doubt she had expressed as to his being willingto consent to any further postponement of their marriage. Of course shehad expected, and got herself ready for, some thrust on the postponementsubject. 

Eliza crossed from behind her counter to where the Exchange flowersstood on the opposite side of the room and took some of them up. 

"But those are inferior, " said Hortense. "These. " And she touchedrightly the bowl in which my roses stood close beside Eliza's ledger. 

Eliza paused for one second. "Those are not for sale. "

Hortense paused, too. Then she hung to it. "They are so much the best. "She was holding her purse. 

"I think so, too, " said Eliza. "But I cannot let any one have them. "

Hortense put her purse away. "You know best. Shall you furnish usflowers as well as cake?"

Eliza's sweetness rose an octave, softer and softer. "Why, they haveflowers there! Didn't you know?"

And to this last and frightful peck through the bars Hortense found noretaliation. With a bow to Eliza, and a total oblivion of me, she wentout of the Exchange. She had flaunted "her" John in Eliza's face, shehad, as they say, rubbed it in that he was "her" John;--but was it sucha neat, tidy victory, after all? She had given away the last word toEliza, presented her with that poisonous speech which when translatedmeant:--

"Yes, he's 'your' John; and you're climbing up him into houses whereyou'd otherwise be arrested for trespass. " For it was in one of thevarious St. Michael houses that the marriage would be held, owing to thenomadic state of the Rieppes. 

Yes, Hortense had gone altogether too close to the cage at the end, and, in that repetition of her taunt about "furnishing" supplies for thewedding, she had at length betrayed something which her skill andthe intricate enamel of her experience had hitherto, and with entiresuccess, concealed--namely, the latent vulgarity of the woman. She waswearing, for the sake of Kings Port, her best behavior, her most knowingform, and, indeed it was a well-done imitation of the real thing; itwould last through most occasions, and it would deceive most people. But here was the trouble: she was wearing it; while, through the wholeencounter, Eliza La Heu had worn nothing but her natural and perfectdignity; yet with that disadvantage (for good breeding, alas!, is attimes a sort of disadvantage, and can be battered down and covered withmud so that its own fine grain is invisible) Eliza had, after a somewhatundecisive battle, got in that last frightful peck! But what had ledHortense, after she had come through pretty well, to lose her temperand thus, at the finish, expose to Eliza her weakest position? That herclothes were paid for by a Newport lady who had taken her to Worth, thather wedding feast was to be paid for by the bridegroom, these were notfacts which Eliza would deign to use as weapons; but she was marryinginside the doors of Eliza's Kings Port, that had never opened to admither before, and she had slipped into putting this chance into Eliza'shand--and how had she come to do this?

To be sure, my vision had been slow! Hortense had seen, through herthick veil, Eliza's interest in John in the first minute of her arrivalon the bridge, that minute when John had run up to Eliza after theautomobile had passed over poor General. And Hortense had not revealedherself at once, because she wanted a longer look at them. Well, she hadgot it, and she had got also a look at her affianced John when he was inthe fire-eating mood, and had displayed the conduct appropriate to 1840, while Charley's display had been so much more modern. And so first shehad prudently settled that awkward phosphate difficulty, and next shehad paid this little visit to Eliza in order to have the pleasure oftelling her in four or five different ways, and driving it in deep, andturning it round: "Don't you wish you may get him?"

"That's all clear as day, " I said to myself. "But what does her loss oftemper mean?"

Eliza was writing at her ledger. The sweetness hadn't entirely gone; itwas too soon for that, and besides, she knew I must be looking at her. 

"Couldn't you have told her they were my flowers?" I asked her at thecounter, as I prepared to depart. Eliza did not look up from her ledger. "Do you think she would have believed me?"

"And why shouldn't--"

"Go out!" she interrupted imperiously and with a stamp of her foot. "You've been here long enough!"

You may imagine my amazement at this. It was not until I had reachedMrs. Trevise's, and was sitting down to answer a note which had beenleft for me, that light again came. Hortense Rieppe had thought thoseflowers were from John Mayrant, and Eliza had let her think so. 

Yes, that was light, a good bright light shed on the matter; but a stillmore brilliant beam was cast by the up-country bride when I came intothe dining-room. I told her myself, at once, that I had taken flowers toMiss La Heu; I preferred she should hear this from me before she learnedit from the smiling lips of gossip. It surprised me that she shouldimmediately inquire what kind of flowers?

"Why, roses, " I answered; and she went into peals of laughter. 

"Pray share the jest, " I begged her with some dignity. 

"Didn't you know, " she replied, "the language that roses from a singlegentleman to a young lady speak in Kings Port?"

I stood staring and stiff, taking it in, taking myself, and Eliza, andHortense, and the implicated John, all in. 

"Why, aivrybody in Kings Port knows that!" said the bride; and now mymirth rose even above hers. 

XVII: Doing the Handsome Thing

It by no means lessened my pleasure to discern that Hortense must feelherself to be in a predicament; and as I sat writing my answer tothe note, which was from Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael and contained aninvitation to me for the next afternoon, I thought of those pilots whosedangers have come down to us from distant times through the songs ofancient poets. The narrow and tempestuous channel between Scylla andCharybdis bristled unquestionably with violent problems, but with none, I should suppose, that called for a nicer hand upon the wheel, or an eyemore alert, than this steering of your little trireme to a successfulmarriage, between one man who believed himself to be your destinedbridegroom and another who expected to be so, meanwhile keeping eachin ignorance of how close you were sailing to the other. In Hortense'splace I should have wished to hasten the wedding now, have it safelyperformed this afternoon, say, or to-morrow morning; thus precipitatedby some invaluable turn in the health of her poor dear father. But shehad worn it out, his health, by playing it for decidedly as much as itcould bear; it couldn't be used again without risk; the date must standfixed; and, uneasy as she might have begun to be about John, Hortensemust, with no shortening of the course, get her boat in safe withoutsmashing it against either John or Charley. I wondered a little that sheshould feel any uncertainty about her affianced lover. She must know howmuch his word was to him, and she had had his word twice, given herthe second time to put his own honor right with her on the score of thephosphates. But perhaps Hortense's rich experiences of life had taughther that a man's word to a woman should not be subjected to the testof another woman's advent. On the whole, I suppose it was quite naturalthose flowers should annoy her, and equally natural that Eliza, theminx, should allow them to do so! There's a joy to the marrow inwatching your enemy harried and discomfited by his own gratuitouscontrivances; you look on serenely at a show which hasn't cost you agroat. However, poor Eliza had not been so serene at the very end, when she stormed out at me. For this I did not have to forgive her, ofcourse, little as I had merited such treatment. Had she not accepted myflowers? But it was a gratification to reflect that in my sentimentalpassages with her I had not gone to any great length; nothing, do I everfind, is so irksome as the sense of having unwittingly been in a falseposition. Was John, on his side, in love with her? Was it possible hewould fail in his word? So with these thoughts, while answering andaccepting Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael's invitation to make one of aparty of strangers to whom she was going to show another old Kings Portchurch, "where many of my ancestors lie, " as her note informed me, Iadded one sentence which had nothing to do with the subject "She is asteel wasp, " I ventured to say. And when on the next afternoon I met theparty at the church, I received from the little lady a look of highlyspiced comprehension as she gently remarked, "I was glad to get youracceptance. "

When I went down to the dinner-table, Juno sat in her best clothes, still discussing the Daughters of Dixie. 

I can't say that I took much more heed of this at dinner than I haddone at tea; but I was interested to hear Juno mention that she, too, intended to call upon Hortense Rieppe. Kings Port, she said, must takea consistent position; and for her part, so far as behavior went, shedidn't see much to choose between the couple. "As to whether Mr. Mayranthad really concealed the discovery of his fortune, " she continued, "Iasked Miss Josephine--in a perfectly nice way, of course. But old Mr. St. Michael Beaugarcon, who has always had the estate in charge, didthat. It is only a life estate, unless Mr. Mayrant has lawful issue. Well, he will have that now, and all that money will be his tosquander. "

Aunt Carola had written me again this morning, but I had been in nohaste to open her letter; my neglect of the Bombos did not weigh tooheavily upon me, I fear, but I certainly did put off reading what Iexpected to be a reprimand. And concerning this I was right; her firstwords betokened reprimand at once. "My dear nephew Augustus, " she began, in her fine, elegant handwriting. That was always her mode of addressto me when something was coming, while at other times it would be, lessportentously, "My dear Augustus, " or "My dear nephew "; but whenevermy name and my relationship to her occurred conjointly, I took thecommunication away with me to some corner, and opened it in solitude. 

It wasn't about the Bombos, though; and for what she took me to task Iwas able to defend myself, I think, quite adequately. She found faultwith me for liking the South too much, and this she based upon theenthusiastic accounts of Kings Port and its people that I had writtento her; nor had she at all approved of my remarks on the subject of thenegro, called forth by Daddy Ben and his grandson Charles Cotesworth. 

"When I sent you (wrote Aunt Carola) to admire Kings Port good-breeding, I did not send you to forget your country. Remember that those peoplewere its mortal enemies; that besides their treatment of our prisonersin Libby and Andersonville (which killed my brother Alexander) theydisplayed in their dealings, both social and political, an arrogancein success and a childish petulance at opposition, which we who saw andsuffered can never forget, any more than we can forget our loved oneswho laid down their lives for this cause. "

These were not the only words with which Aunt Carola reproved what shetermed my "disloyalty, " but they will serve to indicate her feelingabout the Civil War. It was--on her side--precisely the feeling of allthe Kings Port old ladies on Heir side. But why should it be mine? Andso, after much thinking how I might best reply respectfully yet say toAunt Carola what my feeling was, I sat down upstairs at my window, and, after some preliminary sentences, wrote:--

"There are dead brothers here also, who, like your brother, laid downtheir lives for what they believed was their country, and whom theirsisters never can forget as you can never forget him. I read theirnames upon sad church tablets, and their boy faces look out at me fromcherished miniatures and dim daguerreotypes. Upon their graves the womenwho mourn them leave flowers as you leave flowers upon the grave of youryoung soldier. You will tell me, perhaps, that since the bereavementis equal, I have not justified my sympathy for these people. But thebereavement was not equal. More homes here were robbed by death of theirlight and promise than with us; and to this you must add the materialdesolation of the homes themselves. Our roofs were not laid in ashes, and to-day we sit in affluence while they sit in privation. You willsay to this, perhaps, that they brought it upon themselves. But evengranting that they did so, surely to suffer and to lose is more bitterthan to suffer and to win. My dear aunt, you could not see what I haveseen here, and write to me as you do; and if those years have leftupon your heart a scar which will not vanish, do not ask me, who cameafterward, to wear the scar also. I should then resemble certain of theyounger ones here, with less excuse than is theirs. As for the negro, forgive me if I assure you that you retain an Abolitionist exaltationfor a creature who does not exist, or whose existence is an ineffectualdrop in the bucket, a creature on grateful knees raising faithful eyesto one who has struck off his chains of slavery, whereas the creaturewho does exist is--"

I paused here in my letter to Aunt Carola, and sought for some fittingexpression that should characterize for her with sufficient severitythe new type of deliberately worthless negro; and as I sought, my eyeswandered to the garden next door, the garden of the Cornerlys. On abench near a shady arrangement of vines over bars sat Hortense Rieppe. She was alone, and, from her attitude, seemed to be thinking deeply. Thehigh walls of the garden shut her into a privacy that her position nearthe shady vines still more increased. It was evident that she had comehere for the sake of being alone, and I regretted that she was so turnedfrom me that I could not see her face. But her solitude did not longcontinue; there came into view a gentleman of would-be venerableappearance, who approached her with a walk carefully constructed forpublic admiration, and who, upon reaching her, bent over with the samesort of footlight elaboration and gave her a paternal kiss. I did notneed to hear her call him father; he was so obviously General Rieppe, the prudent hero of Chattanooga, that words would have been perfectlysuperfluous in his identification. 

I was destined upon another day to hear the tones of his voice, andthereupon may as well state now that they belonged altogether with therest of him. There is a familiar type of Northern fraud, and a Southerntype, equally familiar, but totally different in appearance. TheNorthern type has the straight, flat, earnest hair, the shaven upperlip, the chin-beard, and the benevolent religious expression. He will bethe president of several charities, and the head of one great business. He plays no cards, drinks no wine, and warns young men to beware oftemptation. He is as genial as a hair-sofa; and he is seldom found outby the public unless some financial crash in general affairs uncovershis cheating, which lies most often beyond the law's reach; and becausehe cannot be put in jail, he quite honestly believes heaven is hisdestination. We see less of him since we have ceased to be a religiouscountry, religion no longer being an essential disguise for him. TheSouthern type, with his unction and his juleps, is better company, unless he is the hero of too many of his own anecdotes. He is commonlythe possessor of a poetic gaze, a mane of silvery hair, and a nobleneck. As war days and cotton-factor days recede into a past more andmore filmed over with romance, he too grows rare among us, and Iregret it, for he was in truth a picturesque figure. General Rieppe wasperfect. 

At first I was sorry that the distance they were from me renderedhearing what they were saying impossible; very soon, however, the frameof my open window provided me with a living picture which would havebeen actually spoiled had the human voice disturbed its eloquentpantomime. 

General Rieppe's daughter responded to her father's caress butlanguidly, turning to him her face, with its luminous, stationarybeauty. He pointed to the house, and then waved his hand toward thebench where she sat; and she, in response to this, nodded slightly. Upon which the General, after another kiss of histrionic paternityadministered to her forehead, left her sitting and proceeded alongthe garden walk at a stately pace, until I could no longer see him. Hortense, left alone upon the bench, looked down at the folds of herdress, extended a hand and slowly rearranged one of them, and then, withthe same hand, felt her hair from front to back. This had scarce beenaccomplished when the General reappeared, ushering Juno along the walk, and bearing a chair with him. When they turned the corner at the arbor, Hortense rose, and greetings ensued. Few objects could be straighterthan was Juno's back; her card-case was in her hand, but her pocket wasnot quite large enough for the whole of her pride, which stuck out sothat it could have been seen from a greater distance than my window. The General would have departed, placing his chair for the visitor, whenHortense waved for him an inviting hand toward the bench beside her;he waved a similarly inviting hand, looking at Juno, who thereupon satfirmly down upon the chair. At this the General hovered heavily, lookingat his daughter, who gave him no look in return, as she engaged inconversation with Juno; and presently the General left them. Juno's backand Hortense's front, both entirely motionless as they interviewed eachother' presented a stiff appearance, with Juno half turned in her seatand Hortense's glance following her slight movement; the two then rose, as the General came down the walk with two chairs and Mrs. Gregory andMrs. Weguelin St. Michael. Juno, with a bow to them, approached Hortenseby a step or two, a brief touch of their fingers was to be seen, andJuno's departure took place, attended by the heavy hovering of GeneralRieppe. 

"That's why!" I said to myself aloud, suddenly, at my open window. Immediately, however, I added, "but can it be?" And in my mind a wholelittle edifice of reasons for Hortense's apparent determination to marryJohn instantly fabricated itself--and then fell down. 

Through John she was triumphantly bringing stiff Kings Port to her, wasforcing them to accept her. But this was scarce enough temptation forHortense to marry; she could do very well without Kings Port--indeed, she was not very likely to show herself in it, save to remind them, nowand then, that she was there, and that they could not keep her out anymore; this might amuse her a little, but the society itself wouldnot amuse her in the least. What place had it for her to smoke hercigarettes in?

Eliza La Heu, then? Spite? The pleasure of taking something thatsomebody else wanted? The pleasure of spoiling somebody else's pleasure?Or, more accurately, the pleasure of power? Well, yes; that might be it, if Hortense Rieppe were younger in years, and younger, especially, insoul; but her museum was too richly furnished with specimens of thechase, she had collected too many bits and bibelots from life's HotelDruot and the great bazaar of female competition, to pay so great aprice as marriage for merely John; particularly when a lady, even inNewport, can have but one husband at a time in her collection. If shedid actually love John, as Beverly Rodgers had reluctantly come tobelieve, it was most inappropriate in her! Had I followed out the trainof reasoning which lay coiled up inside the word inappropriate, I mighthave reached the solution which eventually Hortense herself gave me, and the jewelled recesses of her nature would have blazed still morebrilliantly to my eyes to-day; but in truth, my soul wasn't old enoughyet to work Hortense out by itself, unaided!

While Mrs. Gregory and Mrs. Weguelin sat on their chairs, and Hortensesat on her bench, tea was brought and a table laid, behind whosewhiteness and silver Hortense began slight offices with cups and sugartongs. She looked inquiry at her visitors, in answer to which Mrs. Gregory indicated acceptance, and Mrs. Weguelin refusal. The beauty ofHortense's face had strangely increased since the arrival of these twovisitors. It shone resplendent behind the silver and the white cloth, and her movement, as she gave the cup to Mrs. Gregory St. Michael, wasone of complete grace and admirable propriety. But once she looked awayfrom them in the direction of the path. Her two visitors rose and lefther, Mrs. Gregory setting her tea-cup down with a gesture that saidshe would take no more, and, after their bows of farewell, Hortense satalone again pulling about the tea things. 

I saw that by the table lay a card-case on the ground, evidently droppedby Mrs. Gregory; but Hortense could not see it where she sat. Her quicklook along the path heralded more company and the General with morechairs. Young people now began to appear, the various motions of whomwere more animated than the approaches and greetings and farewells oftheir elders; chairs were moved and exchanged, the General was useful inhandling cups, and a number of faces unknown to me came and went, someof them elderly ones whom I had seen in church, or passed while walking;the black dresses of age mingled with the brighter colors of youth; andon her bench behind the cups sat Hortense, or rose up at right moments, radiant, restrained and adequate, receiving with deferential attentionthe remarks of some dark-clothed elder, or, with sufficiently interestedcountenance, inquiring something from a brighter one of her owngeneration; but twice I saw her look up the garden path. None of themstayed long, although when they were all gone the shadow of the gardenwall had come as far as the arbor; and once again Hortense sat alonebehind the table, leaning back with arms folded, and looking straightin front of her. At last she stirred, and rose slowly, and then, witha movement which was the perfection of timidity, began to advance, asJohn, with his Aunt Eliza, came along the path. To John, Hortense withfamiliar yet discreet brightness gave a left hand, as she waited for theold lady; and then the old lady went through with it. What that embraceof acknowledgment cost her cannot be measured, and during its processJohn stood like a sentinel. Possibly this was the price of hisforgiveness to his Aunt Eliza. 

The visitors accepted tea, and the beauty in Hortense's face was nowsupreme. The old lady sat, forgetting to drink her tea, but very stillin outward attitude, as she talked with Hortense; and the sight of onehand in its glove lying motionless upon her best dress, suddenly almostdrew unexpected tears to my eyes. John was nearly as quiet as she, butthe glove that he held was twisted between his fingers. I expectedthat he would stay with his Hortense when his aunt took her leave; he, however, was evidently expected by the old lady to accompany her out andback, I suppose, to her house, as was proper. 

But John's departure from Hortense differed from his meeting her. Shegave no left hand to him now; she gazed at him, and then, as the oldlady began to go toward the house, she moved a step toward him, andthen she cast herself into his arms! It was no acting, this, no skilfulsimulation; her head sank upon his shoulder, and true passion spoke inevery line of that beautiful surrendered form, as it leaned against herlover's. 

"So that's why!" I exclaimed, once more aloud. 

It was but a moment; and John, released, followed Miss Eliza. The oldlady walked slowly, with that half-failing step that betokens the body'sweariness after great mental or moral strain. Indeed, as John regainedher side, she put her arm in his as if her feebleness needed hissupport. Thus they went away together, the aunt and her beloved boy, whohad so sorely grieved and disappointed her. 

But if this sight touched me, this glimpse of the vanquished leaving thefield after supreme acknowledgment of defeat, upon Hortense it wroughtanother effect altogether. She stood looking after them, and as shelooked, the whole woman from head to foot, motionless as she was, seemedto harden. Yet still she looked, until at length, slowly turning, hereyes chanced to fall upon Mrs. Gregory St. Michael's card-case. Thereit lay, the symbol of Kings Port's capitulation. She swooped down andup with a flying curve of grace, holding her prey caught; and then, catching also her handsome skirts on either side, she danced like awhirling fan among the empty chairs. 

XVIII: Again the Replacers

But a little while, and all that I had just witnessed in such vividdumb-show might have seemed to me in truth some masque; so smooth hadit been, and voiceless, coming and going like a devised fancy. Andafter the last of the players was gone from the stage, leaving the whitecloth, and the silver, and the cups, and the groups of chairs near thepleasant arbor, I watched the deserted garden whence the sunlight wasslowly departing, and it seemed to me more than ever like some empty andcharming scene in a playhouse, to which the comedians would in duetime return to repeat their delicate pantomime. But these were mentalindulgences, with which I sat playing until the sight of my interruptedletter to Aunt Carola on the table before me brought the reality ofeverything back into my thoughts; and I shook my head over Miss Eliza. Iremembered that hand of hers, lying in despondent acquiescence uponher lap, as the old lady sat in her best dress, formally and faithfullyaccepting the woman whom her nephew John had brought upon them as hisbride-elect--formally and faithfully accepting this distasteful person, and thus atoning as best she could to her beloved nephew for thewrong that her affection had led her to do him in that ill-starred andinexcusable tampering with his affairs. 

But there was my letter waiting. I took my pen, and finished what I hadto say about the negro and the injustice we had done to him, as well asto our own race, by the Fifteenth Amendment. I wrote:--

"I think Northerners must often seem to these people strangely obtuse intheir attitude. And they deserve such opinion, since all they need to dois come here and see for themselves what the War did to the South. 

"You may have a perfectly just fight with a man and beat him rightly;but if you are able to go on with your work next day, while his healthis so damaged that for a long while he limps about as a cripple, youmust not look up from your busy thriving and reproach him with hishelplessness, and remind him of its cause; nor must you be surprisedthat he remembers the fight longer than you have time for. I know thatthe North meant to be magnanimous, that the North was magnanimous, thatthe spirit of Grant at Appomattox filled many breasts; and I know thatthe magnanimity was not met by those who led the South after Lee'sretirement, and before reconstruction set in, and that the FifteenthAmendment was brought on by their own doings: when have two wrongs madea right? And to place the negro above these people was an atrocity. Youcannot expect them to inquire very industriously how magnanimous thisNorth meant to be, when they have suffered at her hands worse, farworse, than France suffered from Germany's after 1870. 

"I do think there should be a different spirit among some of thelater-born, but I have come to understand even the slights andsuspicions from which I here and there suffer, since to their minds, shut in by circumstance, I'm always a 'Yankee. '

"We are prosperous; and prosperity does not bind, it merely assemblespeople--at dinners and dances. It is adversity that binds--beside thegravestone, beneath the desolated roof. Could you come here and seewhat I have seen, the retrospect of suffering, the long, lingeringconvalescence, the small outlook of vigor to come, and the steadfastsodality of affliction and affection and fortitude, your kind butunenlightened heart would be wrung, as mine has been, and is being, atevery turn. "

After I had posted this reply to Aunt Carola, I had some fears that mypen had run away with me, and that she might now descend upon mewith that reproof which she knew so well how to exercise in cases ofdisrespect. But there was actually a certain pathos in her mildness whenit came. She felt it her duty to go over a good deal of history first, but:--

"I do not understand the present generation, " she finished, "and Isuppose that I was not meant to. "

The little sigh in these words did great credit to Aunt Carola. 

This vindication off my mind, and relieved by it of the more generalthoughts about Kings Port and the South, which the pantomime of KingsPort's forced capitulation to Hortense had raised in me, I returned tothe personal matters between that young woman and John, and Charley. Howmuch did Charley know? How much would Charley stand? How much would Johnstand, if he came to know?

Well, the scene in the garden now helped me to answer these questionsmuch better than I could have answered them before its occurrence. Withone fact--the great fact of love--established, it was not difficult toaccount for at least one or two of the several things that puzzled me. There could be no doubt that Hortense loved John Mayrant, loved himbeyond her own control. When this love had begun, made no matter. Perhaps it began on the bridge, when the money was torn, and Eliza LaHeu had appeared. The Kings Port version of Hortense's indifference toJohn before the event of the phosphates might well enough be true. Itmight even well enough be true that she had taken him and his phosphatesat Newport for lack of anything better at hand, and because she was sickof disappointed hopes. In this case, Charley's subsequent appearanceas something very much better (if the phosphates were to fail) wouldperfectly explain the various postponements of the wedding. 

So I was able to answer my questions to myself thus: How much didCharley know?--Just what he could see for himself, and what he hadmost likely heard from Newport gossip. He could have heard of an oldengagement, made purely for money's sake, and of recent delays createdby the lady; and he could see the gentleman--an impossible husband froma Wall Street standpoint!--to whom Hortense was evidently tempering herfinal refusal by indulgently taking an interest in helping along hisphosphate fortune. Charley would not refuse to lend her his aid in thisestimable benevolence; nor would it occur to Charley's sensibilitieshow such benevolence would be taken by John if John were not "taken"himself. Yes, Charley was plainly fooled, and fooled the more readilybecause he had the old version of the truth. How should he suspectthere was a revised version? How should he discover that passion had nowchanged sides, that it was now John who allowed himself to be loved? Thesigns of this did not occur before his eyes. Of course, Charley wouldnot stay fooled forever; the hours of that were numbered, --but theirnumber was quite beyond my guessing!

How much would Charley stand? He would stand a good deal, because themeasure of his toleration was the measure of his desire for Hortense;and it was plain that he wanted her very much indeed. But how muchwould John stand? How soon would his "fire-eating" traditions produce a"difficulty"? Why had they not done this already? Well, the garden hadin some way helped me to frame a fairly reasonable answer for this also. Poor Hortense had become as powerless to woo John to warmth as poorVenus had been with Adonis; and passion, in changing sides, had advancedthe boy's knowledge. He knew now the difference between the embracesof his lady when she had merely wanted his phosphates, and these othercaresses now that, she wanted him. In his ceaseless search for somepossible loophole of escape, his eye could not have overlooked thechance that lay in Charley, and he was far too canny to blast hisforlorn hope. He had probably wondered what had changed the nature ofHortense's caresses, and the adventure of the torn money could scarcehave failed to suggest itself to the mind of a youth who, little ashe had trodden the ways of the world, evidently possessed some livelyinstincts regarding the nature of women. To batter Charley as he hadbattered Juno's nephew, might result in winding the arms of Hortensearound his own neck more tightly than ever. 

Why Hortense should keep Charley "on" any longer, was what I could leastfathom, but I trusted her to have excellent reasons for anything thatshe did. "It's sure to be quite simple, once you know it, " I toldmyself; and the near future proved me to be right. 

Thus I laid most of my enigmas to rest; there was but one which nowand then awakened still. Were Hortense a raw girl of eighteen, I couldeasily grant that the "fire-eater" in John would be sure to move her. But Hortense had travelled many miles away from the green forests ofromance; her present fields were carpeted, not with grass and flowers, but with Oriental mats and rugs, and it was electric lights, not themoon and stars, that shone upon her highly seasoned nights. No, tornmoney and all, it was not appropriate in a woman of her experience; andso I still found myself inquiring in the words of Beverly Rodgers, "Butwhat can she want him for?"

The next time that I met Mrs. Gregory St. Michael it was on my way tojoin the party at the old church, which Mrs. Weguelin was going to showthem. The card-case was in her hand, and the sight of it prompted me toallude to Hortense Rieppe. 

"I find her beauty growing upon me?" I declared. 

Mrs. Gregory did not deny the beauty, although she spoke with reserve atfirst. "It is to be said that she knows how to write a suitable note, "the lady also admitted. 

She didn't tell me what the note was about, naturally; but I couldimagine with what joy in the exercise of her art Hortense hadconstructed that communication which must have accompanied the promptreturn of the card-case. 

Then Mrs. Gregory's tongue became downright. "Since you're able to seeso much of her, why don't you tell her to marry that little steam-yachtgambler? I'm sure he's dying to, and he's just the thing for her?"

"Ah, " I returned, "Love so seldom knows what's just the thing formarriage. "

"Then your precocity theory falls, " declared Mrs. St. Michael. And asshe went away from me along the street, I watched her beautiful statelywalk; for who could help watching a sight so good?

Charley, then, was no secret to John's people. Was John still a secretto Charley? Could Hortense possibly have managed this? I hoped for achance to observe the two men with her during the visit of Mrs. WeguelinSt. Michael and her party to the church. 

This party was already assembled when I arrived upon the spot appointed. In the street, a few paces from the church, stood Bohm and Charley andKitty and Gazza, with Beverly Rodgers, who, as I came near, left themand joined me. 

"Oh, she's somewhere off with her fire-eater, " responded Beverly to myimmediate inquiry for Hortense. "Do you think she was asked, old man?"

Probably not, I thought. "But she goes so well with the rest, " Isuggested. 

Beverly gave his chuckle. "She goes where she likes. She'll meet us herewhen we're finished, I'm pretty sure. "

"Why such certainty?"

"Well, she has to attend to Charley, you know!"

Mrs. Weguelin, it appeared, had met the party here by the church, buthad now gone somewhere in the immediate neighborhood to find out why thegate was not opened to admit us, and to hasten the unpunctual custodianof the keys. I had not looked for precisely such a party as Mrs. Weguelin's invitation had gathered, nor could I imagine that she hadfully understood herself what she was gathering; and this I intimated toBeverly Rodgers, saying:--

"Do you suppose, my friend, that she suspected the feather of the birdsyou flock with?"

Beverly took it lightly. "Hang it, old boy, of course everybody can't beas nice as I am!" But he took it less lightly before it was over. 

We stood chatting apart, he and I, while Bohm and Charley and Kittyand Gazza walked across the street to the window of a shop, where oldfurniture was for sale at a high price; and it grew clearer to mewhat Beverly had innocently brought upon Mrs. Weguelin, and how he hadbrought it. The little quiet, particular lady had been pleased with hisvisit, and pleased with him. His good manners, his good appearance, hisgood English-trained voice, all these things must have been extremelyto her taste; and then--more important than they--did she not know abouthis people? She had inquired, he told me, with interest about two of hisuncles, whom she had last seen in 1858. "She's awfully the right sort, "said Beverly. Yes, I saw well how that visit must have gone: the gentleold lady reviving in Beverly's presence, and for the sake of being civilto him, some memories of her girlhood, some meetings with those uncles, some dances with them; and generally shedding from her talk and mannerthe charm of some sweet old melody--and Beverly, the facile, theappreciative, sitting there with her at a correct, deferential angle onhis chair, admirably sympathetic and in good form, and playing the oldschool. (He had no thought to deceive her; the old school was his byright, and genuinely in his blood, he took to it like a duck to thewater. ) How should Mrs. Weguelin divine that he also took to the nouveaujeu to the tune of Bohm and Charley and Kitty and Gazza? And so, to showhim some attention, and because she couldn't ask him to a meal, why, shewould take him over the old church, her colonial forefathers'; she wouldtell him the little legends about them; he was precisely the young manto appreciate such things--and she would be pleased if he would alsobring the friends with whom he was travelling. 

I looked across the street at Bohm and Charley and Kitty and Gazza. They were now staring about them in all their perfection of stare: smallCharley in a sleek slate-colored suit, as neat as any little barber;Bohm, massive, portentous, his strong shoes and gloves the chief note inhis dress, and about his whole firm frame a heavy mechanical strength, alook as of something that did something rapidly and accurately when setgoing--cut or cracked or ground or smashed something better and fasterthan it had ever been cut or cracked or ground or smashed before, andwould take your arms and legs off if you didn't stand well back from it;it was only in Bohm's eye and lips that you saw he wasn't made entirelyof brass and iron, that champagne and shoulders decolletes received apunctual share of his valuable time. And there was Kitty, too, just thewife for Bohm, so soon as she could divorce her husband, to whom she hadunited herself before discovering that all she married him for, his oldKnickerbocker name, was no longer in the slightest degree necessary forsocial acceptance; while she could feed people, her trough would be wellthronged. Kitty was neat, Kitty was trig, Kitty was what Beverly wouldcall "swagger "; her skilful tailor-made clothes sheathed her closelyand gave her the excellent appearance of a well-folded English umbrella;it was in her hat that she had gone wrong--a beautiful hat in itself, one which would have wholly become Hortense; but for poor Kitty itdidn't do at all. Yes, she was a well folded English umbrella, onlythe umbrella had for its handle the head of a bulldog or the leg of aballet-dancer. And these were the Replacers whom Beverly's clear-sightedeyes saw swarming round the temple of his civilization, pushing downthe aisles, climbing over the backs of the benches, walking over eachother's bodies, and seizing those front seats which his family hadsat in since New York had been New York; and so the wise fellow veryprudently took every step that would insure the Replacers' inviting himto occupy one of his own chairs. I had almost forgotten little Gazza, the Italian nobleman, who sold old furniture to new Americans. Gazza wasnot looking at the old furniture of Kings Port, which must have filledhis Vatican soul with contempt; he was strolling back and forth inthe street, with his head in the air, humming, now loudly, now softly"La-la, la-la, E quando a la predica in chiesa siederia, la-la-la-la;"and I thought to myself that, were I the Pope, I should kick him intothe Tiber. 

When Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael came back with the keys and theircustodian, Bohm was listening to the slow, clear words of Charley, inwhich he evidently found something that at length interested him--alittle. Bohm, it seemed, did not often speak himself: possibly once aweek. His way was to let other people speak to him when there were signsin his face that he was hearing anything which they said, it was a highcompliment to them, and of course Charley could command Bohm's ear; forCharley, although he was as neat as any barber, and let Hortense walk onhim because he looked beyond that, and purposed to get her, was just aspotent in the financial world as Bohm, could bring a borrowing empireto his own terms just as skillfully as could Bohm; was, in short, aman after Bohm's own--I had almost said heart: the expression is soobstinately embedded in our language! Bohm, listening, and Charley, talking, had neither of them noticed Mrs. Weguelin's arrival; theystood ignoring her, while she waited, casting a timid eye upon them. But Beverly, suddenly perceiving this, and begging her pardon for them, brought the party together, and we moved in among the old graves. 

"Ah!" said Gazza, bending to read the quaint words cut upon one of them, as we stopped while the door at the rear of the church was being opened, "French!"

"It was the mother-tongue of these colonists, " Mrs. Weguelin explainedto him. 

"Ah! like Canada!" cried Gazza. "But what a pretty bit is that!" And hestood back to admire a little glimpse, across a street, between tiledroofs and rusty balconies, of another church steeple. "Almost, one wouldsay, the Old World, " Gazza declared. 

"Our world is not new, " said Mrs. Weguelin; and she passed into thechurch. 

Kings Port holds many sacred nooks, many corners, many vistas, thatshould deeply stir the spirit and the heart of all Americans who knowand love their country. The passing traveller may gaze up at certainwindows there, and see History herself looking out at him, even as shelooks out of the windows of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. There arealso other ancient buildings in Kings Port, where History is shut up, asin a strong-box, --such as that stubborn old octagon, the powder-magazineof Revolutionary times, which is a chest holding proud memories of bloodand war. And then there are the three churches. Not strong-boxes, these, but shrines, where burn the venerable lamps of faith. And of these threehouses of God, that one holds the most precious flame, the purestlight, which treasures the holy fire that came from France. The Englishcolonists, who sat in the other two congregations, came to Carolina'ssoil to better their estate; but it was for liberty of soul, to lifttheir ardent and exalted prayer to God as their own conscience badethem, and not as any man dictated, that those French colonists soughtthe New World. No Puritan splendor of independence and indomitablecourage outshines theirs. They preached a word as burning as any thatPlymouth or Salem ever heard. They were but a handful, yet so fecundwas their marvelous zeal that they became the spiritual leaven of theirwhole community. They are less known than Plymouth and Salem, becausemen of action, rather than men of letters, have sprung from the loinsof the South; but there they stand, a beautiful beacon, shining upon thecoasts of our early history. Into their church, then, into the shrinewhere their small lamp still burns, their devout descendant, Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael led our party, because in her eyes Kings Port couldshow nothing more precious and significant. There had been nothing towarn her that Bohm and Charley were Americans who neither knew nor lovedtheir country, but merely Americans who knew their country's wealth andloved to acquire every penny of it that they could. 

And so, following the steps of our delicate and courteous guide, weentered into the dimness of the little building; and Mrs. Weguelin'svoice, lowered to suit the sanctity which the place had for her, beganto tell us very quietly and clearly the story of its early days. 

I knew it, or something of it, from books; but from this little lady'slips it took on a charm and graciousness which made it fresh to me. Ilistened attentively, until I felt, without at first seeing thecause, that dulling of enjoyment, that interference with the receptiveattention, which comes at times to one during the performance of musicwhen untimely people come in or go out. Next, I knew that our group oflisteners was less compact; and then, as we moved from the first pointin the church to a new one, I saw that Bohm and Charley were droppingbehind, and I lingered, with the intention of bringing them closer. 

"But there was nothing in it, " I heard Charley's slow monologuecontinuing behind me to the silent Bohm. "We could have bought theParsons road at that time. 'Gentlemen, ' I said to them, 'what is therefor us in tide-water at Kings Port? '"

It was not to be done, and I rejoined Mrs. Weguelin and those ofthe party who were making some show of attention to her quiet littlehistories and explanations; and Kitty's was the next voice which I heardring out--

"Oh, you must never let it fall to pieces! It's the cunningest littlefossil I've seen in the South. "

"So, " said Charley behind me, "we let the other crowd buy theirstrategic point; and I guess they know they got a gold brick. "

I moved away from the financiers, I endeavored not to hear their words;and in this much I was successful; but their inappropriate presencehad got, I suppose upon my nerves; at any rate, go where I would in thelittle church, or attend as I might and did to what Mrs. WeguelinSt. Michael said about the tablets, and whatever traditions theirinscriptions suggested to her, that quiet, low, persistent banker'svoice of Charley's pervaded the building like a draft of cold air. Once, indeed, he addressed Mrs. Weguelin a question. She was telling Beverly(who followed her throughout, protectingly and charmingly, with his mostdevoted attention and his best manner) the honorable deeds of certainolder generations of a family belonging to this congregation, some ofwhose tombs outside had borne French inscriptions. 

"My mother's family, " said Mrs. Weguelin. 

"And nowadays, " inquired Beverly, "what do they find instead of militarycareers?"

"There are no more of us nowadays; they--they were killed in the war. "

And immediately she smiled, and with her hand she made a light gesture, as if to dismiss this subject from mutual embarrassment and pain. 

"I might have known better, " murmured the understanding Beverly. 

But Charley now had his question. "How many, did you say?"

"How many?" Mrs. Weguelin did not quite understand him. 

"Were killed?" explained Charley. 

Again there was a little pause before Mrs. Weguelin answered, "My fourbrothers met their deaths. "

Charley was interested. "And what was the percentage of fatality intheir regiments?"

"Oh, " said Mrs. Weguelin, "we did not think of it in that way. " And sheturned aside. 

"Charley, " said Kitty, with some precipitancy, "do make Mr. Bohm look atthe church!" and she turned after Mrs. Weguelin. "It is such a gem!"

But I saw the little lady try to speak and fail, and then I noticed thatshe was leaning against a window-sill. 

Beverly Rodgers also noticed this, and he hastened to her. 

"Thank you, " she returned to his hasty question, "I am quite well. Ifyou are not tired of it, shall we go on?"

"It is such a gem!" repeated Kitty, throwing an angry glance at Charleyand Bohm. And so we went on. 

Yes, Kitty did her best to cover it up; Kitty, as she would undoubtedlyhave said herself, could see a few things. But nobody could cover itup, though Beverly was now vigilant in his efforts to do so. Indeed, Replacers cannot be covered up by human agency; they bulge, they loom, they stare, they dominate the road of life, even as their automobilesdrive horses and pedestrians to the wall. Bohm, roused from hisfinancial torpor by Kitty's sharp command, did actually turn his eyesupon the church, which he had now been inside for some twenty minuteswithout noticing. Instinct and long training had given his eye, whenit really looked at anything, a particular glance--the glance of theReplacer--which plainly calculated: "Can this be made worth money tome?" and which died instantly to a glaze of indifference on seeing thatno money could be made. Bohm's eye, accordingly, waked and then glazed. Manners, courtesy, he did not need, not yet; he had looked at them withhis Replacer glance, and, seeing no money in them, had gone on lookingat railroads, and mines, and mills, --and bare shoulders, and bottles. Should manners and courtesy come, some day, to mean money to him, then he could have them, in his fashion, so that his admirers and hisapologists should alike declare of him, "A rough diamond, but considerwhat he has made of himself!"

"After what, did you say?" This was the voice of Gazza, addressing Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael. It must be said of Gazza that he, too, made acertain presence of interest in the traditions of Kings Port. 

"After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, " replied Mrs. Weguelin. 

"Built it in Savannah, " Charley was saying to Bohm, "or Norfolk. Thisis a good place to bury people in, but not money. Now the phosphateproposition--"

Again I dragged my attention by force away from that quiet, relentlessmonologue, and listened as well as I could to Mrs. Weguelin. There hadcome to be among us all, I think--Beverly, Kitty, Gazza, and myself--ajoint impulse to shield her, to cluster about her, to follow her stepsfrom each little lecture that she finished to the new point where thenext lecture began; and we did it, performed our pilgrimage to the end;but there was less and less nature in our performance. I knew (and itwas like a dream which I could not stop) that we pressed a little tooclose, that our questions were a little too eager, that we overprintedour faces with attention; knowing this did not help, nothing helped, andwe went on to the end, seeing ourselves doing it; and it must havebeen that Mrs. Weguelin saw us likewise. But she was truly admirable ingiving no sign, she came out well ahead; the lectures were nothurried, one had no sense of points being skipped to accommodate ourunworthiness, it required a previous familiarity with the church toknow (as I did) that there was, indeed, more and more skipping; yet thelittle lady played her part so evenly and with never a falter ofvoice nor a change in the gentle courtesy of her manner, that I do notthink--save for that moment at the window-sill--I could have been surewhat she thought, or how much she noticed. Her face was always so pale, it may well have been all imagination with me that she seemed, when weemerged at last into the light of the street, paler than usual; but Iam almost certain that her hand was trembling as she stood receiving thethanks of the party. These thanks were cut a little short by the arrivalof one of the automobiles, and, at the same time, the appearance ofHortense strolling toward us with John Mayrant. 

Charley had resumed to Bohm, "A tax of twenty-five cents on the tonis nothing with deposits of this richness, " when his voice ceased; andlooking at him to see the cause, I perceived that his eye was on John, and that his polished finger-nail was running meditatively along histhin mustache. 

Hortense took the matter--whatever the matter was--in hand. 

"You haven't much time, " she said to Charles, who consulted his watch. 

"Who's coming to see me off?" he inquired. 

"Where's he going?" I asked Beverly. 

"She's sending him North, " Beverly answered, and then he spoke with hisvery best simple manner to Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael. "May I not walkhome with you after all your kindness?"

She was going to say no, for she had had enough of this party; but shelooked at Beverly, and his face and his true solicitude won her; shesaid, "Thank you, if you will. " And the two departed together down theshabby street, the little veiled lady in black, and Beverly withhis excellent London clothes and his still more excellent look ofrespectful, sheltering attention. 

And now Bohm pronounced the only utterance that I heard fall from hislips during his stay in Kings Port. He looked at the church he had comefrom, he looked at the neighboring larger church whose columns stood outat the angle of the street; he looked at the graveyard opposite that, then at the stale, dusty shop of old furniture, and then up the shabbystreet, where no life or movement was to be seen, except the distantforms of Beverly and Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael. Then from a goldcigar-case, curved to fit his breast pocket, he took a cigar and lightedit from a gold match-box. Offering none of us a cigar, he placed thecase again in his pocket; and holding his lighted cigar a moment withtwo fingers in his strong glove, he spoke:--

"This town's worse than Sunday. "

Then he got into the automobile. They all followed to see Charley off, and he addressed me. 

"I shall be glad, " he said, "if you will make one of a little partyon the yacht next Sunday, when I come back. And you also, " he added toJohn. 

Both John and I expressed our acceptance in suitable forms, and theautomobile took its way to the train. 

"Your Kings Port streets, " I said, as we walked back toward Mrs. Trevise's, "are not very favorable for automobiles. "

"No, " he returned briefly. I don't remember that either of us found moreto say until we had reached my front door, when he asked, "Will the dayafter to-morrow suit you for Udolpho?"

"Whenever you say, " I told him. 

"Weather permitting, of course. But I hope that it will; for after thatI suppose my time will not be quite so free. "

After we had parted it struck me that this was the first reference tohis approaching marriage that John had ever made in my hearing sincethat day long ago (it seemed long ago, at least) when he had come to theExchange to order the wedding-cake, and Eliza La Heu had fallen in lovewith him at sight. That, in my opinion, looking back now with eyes atany rate partially opened, was what Eliza had done. Had John returnedthe compliment then, or since?

XIX: Udolpho

It was to me continuously a matter of satisfaction and of interest tosee Hortense disturbed--whether for causes real or imaginary--aboutthe security of her title to her lover John, nor can I say that mymisinterpreted bunch of roses diminished this satisfaction. I shouldhave been glad to know if the accomplished young woman had furtherprobed that question and discovered the truth, but it seemed scarcelikely that she could do this without the help of one of three persons, Eliza and myself who knew all, or John who knew nothing; for theup-country bride, and whatever other people in Kings Port there wereto whom the bride might gayly recite the tale of my roses, were noneof them likely to encounter Miss Rieppe; their paths and hers would notmeet until they met in church at the wedding of Hortense and John. No, she could not have found out the truth; for never in the world wouldshe, at this eleventh hour, risk a conversation with John upon a subjectso full of well-packed explosives; and so she must be simply keepingon both him and Eliza an eye as watchful as lay in her power. As forCharley, what bait, what persuasion, what duress she had been able tofind that took him at an hour so critical from her side to New York, Icould not in the least conjecture. Had she said to the little banker, Go, because I must think it over alone? It did not seem strong enough. Or had she said, Go, and on your return you shall have my answer? Notadequate either, I thought. Or had it been, If you don't go, it shallbe "no, " to-day and forever? This last was better; but there was notelling, nor did Beverly Rodgers, to whom I propounded all my theories, have any notion of what was between Hortense and Charley. He only knewthat Charley was quite aware of the existence of John, but had alwaysbeen merely amused at the notion of him. 

"So have you been merely amused, " I reminded him. 

"Not since that look I saw her give him, old chap. I know she wants him, only not why she wants him. And Charley, you know--well, of course, poorCharley's a banker, just a banker and no more; and a banker is merelythe ace in the same pack where the drummer is the two-spot. Our Americancivilization should be called Drummer's Delight--and there's nothing inyour fire-eater to delight a drummer: he's a gentleman, he'll be onlyso-so rich, and he's away back out of the lime-light, while poor oldCharley's a bounder, and worth forty millions anyhow, and right in thecentre of the glare. How should he see any danger in John?"

"I wonder if he hasn't begun to?"

"Well, perhaps. He and Hortense have been 'talking business'; I knowthat. Oh--and why do you think she said he must go to New York? To makea better deal for the fire-eater's phosphates than his fuddling oldtrustee here was going to close with. Charley said that could bearranged by telegram. But she made him go himself! She's extraordinary. He'll arrive in town to-morrow, he'll leave next day, he'll reach hereby the Southern on Saturday night in time for our Sunday yacht picnic, and then something has got to happen, I should think. "

Here was another key, unlocking a further piece of knowledge for me. Ihad not been able to guess why Hortense should be keeping Charley "on";but how natural was this policy, when understood clearly! She stillneeded Charley's influence in the world of affairs. Charley's finalservice was to be the increasing of his successful rival's fortune. Iwondered what Charley would do, when the full extent of his usefulnessdawned upon him; and with wonder renewed I thought of General Rieppe, and this daughter he had managed to beget. Surely the mother ofHortense, whoever she may have been, must have been a very richlyendowed character!

"Something has most certainly got to happen and soon, " I said to BeverlyRodgers. "Especially if my busy boarding-house bodies are right insaying that the invitations for the wedding are to be out on Monday. "

Well, I had Friday, I had Udolpho; and there, while on that excursion, when I should be alone with John Mayrant during many hours, andespecially the hours of deep, confidential night, I swore to myself onoath I would say to the boy the last word, up to the verge of offense, that my wits could devise. Apart from a certain dramatic excitement asof battle--battle between Hortense and me--I truly wished to help himout of the miserable mistake his wrong standard, his chivalry goneperverted, was spurring him on to make; and I had a comic image ofmyself, summoning Miss Josephine, summoning Miss Eliza, summoning Mrs. Gregory and Mrs. Weguelin, and the whole company of aunts and cousins, and handing to them the rescued John with the single but sufficientsyllable: "There!"

He was in apparent spirits, was John, at that hour of our departurefor Udolpho; he pretended so well that I was for a while altogetherdeceived. He had wished to call for me with the conveyance in which heshould drive us out into the lonely country through the sunny afternoon;but instead, I chose to walk round to where he lived, and where Ifound him stuffing beneath the seats of the vehicle the baskets and theparcels which contained the provisions for our ample supper. 

"I have never seen you drink hearty yet, and now I purpose to, " saidJohn. 

As the packing was finishing Miss Josephine St. Michael came by; and thesight of the erect old lady reminded me that of all Kings Port figuresknown to me and seen in the garden paying their visit of ceremony toHortense, she alone--she and Eliza La Heu--had been absent. Eliza'sdeclining to share in that was well-nigh inevitable, but Miss Josephinewas another matter. Perhaps she had considered her sister's going thereto be enough; at any rate, she had not been party to the surrender, and this gave me whimsical satisfaction. Moreover, it had evidentlyoccasioned no ruffle in the affectionate relations between herself andJohn. 

"John, " said she, "as you drive by, do get me a plumber. "

"Much better get a burglar, Aunt Josephine. Cheaper in the end, andneater work. "

It was thus, at the outset, that I came to believe John's spirits werehigh; and this illusion he successfully kept up until after we had leftthe plumber and Kings Port several sordid miles behind us; theapproach to Kings Port this way lies through dirtiest Africa. Johnwas loquacious; John discoursed upon the Replacers; Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael had quite evidently expressed to her own circle what she thoughtof them; and the town in consequence, although it did not see them ortheir automobiles, because it appeared they were gone some twenty milesinland upon an excursion to a resort where was a large hotel, and alittle variety in the way of some tourists of the Replacer stripe, --thetown kept them well in its mind's eye. The automobiles would havesufficed to bring them into disrepute, but Kings Port had a betterreason in their conduct in the church; and John found many things tosay to me, as we drove along, about Bohm and Charley and Kitty. Gazza heforgot, although, as shall appear in its place, Gazza was likely to livea long while in his memory. Beverly Rodgers he, of course, recognizedas being a gentleman--it was clear that Beverly met with Kings Port'sapproval--and, from his Newport experiences, John was able to make outquite as well as if he had heard Beverly explain it himself the wholewise philosophic system of joining with the Replacers in order that yoube not replaced yourself. 

"In his shoes mightn't I do the same?" he surmised. "I fear I'm not asSpartan as my aunts--only pray don't mention it to them!"

And then, because I had been answering him with single syllables, orwith nods, or not at all, he taxed me with my taciturnity; he even wentso far as to ask me what thoughts kept me so silent--which I did nottell him. 

"I am wondering, " I told him instead, "how much they steal every week. "

"Those financiers?"

"Yes. Bohm is president of an insurance company, and Charley's adirector, and reorganizes railroads. "

"Well, if other people share your pleasant opinion of them, how do theyget elected?"

"Other people share their pleasant spoils--senators, vestrymen--youcan't be sure who you're sitting next to at dinner any more. Come liveNorth. You'll find the only safe way is never to know anybody worth morethan five millions--if you wish to keep the criminal classes off yourvisiting list. "

This made him merry. "Put 'em in jail, then!"

"Ah, the jail!" I returned. "It's the great American joke. It reversesthe rule of our smart society. Only those who have no incomes areadmitted. "

"But what do you have laws and lawyers for?"

"To keep the rich out of jail. It's called 'professional etiquette. '"

"Your picture flatters!"

"You flatter me; it's only a photograph. Come North and see. "

"One might think, from your account, the American had rather be bad thangood. "

"O dear, no! The American had much rather be good than bad!"

"Your admission amazes me!"

"But also the American had rather be rich than good. And he is havinghis wish. And money's golden hand is tightening on the throat of libertywhile the labor union stabs liberty in the back--for trusts and unionsare both trying to kill liberty. And the soul of Uncle Sam has turnedinto a dollar-inside his great, big, strong, triumphant flesh; so thateven his new religion, his own special invention, his last offering tothe creeds of the world, his gatherer of converted hordes, his ChristianScience, is based upon physical benefit. "

John touched the horses. "You're particularly cheerful to-day!"

"No. I merely summarize what I'm seeing. "

"Well, a moral awakening will come, " he declared. 

"Inevitably. To-morrow, perhaps. The flesh has had a good, long, prosperous day, and the hour of the spirit must be near striking. Andthe moral awakening will be followed by a moral slumber, since, inthe uncomprehended scheme of things, slumber seems necessary; and youneedn't pull so long a face, Mr. Mayrant, because the slumber will befollowed by another moral awakening. The alcoholic society girlyou don't like will very probably give birth to a water-drinkingdaughter--who in her turn may produce a bibulous progeny: how often mustI tell you that nothing is final?"

John Mayrant gave the horses a somewhat vicious lash after these lastwords of mine; and, as he made no retort to them, we journeyed somelittle distance in silence through the mild, enchanting light of thesun. My deliberate allusion to alcoholic girls had made plain what Ihad begun to suspect. I could now discern that his cloak of gayetyhad fallen from him, leaving bare the same harassed spirit, the samerestless mood, which had been his upon the last occasion when we hadtalked at length together upon some of the present social and politicalphases of our republic--that day of the New Bridge and the advent ofHortense. Only, upon that day, he had by his manner in some subtlefashion conveyed to me a greater security in my discretion than I felthim now to entertain. His many observations about the Replacers, withalways the significant and conspicuous omission of Hortense, proved moreand more, as I thought it over, that his state was unsteady. Even now, he did not long endure silence between us; yet the eagerness which hethrew into our discussions did not, it seemed to me, so much proceedfrom present interest in their subjects (though interest there was attimes) as from anxiety lest one particular subject, ever present withhim, should creep in unawares. So much I, at any rate, concluded, andbided my time for the creeping in unawares, content meanwhile toparry some of the reproaches which he now and again cast at me with anearnestness real or feigned. 

We had made now considerable progress, and were come to a space of sandand cabins and intersecting railroad tracks, where freight cars andlocomotives stood, and negroes of all shapes, but of one lowering andragged appearance, lounged and stared. 

"There used to be a murder here about once a day, " said John, "beforethe dispensary system. Now, it is about once a week. "

"That law is of benefit, then?" I inquired. 

"To those who drink the whiskey, possibly; certainly to those who sellit!" And he condensed for me the long story of the state dispensary, which in brief appeared to be that South Carolina had gone into theliquor business. The profits were to pay for compulsory education; theliquor was to be pure; society and sobriety were to be advanced: suchhad been the threefold promise, of which the threefold fulfillmentwas--defeat of the compulsory education bill, a political monopolyenriching favored distillers, "and lately, " said John, "a thoroughlydemocratic whiskey for the plain people. Pay ten cents for a bottle ofX, if you're curious. It may not poison you--but the murders are comingup again. "

"What a delightful example of government ownership!" I exclaimed. 

But John in Kings Port was not in the way of hearing that cure-allpolicy discussed, and I therefore explained it to him. He did not seemto grasp my explanation. 

"I don't see how it would change anything, " he remarked, "beyondswitching the stealing from one set of hands to another. "

I put on a face of concern. "What? You don't believe in our patentAmerican short-cuts?"

"Short-cuts?"

"Certainly. Short-cuts to universal happiness, universal honesty, universal everything. For instance: Don't make a boy study four yearsfor a college degree; just cut the time in half, and you've got ashort-cut to education. Write it down that man is equal. That settlesit. You'll notice how equal he is at once. Write it down that the negroshall vote. You'll observe how instantly he is fit for the suffrage. Now they want it written down that government shall take all the wickedcorporations, because then corruption will disappear from the face ofthe earth. You'll find the farmers presently having it written down thatall hens must hatch their eggs in a week, and next, a league of earnestwomen will advocate a Constitutional amendment that men only shall bringforth children. Oh, we Americans are very thorough!" And I laughed. 

But John's face was not gay. "Well, " he mused, "South Carolina took ashort-cut to pure liquor and sober citizens--and reached instead a newden of thieves. Is the whole country sick?"

"Sick to the marrow, my friend; but young and vigorous still. A nationin its long life has many illnesses before the one it dies of. But weshall need some strong medicine if we do not get well soon. "

"What kind?"

"Ah, that's beyond any one! And we have several things the matter withus--as bad a case, for example, of complacency as I've met in history. Complacency's a very dangerous disease, seldom got rid of without thepurge of a great calamity. And worse, where does our dishonesty begin, and where end? The boy goes to college, and there in football it awaitshim; he graduates, and in the down-town office it smirks at him; herises into the confidence of his superiors, the town's chief citizens, and finds their gray hairs crowned with it, --the very men he has lookedup to, believed in, his ideals, his examples, the merchant prince, the railroad magnate, the president of insurance companies--all dirtyrascals! Presently he faces worldly success or failure, and then, inthe new ocean of mind that has swallowed morals up, he sinks with hisisolated honesty, like a fool, or swims to respectability with hisbrother knaves. And into this mess the immigrant sewage of Europe issteadily pouring. Such is our continent to-day, with all its fair windsand tides and fields favorable to us, and only our shallow, complacent, dishonest selves against us! But don't let these considerations make yougloomy; for (I must say it again) nothing is final; and even if we rotbefore we ripen--which would be a wholly novel phenomenon--we shall havemade our contribution to mankind in demonstrating by our collapse thatthe sow's ear belongs with the rest of the animal, and not in the votingbooth or the legislature, and that the doctrine of universal suffrageshould have waited until men were born honest and equal. That in itselfwould be a memorable service to have rendered. "

We had come into the divine, sad stillness of the woods, where the warmsunlight shone through the gray moss, lighting the curtained solitudesaway and away into the depths of the golden afternoon; and somewhereamid the miles of sleeping wilderness sounded the hoarse honk of theautomobile. The Replacers were abroad, enjoying what they could in thiscountry where they did not belong, and which did not as yet belong tothem. Once again we heard their honk off to our left, from a fartherdistance, and I am glad to say that we did not see them at all. 

"If, " said John Mayrant, "what you have said is true, the nation hadbetter get on its knees and pray God to give it grace. "

I looked at the boy and saw that his countenance had grown very fine. "The act, " I said, "would bring grace, wherever it comes from. "

"Yes, " he assented. "If in the stars and awfulness of space there'snothing, that does not trouble me; for my greater self is inside me, safe. And our country has a greater self somewhere. Think!"

"I do not have to think, " I replied, "when I know the nobleness we haverisen to at times. "

"And I, " he pursued, "happen to believe it is not all only stars andspace; and that God, as much as any ship-builder, rejoices to watchevery tiniest boat meet and brave the storm. "

Out of his troubles he had brought such mood, sweetness instead ofbitterness; he was saying as plainly as if his actual words said it, "Misfortune has come to me, and I am going to make the best of it. " Hisnobleness, his moral elegance, compelled him to this, and I envied him, not sure if I myself, thus placed, would acquit myself so well. Andthere was in his sweetness a contagion that strangely reconciled me tothe troubled aspects of our national hour. I thought, "Invisible amongour eighty millions there is a quiet legion living untainted in thedepths, while the yellow rich, the prismatic scum and bubbles, boil onthe surface. " Yes, he had accidentally helped me, and I wished doublythat I might help him. It was well enough he should feel he must notshirk his duty, but how much better if he could be led to see thatmarrying where he did not love was no duty of his. 

I knew what I had to say to him, but lacked the beginning of it; andof this beginning I was in search as we drove up among the live-oaks ofUdolpho to the little club-house, or hunting lodge, where a negro andhis wife received us, and took the baskets and set about preparingsupper. My beginning sat so heavily upon my attention that I tookscant notice of Udolpho as we walked about its adjacent grounds in thetwilight before supper, and John Mayrant pointed out to me its fine oldtrees, its placid stream, and bade me admire the snug character of thehunting lodge, buried away for bachelors' delights deep in the heart ofthe pleasant forest. I heard him indulging in memories and anecdotes ofdate sittings after long hunts; but I was myself always on a hunt for mybeginning, and none of his words clearly reached my intelligence until Iwas aware of his reciting an excellently pertinent couplet:--

 "If you would hold your father's land, You must wash your throat before your hand--"

and found myself standing by the lodge table, upon which he had set twoglasses, containing, I soon ascertained, gin, vermouth, orange bitters, and a cherry at the bottom--all which he had very skillfully mingledhimself in the happiest proportions. 

"The poetry, " he remarked, "is hereditary in my family;" and settingdown the empty glasses we also washed our hands. A moon half-grownlooked in at the window from the filmy darkness, and John, catchingsight of it, paused with the wet soap in his hand and stared out at thedimly visible trees. "Oh, the times, the times!" he murmured to himself, gazing long; and then with a sort of start he returned to the presentmoment, and rinsed and dried his hands. Presently we were sitting at thetable, pledging each other in well-cooled champagne; and it was not longafter this that not only the negro who waited on us was plainly revelingin John's remarks, but also the cook, with her bandannaed ebony headpoked round the corner of the kitchen door, was doing her utmost to loseno word of this entertainment. For John, taking up the young and theold, the quick and the dead, of masculine Kings Port, proceeded tonarrate their private exploits, until by coffee-time he had unrolled forme the richest tapestry of gayeties that I remember, and I sat withoutbreath, tearful and aching, while the two negroes had retired far intothe kitchen to muffle their emotions. 

"Tom, oh Tom! you Tom!" called John Mayrant; and after the man had comefrom the kitchen: "You may put the punch-bowl and things on the table, and clear away and go to bed. My Great-uncle Marston Chartain, " hecontinued to me, "was of eccentric taste, and for the last twenty yearsof his life never had anybody to dinner but the undertaker. " He pausedat this point to mix the punch, and then resumed: "But for all that, heappears to have been a lively old gentleman to the end, and left us hisversion of a saying which is considered by some people an improvement onthe original, 'Cherchez la femme. ' Uncle Marston had it, 'Hunt the otherwoman. ' Don't go too fast with that punch; it isn't as gentle as itseems. "

But John and his Uncle Marston had between them given me my beginning, and, as I sat sipping my punch, I ceased to hear the anecdotes whichfollowed. I sat sipping and smoking, and was presently aware of thedeepening silence of the night, and of John no longer at the table, butby the window, looking out into the forest, and muttering once more, "Oh, the times, the times!"

"It's always a triangle, " I began. 

He turned round from his window. "Triangle?" He looked at my glass ofpunch, and then at me. "Go easy with the Bombo, " he repeated. 

"Bombo?" I echoed. "You call this Bombo? You don't know how remarkablethat is, but that's because you don't know Aunt Carola, who is veryremarkable, too. Well, never mind her now. Point is, it's always atriangle. "

"I haven't a doubt of it, " he replied. 

"There you're right. And so was your uncle. He knew. Triangle. " Here Ifound myself nodding portentously at John, and beating the table with myfinger very solemnly. 

He stood by his window seeming to wait for me. And now everything inthe universe grew perfectly clear to me; I rose on mastering tides ofthought, and all problems lay disposed of at my feet, while deliciousstrength and calm floated in my brain and being. Nothing was difficultfor me. But I was getting away from the triangle, and there was Johnwaiting at the window, and I mustn't say too much, mustn't say too much. My will reached out and caught the triangle and brought it close, and Isaw it all perfectly clear again. 

"What are they all, " I said, "the old romances? You take Paris and Helenand Menelaus. What's that? You take Launcelot and Arthur and Guinevere. You take Paola and Francesca and her husband, what's-his-name, orTristram and Iseult and Mark. Two men, one woman. Triangle and trouble. Other way around you get Tannhauser and Venus and Elizabeth; two women, one man; more triangle and more trouble. Yes. " And I nodded at himagain. The tide of my thought was pulling me hard away from this toother important world-problems, but my will held, struggling, and I keptto it. 

"You wait, " I told him. "I know what I mean. Trouble is, so hard toadvise him right. "

"Advise who right?" inquired John Mayrant. 

It helped me wonderfully. My will gripped my floating thoughts and heldthem to it. "Friend of mine in trouble; though why he asks me when I'mnot married--I'd be married now, you know, but afraid of only one wife. Man doesn't love twice; loves thrice, four, six, lots of times; but theysay only one wife. Ought to be two, anyhow. Much easier for man to marrythen. "

"Wouldn't it be rather immoral?" John asked. 

"Morality is queer thing. Like kaleidoscope. New patterns all the time. Abraham and wives--perfectly respectable. You take Pharaohs--or kings ofthat sort--married own sisters. All right then. Perfectly horrible now, of course. But you ask men about two wives. They'd say something to besaid for that idea. Only there are the women, you know. They'd never. But I'm going to tell my friend he's doing wrong. Going to write himto-night. Where's ink?"

"It won't go to-night, " said John. "What are you going to tell him?"

"Going to tell him, since only one wife, wicked not to break hisengagement. "

John looked at me very hard, as he stood by the window, leaning on thesill. But my will was getting all the while a stronger hold, and mythoughts were less and less inclined to stray to other world-problems;moreover, below the confusion that still a little reigned in them wasthe primal cunning of the old Adam, the native man, quite untroubled andalert--it saw John's look at me and it prompted my course. 

"Yes, " I said. "He wants the truth from me. Where's his letter? No harmreading you without names. " And I fumbled in my pocket. 

"Letter gone. Never mind. Facts are: friend's asked girl. Girl's saidyes. Now he thinks he's bound by that. "

"He thinks right, " said John. 

"Not a bit of it. You take Tannhauser. Engagement to Venus all amistake. Perfectly proper to break it. Much more than proper. Onlyhonorable thing he could do. I'm going to write it to him. Where's ink?"And I got up. 

John came from his window and sat down at the table. His glass wasempty, his cigar gone out, and he looked at me. But I looked round theroom for the ink, noting in my search the big fireplace, simple, wooden, unornamented, but generous, and the plain plaster walls of the lodge, whereon hung two or three old prints of gamebirds; and all the while Isaw John out of the corner of my eye, looking at me. 

He spoke first. "Your friend has given his word to a lady; he must standby it like a gentleman. 

"Lot of difference, " I returned, still looking round the room, "betweenspirit and letter. If his heart has broken the word, his lips can't makehim a gentleman. "

John brought his fist down on the table. "He had no business to getengaged to her! He must take the consequences. "

That blow of the fist on the table brought my thoughts wholly clear andfixed on the one subject; my will had no longer to struggle with them, they worked of themselves in just the way that I wanted them to do. 

"If he's a gentleman, he must stand to his word, " John repeated, "unlessshe releases him. "

I fumbled again for my letter. "That's just about what he says himself, "I rejoined, sitting down. "He thinks he ought to take the consequences. "

"Of course!" John Mayrant's face was very stern as he sat in judgment onhimself. 

"But why should she take the consequences?" I asked. 

"What consequences?"

"Being married to a man who doesn't want her, all her life, untildeath them do part. How's that? Having the daily humiliation of hisindifference, and the world's knowledge of his indifference. How's that?Perhaps having the further humiliation of knowing that his heart belongsto another woman. How's that? That's not what a girl bargains for. Hisstanding to his word is not an act of honor, but a deception. And intalking about 'taking the consequences, ' he's patting his personalsacrifice on the back and forgetting all about her and the sacrificehe's putting her to. What's the brief suffering of a broken engagementto that? No: the true consequences that a man should shoulder for makingsuch a mistake is the poor opinion that society holds of him for placinga woman in such a position; and to free her is the most honorable thinghe can do. Her dignity suffers less so than if she were a wife chaineddown to perpetual disregard. "

John, after a silence, said: "That is a very curious view. "

"That is the view I shall give my friend, " I answered. "I shall tell himthat in keeping on he is not at bottom honestly thinking of the girl andher welfare, but of himself and the public opinion he's afraid of, ifhe breaks his engagement. And I shall tell him that if I'm in churchand they come to the place where they ask if any man knows just cause orimpediment, I shall probably call out, 'He does! His heart's not init. This is not marriage that he's committing. You're pronouncing yourblessing upon a fraud. '"

John sat now a long time silent, holding his extinct cigar. The lampwas almost burned dry; we had blown out the expiring candles some whilesince. "That is a very curious view, " he repeated. "I should like tohear what your friend says in answer. "

This finished our late sitting. We opened the door and went out for abrief space into the night to get its pure breath into our lungs, andlook to the distant place where the moon had sailed. Then we went tobed, or rather, I did; for the last thing that I remembered was John, standing by the window of our bedroom still dressed, looking out intothe forest. 

XX: What She Wanted Him For

He was neither at the window, nor in his bed, nor anywhere else to beseen, when I opened my eyes upon the world next morning; nor did anyanswer come when I called his name. I raised myself and saw outside thegreat branches of the wood, bathed from top to trunk in a sunshine thatwas no early morning's light; and upon this, the silence of the housespoke plainly to me not of man still sleeping, but of man long risen andgone about his business. I stepped barefoot across the wooden floor towhere lay my watch, but it marked an unearthly hour, for I had neglectedto wind it at the end of our long and convivial evening--of which myhead was now giving me some news. And then I saw a note addressed to mefrom John Mayrant. 

"You are a good sleeper, " it began, "but my conscience is clear asto the Bombo, called by some Kill-devil, about which I hope you willremember that I warned you. "

He hoped I should remember! Of course I remembered everything; why didhe say that? An apology for his leaving me followed; he had been obligedto take the early train because of the Custom House, where he wasserving his final days; they would give me breakfast when ever I shouldbe ready for it, and I was to make free of the place; I had better visitthe old church (they had orders about the keys) and drive myself intoKings Port after lunch; the horses would know the way, if I did not. Itwas the boy's closing sentence which fixed my attention wholly, tookit away from Kill-devil Bombo and my Aunt Carola's commission, for theexecution of which I now held the clue, and sent me puzzling for theright interpretation of his words:--

"I believe that you will help your friend by that advice which startledme last night, but which I now begin to see more in than I did. Onlybetween alternate injuries, he may find it harder to choose which is theleast he can inflict, than you, who look on, find it. For in followingyour argument, he benefits himself so plainly that the benefit to theother person is very likely obscured to him. But, if you wish to, tellhim a Southern gentleman would feel he ought to be shot either way. That's the honorable price for changing your mind in such a case. "

No interpretation of this came to me. I planned and carried out my dayaccording to his suggestion; a slow dressing with much cold water, aslow breakfast with much good hot coffee, a slow wandering beneath thedreamy branches of Udolpho, --this course cleared my head of the Bombo, and brought back to me our whole evening, and every word I had saidto John, except that I had lost the solution which, last night, thetriangle had held for me. At that moment, the triangle, and my wholedealing with the subject of monogamy, had seemed to contain thesimplicity of genius; but it had all gone now, and I couldn't getit back; only, what I had contrived to say to John about his ownpredicament had been certainly well said; I would say that over againto-day. It was the boy and the meaning of his words which escaped mestill, baffled me, and formed the whole subject of my attention, evenwhen I was inside the Tern Creek church; so that I retain nothingof that, save a general quaintness, a general loneliness, a littledeserted, forgotten token of human doings long since done, standingon its little acre of wilderness amid that solitude which suggests thedeparted presence of man, and which is so much more potent in the flavorof its desolation than the virgin wilderness whose solitude is stillwaiting for man to come. 

It made no matter whether John had believed in the friend to whom Iintended writing advice, or had seen through and accepted in good partmy manoeuvre; he had considered my words, that was the point; and he hadnot slept in his bed, but on it, if sleep had come to him at all; thisI found out while dressing. Several times I read his note over. "Betweenalternate injuries he may find it harder to choose. " This was not ananswer to me, but an explanation of his own perplexity. At times itsounded almost like an appeal, as if he were saying, "Do not blame mefor not being convinced;" and if it was such appeal, why, then, takenwith his resolve to do right at any cost, and his night of inwardcontention, it was poignant. "I believe that you will help your friend. "Those words sounded better. But--"tell him a Southern gentleman ought tobe shot either way. " What was the meaning of this? A chill import rosefrom it into my thoughts, but that I dismissed. To die on accountof Hortense! Such a thing was not to be conceived. And yet, given ahigh-strung nature, not only trapped by its own standards, but alsowrought upon during many days by increasing exasperation and unhappinesswhile helpless in the trap, and with no other outlook but the trap: thechill import returned to me more than once, and was reasoned away, as, with no attention to my surroundings, I took a pair of oars, and gotinto a boat belonging to the lodge, and rowed myself slowly among thesluggish windings of Tern Creek. 

Whence come those thoughts that we ourselves feel shame at? It shamedme now, as I pulled my boat along, that I should have thoughts of Johnwhich needed banishing. What tale would this be to remember of a boy'slife, that he gave it to buy freedom from a pledge which need neverhave been binding? What pearl was this to cast before the sophisticatedHortense? Such act would be robbed of its sadness by its absurdity. Yet, surely, the bitterest tragedies are those of which the central anguishis lost amid the dust of surrounding paltriness. If such a thing shouldhappen here, no one but myself would have seen the lonely figure of JohnMayrant, standing by the window and looking out into the dark quiet ofthe wood; his name would be passed down for a little while as the nameof a fool, and then he would be forgotten. "I believe that you will helpyour friend. " Yes; he had certainly written that, and it now came to methat I might have said to him one thing more: Had he given Hortense thechance to know what his feelings to her had become? But he would merelyhave answered that here it was the duty of a gentleman to lie. Or, hadhe possibly, at Newport, ever become her lover too much for any escapingnow? Had his dead passion once put his honor in a pawn which onlymarriage could redeem? This might fit all that had come, so far; andstill, with such a two as they, I should forever hold the boy thewoman's victim. But this did not fit what came after. Perhaps it was thelate sitting of the night before, and the hushed and strange solitudeof my surroundings now, that had laid my mind open to all these thoughtswhich my reason, in dealing with, answered continually, one by one, yetwhich returned, requiring to be answered again; for there are times whenour uncomfortable eyes see through the appearances we have arranged fordaily life, into the actualities which lie forever behind them. 

Going about thus in my boat, I rowed sleepiness into myself, and pushedinto a nook where shade from some thick growth hid the boat and me fromthe sun; and there, almost enmeshed in the deep lattice of green, Iplaced my coat beneath my head, and prone in the boat's bottom I driftedinto slumber. Once or twice my oblivion was pierced by the roaming honkof the automobile; but with no more than the half-melted consciousnessthat the Replacers were somewhere in the wood, oblivion closed over meagain; and when it altogether left me, it was because of voices near meon the water, or on the bank. Their calls and laughter pushed themselvesinto my drowsiness, and soon after I grew aware that the Replacerswere come here to see what was to be seen at Udolpho--the club, the oldchurch, a country place with a fine avenue--and that it was the churchthey now couldn't get into, because my visit had disturbed the usualwhereabouts of the key, of which Gazza was now going in search. I couldhave told him where to find it, but it pleased me not to disturb myselffor this, as I listened to him assuring Kitty that it was probablyin the cabin beyond the bridge, but not to be alarmed if he did notimmediately return with it. Kitty, not without audible mirth, assuredhim that they should not be alarmed at all, to which the voice ofHortense supplemented, "Not at all. " They were evidently in a boat, which Hortense herself was rowing, and which she seemed to bring tothe bank, where I gathered that Kitty got out and sat while Hortenseremained in the boat. There was the little talk and movement which goeswith borrowing of a cigarette, a little exclamation about not fallingout, accompanied by the rattle of a displaced oar, and then stillness, and the smell of tobacco smoke. 

Presently Kitty spoke. "Charley will be back to-night. "

To this I heard no reply. 

"What did his telegram say?" Kitty inquired, after another silence. 

"It's all right. " This was Hortense. Her slow, rich murmur was asdeliberate as always. 

"Mr. Bohm knew it would be, " said Kitty. "He said it wouldn't take fiveminutes' talk from Charley to get a contract worth double what they weregoing to accept. "

After this, nothing came to me for several minutes, save the odor of thecigarettes. 

Of course there was now but one proper course for me, namely, to utter adiscreet cough, and thus warn them that some one was within earshot. ButI didn't! I couldn't! Strength failed, curiosity won, my baser naturetriumphed here, and I deliberately remained lying quiet and hidden. It was the act of no gentleman, you will say. Well, it was; and I mustsimply confess to it, hoping that I am not the only gentleman in theworld who has, on occasion, fallen beneath himself. 

"Hortense Rieppe, " began Kitty, "what do you intend to say to my brotherafter what he has done about those phosphates?"

"He is always so kind, " murmured Hortense. 

"Well, you know what it means. "

"Means?"

"If you persist in this folly, you'll drop out. "

Hortense chose another line of speculation. "I wonder why your brotheris so sure of me?"

"Charley is a set man. And I've never seen him so set on anything as onyou, Hortense Rieppe. "

"He is always so kind, " murmured Hortense again. 

"He's a man you'll always know just where to find, " declared Kitty. "Charley is safe. He'll never take you by surprise, never fly out, neverdo what other people don't do, never make any one stare at him by theway he looks, or the way he acts, or anything he says, or--or--why, howyou can hesitate between those two men after that ridiculous, childish, conspicuous, unusual scene on the bridge--"

"Unusual. Yes, " said Hortense. 

Kitty's eloquence and voice mounted together. "I should think it wasunusual! Tearing people's money up, and making a rude, awkward fussthat everybody had to smooth over as hard as they could! Why, even Mr. Rodgers says that sort of thing isn't done, and you're always saying heknows. "

"No, " said Hortense. "It isn't done. "

"Well, I've never seen anything approaching such behavior in our set. And he was ready to go further. Nobody knows where it might have goneto, if Charley's perfect coolness hadn't rebuked him and brought him tohis senses. There's where it is, that's what I mean, Hortense, by sayingyou could always feel safe with Charley. "

Hortense put in a languid word. "I think I should always feel safe withMr. Mayrant. "

But Kitty was a simple soul. "Indeed you couldn't, Hortense! I assureyou that you're mistaken. There's where you get so wrong about mensometimes. I have been studying that boy for your sake ever since wegot here, and I know him through and through. And I tell you, you cannotcount upon him. He has not been used to our ways, and I see no promiseof his getting used to them. He will stay capable of outbreaks like thathorrid one on the bridge. Wherever you take him, wherever you puthim, no matter how much you show him of us, and the way we don't allowconspicuous things like that to occur, believe me, Hortense, he'll neverlearn, he'll never smooth down. You may brush his hair flat and keep himappearing like other people for a while, but a time will come, somethingwill happen, and that boy'll be conspicuous. Charley would never beconspicuous. "

"No, " assented Hortense. 

Kitty urged her point. "Why, I never saw or beard of anything like thaton the bridge--that is, among--among--us!"

"No, " assented Hortense, again, and her voice dropped lower with eachstatement. "One always sees the same thing. Always hears the same thing. Always the same thing. " These last almost inaudible words sank away intothe silent pool of Hortense's meditation. 

"Have another cigarette, " said Kitty. "You've let yours fall into thewater. "

I heard them moving a little, and then they must have resumed theirseats. 

"You'll drop out of it, " Kitty now pursued. 

"Into what shall I drop?"

"Just being asked to the big things everybody goes to and nobody counts. For even with the way Charley has arranged about the phosphates, it willnot be enough to keep you in our swim--just by itself. He'll weigh morethan his money, because he'll stay different--too different. "

"He was not so different last summer. "

"Because he was not there long enough, my dear. He learned bridgequickly, and of course he had seen champagne before, and nobody had timeto notice him. But he'll be married now and they will notice him, andthey won't want him. To think of your dropping out!" Kitty became veryearnest. "To think of not seeing you among us! You'll be in none of thesmall things; you'll never be asked to stay at the smart houses--why, not even your name will be in the paper! Not a foreigner you entertain, not a dinner you give, not a thing you wear, will ever be described nextmorning. And Charley's so set on you, and you're so just exactly madefor each other, and it would all be so splendid, and cosey, and jolly!And to throw all this away for that crude boy!" Kitty's disdain was highat the thought of John. 

Hortense took a little time over it "Once, " she then stated, "he told mehe could drown in my hair as joyfully as the Duke of Clarence did in hisbutt of Malmsey wine!"

Kitty gave a little scream. "Did you let him?"

"One has to guard one's value at times. "

Kitty's disdain for John increased. "How crude!"

Hortense did not make any answer. 

"How crude!" Kitty, after some silence, repeated. She seemed to havefound the right word. 

Steps sounded upon the bridge, and the voice of Gazza cried out that thestupid key was at the imbecile club-house, whither he was now going forit, and not to be alarmed. Their voices answered reassuringly, and Gazzawas heard growing distant, singing some little song. 

Kitty was apparently unable to get away from John's crudity. "Heactually said that?"

"Yes. "

"Where was it? Tell me about it, Hortense. "

"We were walking in the country on that occasion. "

Kitty still lingered with it. "Did he look--I've never had any man--Iwonder if--how did you feel?"

"Not disagreeably. " And Hortense permitted herself to laugh musically. 

Kitty's voice at once returned to the censorious tone. "Well, I callsuch language as that very--very--"

Hortense helped her. "Operatic?"

"He could never be taught in those ways either, " declared Kitty. "Youwould find his ardor always untrained--provincial. "

Once more Hortense abstained from making any answer. 

Kitty grew superior. "Well, if that's to your taste, Hortense Rieppe!"

"It was none of it like Charley, " murmured Hortense. 

"I should think not! Charley's not crude. What do you see in that man?"

"I like the way his hair curls above his ears. "

For this Kitty found nothing but an impatient exclamation. 

And now the voice of Hortense sank still deeper in dreaminess, --downto where the truth lay; and from those depths came the truth, flashingupward through the drowsy words she spoke: "I think I want him for hisinnocence. "

What light these words may have brought to Kitty, I had no chance tolearn; for the voice of Gazza returning with the key put an end to thisconversation. But I doubted if Kitty had it in her to fathom the natureof Hortense. Kitty was like a trim little clock that could tick tidilyon an ornate shelf; she could go, she could keep up with time, withthe rapid epoch to which she belonged, but she didn't really have manyworks. I think she would have scoffed at that last languorous speechas a piece of Hortense's nonsense, and that is why Hortense uttered italoud: she was safe from being understood. But in my ears it soundedthe note of revelation, the simple central secret of Hortense's fire, a flame fed overmuch with experience, with sophistication, grown coldunder the ministrations of adroitness, and lighted now by the "crudity"of John's love-making. And when, after an interval, I had rowed myboat back, and got into the carriage, and started on my long drive fromUdolpho to Kings Port, I found that there was almost nothing about allthis which I did not know now. Hortense, like most riddles when you aretold the answer, was clear:--

"I think I want him for his innocence. "

Yes; she was tired of love-making whose down had been rubbed off; shehungered for love-making with the down still on, even if she must payfor it with marriage. Who shall say if her enlightened and modern eyecould not look beyond such marriage (when it should grow monotonous) todivorce?

XXI: Hortense's Cigarette Goes Out

John was the riddle that I could not read. Among my last actions ofthis day was one that had been almost my earliest, and bedtime found mestaring at his letter, as I stood, half undressed, by my table. The calmmoon brought back Udolpho and what had been said there, as it now shonedown upon the garden where Hortense had danced. I stared at John'sletter as if its words were new to me, instead of being words that Icould have fluently repeated from beginning to end without an error; itwas as if, by virtue of mere gazing at the document, I hoped to wringmore meaning from it, to divine what had been in the mind which hadcomposed it; but instead of this, I seemed to get less from it, insteadof more. Had the boy's purpose been to mystify me, he could scarce havedone better. I think that he had no such intention, for it would havebeen wholly unlike him; but I saw no sign in it that I had really helpedhim, had really shaken his old quixotic resolve, nor did I see anyof his having found a new way of his own out of the trap. I could notbelieve that the dark road of escape had taken any lodgement in histhought, but had only passed over it, like a cloud with a heavy shadow. But these are surmises at the best: if John had formed any plan, I cannever know it, and Juno's remarks at breakfast on Sunday morning soundedstrange, like something a thousand miles away. For she spoke of thewedding, and of the fact that it would certainly be a small one. Shewent over the names of the people who would have to be invited, anddoubted if she were one of these. But if she should be, then she wouldgo--for the sake of Miss Josephine St. Michael, she declared. In short, it was perfectly plain that Juno was much afraid of being left out, andthat wild horses could not drag her away from it, if an invitation cameto her. But, as I say, this side of the wedding seemed to have nothingto do with it, when I thought of all that lay beneath; my one interestto-day was to see John Mayrant, to get from him, if not by some word, then by some look or intonation, a knowledge of what he meant to do. Therefore, disappointment and some anxiety met me when I stepped fromthe Hermana's gangway upon her deck, and Charley asked me if he wascoming. But the launch, sent back to wait, finally brought John, apologizing for his lateness. 

Meanwhile, I was pleased to find among the otherwise complete partyGeneral Rieppe. What I had seen of him from a distance held promise, andthe hero's nearer self fulfilled it. We fell to each other's lot for themost natural of reasons: nobody else desired the company of either ofus. Charley was making himself the devoted servant of Hortense, whileKitty drew Beverly, Bohm, and Gazza in her sprightly wake. To her, indeed, I made a few compliments during the first few minutes after mycoming aboard, while every sort of drink and cigar was being circulatedamong us by the cabin boy. Kitty's costume was the most markedlymaritime thing that I have ever beheld in any waters, and her whiteshoes looked (I must confess) supremely well on her pretty little feet. I am no advocate of sumptuary laws; but there should be one prohibitingbig-footed women from wearing white shoes. Did these women know what aspatulated effect their feet so shod produce, no law would be needed. Yes, Kitty was superlatively, stridently maritime; you could have knownfrom a great distance that she belonged to the very latest steam yachtclass, and that she was perfectly ignorant of the whole subject. On herleft arm, for instance, was worked a red propeller with one blade down, and two chevrons. It was the rating mark for a chief engineer, but this, had she known it, would not have disturbed her. 

"I chose it, " she told me in reply to my admiration of it, "becauseit's so pretty. Oh, won't we enjoy ourselves while those stupid oldblue-bloods in Kings Port are going to church!" And with this she gavea skip, and ordered the cabin boy to bring her a Remsen cooler. BeverlyRodgers called for dwarf's blood, and I chose a horse's neck, and soonfound myself in the society of the General. 

He was sipping whiskey and plain water. "I am a rough soldiers sir, " heexplained to me, "and I keep to the simple beverage of the camp. Had wenot 'rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we knownot of'?" And he waved a stately hand at my horse's neck. "You areacquainted with the works of Shakespeare?"

I replied that I had a moderate knowledge of them, and assured him thata horse's neck was very simple. 

"Doubtless, sir; but a veteran is ever old-fashioned. "

"Papa, " said Hortense, "don't let the sun shine upon your head. "

"Thank you, daughter mine. " They said no more; but I presently felt thatfor some reason she watched him. 

He moved farther beneath the awning, and I followed him. "Are you afather, sir? No? Then you cannot appreciate what it is to confide such ajewel as yon girl to another's keeping. " He summoned the cabin boy, whobrought him some more of the simple beverage of the camp, and I, feelingmyself scarce at liberty to speak on matters so near to him and sofar from me as his daughter's marriage, called his attention to thebeautiful aspect of Kings Port, spread out before us in a long whiteline against the blue water. 

The General immediately seized his opportunity. "'Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain!' You are acquainted with the works ofGoldsmith, sir?"

I professed some knowledge of this author also, and the General's talkflowed ornately onward. Though I had little to say to him about hisdaughter's marriage, he had much to say to me. Miss Josephine St. Michael would have been gratified to hear that her family was consideredsuitable for Hortense to contract an alliance with. "My girl is notstepping down, sir, " the father assured me; and he commended the St. Michaels and the whole connection. He next alluded tragically butvaguely to misfortunes which had totally deprived him of income. I couldnot precisely fix what his inheritance had been; sometimes he spoke ofcotton, but next it would be rice, and he touched upon sugar more thanonce; but, whatever it was, it had been vast and was gone. He told methat I could not imagine the feelings of a father who possessed a jeweland no dowry to give her. "A queen's estate should have been hers, " hesaid. "But what! 'Who steals my purse steals trash. '" And he sat up, nobly braced by the philosophic thought. But he soon was shaking hishead over his enfeebled health. Was I aware that he had been the causeof postponing the young people's joy twice? Twice had the doctorsforbidden him to risk the emotions that would attend his giving hisjewel away. He dwelt upon his shattered system to me, and, indeed, it required some dwelling on, for he was the picture of admirablepreservation. "But I know what it is myself, " he declared, "to be alover and have bliss delayed. They shall be united now. A soldier mustface all arrows. What!"

I had hoped he might quote something here, but was disappointed. His conversation would soon cease to interest me, should I lose theexcitement of watching for the next classic; and my eye wandered fromthe General to the water, where, happily, I saw John Mayrant coming inthe launch. I briskly called the General's attention to him, and wasdelighted with the unexpected result. 

"'Oh, young Lochinvar has come out of the West, '" said the General, lifting his glass. 

I touched it ceremoniously with mine. "The day will be hot, " I said;"'The boy stood on the burning deck. '"

On this I made my escape from him, and, leaving him to his whiskey andhis contemplating, I became aware that the eyes of the rest of the partywere eager to watch the greeting between Hortense and John. But therewas nothing to see. Hortense waited until her lover had made hisapologies to Charley for being late, and, from the way they met, she might have been no more to him than Kitty was. Whatever might bethought, whatever might be known, by these onlookers, Hortense set thepace of how the open secret was to be taken. She made it, for all of us, as smooth and smiling as the waters of Kings Port were this fine day. How much did they each know? I asked myself how much they had sharedin common. To these Replacers Kings Port had opened no doors; they andtheir automobile had skirted around the outside of all things. And ifCharley knew about the wedding, he also knew that it had been alreadytwice postponed. He, too, could have said, as Miss Eliza had once saidto me, "The cake is not baked yet. " The General's talk to me (I felt asI took in how his health had been the centred point) was probably theresult of previous arrangements with Hortense herself; and she quite ascertainly inspired whatever she allowed him to say to Charley. 

As for Kitty, she knew that her brother was "set"; she always came backto that. 

If Hortense found this Sunday morning a passage of particularly delicatesteering, she showed it in no way, unless by that heightened radianceand triumph of beauty which I had seen in her before. No; the splendorof the day, the luxuries of the Hermana, the conviviality of theReplacers--all melted the occasion down to an ease and enjoyment inwhich even John Mayrant, with his grave face, was not perceptible, unless, like myself, one watched him. 

It was my full expectation that we should now get under way and proceedamong the various historic sights of Kings Port harbor, but of this Isaw no signs anywhere on board the Hermana. Abeam of the foremast herboat booms remained rigged out on port and starboard, her boats ridingto painters, while her crew wore a look as generally lounging as that ofher passengers. Beverly Rodgers told me the reason: we had no pilot; thenegro Waterman engaged for this excursion in the upper waters had failedof appearance, and when Charley was for looking up another, Kitty, Bohm, and Gazza had dissuaded him. 

"Kitty, " said Beverly, "told me she didn't care about the musty oldforts and things, anyhow. "

I looked at Kitty, and heard her tongue ticking away, like the littleclock she was; she had her Bohm, she had her nautical costume and herRemsen cooler. These, with the lunch that would come in time, wereenough for her. 

"But it was such a good chance!" I exclaimed in disappointment

"Chance for what, old man?"

"To see everything--the forts, the islands--and it's beautiful, youknow, all the way to the navy yard. "

Beverly followed my glance to where the gay company was sitting amongthe cracked ice, and bottles, and cigar boxes, chattering volubly, withits back to the scenery. He gave his laisser-faire chuckle, and laid ahand on my shoulder. "Don't worry 'em with forts and islands, old boy!They know what they want. No living breed on earth knows better what itwants. "

"Well, they don't get it. "

"Ho, don't they?"

"The cold fear of ennui gnaws at their vitals this minute. "

Shrill laughter from Kitty and Gazza served to refute my theory. 

"Of course, very few know what's the matter with them, " I added. "Youseldom spot an organic disease at the start. "

"Hm, " said Beverly, lengthily. "You put a pin through some of 'em. Hortense hasn't got the disease, though. "

"Ah, she spotted it! She's taking treatment. It's likely to helpher--for a time. "

He looked at me. "You know something. "

I nodded. He looked at Hortense, who was now seated among the noisygroup with quiet John beside her. She was talking to Bohm, she had noair of any special relation to John, but there was a lustre about herthat spoke well for the treatment. 

"Then it's coming off?" said Beverly. 

"She has been too much for him, " I answered. 

Beverly misunderstood. "He doesn't look it. "

"That's what I mean. "

"But the fool can cut loose!"

"Oh, you and I have gone over all that! I've even gone over it withhim. "

Beverly looked at Hortense again. "And her fire-eater's fortune is aboutdouble what it would have been. I don't see how she's going to squareherself with Charley. "

"She'll wait till that's necessary. It isn't necessary to-day. "

We had to drop our subject here, for the owner of the Hermana approachedus with the amiable purpose, I found, of making himself civil for awhile to me. 

"I think you would have been interested to see the navy yard, " I said tohim. 

"I have seen it, " Charley replied, in his slightly foreign, carefulvoice. "It is not a navy yard. It is small politics and a big swamp. Iwas not interested. "

"Dear me!" I cried. "But surely it's going to be very fine!"

"Another gold brick sold to Uncle Sam. " Charley's words seemed alwaysto drop out like little accurately measured coins from some mintingmachine. "They should not have changed from the old place if they wanteda harbor that could be used in war-time. Here they must always keep atleast one dredge going out at the jetties. So the enemy blows up yourdredge and you are bottled in, or bottled out. It is very simple for theenemy. And, for Kings Port, navy yards do not galvanize dead trade. Itwas a gold brick. You have not been on the Hermana before?"

He knew that I had not, but he wishes to show her to me; and Isoon noted a difference as radical as it was diverting between thisbanker-yachtsman's speech when he talked of affairs on land and whenhe attempted to deal with nautical matters. The clear, dispassionatefinality of his tone when phosphates, or railroads, or navy yards, orimperial loans were concerned, left him, and changed to somethingvery like a recitation of trigonometry well memorized but not at allmastered; he could do that particular sum, but you mustn't stop him;and I concluded that I would rather have Charley for my captain duringa panic in Wall Street than in a hurricane at sea. He, too, wore highlypronounced sea clothes of the ornamental kind; and though they fittedhim physically, they hung baggily upon his unmarine spirit; giving himthe air, as it were, of a broiled quail served on oyster shells. BeverlyRodgers, the consummate Beverly, was the only man of us whose clothesseemed to belong to him; he looked as if he could sail a boat. 

While the cabin boy continued to rush among the guests with siphons, ice, and fresh refreshments, Charley became the Hermana's guidebookfor me; and our interview gave me, I may say, entertainment unalloyed, although there lay all the while, beneath the entertainment, my sadnessand concern about John. Charley was owner of the Hermana, there wasno doubt of that; she had cost him (it was not long before he told me)fifty thousand dollars, and to run her it cost him a thousand a month. Yes, he was her owner, but there it stopped, no matter with how solemna face he inspected each part of her, or spoke of her details; he was asmuch a passenger on her as myself; and this was as plain on the equallysolemn faces of his crew, from the sailing-master down through the twoquartermasters to the five deck-hands, as was the color of theHermana's stack, which was, of course, yellow. She was a pole-mast, schooner-rigged steam yacht, Charley accurately told me, with clipperbow and spiked bowsprit. 

"About a hundred tons?" I inquired. 

"Yes. A hundred feet long, beam twenty feet, and she draws twelve feet, "said Charley; and I thought I detected the mate listening to him. 

He now called my attention to the flags, and I am certain that I sawthe sailing-master hide his mouth with his hand. Some of the deck-handsseemed to gather delicately nearer to us. 

"Sunday, of course, " I said; and I pointed to the Jack flying from astaff at the bow. 

But Charley did not wish me to tell him about the flags, he wished totell me about the flags. "I am very strict about all this, " he said, hisgravity and nauticality increasing with every word. "At the fore truckflies our club burgee. "

I went through my part, giving a solemn, silent, intelligent assent. 

"That is my private signal at the main truck. It was designed by MissRieppe. "

As I again intelligently nodded, I saw the boatswain move an elbow intothe ribs of one of the quartermasters. 

"On the staff at the taffrail I have the United States yacht ensign, "Charley continued. "That's all, " he said, looking about for more flags, and (to his disappointment, I think) finding no more. For he added: "Butat twelve o'c--at eight bells, the crew's meal-flag will be in theport fore rigging. While we are at lunch, my meal-flag will be in thestarboard main rigging. "

"It should be there all day, " I was tempted to remark to him, as mywandering eye fell on the cabin boy carrying something more on a plateto Kitty. But instead of this I said: "Well, she's a beautiful boat!"

Charley shook his head. "I'm going to get rid of her. "

I was surprised. "Isn't she all right?" It seemed to me that the crewbehind us were very attentive now. 

"There is not enough refrigerator space, " said Charley. One of thedeck-hands whirled round instantly; but stolidity sat like adamant uponthe faces of the others as Charley turned in their direction, and wecontinued our tour of the Hermana. Thus the little banker let me seehis little soul, deep down; and there I saw that to pass for a realyachtsman--which he would never be able to do--was dearer to his pridethan to bring off successfully some huge and delicate matter in theworld's finance--which he could always do supremely well. "I'm just likethat, too, " I thought to myself; and we returned to the gay Kitty. 

But Kitty, despite her gayety, had serious thoughts upon her mind. Charley's attentions to me had met all that politeness required, andas we went aft again, his sister caused certain movements andrearrangements to happen with chairs and people. I didn't know this atonce, but I knew it when I found myself somehow sitting with her andJohn, and saw Hortense with Charley. Hortense looked over at Kitty witha something that had in it both raised eyebrows and a shrug, thoughthese visible signs did not occur; and, indeed, so far as anythingvisible went (except the look) you might have supposed that now Hortensehad no thoughts for any man in the world save Charley. And John wasplainly more at ease with Kitty! He began to make himself agreeable, sothat once or twice she gave him a glance of surprise. There was nothingto mark him out from the others, except his paleness in the midst oftheir redness. Yachting clothes bring out wonderfully how much you arein the habit of eating and drinking; and an innocent stranger might havesupposed that the Replacers were richly sunburned from exposure to theblazing waters of Cuba and the tropics. Kitty deemed it suitable toextol Kings Port to John. "Quaint" was the word that did most of thiswork for her; she found everything that, even the negroes; and whenshe had come to the end of it, she supposed the inside must be just as"quaint" as the outside. 

"It is, " said John Mayrant. He was enjoying Kitty. Then he becameimpertinent. "You ought to see it. "

"Do you stay inside much?" said Kitty. 

"We all do, " said John. "Some of us never come out. "

"But you came out?" Kitty suggested. 

"Oh, I've been out, " John returned. He was getting older. I doubt if thepast few years of his life had matured him as much as had the past fewdays. Then he looked at Kitty in the eyes. "And I'd always come out--ifRomance rang the bell. "

"Hm!" said Kitty. "Then you know that ring?"

"We begin to hear it early in Kings Port, " remarked John. "About the ageof fourteen. "

Kitty looked at him with an interest that now plainly revealedcuriosity also. It occurred to me that he could not have found anygreat embarrassment in getting on at Newport. "What if I rang the bellmyself?" explained Kitty. 

"Come in the evening, " returned John. "We won't go home till morning. "

Kitty kissed her hand to him, and, during the pleased giggle thatshe gave, I saw her first taking in John and then Hortense. Kittywas thinking, thinking, of John's "crudity. " And so I made a littleexperiment for myself. 

"I wonder if men seem as similar in making love as women do in receivingit?"

"They aren't!" shouted both John and Kitty, in the same indignantbreath. Their noise brought Bohm to listen to us. 

This experiment was so much a success that I promptly made anotherfor the special benefit of Bohm, Kitty's next husband. I find it oftendelightful to make a little gratuitous mischief, just to watch thevictims. I addressed Kitty. "What would you do if a man said he coulddrown in your hair as joyfully as the Duke of Clarence did in his buttof Malmsey?"

"Why--why--" gasped Kitty, "why--why--"

I suppose it gave John time; but even so he was splendid. 

"She has heard it said!" This was his triumphant shout. I should nothave supposed that Kitty could have turned any redder, but she did. Johnburied his nose in his tall glass, and gulped a choking quantity of itscontents, and mopped his face profusely; but little good that effected. There sat this altogether innocent pair, deeply suffused with thecrimson of apparent guilt, and there stood Kitty's next husband, eyeingthem suspiciously. My little gratuitous mischief was a perfect success, and remains with me as one of the bright spots in this day of pleasure. 

Vivacious measures from the piano brought Kitty to her feet. 

"There's Gazza!" she cried. "We'll make him sing!" And on the instantshe was gone down the companionway. Bohm followed her with a lessagitated speed, and soon all were gone below, leaving John and me aloneon the deck, sitting together in silence. 

John lolled back in his chair, slowly sipping at his tall glass, andneither of us made any remark. I think he wanted to ask me how I came tomention the Duke of Clarence; but I did not see how he very well could, and he certainly made no attempt to do so. Thus did we sit for sometime, hearing the piano and the company grow livelier and louder withsolos, and choruses, and laughter. By and by the shadow of the awningshifted, causing me to look up, when I saw the shores slowly changing;the tide had turned, and was beginning to run out. Land and water layin immense peace; the long, white, silent picture of the town with itssteeples on the one hand, and on the other the long, low shore, and thetrees behind. Into this rose the high voice of Gazza, singing in brokenEnglish, "Razzla-dazzla, razzla-dazzla, " while his hearers beat uponglasses with spoons--at least so I conjectured. 

"Aren't you coming, John?" asked Hortense, appearing at thecompanionway. She looked very bacchanalian. Her splendid amber hair washalf riotous, and I was reminded of the toboggan fire-escape. 

He obeyed her; and now I had the deck entirely to myself, or, rather, but one other and distant person shared it with me. The hour hadcome, the bells had struck; Charley's crew was eating its dinnerbelow forward; Charley's guests were drinking their liquor below aft;Charley's correct meal-flag was to be seen in the port fore rigging, ashe had said, red and triangular; and away off from me in the bow wasthe anchor watch, whom I dreamily watched trying to light his pipe. His matches seemed to be bad; and the brotherly thought of helpinghim drifted into my mind--and comfortably out of it again, withoutdisturbing my agreeable repose. It had been really entertaining in Johnto tell Kitty that she ought to see the inside of Kings Port; that waslike his engaging impishness with Juno. If by any possible contrivance(and none was possible) Kitty and her Replacers could have metthe inside of Kings Port, Kitty would have added one more "quaint"impression to her stock, and gone away in total ignorance of the qualityof the impression she had made--and Bohm would probably have againremarked, "Worse than Sunday. " No; the St. Michaels and the Replacerswould never meet in this world, and I see no reason that they shouldin the next. John's light and pleasing skirmish with Kitty gave me theglimpse of his capacities which I had lacked hitherto. John evidently"knew his way about, " as they say; and I was diverted to think how MissJosephine St. Michael would have nodded over his adequacy and shakenher head at his squandering it on such a companion. But it was nosquandering; the boy's heavy spirit was making a gallant "bluff" atplaying up with the lively party he had no choice but to join, and thisone saw the moment he was not called upon to play up. 

The peaceful loveliness that floated from earth and water around metriumphed over the jangling hilarity of the cabin, and I dozed away, aware that they were now all thumping furiously in chorus, while Gazzasang something that went, "Oh, she's my leetle preety poosee pet. "When I roused, it was Kitty's voice at the piano, but no change in thequality of the song or the thumping; and Hortense was stepping ondeck. She had a cigarette, her beauty flashed with devilment, and Johnfollowed her. "They are going to have an explanation, " I thought, as Isaw his face. If that were so, then Kitty had blundered in her strategyand hurt Charley's cause; for after the two came Gazza, as obviously"sent" as any emissary ever looked: Kitty took care of the singing, while Gazza intercepted any tete-a-tete. I rose and made a fourth withthem, and even as I was drawing near, the devilment in Hortense's facesank inward beneath cold displeasure. 

I had never been a welcome person to Hortense, and she made as littleeffort to conceal this as usual. Her indifferent eyes glanced at me withdrowsy insolence, and she made her beautiful, low voice as remote andinattentive as her skilful social equipment could render it. 

"It is so hot in the cabin. "

This was all she had for me. Then she looked at Gazza with returninganimation. 

"Oh, la la!" said Gazza. "If it is hot in the cabin!" And he flirted hishandkerchief back and forth. 

"I think I had the best of it, " I remarked. "All the melody and none ofthe temperature. "

Hortense saw no need of noticing me further

"The singer has the worst of it, " said Gazza. 

"But since you all sang!" I laughed. 

"Miss Rieppe, she is cool, " continued Gazza. "And she danced. It is notfair. "

John contributed nothing. He was by no means playing up now. He waslooking away at the shore. 

Gazza hummed a little fragment. "But after lunch I will sing you goodmusic. "

"So long as it keeps us cool, " I suggested. 

"Ah, no! It will not be cool music!" cried Gazza--"for those whounderstand. "

"Are those boys bathing?" Hortense now inquired. 

We watched the distant figures, and presently they flashed into thewater. 

"Oh, me!" sighed Gazza. "If I were a boy!"

Hortense looked at him. "You would be afraid. " The devilment had comeout again, suddenly and brilliantly:

"I never have been afraid!" declared Gazza. 

"You would not jump in after me, " said Hortense, taking his measure moreand more provokingly. 

Gazza laid his hand on his heart. "Where you go, I will go!"

Hortense looked at him, and laughed very slightly and lightly. 

"I swear it! I swear!" protested Gazza. 

John's eyes were now fixed upon Hortense. 

"Would you go?" she asked him

"Decidedly not!" he returned. I don't know whether he was angry oranxious. 

"Oh, yes, you would!" said Hortense; and she jumped into the water, cigarette and all. 

"Get a boat, quick, " said John to me; and with his coat flung off he wasin the river, whose current Hortense could scarce have reckoned with;for they were both already astern as I ran out on the port boat boom. 

Gazza was dancing and shrieking, "Man overboard!" which, indeed, was thecorrect expression, only it did not apply to himself. Gazza was a verysensible person. I had, as I dropped into the nearest boat, a brisksight of the sailing-master, springing like a jack-in-the-box on thedeserted deck, with a roar of "Where's that haymaker?" His reference wasto the anchor watch. The temptation to procure good matches to lighthis pipe had ended (I learned later) by proving too much for thisresponsible sailor-man, and he had unfortunately chosen for goingbelow just the unexpected moment when it had entered the daring head ofHortense to perform this extravagance. Of course, before I had pulledmany strokes, the deck of the Hermana was alive with many manifestationsof life-saving and they had most likely been in time. But I am notperfectly sure of this; the current was strong, and a surprisingdistance seemed to broaden between me and the Hermana before anotherboat came into sight around her stern. By then, or just after that (forI cannot clearly remember the details of these few anxious minutes), Ihad caught up with John, whose face, and total silence, as he grippedthe stern of the boat with one hand and held Hortense with the other, plainly betrayed it was high time somebody came. A man can swim(especially in salt water) with his shoes on, and his clothes addnothing of embarrassment, if his arms are free; but a woman's clothesdo not help either his buoyancy or the freedom of his movement. John nowlifted Hortense's two hands, which took a good hold of the boat. Frombetween her lips the dishevelled cigarette, bitten through and limp, fell into the water. The boat felt the weight of the two hands to it. 

"Take care, " I warned John. 

Hortense opened her eyes and looked at me; she knew that I meant her. "I'll not swamp you. " This was her first remark. Her next was when, after no incautious haste, I had hauled her in over the stern, Johnworking round to the bow for the sake of balance: "I was not dressed forswimming. " Very quietly did Hortense speak; very coolly, very evenly; nofainting--and no flippancy; she was too game for either. 

After this, whatever emotions she had felt, or was feeling, she showednone of them, unless it was by her complete silence. John's coming intothe boat we managed with sufficient dexterity; aided by the horrifiedCharley, who now arrived personally in the other boat, and was fortaking all three of us into that. But this was altogether unnecessary;he was made to understand that such transferences as it would occasionwere superfluous, and so one of his men stepped into our boat to help meto row back against the current; and for this I was not unthankful. 

Our return took, it appeared to me, a much longer time than everythingelse which had happened. When I looked over my shoulder at the Hermana, she seemed an incredible distance off, and when I looked again, she hadgrown so very little nearer that I abandoned this fruitless proceeding. Charley's boat had gone ahead to announce the good news to GeneralRieppe as soon as possible. But if our return was long to me, toHortense it was not so. She sat beside her lover in the stern, and Iknew that he was more to her than ever: it was her spirit also thatwanted him now. Poor Kitty's words of prophecy had come perversely true:"Something will happen, and that boy'll be conspicuous. " Well, it hadhappened with a vengeance, and all wrong for Kitty, and all wrong forme! Then I remembered Charley, last of all. My doubt as to what he wouldhave done, had he been on deck, was settled later by learning from hisown lips that he did not know how to swim. 

Yes, the sentimental world (and by that I mean the immense and mournfulpreponderance of fools, and not the few of true sentiment) would soonbe exclaiming: "How romantic! She found her heart! She had a glimpse ofDeath's angel, and in that light saw her life's true happiness!" But Ishould say nothing like that, nor would Miss Josephine St. Michael, if Iread that lady at all right. She didn't know what I did about Hortense. She hadn't overheard Sophistication confessing amorous curiosity aboutInnocence; but the old Kings Port lady's sound instinct would tell herthat a souse in the water wasn't likely to be enough to wash away theseasoning of a lifetime; and she would wait, as I should, for the daywhen Hortense, having had her taste of John's innocence, and havinggrown used to the souse in the water, would wax restless for theReplacers, for excitement, for complexity, for the prismatic life. Thenit might interest her to corrupt John; but if she couldn't, where wouldher occupation be, and how were they going to pull through?

But now, there sat Hortense in the stern, melted into whatever best shewas capable of; it had come into her face, her face was to be read--forthe first time since I had known it--and, strangely enough, I couldn'tread John's at all. It seemed happy, which was impossible. 

"Way enough!" he cried suddenly, and, at his command, the sailor and Itook in our oars. Here was Hermana's gangway, and crowding faces above, and ejaculations and tears from Kitty. Yes, Hortense would have likedthat return voyage to last longer. I was first on the gangway, and stoodto wait and give them a hand out; but she lingered, and; rising slowly, spoke her first word to him, softly:--

"And so I owe you my life. "

"And so I restore it to you complete, " said John, instantly. 

None could have heard it but myself--unless the sailor, beyond whosecomprehension it was--and I doubted for a moment if I could have heardright; but it was for a moment only. Hortense stood stiff, and then, turning, came in front of him, and I read her face for an instant longerbefore the furious hate in it was mastered to meet her father's embrace, as I helped her up the gang. 

"Daughter mine!" said the General, with a magnificent break in hisvoice. 

But Hortense was game to the end. She took Kitty's-hysterics and themen's various grades of congratulation; her word to Gazza would havebeen supreme, but for his imperishable rejoinder. 

"I told you you wouldn't jump, " was what she said. 

Gazza stretched both arms, pointing to John. "But a native! He was surerto find you!"

At this they all remembered John, whom they thus far hadn't thought of. 

"Where is that lion-hearted boy?" the General called out. 

John hadn't got out of the boat; he thought he ought to change hisclothes, he said; and when Charley, truly astonished, proffered hisentire wardrobe and reminded him of lunch, it was thank you very much, but if he could be put ashore--I looked for Hortense, to see what shewould do, but Hortense, had gone below with Kitty to change her clothes, and the genuinely hearty protestations from all the rest brought merelypleasantly firm politeness from John, as he put on again the coat hehad flung off on jumping. At least he would take a drink, urged Charley. Yes, thank you, he would; and he chose brandy-and-soda, of which hepoured himself a remarkably stiff one. Charley and I poured ourselvesmilder ones, for the sake of company. 

"Here's how, " said Charley to John. 

"Yes, here's how, " I added more emphatically. 

John looked at Charley with a somewhat extraordinary smile. "Here'sunquestionably how!" he exclaimed. 

We had a gay lunch; I should have supposed there was plenty of room inthe Hermana's refrigerator; nor did the absence of Hortense and John, the cause of our jubilation, at all interfere with the jubilationitself; by the time the launch was ready to put me ashore, Gazzahad sung several miles of "good music" and double that quantity of"razzla-dazzla, " and General Rieppe was crying copiously, and assuringeverybody that God was very good to him. But Kitty had told us all thatshe intended Hortense to remain quiet in her cabin; and she kept herword. 

Quite suddenly, as the launch was speeding me toward Kings Port, Iexclaimed aloud: "The cake!"

And, I thought, the cake was now settled forever. 

XXII: Behind the Times

It was my lot to attend but one of the weddings which Hortenseprecipitated (or at least determined) by her plunge into the water; and, truth to say, the honor of my presence at the other was not requested;therefore I am unable to describe the nuptials of Hortense and Charley. But the papers were full of them; what the female guests wore, what themale guests were worth, and what both ate and drank, were set forth inmany columns of printed matter; and if you did not happen to see this, just read the account of the next wedding that occurs among the New Yorkyellow rich, and you will know how Charley and Hortense were married;for it's always the same thing. The point of mark in this particularceremony of union lay in Charley's speech; Charley found a happy thoughtat the breakfast. The bridal party (so the papers had it) sat on adais, and was composed exclusively of Oil, Sugar, Beef, Steel, and UnionPacific; merely at this one table five hundred million dollars weresitting (so the papers computed), and it helped the bridegroom to hisidea, when, by the importunate vociferations of the company, he wasforced to get on his unwilling legs. 

"Poets and people of that sort say" (Charley concluded, after thankingthem) "that happiness cannot be bought with money. Well, I guess a poetnever does learn how to make a dollar do a dollar's work. But I am nopoet; and I have learned it is as well to have a few dollars around. AndI guess that my friends and I, right here at this table, could organizea corner in happiness any day we chose. And if we do, we will let youall in on it. "

I am told that the bride looked superb, both in church and at thereception which took place in the house of Kitty; and that GeneralRieppe, in spite of his shattered health, maintained a noble appearancethrough the whole ordeal of parting with his daughter. I noticed thatBeverly Rodgers and Gazza figured prominently among the invited guests:Bohm did not have to be invited, for some time before the wedding he hadbecome the husband of the successfully divorced Kitty. So much for thenuptials of Hortense and Charley; they were, as one paper pronouncedthem, "up to date and distingue. " The paper omitted the accent inthe French word, which makes it, I think, fit this wedding even morehappily. 

"So Hortense, " I said to myself as I read the paper, "has squaredherself with Charley after all. " And I sat wondering if she wouldbe happy. But she was not constructed for happiness. You cannot beconstructed for all the different sorts of experiences which this worldoffers: each of our natures has its specialty. Hortense was constructedfor pleasure; and I have no doubt she got it, if not through Charley, then by other means. 

The marriage of Eliza La Heu and John Mayrant was of a differentquality; no paper pronounced it "up to date, " or bestowed any otheradjectival comments upon it; for, being solemnized in Kings Port, wheresuch purely personal happenings are still held (by the St. Michaelfamily, at any rate) to be no business of any one's save thoseimmediately concerned, the event escaped the famishment of publicity. Yes, this marriage was solemnized, a word that I used above withoutforethought, and now repeat with intention; for certainly no respecterof language would write it of the yellow rich and their blatant unions. If you're a Bohm or a Charley, you may trivialize or vulgarize orbestialize your wedding, but solemnize it you don't, for that is not "upto date. "

And to the marriage of Eliza and John I went; for not only was the honorof my presence requested, but John wrote me, in both their names, apersonal note, which came to me far away in the mountains, whither I hadgone from Kings Port. This was the body of the note:--

"To the formal invitation which you will receive, Miss La Heu joins herwish with mine that you will not be absent on that day. We shouldboth really miss you. Miss La Heu begs me to add that if this is notsufficient inducement, you shall have a slice of Lady Baltimore. "

Not a long note! But you will imagine how genuinely I was touched bytheir joint message. I was not an old acquaintance, and I had donelittle to help them in their troubles, but I came into the troubles;with their memory of those days I formed a part, and it was a part whichit warmed me to know they did not dislike to recall. I had actually beenpresent at their first meeting, that day when John visited the Exchangeto order his wedding-cake, and Eliza had rushed after him, because inhis embarrassment he had forgotten to tell her the date for which hewanted it. The cake had begun it, the cake had continued it, the cakehad brought them together; and in Eliza's retrospect now I doubted Ifshe could find the moment when her love for John had awakened; but ifwith women there ever is such a moment, then, as I have before said, it was when the girl behind the counter looked across at the handsome, blushing boy, and felt stirred to help him in his stumbling attempts tobe businesslike about that cake. If his youth unwittingly kindled hers, how could he or she help that? But, had he ever once known it and shownit to her during his period of bondage to Hortense, then, indeed, theflame would have turned to ice in Eliza's breast. What saved him forher was his blind steadfastness against her. That was the very thing sheprized most, once it became hers; whereas, any secret swerving towardher from Hortense during his heavy hours of probation would havedegraded John to nothing in Eliza's eyes. And so, making all this outby myself in the mountains after reading John's note, I ordered from theNorth the handsomest old china cake-dish that Aunt Carola could findto be sent to Miss Eliza La Heu with my card. I wanted to write onthe card, "Rira bien qui viva le dernier"; but alas! so many pleasantthoughts may never be said aloud in this world of ours. That I orderedchina, instead of silver, was due to my surmise that in Kings Port--orat any rate by Mrs. Weguelin and Miss Josephine St. Michael--silverfrom any one not of the family would be considered vulgar; it was only asurmise, and, of course, it was precisely the sort of thing that I couldnot verify by asking any of them. 

But (you may be asking) how on earth did all this come about? Whathappened in Kings Port on the day following that important swim whichHortense and John took together in the waters of the harbor?

I wish that I could tell you all that happened, but I can only tell youof the outside of things; the inside was wholly invisible and inaudibleto me, although we may be sure, I think, that when the circles thatwidened from Hortense's plunge reached the shores of the town, theremust have been in certain quarters a considerable splashing. I presumethat John communicated to somebody the news of his broken engagement;for if he omitted to do so, with the wedding invitations to be out thenext day, he was remiss beyond excuse, and I think this very unlikely;and I also presume (with some evidence to go on) that Hortense did not, in the somewhat critical juncture of her fortunes, allow the grass togrow under her feet--if such an expression may be used of a person whois shut up in the stateroom of a steam yacht. To me John Mayrant made nosign of any sort by word or in writing, and this is the highest proofhe ever gave me of his own delicacy, and also of his reliance uponmine; for he must have been pretty sure that I had overheard those lastdestiny-deciding words spoken between himself and Hortense in the boat, as we reached the Hermana's gangway. In John's place almost any man, even Beverly Rodgers, would have either dropped a hint at the moment, orlater sent me some line to the effect that the incident was, ofcourse, "between ourselves. " That would have been both permissible andpractical; but there it was, the difference between John of Kings Portand us others; he was not practical when it came to something "betweengentlemen, " as he would have said. The finest flower of breedingblossoms above the level of the practical, and that is why you do notfind it growing in the huge truck-garden of our age, save in cornerswhere it has not yet been uprooted. John's silence to me was somethingthat I liked very much, and he must have found that it was notmisplaced. 

The first external splash of the few that I have to narrate was anegative manifestation, and occurred at breakfast: Juno supposed if thewedding invitations would be out later in the day. The next splash wassomewhat louder on, was at dinner, when Juno inquired of Mrs. Treviseif she had received any wedding invitation. At tea time was very decidedsplashing. No invitation had come to anybody. Juno had called at five ofthe St. Michael houses and got in at none of them, and there was a rumorthat the Hermana had disappeared from the harbor. So far, none of thesplashing had wet me but I now came in for a light sprinkle. 

"Were you not on board that boat yesterday?" Juno inquired; and to seeher look at me you might have gathered that I was suspected of sinkingthe vessel. 

"A most delightful occasion!" I exclaimed, filling my face with a brightblankness. 

"Isn't he awful to speak that way about Sunday!" said the up-countrybride. 

This was a chance for the poetess, and she took it. "To me, " she mused, "every day seems fraught with an equal holiness. "

"But I should think, " observed the Briton, "that you could knock off ahymn better on Sundays. "

All this while Juno was looking at me, and I knew it, and therefore Iate my food in a kindly sort of unconscious way, until she fired anothershot at me. "There is an absurd report that somebody fell overboard. "

"Dear me!" I laughed. "So that is what it has grown to already! I did goout on the boat boom, and I did drop off--but into a boat. "

At this confession of mine the up-country bride became extraordinarilyarch on the subject of the well-known hospitality of steam yachts, andfor this I was honestly grateful to her; but Juno brooded still. "I hopethere is nothing wrong, " she said solemnly. 

Feeling that silence at this point would not be golden, I went into itwith spirit I told them of our charming party, of General Rieppe'srich store of quotations, of the strict discipline on board thewell-appointed Hermana, of the great beauty of Hortense, and her evidenthappiness when her lover was by her side. This talk of mine turned offany curiosity or suspicion which the rest of the company may have begunto entertain; but upon Juno I think it made scant impression, savecausing her to set me down as an imbecile. For there was DoctorBeaugarcon when we came into the sitting-room, who told us before anyone could even say "How-do-you-do, " that Miss Hortense Rieppe had brokenher engagement with John Mayrant, and that he had it from Mrs. Cornerly, whom he was visiting professionally. I caught the pitying look whichJuno threw at me at this news, and I was happy to have acquitted myselfso creditably in the manipulation of my secret: nobody asked me any morequestions!

There is almost nothing else to tell you of how the splashes brokeon Kings Port. Before the day when I was obliged to call in DoctorBeaugarcon's professional services (quite a sharp attack put me to bedfor half a week) I found merely the following things: the Hermana goneto New York, the automobiles and the Replacers had also disappeared, and people were divided on the not strikingly important question as towhether Hortense and the General had accompanied Charley on the yacht, or continued northward in an automobile, or taken the train. Gone, inany case, the whole party indubitably was, leaving, I must say, a senseof emptiness: the comedy was over, the players departed. I never heardany one, not even Juno, doubt that it was Hortense who had broken theengagement; this part of the affair was conducted by the principalswith great skill. Hortense had evidently written her version to theCornerlys, and not a word to any other effect ever came from John'smouth, of course. One result I had not looked for, though it was anatural one: if the old ladies had felt indignation at Hortense for herdetermination to marry John Mayrant, this indignation was doubled by herdetermination not to! I fear that few of us live by logic, even in KingsPort; and then, they had all called upon her in that garden for nothing!The sudden thought of this made me laugh alone in my bed of sickness;and when I came out of it, had such a thing been possible, I should haveliked to congratulate Miss Josephine St. Michael on her absence from thegarden occasion. I said, however, nothing to her, or to any of the otherladies, upon this or any subject, for I was so unlucky as to find themnot at home when I paid my round of farewell visits. Nor (to my realdistress) did I see John Mayrant again. The boy wrote me (I received itin bed) a short, warm note of regret, with nothing else in it save thefact that he was leaving town, having become free from the Custom Houseat last. I fancy that he ran away for a judicious interval. Who wouldnot?

Was there one person to whom he told the truth before he went? Did thegirl behind the counter hear the manner in which the engagement wasbroken? Ah, none of us will ever know that! But, although I could not, without the highest impropriety, have spoken to any of the old ladiesabout this business, unless they had chosen to speak to me--and somehowI feel that after the abrupt close of it not even Mrs. GregorySt. Michael would have been likely to touch on the subject with anoutsider--there was nothing whatever to forbid my indulging in askirmish with Eliza La Heu; therefore I lunched at the Exchange on mylast day. 

"To the mountains?" she said, in reply to my information about my plansof travel. 

"Doctor Beaugarcon says nothing else can so quickly restore me. "

"Stay there for the rhododendrons, then, " she bade me. "No sight morebeautiful in all the South. "

"Town seems deserted, " I pursued. "Everybody gone. "

"Oh, not everybody!"

"All the interesting people. "

"Thank you. "

"I meant, interesting to you. "

I saw her decide not to be angry; and her decision changed and saved ourconversation from the trashy, bantering tone which it was taking, andbrought it to a pass most unexpected to both of us. 

She gave me a charming and friendly smile. "Well, you, at any rate, aregoing away. And I am really sorry for that. "

Her eyes rested upon me with perfect frankness. I was not in love withEliza La Heu, but nearer to love than I had ever been then, and it wouldhave been easy, very easy, to let one's self go straight onward intolove. There are for a man more ways of falling into that state thanromancers would have us to believe, and one of them is by an assentof the will at a certain given moment, which the heart promptlyfollows--just as a man in a moment decides he will espouse a cause, andsoon finds himself hotly fighting for it body and soul. I could havegone out of that Exchange completely in love with Eliza La Heu; but mywill did not give its assent, and I saw John Mayrant not as a rival, butas one whose happiness I greatly desired. 

"Thank you, " I said, "for telling me you are sorry I am going. Andnow, may I treat you more than ever as a friend, and tell you of acircumstance which Kings Port does not know?"

It put her on her guard. "Don't be indiscreet, " she laughed. 

"Isn't timely indiscretion discretion?"

"And don't be clever, " she said. "Tell me what you have to say--ifyou're quite sure you'll not be sorry. "

"Quite sure. There's no reason--now that the untruth is properly andsatisfactorily established--that one person should not know that JohnMayrant broke that engagement. " And I told her the whole of it. "If I'moutrageous to share this secret with you, " I concluded, "I can only saythat I couldn't stand the unfairness any longer. "

"He jumped straight in?" said Eliza. 

"Oh, straight!"

"Of course, " she murmured. 

"And just after declaring that he wouldn't. "

"Of course, " she murmured again. "And the current took them right away?"

"Instantly. "

"Was he very tired when you got to him?"

I answered this question and a number of others, backward and forward, until she had led me to cover the whole incident about twice-and-a-halftimes. Then she had a silence, and after this a reflection. 

"How well they managed it!"

"Managed what?"

"The accepted version. "

"Oh, yes, indeed!"

"And you and I will not spoil it for them, " she declared. 

As I took my final leave of her she put a flower in my buttonhole. Myreflection was then, and is now, that if she already knew the truth fromJohn himself, how well she managed it!

So that same night I took the lugubrious train which bore me with thegrossest deliberation to the mountains; and among the mountains andtheir waterfalls I stayed and saw the rhododendrons, and was preparingto journey home when the invitation came from John and Eliza. 

I have already said that of this wedding no word was in the papers. Kings Port by the war lost all material things, but not the others, among which precious privacy remains to her; and, O Kings Port, mayyou never lose your grasp of that treasure! May you never know the landwhere the reporter blooms, where if any joy or grief befall you, thepublic press rings your doorbell and demands the particulars, and if youdeny it the particulars, it makes them up and says something scurrilousabout you into the bargain. Therefore nothing was printed, morningor evening, about John and Eliza. Nor was the wedding service held inchurch to the accompaniment of nodding bonnets and gaping stragglers. Noeye not tender with regard and emotion looked on while John took Elizato his wedded wife, to live together after God's ordinance in the holystate of matrimony. 

In Royal Street, not many steps from South Place, there stands a quiethouse a little back, upon whose face sorrow has struck many blows, butmade no deep wounds yet; no scorch from the fires of war is visible, and the rending of the earthquake does not show too plainly; but therehangs about the house a gravity that comes from seeing and sufferingmuch, and a sweetness from having sheltered many generations of smilesand tears. The long linked chain of births and deaths here has not beenbroken and scattered, and the grandchildren look out of the same windowsfrom which the grandsires gazed, whose faces now in picture frames stillwatch serenely the sad present from their happy past. Therefore therooms lie in still depths of association, and from the walls, thestairs, the furniture, flows the benign influence of undispersedmemories; it sheds its tempered radiance upon the old miniatures, andupon every fresh flower that comes in from the garden; it seems to passthrough the open doors to and fro like a tranquil blessing; it is beyondjoy and pain, because time has distilled it from both of these; itis the assembled essence of kinship and blood unity, enriched by eachsucceeding brood that is born, is married, is fruitful in its turn, anddies remembered; only the balm of faith is stronger to sustain and heal;for that comes from heaven, while it is earth that gives us this; andthe sacred cup of it which our native land once held is almost empty. 

Amid this influence John and Eliza were made one, and the faces ofthe older generations grew soft beneath it, and pensive eyes becamelustrous, and into pale cheeks the rosy tint came like an echo faintlyback for a short hour. They made so little sound in their quiethappiness of congratulation that it might have been a dream; and theywere so few that the house with the sense of its memories was not lostwith the movement and crowding, but seemed still to preside over thewhole, and send down its benediction. 

When it was my turn to shake the hands of bride and groom, John asked:--

"What did your friend do with your advice?"

And I replied. "He has taken it. "

"Perhaps not that, " John returned, "but you must have helped him to seehis way. "

When the bride came to cut the cake, she called me to her and fulfilledher promise. 

"You have always liked my baking, " she said. 

"Then you made it after all, " I answered. 

"I would not have been married without doing so, " she declared sweetly. 

When the time came for them to go away, they were surrounded withaffectionate God-speeds; but Miss Josephine St. Michael waited to bethe last, standing a little apart, her severe and chiselled face turnedaside, and seeming to watch a mocking-bird that was perched in his cageat a window halfway up the stairs. 

"He is usually not so silent, " Miss Josephine said to me. "I suppose weare too many visitors for him. "

Then I saw that the old lady, beneath her severity, was deeply moved;and almost at once John and Eliza came down the stairs. Miss Josephinetook each of them to her heart, but she did not trust herself to speak;and a single tear rolled down her face, as the boy and girl continued tothe hall-door. There Daddy Ben stood, and John's gay good-by to himwas the last word that I heard the bridegroom say. While we all stoodsilently watching them as they drove away from the tall iron gate, themocking-bird on the staircase broke into melodious ripples of song. 

XXIII: Poor Aunt Carola!

And now here goes my language back into the small-clothes that it woreat the beginning of all, when I told you something of that colonialsociety, the Selected Salic Scions, dear to the heart of my Aunt. Itwere beyond my compass to approach this august body of men and womenwith the respect that is its due, did I attire myself in that moderngarment which, in the phrase of the vulgar, is denoted pants. 

You will scarce have forgot, I must suppose, the importance set by myAunt Carola upon the establishing of the Scions in new territories, wherever such persons as were both qualified by their descent and inthemselves worthy, should be found; and you will remember that Iwas bidden by her to look in South Carolina for members of the Bomboconnection which she was inclined to suspect existed in that state. Myneglect to make this inquiry for my kind Aunt now smote me sharply whenall seemed too late. John Mayrant had spoken of Kill-devil Bombo, thevery personage through whom lay Aunt Carola's claim to kingly lineage, and I had let John Mayrant go away upon his honeymoon without everquestioning him upon this subject. As I looked back upon the easewith which I might have settled the matter, and forward to my returnempty-handed to the generous relative to whom I owed this agreeableexperience of travel, I felt guilty indeed. I wrote a letter to followJohn Mayrant into whatever retreat of bliss he had betaken himself to, and I begged him earnestly to write me at his early convenience all thathe might know of Bombos in South Carolina. Consequently, I was able, onreaching home, to meet Aunt Carola with some sort of countenance, and toassure her that I expected presently to be furnished with authentic andvaluable particulars. 

I now learned that the Selected Salic Scions had greatly increased innumbers during my short absence. It appeared that the origin of thewhole movement had sprung from a needy but ingenious youth in somemanufacturing town of New England. This lad had a cousin, who hadamassed from nothing a noble fortune by inventing one day a speedyand convenient fashion of opening beer bottles; and this cousin'sachievement had set him to looking about him. He soon discovered that inour great republic everywhere there were living hundreds and thousandsof men and women who were utterly unaware that they were descended fromkings. Borrowing a little money to float him, he set up The AmericanAlmanach de Gotha and began (for the minimum sum of fifty dollarsa pedigree) to reveal to these eager people the chain of links thatconnected them with royalty. Thus, in a period of time the brevity ofwhich is incredible, this young man passed from complete indigence toa wife and four automobiles, or an automobile and four wives--I don'tremember which he had the four of. There was so much royal blood aboutthat it had spilled into several rival organizations, each bitterlywarring with the other; but my Aunt assured me that her society was theonly one that any respectable person belonged to. 

I am minded to announce a rule of discreet conduct: Never read aloudany letter that you have not first read to yourself. Had I observed thisrule--but listen:--

It so happened that Aunt Carola was at luncheon with us when the postmanbrought John Mayrant's answer to my inquiry, and at the sight of hishandwriting I thoughtlessly exclaimed to my Aunt that here at last wehad all there was to be known concerning the Bombos in South Carolina;with this I tore open the missive and embarked upon a reading of itfor the edification of all present. I pass over the beginning of John'scommunication, because it was merely the observations of a man uponhis honeymoon, and was confined to laudatory accounts of scenery andweather, and the beauty of all life when once one saw it with his eyestruly opened. 

"No Bombos ever came to Carolina, " he now continued, "that I know of, orthat Aunt Josephine knows of, which is more to the point. Aunt Josephinehas copied me a passage from the writings of William Byrd, Esq. , ofWestover, Virginia, in which mention is made, not of the family, but ofa rum punch which seems to have been concocted first by Admiral Bombo, from a New England brand of rum so very deadly that it was not inaptlystyled 'kill-devil' by the early planters of the colony. That the punchdrifted to Carolina and still survives there, you have reason to know. Therefore if any remote ancestors of yours contracted an alliance withKill-devil Bombo, I can imagine no resulting offspring of such union buta series of severe attacks of delir--"

"What?" interrupted Aunt Carola, at this point, in her most formidablevoice. "What's that stuff you're reading, Augustus?"

I shook in my shoes. "Why, Aunt, it's John--"

"Not another word, sir! And never let me hear his name again. Tothink--to think--" But here Aunt Carola's face grew extremely red, andshe choked so decidedly that Uncle Andrew poured her a glass of water. 

The rest of our luncheon was conducted with remarkable solemnity. 

As we were rising from table, my Aunt said:--

"It was high time, Augustus, that you came home. You seem to have gotinto very strange company down there. "

This was the last reference to the Bombos that my Aunt ever made in myhearing. Of course it is preposterous to suppose that she traces herdescent from a king through a mere bowl of punch, and her being stillthe president of the Selected Salic Scions is proof irrefutable that herclaim rests upon a more solid foundation. 

XXIV: Post Scriptum

I think that John Mayrant, Jr. , is going to look like his mother. I wasvery glad to be present when he was christened, and at this ceremony Idid not feel as I had felt the year before at the wedding; for then Ihad known well enough that if the old ladies found any blemish onthat occasion, it was my being there! To them I must remain forever a"Yankee, " a wall perfectly imaginary and perfectly real between us; andthe fact that young John could take any other view of me, was to them asign of that "radical" tendency in him which they were able to forgivesolely because he was of the younger generation and didn't know anybetter. 

And with these thoughts in my mind, and remembering a certain very gravetalk I had once held with Eliza in the Exchange about the North and theSouth, in which it was my good fortune to make her see that there is onour soil nowadays such a being as an American, who feels, whereverhe goes in our native land, that it is all his, and that he belongseverywhere to it, I looked at the little John Mayrant, and then I saidto his mother:--

"And will you teach him 'Dixie' and 'Yankee Doodle' as well?"

But Eliza smiled at me with friendly, inscrutable eyes. 

"Oh, " said John, "you mustn't ask too much of the ladies. I'll see toall that. "

Perhaps he will. And an education at Harvard College need not causethe boy to forget his race, or his name, or his traditions, but only tovalue them more, as they should be valued. And the way that they shouldbe valued is this: that the boy in thinking of them should say tohimself, "I am proud of my ancestors; let my life make them proud ofme. "

But, in any case, is it not pleasant to think of the boy being broughtup by Eliza, and not by Hortense?

And so my portrait of Kings Port is finished. That the likeness is notperfect, I am only too sensible. No painter that I have heard of eversatisfies the whole family. But, should any of the St. Michaels seethis picture, I trust they may observe that if some of the touches arefaulty, true admiration and love of his subject animated the artist'shand; and if Miss Josephine St. Michael should be pleased with anyof it, I could wish that she might indicate this by sending me a LadyBaltimore; we have no cake here that approaches it.