by Owen Wister
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 fo
r 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 fa
ct 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 look
ed 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.
