by Owen Wister
XX: What She Wanted Him For
He was neither at the window, nor in his bed, nor anywhere else to beseen, when I opened my eyes upon the world next morning; nor did anyanswer come when I called his name. I raised myself and saw outside thegreat branches of the wood, bathed from top to trunk in a sunshine thatwas no early morning's light; and upon this, the silence of the housespoke plainly to me not of man still sleeping, but of man long risen andgone about his business. I stepped barefoot across the wooden floor towhere lay my watch, but it marked an unearthly hour, for I had neglectedto wind it at the end of our long and convivial evening--of which myhead was now giving me some news. And then I saw a note addressed to mefrom John Mayrant.
"You are a good sleeper," it began, "but my conscience is clear asto the Bombo, called by some Kill-devil, about which I hope you willremember that I warned you."
He hoped I should remember! Of course I remembered everything; why didhe say that? An apology for his leaving me followed; he had been obligedto take the early train because of the Custom House, where he wasserving his final days; they would give me breakfast when ever I shouldbe ready for it, and I was to make free of the place; I had better visitthe old church (they had orders about the keys) and drive myself intoKings Port after lunch; the horses would know the way, if I did not. Itwas the boy's closing sentence which fixed my attention wholly, tookit away from Kill-devil Bombo and my Aunt Carola's commission, for theexecution of which I now held the clue, and sent me puzzling for theright interpretation of his words:--
"I believe that you will help your friend by that advice which startledme last night, but which I now begin to see more in than I did. Onlybetween alternate injuries, he may find it harder to choose which is theleast he can inflict, than you, who look on, find it. For in followingyour argument, he benefits himself so plainly that the benefit to theother person is very likely obscured to him. But, if you wish to, tellhim a Southern gentleman would feel he ought to be shot either way.That's the honorable price for changing your mind in such a case."
No interpretation of this came to me. I planned and carried out my dayaccording to his suggestion; a slow dressing with much cold water, aslow breakfast with much good hot coffee, a slow wandering beneath thedreamy branches of Udolpho,--this course cleared my head of the Bombo,and brought back to me our whole evening, and every word I had saidto John, except that I had lost the solution which, last night, thetriangle had held for me. At that moment, the triangle, and my wholedealing with the subject of monogamy, had seemed to contain thesimplicity of genius; but it had all gone now, and I couldn't getit back; only, what I had contrived to say to John about his ownpredicament had been certainly well said; I would say that over againto-day. It was the boy and the meaning of his words which escaped mestill, baffled me, and formed the whole subject of my attention, evenwhen I was inside the Tern Creek church; so that I retain nothingof that, save a general quaintness, a general loneliness, a littledeserted, forgotten token of human doings long since done, standingon its little acre of wilderness amid that solitude which suggests thedeparted presence of man, and which is so much more potent in the flavorof its desolation than the virgin wilderness whose solitude is stillwaiting for man to come.
It made no matter whether John had believed in the friend to whom Iintended writing advice, or had seen through and accepted in good partmy manoeuvre; he had considered my words, that was the point; and he hadnot slept in his bed, but on it, if sleep had come to him at all; thisI found out while dressing. Several times I read his note over. "Betweenalternate injuries he may find it harder to choose." This was not ananswer to me, but an explanation of his own perplexity. At times itsounded almost like an appeal, as if he were saying, "Do not blame mefor not being convinced;" and if it was such appeal, why, then, takenwith his resolve to do right at any cost, and his night of inwardcontention, it was poignant. "I believe that you will help your friend."Those words sounded better. But--"tell him a Southern gentleman ought tobe shot either way." What was the meaning of this? A chill import rosefrom it into my thoughts, but that I dismissed. To die on accountof Hortense! Such a thing was not to be conceived. And yet, given ahigh-strung nature, not only trapped by its own standards, but alsowrought upon during many days by increasing exasperation and unhappinesswhile helpless in the trap, and with no other outlook but the trap: thechill import returned to me more than once, and was reasoned away, as,with no attention to my surroundings, I took a pair of oars, and gotinto a boat belonging to the lodge, and rowed myself slowly among thesluggish windings of Tern Creek.
Whence come those thoughts that we ourselves feel shame at? It shamedme now, as I pulled my boat along, that I should have thoughts of Johnwhich needed banishing. What tale would this be to remember of a boy'slife, that he gave it to buy freedom from a pledge which need neverhave been binding? What pearl was this to cast before the sophisticatedHortense? Such act would be robbed of its sadness by its absurdity. Yet,surely, the bitterest tragedies are those of which the central anguishis lost amid the dust of surrounding paltriness. If such a thing shouldhappen here, no one but myself would have seen the lonely figure of JohnMayrant, standing by the window and looking out into the dark quiet ofthe wood; his name would be passed down for a little while as the nameof a fool, and then he would be forgotten. "I believe that you will helpyour friend." Yes; he had certainly written that, and it now came to methat I might have said to him one thing more: Had he given Hortense thechance to know what his feelings to her had become? But he would merelyhave answered that here it was the duty of a gentleman to lie. Or, hadhe possibly, at Newport, ever become her lover too much for any escapingnow? Had his dead passion once put his honor in a pawn which onlymarriage could redeem? This might fit all that had come, so far; andstill, with such a two as they, I should forever hold the boy thewoman's victim. But this did not fit what came after. Perhaps it was thelate sitting of the night before, and the hushed and strange solitudeof my surroundings now, that had laid my mind open to all these thoughtswhich my reason, in dealing with, answered continually, one by one, yetwhich returned, requiring to be answered again; for there are times whenour uncomfortable eyes see through the appearances we have arranged fordaily life, into the actualities which lie forever behind them.
Going about thus in my boat, I rowed sleepiness into myself, and pushedinto a nook where shade from some thick growth hid the boat and me fromthe sun; and there, almost enmeshed in the deep lattice of green, Iplaced my coat beneath my head, and prone in the boat's bottom I driftedinto slumber. Once or twice my oblivion was pierced by the roaming honkof the automobile; but with no more than the half-melted consciousnessthat the Replacers were somewhere in the wood, oblivion closed over meagain; and when it altogether left me, it was because of voices near meon the water, or on the bank. Their calls and laughter pushed themselvesinto my drowsiness, and soon after I grew aware that the Replacerswere come here to see what was to be seen at Udolpho--the club, the oldchurch, a country place with a fine avenue--and that it was the churchthey now couldn't get into, because my visit had disturbed the usualwhereabouts of the key, of which Gazza was now going in search. I couldhave told him where to find it, but it pleased me not to disturb myselffor this, as I listened to him assuring Kitty that it was probablyin the cabin beyond the bridge, but not to be alarmed if he did notimmediately return with it. Kitty, not without audible mirth, assuredhim that they should not be alarmed at all, to which the voice ofHortense supplemented, "Not at all." They were evidently in a boat,which Hortense herself was rowing, and which she seemed to bring tothe bank, where I gathered that Kitty got out and sat while Hortenseremained in the boat. There was the little talk and movement which goeswith borrowing of a cigarette, a little exclamation about not fallingout, accompanied by the rattle of a displaced oar, and then stillness,and the smell of tobacco smoke.
Presently Kitty spoke. "Charley will be back to-night."
To this I heard no reply.
"What did his telegram say?" Kitty inquired,
after another silence.
"It's all right." This was Hortense. Her slow, rich murmur was asdeliberate as always.
"Mr. Bohm knew it would be," said Kitty. "He said it wouldn't take fiveminutes' talk from Charley to get a contract worth double what they weregoing to accept."
After this, nothing came to me for several minutes, save the odor of thecigarettes.
Of course there was now but one proper course for me, namely, to utter adiscreet cough, and thus warn them that some one was within earshot. ButI didn't! I couldn't! Strength failed, curiosity won, my baser naturetriumphed here, and I deliberately remained lying quiet and hidden.It was the act of no gentleman, you will say. Well, it was; and I mustsimply confess to it, hoping that I am not the only gentleman in theworld who has, on occasion, fallen beneath himself.
"Hortense Rieppe," began Kitty, "what do you intend to say to my brotherafter what he has done about those phosphates?"
"He is always so kind," murmured Hortense.
"Well, you know what it means."
"Means?"
"If you persist in this folly, you'll drop out."
Hortense chose another line of speculation. "I wonder why your brotheris so sure of me?"
"Charley is a set man. And I've never seen him so set on anything as onyou, Hortense Rieppe."
"He is always so kind," murmured Hortense again.
"He's a man you'll always know just where to find," declared Kitty."Charley is safe. He'll never take you by surprise, never fly out, neverdo what other people don't do, never make any one stare at him by theway he looks, or the way he acts, or anything he says, or--or--why, howyou can hesitate between those two men after that ridiculous, childish,conspicuous, unusual scene on the bridge--"
"Unusual. Yes," said Hortense.
Kitty's eloquence and voice mounted together. "I should think it wasunusual! Tearing people's money up, and making a rude, awkward fussthat everybody had to smooth over as hard as they could! Why, even Mr.Rodgers says that sort of thing isn't done, and you're always saying heknows."
"No," said Hortense. "It isn't done."
"Well, I've never seen anything approaching such behavior in our set.And he was ready to go further. Nobody knows where it might have goneto, if Charley's perfect coolness hadn't rebuked him and brought him tohis senses. There's where it is, that's what I mean, Hortense, by sayingyou could always feel safe with Charley."
Hortense put in a languid word. "I think I should always feel safe withMr. Mayrant."
But Kitty was a simple soul. "Indeed you couldn't, Hortense! I assureyou that you're mistaken. There's where you get so wrong about mensometimes. I have been studying that boy for your sake ever since wegot here, and I know him through and through. And I tell you, you cannotcount upon him. He has not been used to our ways, and I see no promiseof his getting used to them. He will stay capable of outbreaks like thathorrid one on the bridge. Wherever you take him, wherever you puthim, no matter how much you show him of us, and the way we don't allowconspicuous things like that to occur, believe me, Hortense, he'll neverlearn, he'll never smooth down. You may brush his hair flat and keep himappearing like other people for a while, but a time will come, somethingwill happen, and that boy'll be conspicuous. Charley would never beconspicuous."
"No," assented Hortense.
Kitty urged her point. "Why, I never saw or beard of anything like thaton the bridge--that is, among--among--us!"
"No," assented Hortense, again, and her voice dropped lower with eachstatement. "One always sees the same thing. Always hears the same thing.Always the same thing." These last almost inaudible words sank away intothe silent pool of Hortense's meditation.
"Have another cigarette," said Kitty. "You've let yours fall into thewater."
I heard them moving a little, and then they must have resumed theirseats.
"You'll drop out of it," Kitty now pursued.
"Into what shall I drop?"
"Just being asked to the big things everybody goes to and nobody counts.For even with the way Charley has arranged about the phosphates, it willnot be enough to keep you in our swim--just by itself. He'll weigh morethan his money, because he'll stay different--too different."
"He was not so different last summer."
"Because he was not there long enough, my dear. He learned bridgequickly, and of course he had seen champagne before, and nobody had timeto notice him. But he'll be married now and they will notice him, andthey won't want him. To think of your dropping out!" Kitty became veryearnest. "To think of not seeing you among us! You'll be in none of thesmall things; you'll never be asked to stay at the smart houses--why,not even your name will be in the paper! Not a foreigner you entertain,not a dinner you give, not a thing you wear, will ever be described nextmorning. And Charley's so set on you, and you're so just exactly madefor each other, and it would all be so splendid, and cosey, and jolly!And to throw all this away for that crude boy!" Kitty's disdain was highat the thought of John.
Hortense took a little time over it "Once," she then stated, "he told mehe could drown in my hair as joyfully as the Duke of Clarence did in hisbutt of Malmsey wine!"
Kitty gave a little scream. "Did you let him?"
"One has to guard one's value at times."
Kitty's disdain for John increased. "How crude!"
Hortense did not make any answer.
"How crude!" Kitty, after some silence, repeated. She seemed to havefound the right word.
Steps sounded upon the bridge, and the voice of Gazza cried out that thestupid key was at the imbecile club-house, whither he was now going forit, and not to be alarmed. Their voices answered reassuringly, and Gazzawas heard growing distant, singing some little song.
Kitty was apparently unable to get away from John's crudity. "Heactually said that?"
"Yes."
"Where was it? Tell me about it, Hortense."
"We were walking in the country on that occasion."
Kitty still lingered with it. "Did he look--I've never had any man--Iwonder if--how did you feel?"
"Not disagreeably." And Hortense permitted herself to laugh musically.
Kitty's voice at once returned to the censorious tone. "Well, I callsuch language as that very--very--"
Hortense helped her. "Operatic?"
"He could never be taught in those ways either," declared Kitty. "Youwould find his ardor always untrained--provincial."
Once more Hortense abstained from making any answer.
Kitty grew superior. "Well, if that's to your taste, Hortense Rieppe!"
"It was none of it like Charley," murmured Hortense.
"I should think not! Charley's not crude. What do you see in that man?"
"I like the way his hair curls above his ears."
For this Kitty found nothing but an impatient exclamation.
And now the voice of Hortense sank still deeper in dreaminess,--downto where the truth lay; and from those depths came the truth, flashingupward through the drowsy words she spoke: "I think I want him for hisinnocence."
What light these words may have brought to Kitty, I had no chance tolearn; for the voice of Gazza returning with the key put an end to thisconversation. But I doubted if Kitty had it in her to fathom the natureof Hortense. Kitty was like a trim little clock that could tick tidilyon an ornate shelf; she could go, she could keep up with time, withthe rapid epoch to which she belonged, but she didn't really have manyworks. I think she would have scoffed at that last languorous speechas a piece of Hortense's nonsense, and that is why Hortense uttered italoud: she was safe from being understood. But in my ears it soundedthe note of revelation, the simple central secret of Hortense's fire,a flame fed overmuch with experience, with sophistication, grown coldunder the ministrations of adroitness, and lighted now by the "crudity"of John's love-making. And when, after an interval, I had rowed myboat back, and got into the carriage, and started on my long drive fromUdolpho to Kings Port, I found that there was almost nothing about allthis which I did not know n
ow. Hortense, like most riddles when you aretold the answer, was clear:--
"I think I want him for his innocence."
Yes; she was tired of love-making whose down had been rubbed off; shehungered for love-making with the down still on, even if she must payfor it with marriage. Who shall say if her enlightened and modern eyecould not look beyond such marriage (when it should grow monotonous) todivorce?
