by Owen Wister
XIII: The Girl Behind the Counter--III
I was still thinking the ode over as I dressed for breakfast, for whichI was late, owing to my hair, which the changes in the weather hadrendered somewhat recalcitrant. Yes; decidedly I must have it out withsomebody. The weather was once more superb; and in the garden beneath mywindow men were already sweeping away the broken twigs and debris of thestorm. I say "already," because it had not seemed to me to be the KingsPort custom to remove debris, or anything, with speed. I also had it inmy mind to perform at lunch Aunt Carola's commission, and learn if thefamily of La Heu were indeed of royal descent through the Bombos. Iintended to find this out from the girl behind the counter, but thecourse which our conversation took led me completely to forget about it.
As soon as I entered the Exchange I planted myself in front of thecounter, in spite of the discouragement which I too plainly perceived inher countenance; the unfavorable impression which I had made upon her atour last interview was still in force.
I plunged into it at once. "I have a confession to make."
"You do me surprising honor."
"Oh, now, don't begin like that! I suppose you never told a lie."
"I'm telling the truth now when I say that I do not see why an entirestranger should confess anything to me."
"Oh, my goodness! Well, I told you a lie, anyhow; a great, successful,deplorable lie."
She opened her mouth under the shock of it, and I recited to herunsparingly my deception; during this recital her mouth graduallyclosed.
"Well, I declare, declare, declare!" she slowly and deliciously breathedover the sum total; and she considered me at length, silently, beforeher words came again, like a soft soliloquy. "I could neverhave believed it in one who"--here gayety flashed in her eyessuddenly--"parts his back hair so rigidly. Oh, I beg your pardon forbeing personal!" And her gayety broke in ripples. Some habitual instinctmoved me to turn to the looking-glass. "Useless!" she cried, "you can'tsee it in that. But it's perfectly splendid to-day."
Nature has been kind to me in many ways--nay, prodigal; it is not everyman who can perceive the humor in a jest of which he is himself thesubject. I laughed with her. "I trust that I am forgiven," I said.
"Oh, yes, you are forgiven! Come out, General, and give the gentlemanyour right paw, and tell him that he is forgiven--if only for the sakeof Daddy Ben." With these latter words she gave me a gracious nod ofunderstanding. They were all thanking me for the kettle-supporter! Sheprobably knew also the tale of John Mayrant, the cards, and the bedside.
The curly dog came out, and went through his part very graciously.
"I can guess his last name," I remarked.
"General's? How? Oh, you've heard it! I don't believe in you any more."
"That's not a bit handsome, after my confession. No, I'm getting tounderstand South Carolina a little. You came from the 'up-country,' youcall your dog General; his name is General Hampton!"
Her laughter assented. "Tell me some more about South Carolina," sheadded with her caressing insinuation.
"Well, to begin with--"
"Go sit down at your lunch-table first. Aunt Josephine would nevertolerate my encouraging gentlemen to talk to me over the counter."
I went back obediently, and then resumed: "Well, what sort of people arethose who own the handsome garden behind Mrs. Trevise's!"
"I don't know them."
"Thank you; that's all I wanted."
"What do you mean?"
"They're new people. I could tell it from the way you stuck your nose inthe air."
"Sir!"
"Oh, if you talk about my hair, I can talk about your nose, I think.I suspected that they were: 'new people' because they cleaned up theirgarden immediately after the storm this morning. Now, I'll tell yousomething else: the whole South looks down on the whole North."
She made her voice kind. "Do you mind it very much?"
I joined in her latent mirth. "It makes life not worth living! But morethan this, South Carolina looks down on the whole South."
"Not Virginia."
"Not? An 'entire stranger,' you know, sometimes notices things whichescape the family eye--family likenesses in the children, for instance."
"Never Virginia," she persisted.
"Very well, very well! Somehow you've admitted the rest, however."
She began to smile.
"And next, Kings Port looks down on all the rest of South Carolina."
She now laughed outright. "An up-country girl will not deny that,anyhow!"
"And finally, your aunts--"
"My aunts are Kings Port."
"The whole of it?"
"If you mean the thirty thousand negroes--"
"No, there are other white people here--there goes your nose again!"
"I will not have you so impudent, sir!"
"A thousand pardons, I'm on my knees. But your aunts--" There was such aflash of war in her eye that I stopped.
"May I not even mention them?" I asked her.
And suddenly upon this she became serious and gentle. "I thought thatyou understood them. Would you take them from their seclusion, too? Itis all they have left--since you burned the rest in 1865."
I had made her say what I wanted! That "you" was what I wanted. Now Ishould presently have it out with her. But, for the moment, I did notdisclaim the "you." I said:--
"The burning in 1865 was horrible, but it was war."
"It was outrage."
"Yes, the same kind as England's, who burned Washington in 1812, andwhom you all so deeply admire."
She had, it seemed, no answer to this. But we trembled on the verge of areal quarrel. It was in her voice when she said:--
"I think I interrupted you."
I pushed the risk one step nearer the verge, because of the words Iwished finally to reach. "In 1812, when England burned our White Housedown, we did not sit in the ashes; we set about rebuilding."
And now she burst out. "That's not fair, that's perfectly inexcusable!Did England then set loose on us a pack of black savages and politiciansto help us rebuild? Why, this very day I cannot walk on the other sideof the river, I dare not venture off the New Bridge; and you who firstbeat us and then unleashed the blacks to riot in a new 'equality' thatthey were no more fit for than so many apes, you sat back at ease inyour victory and your progress, having handed the vote to the negro asyou might have handed a kerosene lamp to a child of three, and let uscrushed, breathless people cope with the chaos and destruction thatnever came near you. Why, how can you dare--" Once again, admirably shepulled herself up as she had done when she spoke of the President."I mustn't!" she declared, half whispering, and then more clearly andcalmly, "I mustn't." And she shook her head as if shaking something off."Nor must you," she finished, charmingly and quietly, with a smile.
"I will not," I assured her. She was truly noble.
"But I did think that you understood us," she said pensively.
"Miss La Heu, when you talked to me about the President and the WhiteHouse, I said that you were hard to answer. Do you remember?"
"Perfectly. I said I was glad you found me so.'
"You helped me to understand you then, and now I want to be helped tofurther understanding. Last night I heard the 'Ode for the Daughters ofDixie.' I had a bad time listening to that."
"Do you presume to criticise it? Do we criticise your Grand Armyreunions, and your 'Marching through Georgia,' and your 'John Brown'sBody,' and your Arlington Museum? Can we not be allowed to celebrate ourheroes and our glories and sing our songs?"
She had helped me already! Still, still, the something I was gropingfor, the something which had given me such pain during the ode, remainedundissolved, remained unanalyzed between us; I still had to have it outwith her, and the point was that it had to be with her, and notsimply with myself alone. We must thrash out together the way to anunderstanding; an agreement was not in the least necessary--we couldagree to differ, for that matter, with perfect cordiality--but anunderstanding
we must reach. And as I was thinking this my lightincreased, and I saw clearly the ultimate thing which lay at the bottomof my own feeling, and which had been strangely confusing me all along.This discovery was the key to the whole remainder of my talk; I neverlet go of it. The first thing it opened for me was that Eliza La Heudidn't understand me, which was quite natural, since I had only justthis moment become clear to myself.
"Many of us," I began, "who have watched the soiling touch of politicsmake dirty one clean thing after another, would not be wholly desolatedto learn that the Grand Army of the Republic had gone to another worldto sing its songs and draw its pensions."
She looked astonished, and then she laughed. Down in the South here shewas too far away to feel the vile uses to which present politics hadturned past heroism.
"But," I continued, "we haven't any Daughters of the Union bandedtogether and handing it down."
"It?" she echoed. "Well, if the deeds of your heroes are not a sacredtrust to you, don't invite us, please, to resemble you."
I waited for more, and a little more came.
"We consider Northerners foreigners, you know."
Again I felt that hurt which hearing the ode had given me, but I nowknew how I was going to take it, and where we were presently coming out;and I knew she didn't mean quite all that--didn't mean it every day, atleast--and that my speech had driven her to saying it.
"No, Miss La Heu; you don't consider Northerners, who understand you, tobe foreigners."
"We have never met any of that sort."
("Yes," I thought, "but you really want to. Didn't you say you hoped Iwas one? Away down deep there's a cry of kinship in you; and that youdon't hear it, and that we don't hear it, has been as much our fault asyours. I see that very well now, but I'm afraid to tell you so, yet.")
What I said was: "We're handing the 'sacred trust' down, I hope."
"I understood you to say you weren't."
"I said we were not handing 'it' down."
I didn't wonder that irritation again moulded her reply. "You mustexcuse a daughter of Dixie if she finds the words of a son of the Unionbeyond her. We haven't had so many advantages."
There she touched what I had thought over during my wakeful hours: thetale of the ashes, the desolate ashes! The war had not prevented myparents from sending me to school and college, but here the old had seenthe young grow up starved of what their fathers had given them, and theyoung had looked to the old and known their stripped heritage.
"Miss La Heu," I said, "I could not tell you, you would not wish me totell you, what the sight of Kings Port has made me feel. But you willlet me say this: I have understood for a long while about your oldpeople, your old ladies, whose faces are so fine and sad."
I paused, but she merely looked at me, and her eyes were hard.
"And I may say this, too. I thank you very sincerely for bringingcompletely home to me what I had begun to make out for myself. I hopethe Daughters of Dixie will go on singing of their heroes."
I paused again, and now she looked away, out of the window into RoyalStreet.
"Perhaps," I still continued, "you will hardly believe me when I saythat I have looked at your monuments here with an emotion more poignanteven than that which Northern monuments raise in me."
"Why?"
"Oh!" I exclaimed. "Need you have asked that? The North won."
"You are quite dispassionate!" Her eyes were always toward the window.
"That's my 'sacred trust.'"
It made her look at me. "Yours?"
"Not yours--yet! It would be yours if you had won." I thought a slightchange came in her steady scrutiny. "And, Miss La Heu, it was awfulabout the negro. It is awful. The young North thinks so just as much asyou do. Oh, we shock our old people! We don't expect them to change,but they mustn't expect us not to. And even some of them have begun towhisper a little doubtfully. But never mind them--here's the negro. Wecan't kick him out. That plan is childish. So, it's like two men havingto live in one house. The white man would keep the house in repair, theblack would let it rot. Well, the black must take orders from the white.And it will end so."
She was eager. "Slavery again, you think?"
"Oh, never! It was too injurious to ourselves. But something betweenslavery and equality." And I ended with a quotation: "'Patience, cousin,and shuffle the cards.'"
"You may call me cousin--this once--because you have been, really, quitenice--for a Northerner."
Now we had come to the place where she must understand me.
"Not a Northerner, Miss La Heu."
She became mocking. "Scarcely a Southerner, I presume?"
But I kept my smile and my directness. "No more a Southerner than aNortherner."
"Pray what, then?"
"An American."
She was silent.
"It's the 'sacred trust'--for me."
She was still silent.
"If my state seceded from the Union tomorrow, I should side with theUnion against her."
She was frankly astonished now. "Would you really?" And I think somelight about me began to reach her. A Northerner willing to side againsta Northern state! I was very glad that I had found that phrase to makeclear to her my American creed.
I proceeded. "I shall help to hand down all the glories and all thesadnesses; Lee's, Lincoln's, everybody's. But I shall not hand 'it'down."
This checked her.
"It's easy for me, you know," I hastily explained. "Nothing nobleabout it at all. But from noble people"--and I looked hard at her--"oneexpects, sooner or later, noble things."
She repressed something she had been going to reply.
"If ever I have children," I finished, "they shall know 'Dixie' and'Yankee Doodle' by heart, and never know the difference. By that timeI should think they might have a chance of hearing 'Yankee Doodle' inKings Port."
Again she checked a rapid retort. "Well," she, after a pause, repeated,"you have been really quite nice."
"May I tell you what you have been?"
"Certainly not. Have you seen Mr. Mayrant to-day?"
"We have an engagement to walk this afternoon. May I go walking with yousometime?"
"May he, General?" A wagging tail knocked on the floor behind thecounter. "General says that he will think about it. What makes you likeMr. Mayrant so much?"
This question struck me as an odd one; nor could I make out the importof the peculiar tone in which she put it. "Why, I should think everybodywould like him--except, perhaps, his double victim."
"Double?"
"Yes, first of his fist and then of--of his hand!"
But she didn't respond.
"Of his hand--his poker hand," I explained.
"Poker hand?" She remained honestly vague.
It rejoiced me to be the first to tell her. "You haven't heard ofMaster John's last performance? Well, finding himself forced by thatimmeasurable old Aunt Josephine of yours to shake hands, he shook 'emall right, but he took thirty dollars away as a little set-off for hispious docility."
"Oh!" she murmured, overwhelmed with astonishment. Then she broke intoone of her delicious peals of laughter.
"Anybody," I said, "likes a boy who plays a hand--and a fist--to thattune." I continued to say a number of commendatory words about youngJohn, while her sparkling eyes rested upon me. But even as I talked Igrew aware that these eyes were not sparkling, were starry rather,and distant, and that she was not hearing what I said; so I stoppedabruptly, and at the stopping she spoke, like a person waking up.
"Oh, yes! Certainly he can take care of himself. Why not?"
"Rather creditable, don't you think?"
"Creditable?"
"Considering his aunts and everything."
She became haughty on the instant. "Upon my word! And do you supposethe women of South Carolina don't wish their men to be men? Why"--shereturned to mirth and that arch mockery which was her special charm--"weSouth Carolina women consider virtue our business, and we don't expectthe men to meddle with
it!"
"Primal, perpetual, necessary!" I cried. "When that division getsblurred, society is doomed. Are you sure John can take care of himselfevery way?"
"I have other things than Mr. Mayrant to think about." She said thisquite sharply.
It surprised me. "To be sure," I assented. "But didn't you once tell methat you thought he was simple?"
She opened her ledger. "It's a great honor to have one's words so wellremembered."
I was still at a loss. "Anyhow, the wedding is postponed," I continued;"and the cake. Of course one can't help wondering how it's all comingout."
She was now working at her ledger, bending her head over it. "Haveyou ever met Miss Rieppe?" She inquired this with a sort of wonderfulsoftness--which I was to hear again upon a still more memorableoccasion.
"Never," I answered, "but there's nobody at present living whom I longto see so much."
She wrote on for a little while before saying, with her pencil steadilybusy, "Why?"
"Why? Don't you? After all this fuss?"
"Oh, certainly," she drawled. "She is so much admired--by Northerners."
"I do hope John is able to take care of himself," I purposely repeated.
"Take care of yourself!" she laughed angrily over her ledger.
"Me? Why? I understand you less and less!"
"Very likely."
"Why, I want to help him!" I protested. "I don't want him to marry her.Oh, by the way do you happen to know what it is that she is coming hereto see for herself?"
In a moment her ledger was left, and she was looking at me straight.Coming? When?
"Soon. In an automobile. To see something for herself."
She pondered for quite a long moment; then her eyes returned,searchingly, to me. "You didn't make that up?"
I laughed, and explained. "Some of them, at any rate," I finished, "knowwhat she's coming for. They were rather queer about it, I thought."
She pondered again. I noticed that she had deeply flushed, and that theflush was leaving her. Then she fixed her eyes on me once more. "Theywouldn't tell you?"
"I think that they came inadvertently near it, once or twice, andremembered just in time that I didn't know about it."
"But since you do know pretty much about it!" she laughed.
I shook my head. "There's something else, something that's turned up;the sort of thing that upsets calculations. And I merely hoped thatyou'd know."
On those last words of mine she gave me quite an extraordinary look, andthen, as if satisfied with what she saw in my face.--
"They don't talk to me."
It was an assurance, it was true, it had the ring of truth, that evidentgenuineness which a piece of real confidence always possesses; she meantme to know that we were in the same boat of ignorance to-day. And yet,as I rose from my lunch and came forward to settle for it, I was awareof some sense of defeat, of having been held off just as the ladies onHigh Walk had held me off.
"Well," I sighed, "I pin my faith to the aunt who says he'll never marryher."
Miss La Heu had no more to say upon the subject. "Haven't you forgottensomething?" she inquired gayly; and, as I turned to see what I had leftbehind--"I mean, you had no Lady Baltimore to-day."
"I clean forgot it!"
"No loss. It is very stale; and to-morrow I shall have a fresh supplyready."
As I departed through the door I was conscious of her eyes followingme, and that she had spoken of Lady Baltimore precisely because she wasthinking of something else.
