by Owen Wister
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 peop
le, 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 an
dthus 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.
