by Owen Wister
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 lad
y 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 ca
use 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 wo
rld either of courtesy orof kindness. But we have progress, progress, instead; and that is atremendous consolation.
