by Owen Wister
XV: What She Came to See
But in this matter my prognostication was thoroughly at fault; yetsurely, knowing Kings Port's sovereign habit, as I had had good causeto know it, I was scarce beyond reasonable bounds in supposing that thearrival of Miss Rieppe would heat up some very general and very audibletalk about this approaching marriage, against which the prejudices ofthe town were set in such compact array. I have several times mentionedthat Kings Port, to my sense, was buzzing over John Mayrant's affairs;buzzing in the open, where one could hear it, and buzzing behind closeddoors, where one could somehow feel it; I can only say that henceforththis buzzing ceased, dropped wholly away, as if Gossip were watching sohard that she forgot to talk, giving place to a great stillness inher kingdom. Such occasional words as were uttered sounded oddly andegregiously clear in the new-established void.
The first of these words sounded, indeed, quite enormous, issuing as itdid from Juno's lips at our breakfast-table, when yesterday's meeting onthe New Bridge was investing my mind with many thoughts. She addressedme in one of her favorite tones (I have met it, thank God! but in twoor three other cases during my whole experience), which always somehowconveyed to you that you were personally to blame for what she was goingto tell you.
"I suppose you know that your friend, Mr. Mayrant, has resigned from theCustom House?"
I was, of course, careful not to give Juno the pleasure of seeing thatshe had surprised me. I bowed, and continued in silence to sip a littlecoffee; then, setting my coffee down, I observed that it would be somefew days yet before the resignation could take effect; and, noticingthat Juno was getting ready some new remark, I branched off and spoke toher of my excursion up the river this morning to see the azaleas in thegardens at Live Oaks.
"How lucky the weather is so magnificent!" I exclaimed.
"I shall be interested to hear," said Juno, "what explanation he findsto give Miss Josephine for his disrespectful holding out against her,and his immediate yielding to Miss Rieppe."
Here I deemed it safe to ask her, was she quite sure it had been at theinstance of Miss Rieppe that John had resigned?
"It follows suspiciously close upon her arrival," stated Juno. She mighthave been speaking of a murder. "And how he expects to support awife now--well, that is no affair of mine," Juno concluded, with awashing-her-hands-of-it air, as if up to this point she had alwaysdone her best for the wilful boy. She had blamed him savagely for notresigning, and now she was blaming him because he had resigned; andI ate my breakfast in much entertainment over this female acrobat incensure.
No more was said; I think that my manner of taking Juno's news had beenperfectly successful in disappointing her. John's resignation, if ithad really occurred, did certainly follow very close upon the arrival ofHortense; but I had spoken one true thought in intimating that I doubtedif it was due to the influence of Miss Rieppe. It seemed to me to thehighest degree unlikely that the boy in his present state of feelingwould do anything he did not wish to do because his ladylove happened towish it--except marry her! There was apparently no doubt that he woulddo that. Did she want him, poverty and all? Was she, even now, with eyesopen, deliberately taking her last farewell days of automobiles andof steam yachts? That voice of hers, that rich summons, with its quietcertainty of power, sounded in my memory. "John," she had called to himfrom the automobile; and thus John had gone away in it, wedged in amongCharley and the fat cushions and all the money and glass eyes. Andnow he had resigned from the Custom House! Yes, that was, whatever itsignified, truly amazing--if true.
So I continued to ponder quite uselessly, until the up-country bridearoused me. She, it appeared, had been greatly carried away by thebeauty of Live Oaks, and was making her David take her there again thismorning; and she was asking me didn't I hope we shouldn't get stuck? Thepeople had got stuck yesterday, three whole hours, right on a bank inthe river; and wasn't it a sin and a shame to run a boat with ever somany passengers aground? By the doctrine of chances, I informed her, wehad every right to hope for better luck to-day; and, with the assuranceof how much my felicity was increased by the prospect of having her andDavid as company during the expedition, I betook myself meanwhile to myown affairs, which meant chiefly a call at the Exchange to inquire forEliza La Heu, and a visit to the post-office before starting upon aseveral hours' absence.
A few steps from our front door I came upon John Mayrant, and saw atonce too plainly that no ease had come to his spirit during the hourssince the bridge. He was just emerging from an adjacent house.
"And have you resigned?" I asked him.
"Yes. That's done. You haven't seen Miss Rieppe this morning?"
"Why, she's surely not boarding with Mrs. Trevise?"
"No; stopping here with her old friend, Mrs. Cornerly." He indicatedthe door he had come from. "Of course, you wouldn't be likely to see herpass!" And with that he was gone.
That he was greatly stirred up by something there could be no doubt;never before had I seen him so abrupt; it seemed clear that anger hadtaken the place of despondency, or whatever had been his previous mood;and by the time I reached the post-office I had already imagined anddismissed the absurd theory that John was jealous of Charley, hadresigned from the Custom House as a first step toward breaking hisengagement, and had rung Mrs. Cornerly's bell at this early hour withthe purpose of informing his lady-love that all was over between them.Jealousy would not be likely to produce this set of manifestations inyoung, foolish John; and I may say here at once, what I somewhat laterlearned, that the boy had come with precisely the opposite purpose,namely, to repeat and reenforce his steadfast constancy, and that it wassomething far removed from jealousy which had spurred him to this.
I found the girl behind the counter at her post, grateful to me forcoming to ask how she was after the shock of yesterday, but unwilling tospeak of it at all; all which she expressed by her charming manner, andby the other subjects she chose for conversation, and especially by theway in which she held out her hand when I took my leave.
Near the post-office I was hailed by Beverly Rodgers, who proclaimed tome at once a comic but genuine distress. He had already walked, he said(and it was but half-past nine o'clock, as he bitterly bade meobserve on the church dial), more miles in search of a drink than hisunarithmetical brain had the skill to compute. And he confounded such atown heartily; he should return as soon as possible to Charley's yacht,where there was civilization, and where he had spent the night. Duringhis search he had at length come to a door of promising appearance, andgone in there, and they had explained to him that it was a dispensary.A beastly arrangement. What was the name of the razor-back hog theysaid had invented it? And what did you do for a drink in this confoundedwater-hole?
He would find it no water-hole, I told him; but there were methods whicha stranger upon his first morning could scarce be expected to grasp. "Icould direct you to a Dutchman," I said, "but you're too well dressed towin his confidence at once."
"Well, old man," began Beverly, "I don't speak Dutch, but give me acrack at the confidence."
However, he renounced the project upon learning what a Dutchman was.Since my hours were no longer dedicated to establishing the presenceof royal blood in my veins I had spent them upon various localinvestigations of a character far more entertaining and akin to mytaste. It was in truth quite likely that Beverly could in a very fewmoments, with his smile and his manner, find his way to any Dutchman'sheart; he had that divine gift of winning over to him quickly all sortsand conditions of men; and my account of the ingenious and law-bafflingcontrivances, which you found at these little grocery shops, at onceroused his curiosity to make a trial; but he decided that the club wasbetter, if less picturesque. And he told me that all the men of theautomobile party had received from John Mayrant cards of invitation tothe club.
"Your fire-eater is a civil chap," said Beverly. "And by the way, do youhappen to know," here he pulled from his pocket a letter and consultedits address, "Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael?"
I was
delighted that he brought an introduction to this lady; HortenseRieppe could not open for him any of those haughty doors; and I wishednot only that Beverly (since he was just the man to appreciate it andunderstand it) should see the fine flower of Kings Port, but also thatthe fine flower of Kings Port should see him; the best blood of theSouth could not possibly turn out anything better than Beverly Rodgers,and it was horrible and humiliating to think of the other Northernspecimens of men whom Hortense had imported with her. I was heresuddenly reminded that the young woman was a guest of the Cornerlys,the people who swept their garden, the people whom Eliza La Heu at theExchange did not "know"; and at this the remark of Mrs. Gregory St.Michael, when I had walked with her and Mrs. Weguelin, took on an addedlustre of significance:--
"We shall have to call."
Call on the Cornerlys! Would they do that? Were they ready to stand bytheir John to that tune? A hotel would be nothing; you could call onanybody at a hotel, if you had to; but here would be a demarche indeed!Yet, nevertheless, I felt quite certain that, if Hortense, though theCornerlys' guest, was also the guaranteed fiancee of John Mayrant, theold ladies would come up to the scratch, hate and loathe it as theymight, and undoubtedly would: they could be trusted to do the rightthing.
I told Beverly how glad I was that he would meet Mrs. Weguelin St.Michael. "The rest of your party, my friend," I said, "are not verylikely to." And I generalized to him briefly upon the town of KingsPort. "Supposing I take you to call upon Mrs. St. Michael when I comeback this afternoon?" I suggested.
Beverly thought it over, and then shook his head. "Wouldn't do, old man.If these people are particular and know, as you say they do, hadn't Ibetter leave the letter with my card, and then wait till she sends someword?"
He was right, as he always was, unerringly. Consorting with all theCharleys, and the Bohms, and the Cohns, and the Kitties hadn't takenthe fine edge from Beverly's good inheritance and good bringing up; hisinstinct had survived his scruples, making of him an agile and charmingcynic, whom you could trust to see the right thing always, and neverdo it unless it was absolutely necessary; he would marry any amountof Kitties for their money, and always know that beside his mother andsisters they were as dirt; and he would see to it that his childrentook after their father, went to school in England for a good accent andenunciation, as he had done, went to college in America for the sakeof belonging in their own country, as he had done, and married as manyfortunes, and had as few divorces, as possible.
"Who was that girl on the bridge?" he now inquired as we reached thesteps of the post-office; and when I had told him again, because hehad asked me about Eliza La Heu at the time, "She's the real thing," hecommented. "Quite extraordinary, you know, her dignity, when poor oldawful Charley was messing everything--he's so used to mere money, youknow, that half the time he forgets people are not dollars, and you haveto kick him to remind him--yes, quite perfect dignity. Gad, it took alady to climb up and sit by that ragged old darky and take her dead dogaway in the cart! The cart and the darky only made her look what shewas all the more. Poor Kitty couldn't do that--she'd look like achambermaid! Well, old man, see you again."
I stood on the post-office steps looking after Beverly Rodgers as hecrossed Court Street. His admirably good clothes, the easy finish ofhis whole appearance, even his walk, and his back, and the slope of hisshoulders, were unmistakable. The Southern men, going to their businessin Court Street, looked at him. Alas, in his outward man he was as arose among weeds! And certainly, no well-born American could unite withan art more hedonistic than Beverly's the old school and the nouveaujeu!
Over at the other corner he turned and stood admiring the church andgazing at the other buildings, and so perceived me still on the steps.With a gesture of remembering something he crossed back again.
"You've not seen Miss Rieppe?"
"Why, of course I haven't!" I exclaimed. Was everybody going to ask methat?
"Well, something's up, old boy. Charley has got the launch away withhim--and I'll bet he's got her away with him, too. Charley lied thismorning."
"Is lying, then, so rare with him?"
"Why, it rather is, you know. But I've come to be able to spot him whenhe does it. Those little bulgy eyes of his look at you particularlystraight and childlike. He said he had to hunt up a man on business--V-CChemical Company, he called it--"
"There is such a thing here," I said.
"Oh, Charley'd never make up a thing, and get found out in that way! Buthe was lying all the same, old man."
"Do you mean they've run off and got married?"
"What do you take them for? Much more like them to run off and not getmarried. But they haven't done that either. And, speaking of that, Ibelieve I've gone a bit adrift. Your fire-eater, you know--she is anextraordinary woman!" And Beverly gave his mellow, little humorouschuckle. "Hanged if I don't begin to think she does fancy him."
"Well!" I cried, "that would explain--no, it wouldn't. Whence comes yourtheory?"
"Saw her look at him at dinner once last night. We dined with somepeople--Cornerly. She looked at him just once. Well, if she intends--bygad, it upsets one's whole notion of her!"
"Isn't just one look rather slight basis for--"
"Now, old man, you know better than that!" Beverly paused to chuckle."My grandmother Livingston," he resumed, "knew Aaron Burr, and she usedto say that he had an eye which no honest woman could meet withouta blush. I don't know whether your fire-eater is a Launcelot, or aGalahad, but that girl's eye at dinner--"
"Did he blush?" I laughed.
"Not that I saw. But really, old man, confound it, you know! He's nosort of husband for her. How can he make her happy and how can she makehim happy, and how can either of them hit it off with the other theleast little bit? She's expensive, he's not; she's up-to-date, he's not;she's of the great world, he's provincial. She's all derision, he's allfaith. Why, hang it, old boy, what does she want him for?"
Beverly's handsome brow was actually furrowed with his problem; and, asI certainly could furnish him no solution for it, we stood in silence onthe post-office steps. "What can she want him for?" he repeated. Thenhe threw it off lightly with one of his chuckles. "So glad I've nodaughters to marry! Well--I must go draw some money."
He took himself off with a certain alacrity, giving an impatient cutwith his stick at a sparrow in the middle of Worship Street, nor didI see him again this day, although, after hurriedly getting my letters(for the starting hour of the boat had now drawn near), I followed wherehe had gone down Court Street, and his cosmopolitan figure wouldhave been easy to descry at any distance along that scantily peopledpavement. He had evidently found the bank and was getting his money.
David of the yellow heir and his limpid-looking bride were on thehorrible little excursion boat, watching for me and keeping with somedifficulty a chair next themselves that I might not have to stand up allthe way; and, as I came aboard, the bride called out to me her relief,she had made sure that I would be late.
"David said you wouldn't," she announced in her clear up-country accentacross the parasols and heads of huddled tourists, "but I told him agentleman that's late to three meals aivry day like as not would forgetboats can't be kept hot in the kitchen for you."
I took my place in the chair beside her as hastily as possible, forthere is nothing that I so much dislike as being made conspicuous forany reason whatever; and my thanks to her were, I fear, less gracious intheir manner than should have been the case. Nor did she find me, I mustsuppose, as companionable during this excursion--during the first partof it, at any rate--as a limpid-looking bride, who has kept at somepains a seat beside her for a single gentleman, has the right to expect;the brief hours of this morning had fed my preoccupation too richly, andI must often have fallen silent.
The horrible little tug, or ferry, or wherry, or whatever itscontemptible inconvenience makes it fitting that this unclean andsnail-like craft should be styled, cast off and began to lumber alongthe edges of the town with its dense cargo
of hats and parasols andlunch parcels. We were a most extraordinary litter of man and womankind.There was the severe New England type, improving each shining hour, anddoing it in bleak costume and with a thoroughly northeast expression;there were pink sunbonnets from (I should imagine) Spartanburg, orCharlotte, or Greenville; there were masculine boots which yet boreincrusted upon their heels the red mud of Aiken or of Camden; therewas one fat, jewelled exhalation who spoke of Palm Beach with the truestockyard twang, and looked as if she swallowed a million every morningfor breakfast, and God knows how many more for the ensuing repasts; shewas the only detestable specimen among us; sunbonnets, boots, and evenungenial New England proved on acquaintance kindly, simple, enterprisingAmericans; yet who knows if sunbonnets and boots and all of us wouldn'thave become just as detestable had we but been as she was, swollen andpuffy with the acute indigestion of sudden wealth?
This reflection made me charitable, which I always like to be, and Iimparted it to the bride.
"My!" she said. And I really don't know what that meant.
But presently I understood well why people endured the discomfort ofthis journey. I forgot the cinders which now and then showered upon us,and the heat of the sun, and the crowded chairs; I forgot the boat andmyself, in looking at the passing shores. Our course took us roundKings Port on three sides. The calm, white town spread out its widthand length beneath a blue sky softer than the tenderest dream; the whitesteeples shone through the enveloping brightness, taking to eachother, and to the distant roofs beneath them, successive and changingrelations, while the dwindling mass of streets and edifices followedmore slowly the veering of the steeples, folded upon itself, andrefolded, opened into new shapes and closed again, dwindling always,and always white and beautiful; and as the far-off vision of it heldthe eye, the few masts along the wharves grew thin and went out intoinvisibility, the spires became as masts, the distant drawbridge throughwhich we had passed sank down into a mere stretching line, and shiningKings Port was dissolved in the blue of water and of air.
The curving and the narrowing of the river took it at last from view;and after it disappeared the spindling chimneys and their smoke, whichwere along the bank above the town and bridge, leaving us to progressthrough the solitude of marsh and wood and shore. The green levels ofstiff salt grass closed in upon the breadth of water, and we wound amongthem, looking across their silence to the deeper silence of the woodsthat bordered them, the brooding woods, the pines and the liveoaks,misty with the motionless hanging moss, and misty also in that Southernair that deepened when it came among their trunks to a caressing,mysterious, purple veil. Every line of this landscape, the straightforest top, the feathery breaks in it of taller trees, the curvingmarsh, every line and every hue and every sound inscrutably spokesadness. I heard a mocking-bird once in some blossoming wild fruit treethat we gradually reached and left gradually behind; and more than onceI saw other blossoms, and the yellow of the trailing jessamine; but thebird could not sing the silence away, and spring with all her abundancecould not hide this spiritual autumn.
Dreams, a land of dreams, where even the high noon itself was dreamy; amelting together of earth and air and water in one eternal gentleness ofrevery! Whence came the melancholy of this? I had seen woods as solitaryand streams as silent, I had felt nature breathing upon me a greaterawe; but never before such penetrating and quiet sadness. I only knowthat this is the perpetual mood of those Southern shores, those riversthat wind in from the ocean among their narrowing marshes and theirhushed forests, and that it does not come from any memory of human hopesand disasters, but from the elements themselves.
So did we move onward, passing in due time another bridge and a fewdwellings and some excavations, until the river grew quite narrow, andthere ahead was the landing at Live Oaks, with negroes idly watching forus, and a launch beside the bank, and Charley and Hortense Rieppe aboutto step into it. Another man stood up in the launch and talked to themwhere they were on the landing platform, and pointed down the river aswe approached; but evidently he did not point at us. I looked hastilyto see what he was indicating to them, but I could see nothing save thesolitary river winding away between the empty woods and marshes.
So this was Hortense Rieppe! It was not wonderful that she had causedyoung John to lose his heart, or, at any rate, his head and his senses;nor was it wonderful that Charley, with his little bulging eyes, shouldtake her in his launch whenever she would go; the wonderful thing wasthat John, at his age and with his nature, should have got over it--ifhe had got over it! I felt it tingling in me; any man would. Steel waspindeed!
She was slender, and oh, how well dressed! She watched the passengersget off the boat, and I could not tell you from that first sight of herwhat her face was like, but only her hair, the sunburnt amber of itsmasses making one think of Tokay or Chateau-Yquem. She was watching me,I felt, and then saw; and as soon as I was near she spoke to me withoutmoving, keeping one gloved hand lightly posed upon the railing of theplatform, so that her long arm was bent with perfect ease and grace.I swear that none but a female eye could have detected any tobogganfire-escape.
Her words dropped with the same calculated deliberation, the samecomposed and rich indifference. "These gardens are so beautiful."
Such was her first remark, chosen with some purpose, I knew quitewell; and I observed that I hoped I was not too late for their fullperfection, if too late to visit them in her company.
She turned her head slightly toward Charley. "We have been enjoying themso much."
It was of absorbing interest to feel simultaneously in these briefspeeches he vouchsafed--speeches consummate in their inexpressiveflatness--the intentional coldness and the latent heat of the creature.Since Natchez and Mobile (or whichever of them it had been that hadwitnessed her beginnings) she had encountered many men and women, thosewho could be of use to her and those who could not; and in dealingwith them she had tempered and chiselled her insolence to a perfectinstrument, to strike or to shield. And of her greatest gift, also,she was entirely aware--how could she help being, with her evidentexperience? She knew that round her whole form swam a delicious,invisible sphere, a distillation that her veriest self sent forth, asgardenias do their perfume, moving where she moved and staying where shestayed, and compared with which wine was a feeble vapor for a man to getdrunk on.
"Flowers are always so delightful."
That was her third speech, pronounced just like the others, in a low,clear voice--simplicity arrived at by much well-practiced complexity.And she still looked at Charley.
Charley now responded in his little banker accent. "It is a magnificentcollection." This he said looking at me, and moving a highly polishedfinger-nail along a very slender mustache.
The eyes of Hortense now for a moment glanced at the mixed company ofboat-passengers, who were beginning to be led off in pilgrim groups bythe appointed guides.
"We were warned it would be too crowded," she remarked.
Charley was looking at her foot. I can't say whether or not the twolight taps that the foot now gave upon the floor of the landing broughtout for me a certain impatience which I might otherwise have missedin those last words of hers. From Charley it brought out, I feel quitesure, the speech which (in some form) she had been expecting from him asher confederate in this unwelcome and inopportune interview with me,and which his less highly schooled perceptions had not suggested to himuntil prompted by her.
"I should have been very glad to include you in our launch party if Ihad known you were coming here to-day," lied little Charley.
"Thank you so much!" I murmured; and I fancy that after this Hortensehated me worse than ever. Well, why should I play her game? If anybodyhad any claim upon me, was it she? I would get as much diversion as Icould from this encounter.
Hortense had looked at Charley when she spoke for my benefit, and it nowpleased me very much to look at him when I spoke for hers.
"I could almost give up the gardens for the sake of returning with you,"I said to him.
This was most successful in producing a perceptible silence beforeHortense said, "Do come."
I wanted to say to her, "You are quite splendid--as splendid as youlook, through and through! You wouldn't have run away from any battle ofChattanooga!" But what I did say was, "These flowers here will fade, butmay I not hope to see you again in Kings Port?"
She was looking at me with eyes half closed; half closed for the sakeof insolence--and better observation; when eyes like that take ondrowsiness, you will be wise to leave all your secrets behind you,locked up in the bank, or else toss them right down on the open table.Well, I tossed mine down, thereto precipitated by a warning from thestranger in the launch:--
"We shall need all the tide we can get."
"I'm sure you'd be glad to know," I then said immediately (to Charley,of course), "that Miss La Heu, whose dog you killed, is back at her workas usual this morning."
"Thank you," returned Charley. "If there could be any chance for me toreplace--"
"Miss La Heu is her name?" inquired Hortense. "I did not catch ityesterday. She works, you say?"
"At the Woman's Exchange. She bakes cakes for weddings--among her otheractivities."
"So interesting!" said Hortense; and bowing to me, she allowed thespellbound Charley to help her down into the launch.
Each step of the few that she had to take was upon unsteady footing, andeach was taken with slow security and grace, and with a mastery of herskirts so complete that they seemed to do it of themselves, falling andfolding in the soft, delicate curves of discretion.
For the sake of not seeming too curious about this party, I turned fromwatching it before the launch had begun to move, and it was immediatelyhidden from me by the bank, so that I did not see it get away. As Icrossed an open space toward the gardens I found myself far behind theother pilgrims, whose wandering bands I could half discern among windingwalks and bordering bushes. I was soon taken into somewhat reprimandingcharge by an admirable, if important, negro, who sighted me from a doorbeneath the porch of the house, and advanced upon me speedily. From himI learned at once the rule of the place, that strangers were not allowedto "go loose," as he expressed it; and recognizing the perfect proprietyof this restriction, I was humble, and even went so far as to put myselfright with him by quite ample purchases of the beautiful flowers that hehad for sale; some of these would be excellent for the up-country bride,who certainly ought to have repentance from me in some form for mysilence as we had come up the river: the scenery had caused me mostungallantly to forget her.
My rule-breaking turned out all to my advantage. The admirable andimportant negro was so pacified by my liberal amends that he not onlyplaced the flowers which I had bought in a bucket of water to wait infreshness until my tour of the gardens should be finished and the momentfor me to return upon the boat should arrive, but he also honored mewith his own special company; and instead of depositing me in one of thegroups of other travellers, he took me to see the sights alone, as ifI were somebody too distinguished to receive my impressions with thecommon herd. Thus I was able to linger here and there, and even toreturn to certain points for another look.
I shall not attempt to describe the azaleas at Live Oaks. You willunderstand me quite well, I am sure, when I say that I had heard thepeople at Mrs. Trevise's house talk so much about them, and praise themso superlatively, that I was not prepared for much: my experienceof life had already included quite a number of azaleas. Moreover, mymeeting with Hortense and Charley had taken me far away from flowers.But when that marvelous place burst upon me, I forgot Hortense. I haveseen gardens, many gardens, in England, in France; in Italy; I have seenwhat can be done in great hothouses, and on great terraces; what can bedone under a roof, and what can be done in the open air with the aidof architecture and sculpture and ornamental land and water; but nohorticulture that I have seen devised by mortal man approaches theunearthly enchantment of the azaleas at Live Oaks. It was not likeseeing flowers at all; it was as if there, in the heart of the wildand mystic wood, in the gray gloom of those trees veiled and muffled intheir long webs and skeins of hanging moss, a great, magic flame ofrose and red and white burned steadily. You looked to see it vanish; youcould not imagine such a thing would stay. All idea of individualpetals or species was swept away in this glowing maze of splendor,this transparent labyrinth of rose and red and white, through which youlooked beyond, into the gray gloom of the hanging moss and the depths ofthe wild forest trees.
I turned back as often as I could, and to the last I caught glimpsesof it, burning, glowing, and shining like some miracle, some rainbowexorcism, with its flooding fumes of orange-rose and red and white,merging magically. It was not until I reached the landing, and made myway on board again, that Hortense returned to my thoughts. She hadn'tcome to see the miracle; not she! I knew that better than ever. And whowas the other man in the launch?
"Wasn't it perfectly elegant!" exclaimed the up-country bride. And uponmy assenting, she made a further declaration to David: "It's just aivrybit as good as the Isle of Champagne."
This I discovered to be a comic opera, mounted with spendthriftbrilliance, which David had taken her to see at the town of Gonzales,just before they were married.
As we made our way down the bending river she continued to make manyobservations to me in that up-country accent of hers, which is a fashionof speech that may be said to differ as widely from the speech of thelow-country as cotton differs from rice. I began to fear that, in spiteof my truly good intentions, I was again failing to be as "attentive" asthe occasion demanded; and so I presented her with my floral tribute.
She was immediately arch. "I'd surely be depriving somebody!" and onthis I got to the full her limpid look.
I assured her that this would not be so, and pointed to the otherflowers I had.
Accordingly, after a little more archness, she took them, as she had,of course, fully meant to do from the first; she also took a woman'srevenge. "I'll not be any more lonesome going down than I was comingup," she said. "David's enough." And this led me definitely to concludethat David had secured a helpmate who could take care of herself, inspite of the limpidity of her eyes.
A steel wasp? Again that misleading description of Mrs. Weguelin St.Michael's, to which, since my early days in Kings Port, my imaginationmay be said to have been harnessed, came back into my mind. I turned itsinjustice over and over beneath the light which the total Hortense nowshed upon it--or rather, not the total Hortense, but my whole impressionof her, as far as I had got; I got a good deal further before we hadfinished. To the slow, soft accompaniment of these gliding river shores,where all the shadows had changed since morning, so that new lovelinessstood revealed at every turn, my thoughts dwelt upon this perfectedspecimen of the latest American moment--so late that she containednothing of the past, and a great deal of to-morrow. I basked myselfin the memory of her achieved beauty, her achieved dress, her achievedinsolence, her luxurious complexity. She was even later than those quitelate athletic girls, the Amazons of the links, whose big, hard footballfaces stare at one from public windows and from public punts, whosegiant, manly strides take them over leagues of country and square milesof dance-floor, and whose bursting, blatant, immodest health glares uponsea-beaches and round supper tables. Hortense knew that even now thehour of such is striking, and that the American boy will presently turnwith relief to a creature who will more clearly remind him that he is aman and that she is a woman.
But why was the insolence of Hortense offensive, when the insolenceof Eliza La Heu was not? Both these extremely feminine beings couldexercise that quality in profusion, whenever they so wished; wherein didthe difference lie? Perhaps I thought, in the spirit of its exercise;Eliza was merely insolent when she happened to feel like it; and manhas always been able to forgive woman for that--whether the angels do ornot, but Hortense, the world-wise, was insolent to all people who couldnot be of use to her; and all I have to say is, that if the angels canforgive them, they're welcome; I can't!
Then, what was her feeling about John Mayrant? As Beverly had said, whatcould she want him for? He hadn't a thing that she valued or needed. Hisold-time notions of decency, the clean simplicity of his make, his goodSouthern position, and his collection of nice old relatives--what didthese assets look like from an automobile, or on board the launch ofa modern steam yacht? And wouldn't it be amusing if John should growneedlessly jealous, and have a "difficulty" with Charley? not a mereflinging of torn paper money in the banker's face, but some more decidedpunishment for the banker's presuming to rest his predatory eyes uponJohn's affianced lady.
I stared at the now broadening river, where the reappearance of thebridge, and of Kings Port, and the nearer chimneys pouring out theirsmoke a few miles above the town, betokened that our excursion wasdrawing to its end. And then from the chimney's neighborhood, fromthe waterside where their factories stood, there shot out into thesmoothness of the stream a launch. It crossed into our course aheadof us, preceded us quickly, growing soon into a dot, went through thebridge, and so was seen no longer; and its occupants must have reachedtown a good half hour before we did. And now, suddenly, I was stunnedwith a great discovery. The bride's voice sounded in my ear. "Well, I'llalways say you're a prophet, anyhow!"
I looked at her, dull and dazed by the internal commotion the discoveryhad raised in me.
"You said we wouldn't get stuck in the mud, and we didn't," said thebride.
I pointed to the chimneys. "Are those the phosphate works?"
"Yais. Didn't you know?"
"The V-C phosphate works?"
"Why, yais. Haven't you been to see them yet? He ought to, oughtn't he,David? 'Specially now they've found those deposits up the river werejust as rich as they hoped, after all."
"Whose? Mr. Mayrant's?" I asked with such sharpness that the bride wassurprised.
David hadn't attended to the name. It was some trust estate, he thought;Regent Tom, or some such thing.
"And they thought it was no good," said the bride. "And it's aivry bitas good as the Coosaw used to be. Better than Florida or Tennessee."
My eyes instinctively turned to where they had last seen the launch; ofcourse it wasn't there any more. Then I spoke to David.
"Do you know what a phosphate bed looks like? Can one see it?"
"This kind you can," he answered. "But it's not worth your trouble.Just a kind of a square hole you dig along the river till you strike thestuff. What you want to see is the works."
No, I didn't want to see even the works; they smelt atrociously, and Ido not care for vats, and acids, and processes: and besides, had I notseen enough? My eyes went down the river again where that launch hadgone; and I wondered if the wedding-cake would be postponed any more.
Regent Tom? Oh, yes, to be sure! John Mayrant had pointed out to me thehouse where he had lived; he had been John's uncle. So the old gentlemanhad left his estate in trust! And now--! But certainly Hortense wouldhave won the battle of Chattanooga!
"Don't be too sure about all this," I told myself cautiously. But thereare times when cautioning one's self is quite as useless as if somebodyelse had cautioned one; my reason leaped with the rapidity of intuition;I merely sat and looked on at what it was doing. All sorts of oddsand ends, words I hadn't understood, looks and silences I hadn'tinterpreted, little signs that I had thought nothing of at first, butwhich I had gradually, through their multiplicity, come to know meantsomething, all these broken pieces fitted into each other now, felltogether and made a clear pattern of the truth, without a crack init--Hortense had never believed in that story about the phosphateshaving failed--"pinched out," as they say of ore deposits. There shehad stood between her two suitors, between her affianced John and thebesieging Charley, and before she would be off with the old love and onwith the new, she must personally look into those phosphates. Thereforeshe had been obliged to have a sick father and postpone the wedding twoor three times, because her affairs--very likely the necessity of makingcertain of Charley--had prevented her from coming sooner to Kings Port.And having now come hither, and having beheld her Northern and herSouthern lovers side by side--had the comparison done something to herhighly controlled heart? Was love taking some hitherto unknown libertieswith that well-balanced organ? But what an outrage had been perpetratedupon John! At that my deductions staggered in their rapid course. Howcould his aunts--but then it had only been one of them; Miss Josephinehad never approved of Miss Eliza's course; it was of that that Mrs.Weguelin St. Michael had so emphatically reminded Mrs. Gregory in mypresence when we had strolled together upon High Walk, and those twoladies had talked oracles in my presence. Well, they were oracles nolonger!
When the boat brought us back to the wharf, there were the rest of myflowers unbestowed, and upon whom should I bestow them? I thought firstof Eliza La Heu, but she wouldn't be at the Exchange so late as this.Then it seemed well to carry them to Mrs. Weguelin. Something, however,prompted me to pass her door, and continue vaguely walking on until Icame to the house where Miss Josephine and Miss Eliza lived; and here Irang the bell and was admitted.
They were sitting as I had seen them first, the one with her embroidery,and the other on the further side of a table, whereon lay an openletter, which in a few moments I knew must have been the subject of thediscussion which they finished even as I came forward.
"It was only prolonging an honest mistake." That was Miss Eliza.
"And it has merely resulted in clinching what you meant it to finish."That was Miss Josephine.
I laid my flowers upon the table, and saw that the letter was in JohnMayrant's hand. Of course.
I avoided looking at it again; but what had he written, and why had hewritten? His daily steps turned to this house--unless Miss Josephine hadbanished him again.
The ladies accepted my offering with gracious expressions, and while Itold them of my visit to Live Oaks, and poured out my enthusiasm, theservant was sent for and brought water and two beautiful old chinabowls, in which Miss Eliza proceeded to arrange the flowers with herdelicate white hands. She made them look exquisite with an old lady'sart, and this little occupation went on as we talked of indifferentsubjects.
But the atmosphere of that room was charged with the subject of which wedid not speak. The letter lay on the table; and even as I struggled tosustain polite conversation, I began to know what was in it, though Inever looked at it again; it spoke out as clearly to me as the launchhad done. I had thought, when I first entered, to tell the ladiessomething of my meeting with Hortense Rieppe; I can only say that Ifound this impossible. Neither of them referred to her, or to John, orto anything that approached what we were all thinking of; for me to doso would have assumed the dimensions of a liberty; and in consequence ofthis state of things, constraint sat upon us all, growing worse, andso pervading our small-talk with discomfort that I made my visit a veryshort one. Of course they were civil about this when I rose, and beggedme not to go so soon; but I knew better. And even as I was getting myhat and gloves in the hall I could tell by their tones that they hadreturned to the subject of that letter. But in truth they had never leftit; as the front door shut behind me I felt as if they had read it aloudto me.
