by Owen Wister
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 on
e'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."
