by Owen Wister
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.
