Chapter 18

Kings Port holds many sacred nooks, many corners, many vistas, that should deeply stir the spirit and the heart of all Americans who know and love their country. The passing traveller may gaze up at certain windows there, and see History herself looking out at him, even as she looks out of the windows of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. There are also other ancient buildings in Kings Port, where History is shut up, as in a strong-box,--such as that stubborn old octagon, the powder-magazine of Revolutionary times, which is a chest holding proud memories of blood and war. And then there are the three churches. Not strong-boxes, these, but shrines, where burn the venerable lamps of faith. And of these three houses of God, that one holds the most precious flame, the purest light, which treasures the holy fire that came from France. The English colonists, who sat in the other two congregations, came to Carolina’s soil to better their estate; but it was for liberty of soul, to lift their ardent and exalted prayer to God as their own conscience bade them, and not as any man dictated, that those French colonists sought the New World. No Puritan splendor of independence and indomitable courage outshines theirs. They preached a word as burning as any that Plymouth or Salem ever heard. They were but a handful, yet so fecund was their marvelous zeal that they became the spiritual leaven of their whole community. They are less known than Plymouth and Salem, because men of action, rather than men of letters, have sprung from the loins of the South; but there they stand, a beautiful beacon, shining upon the coasts of our early history. Into their church, then, into the shrine where their small lamp still burns, their devout descendant, Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael led our party, because in her eyes Kings Port could show nothing more precious and significant. There had been nothing to warn her that Bohm and Charley were Americans who neither knew nor loved their country, but merely Americans who knew their country’s wealth and loved to acquire every penny of it that they could.

And so, following the steps of our delicate and courteous guide, we entered into the dimness of the little building; and Mrs. Weguelin’s voice, lowered to suit the sanctity which the place had for her, began to tell us very quietly and clearly the story of its early days.

I knew it, or something of it, from books; but from this little lady’s lips it took on a charm and graciousness which made it fresh to me. I listened attentively, until I felt, without at first seeing the cause, that dulling of enjoyment, that interference with the receptive attention, which comes at times to one during the performance of music when untimely people come in or go out. Next, I knew that our group of listeners was less compact; and then, as we moved from the first point in the church to a new one, I saw that Bohm and Charley were dropping behind, and I lingered, with the intention of bringing them closer.

“But there was nothing in it,” I heard Charley’s slow monologue continuing behind me to the silent Bohm. “We could have bought the Parsons road at that time. ‘Gentlemen,’ I said to them, ‘what is there for us in tide-water at Kings Port? ’”

It was not to be done, and I rejoined Mrs. Weguelin and those of the party who were making some show of attention to her quiet little histories and explanations; and Kitty’s was the next voice which I heard ring out--

“Oh, you must never let it fall to pieces! It’s the cunningest little fossil I’ve seen in the South.”

“So,” said Charley behind me, “we let the other crowd buy their strategic point; and I guess they know they got a gold brick.”

I moved away from the financiers, I endeavored not to hear their words; and in this much I was successful; but their inappropriate presence had got, I suppose upon my nerves; at any rate, go where I would in the little church, or attend as I might and did to what Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael said about the tablets, and whatever traditions their inscriptions suggested to her, that quiet, low, persistent banker’s voice of Charley’s pervaded the building like a draft of cold air. Once, indeed, he addressed Mrs. Weguelin a question. She was telling Beverly (who followed her throughout, protectingly and charmingly, with his most devoted attention and his best manner) the honorable deeds of certain older generations of a family belonging to this congregation, some of whose tombs outside had borne French inscriptions.

“My mother’s family,” said Mrs. Weguelin.

“And nowadays,” inquired Beverly, “what do they find instead of military careers?”

“There are no more of us nowadays; they--they were killed in the war.”

And immediately she smiled, and with her hand she made a light gesture, as if to dismiss this subject from mutual embarrassment and pain.

“I might have known better,” murmured the understanding Beverly.

But Charley now had his question. “How many, did you say?”

“How many?” Mrs. Weguelin did not quite understand him.

“Were killed?” explained Charley.

Again there was a little pause before Mrs. Weguelin answered, “My four brothers met their deaths.”

Charley was interested. “And what was the percentage of fatality in their regiments?”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Weguelin, “we did not think of it in that way.” And she turned aside.

“Charley,” said Kitty, with some precipitancy, “do make Mr. Bohm look at the church!” and she turned after Mrs. Weguelin. “It is such a gem!”

But I saw the little lady try to speak and fail, and then I noticed that she was leaning against a window-sill.

Beverly Rodgers also noticed this, and he hastened to her.

“Thank you,” she returned to his hasty question, “I am quite well. If you are not tired of it, shall we go on?”

“It is such a gem!” repeated Kitty, throwing an angry glance at Charley and Bohm. And so we went on.

Yes, Kitty did her best to cover it up; Kitty, as she would undoubtedly have said herself, could see a few things. But nobody could cover it up, though Beverly was now vigilant in his efforts to do so. Indeed, Replacers cannot be covered up by human agency; they bulge, they loom, they stare, they dominate the road of life, even as their automobiles drive horses and pedestrians to the wall. Bohm, roused from his financial torpor by Kitty’s sharp command, did actually turn his eyes upon the church, which he had now been inside for some twenty minutes without noticing. Instinct and long training had given his eye, when it really looked at anything, a particular glance--the glance of the Replacer--which plainly calculated: “Can this be made worth money to me?” and which died instantly to a glaze of indifference on seeing that no money could be made. Bohm’s eye, accordingly, waked and then glazed. Manners, courtesy, he did not need, not yet; he had looked at them with his Replacer glance, and, seeing no money in them, had gone on looking at railroads, and mines, and mills,--and bare shoulders, and bottles. Should manners and courtesy come, some day, to mean money to him, then he could have them, in his fashion, so that his admirers and his apologists should alike declare of him, “A rough diamond, but consider what he has made of himself!”

“After what, did you say?” This was the voice of Gazza, addressing Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael. It must be said of Gazza that he, too, made a certain presence of interest in the traditions of Kings Port.

“After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,” replied Mrs. Weguelin.

“Built it in Savannah,” Charley was saying to Bohm, “or Norfolk. This is a good place to bury people in, but not money. Now the phosphate proposition--”

Again I dragged my attention by force away from that quiet, relentless monologue, and listened as well as I could to Mrs. Weguelin. There had come to be among us all, I think--Beverly, Kitty, Gazza, and myself--a joint impulse to shield her, to cluster about her, to follow her steps from each little lecture that she finished to the new point where the next lecture began; and we did it, performed our pilgrimage to the end; but there was less and less nature in our performance. I knew (and it was like a dream which I could not stop) that we pressed a little too close, that our questions were a little too eager, that we overprinted our faces with attention; knowing this did not help, nothing helped, and we went on to the end, seeing ourselves doing it; and it must have been that Mrs. Weguelin saw us likewise. But she was truly admirable in giving no sign, she came out well ahead; the lectures were not hurried, one had no sense of points being skipped to accommodate our unworthiness, it required a previous familiarity with the church to know (as I did) that there was, indeed, more and more skipping; yet the little lady played her part so evenly and with never a falter of voice nor a change in the gentle courtesy of her manner, that I do not think--save for that moment at the window-sill--I could have been sure what she thought, or how much she noticed. Her face was always so pale, it may well have been all imagination with me that she seemed, when we emerged at last into the light of the street, paler than usual; but I am almost certain that her hand was trembling as she stood receiving the thanks of the party. These thanks were cut a little short by the arrival of one of the automobiles, and, at the same time, the appearance of Hortense strolling toward us with John Mayrant.

Charley had resumed to Bohm, “A tax of twenty-five cents on the ton is nothing with deposits of this richness,” when his voice ceased; and looking at him to see the cause, I perceived that his eye was on John, and that his polished finger-nail was running meditatively along his thin mustache.

Hortense took the matter--whatever the matter was--in hand.

“You haven’t much time,” she said to Charles, who consulted his watch.

“Who’s coming to see me off?” he inquired.

“Where’s he going?” I asked Beverly.

“She’s sending him North,” Beverly answered, and then he spoke with his very best simple manner to Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael. “May I not walk home with you after all your kindness?”

She was going to say no, for she had had enough of this party; but she looked at Beverly, and his face and his true solicitude won her; she said, “Thank you, if you will.” And the two departed together down the shabby street, the little veiled lady in black, and Beverly with his excellent London clothes and his still more excellent look of respectful, sheltering attention.

And now Bohm pronounced the only utterance that I heard fall from his lips during his stay in Kings Port. He looked at the church he had come from, he looked at the neighboring larger church whose columns stood out at the angle of the street; he looked at the graveyard opposite that, then at the stale, dusty shop of old furniture, and then up the shabby street, where no life or movement was to be seen, except the distant forms of Beverly and Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael. Then from a gold cigar-case, curved to fit his breast pocket, he took a cigar and lighted it from a gold match-box. Offering none of us a cigar, he placed the case again in his pocket; and holding his lighted cigar a moment with two fingers in his strong glove, he spoke:--

“This town’s worse than Sunday.”

Then he got into the automobile. They all followed to see Charley off, and he addressed me.

“I shall be glad,” he said, “if you will make one of a little party on the yacht next Sunday, when I come back. And you also,” he added to John.

Both John and I expressed our acceptance in suitable forms, and the automobile took its way to the train.

“Your Kings Port streets,” I said, as we walked back toward Mrs. Trevise’s, “are not very favorable for automobiles.”

“No,” he returned briefly. I don’t remember that either of us found more to say until we had reached my front door, when he asked, “Will the day after to-morrow suit you for Udolpho?”

“Whenever you say,” I told him.

“Weather permitting, of course. But I hope that it will; for after that I suppose my time will not be quite so free.”

After we had parted it struck me that this was the first reference to his approaching marriage that John had ever made in my hearing since that day long ago (it seemed long ago, at least) when he had come to the Exchange to order the wedding-cake, and Eliza La Heu had fallen in love with him at sight. That, in my opinion, looking back now with eyes at any rate partially opened, was what Eliza had done. Had John returned the compliment then, or since?

XIX: Udolpho

It was to me continuously a matter of satisfaction and of interest to see Hortense disturbed--whether for causes real or imaginary--about the security of her title to her lover John, nor can I say that my misinterpreted bunch of roses diminished this satisfaction. I should have been glad to know if the accomplished young woman had further probed that question and discovered the truth, but it seemed scarce likely that she could do this without the help of one of three persons, Eliza and myself who knew all, or John who knew nothing; for the up-country bride, and whatever other people in Kings Port there were to whom the bride might gayly recite the tale of my roses, were none of them likely to encounter Miss Rieppe; their paths and hers would not meet until they met in church at the wedding of Hortense and John. No, she could not have found out the truth; for never in the world would she, at this eleventh hour, risk a conversation with John upon a subject so full of well-packed explosives; and so she must be simply keeping on both him and Eliza an eye as watchful as lay in her power. As for Charley, what bait, what persuasion, what duress she had been able to find that took him at an hour so critical from her side to New York, I could not in the least conjecture. Had she said to the little banker, Go, because I must think it over alone? It did not seem strong enough. Or had she said, Go, and on your return you shall have my answer? Not adequate either, I thought. Or had it been, If you don’t go, it shall be “no,” to-day and forever? This last was better; but there was no telling, nor did Beverly Rodgers, to whom I propounded all my theories, have any notion of what was between Hortense and Charley. He only knew that Charley was quite aware of the existence of John, but had always been merely amused at the notion of him.

“So have you been merely amused,” I reminded him.

“Not since that look I saw her give him, old chap. I know she wants him, only not why she wants him. And Charley, you know--well, of course, poor Charley’s a banker, just a banker and no more; and a banker is merely the ace in the same pack where the drummer is the two-spot. Our American civilization should be called Drummer’s Delight--and there’s nothing in your fire-eater to delight a drummer: he’s a gentleman, he’ll be only so-so rich, and he’s away back out of the lime-light, while poor old Charley’s a bounder, and worth forty millions anyhow, and right in the centre of the glare. How should he see any danger in John?”

“I wonder if he hasn’t begun to?”

“Well, perhaps. He and Hortense have been ‘talking business’; I know that. Oh--and why do you think she said he must go to New York? To make a better deal for the fire-eater’s phosphates than his fuddling old trustee here was going to close with. Charley said that could be arranged by telegram. But she made him go himself! She’s extraordinary. He’ll arrive in town to-morrow, he’ll leave next day, he’ll reach here by the Southern on Saturday night in time for our Sunday yacht picnic, and then something has got to happen, I should think.”

Here was another key, unlocking a further piece of knowledge for me. I had not been able to guess why Hortense should be keeping Charley “on”; but how natural was this policy, when understood clearly! She still needed Charley’s influence in the world of affairs. Charley’s final service was to be the increasing of his successful rival’s fortune. I wondered what Charley would do, when the full extent of his usefulness dawned upon him; and with wonder renewed I thought of General Rieppe, and this daughter he had managed to beget. Surely the mother of Hortense, whoever she may have been, must have been a very richly endowed character!

“Something has most certainly got to happen and soon,” I said to Beverly Rodgers. “Especially if my busy boarding-house bodies are right in saying that the invitations for the wedding are to be out on Monday.”

Well, I had Friday, I had Udolpho; and there, while on that excursion, when I should be alone with John Mayrant during many hours, and especially the hours of deep, confidential night, I swore to myself on oath I would say to the boy the last word, up to the verge of offense, that my wits could devise. Apart from a certain dramatic excitement as of battle--battle between Hortense and me--I truly wished to help him out of the miserable mistake his wrong standard, his chivalry gone perverted, was spurring him on to make; and I had a comic image of myself, summoning Miss Josephine, summoning Miss Eliza, summoning Mrs. Gregory and Mrs. Weguelin, and the whole company of aunts and cousins, and handing to them the rescued John with the single but sufficient syllable: “There!”

He was in apparent spirits, was John, at that hour of our departure for Udolpho; he pretended so well that I was for a while altogether deceived. He had wished to call for me with the conveyance in which he should drive us out into the lonely country through the sunny afternoon; but instead, I chose to walk round to where he lived, and where I found him stuffing beneath the seats of the vehicle the baskets and the parcels which contained the provisions for our ample supper.

“I have never seen you drink hearty yet, and now I purpose to,” said John.

As the packing was finishing Miss Josephine St. Michael came by; and the sight of the erect old lady reminded me that of all Kings Port figures known to me and seen in the garden paying their visit of ceremony to Hortense, she alone--she and Eliza La Heu--had been absent. Eliza’s declining to share in that was well-nigh inevitable, but Miss Josephine was another matter. Perhaps she had considered her sister’s going there to be enough; at any rate, she had not been party to the surrender, and this gave me whimsical satisfaction. Moreover, it had evidently occasioned no ruffle in the affectionate relations between herself and John.

“John,” said she, “as you drive by, do get me a plumber.”

“Much better get a burglar, Aunt Josephine. Cheaper in the end, and neater work.”

It was thus, at the outset, that I came to believe John’s spirits were high; and this illusion he successfully kept up until after we had left the plumber and Kings Port several sordid miles behind us; the approach to Kings Port this way lies through dirtiest Africa. John was loquacious; John discoursed upon the Replacers; Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael had quite evidently expressed to her own circle what she thought of them; and the town in consequence, although it did not see them or their automobiles, because it appeared they were gone some twenty miles inland upon an excursion to a resort where was a large hotel, and a little variety in the way of some tourists of the Replacer stripe,--the town kept them well in its mind’s eye. The automobiles would have sufficed to bring them into disrepute, but Kings Port had a better reason in their conduct in the church; and John found many things to say to me, as we drove along, about Bohm and Charley and Kitty. Gazza he forgot, although, as shall appear in its place, Gazza was likely to live a long while in his memory. Beverly Rodgers he, of course, recognized as being a gentleman--it was clear that Beverly met with Kings Port’s approval--and, from his Newport experiences, John was able to make out quite as well as if he had heard Beverly explain it himself the whole wise philosophic system of joining with the Replacers in order that you be not replaced yourself.

“In his shoes mightn’t I do the same?” he surmised. “I fear I’m not as Spartan as my aunts--only pray don’t mention it to them!”

And then, because I had been answering him with single syllables, or with nods, or not at all, he taxed me with my taciturnity; he even went so far as to ask me what thoughts kept me so silent--which I did not tell him.

“I am wondering,” I told him instead, “how much they steal every week.”

“Those financiers?”

“Yes. Bohm is president of an insurance company, and Charley’s a director, and reorganizes railroads.”

“Well, if other people share your pleasant opinion of them, how do they get elected?”

“Other people share their pleasant spoils--senators, vestrymen--you can’t be sure who you’re sitting next to at dinner any more. Come live North. You’ll find the only safe way is never to know anybody worth more than five millions--if you wish to keep the criminal classes off your visiting list.”

This made him merry. “Put ‘em in jail, then!”

“Ah, the jail!” I returned. “It’s the great American joke. It reverses the rule of our smart society. Only those who have no incomes are admitted.”

“But what do you have laws and lawyers for?”

“To keep the rich out of jail. It’s called ‘professional etiquette.’”

“Your picture flatters!”

“You flatter me; it’s only a photograph. Come North and see.”

“One might think, from your account, the American had rather be bad than good.”

“O dear, no! The American had much rather be good than bad!”

“Your admission amazes me!”

“But also the American had rather be rich than good. And he is having his wish. And money’s golden hand is tightening on the throat of liberty while the labor union stabs liberty in the back--for trusts and unions are both trying to kill liberty. And the soul of Uncle Sam has turned into a dollar-inside his great, big, strong, triumphant flesh; so that even his new religion, his own special invention, his last offering to the creeds of the world, his gatherer of converted hordes, his Christian Science, is based upon physical benefit.”

John touched the horses. “You’re particularly cheerful to-day!”

“No. I merely summarize what I’m seeing.”

“Well, a moral awakening will come,” he declared.

“Inevitably. To-morrow, perhaps. The flesh has had a good, long, prosperous day, and the hour of the spirit must be near striking. And the moral awakening will be followed by a moral slumber, since, in the uncomprehended scheme of things, slumber seems necessary; and you needn’t pull so long a face, Mr. Mayrant, because the slumber will be followed by another moral awakening. The alcoholic society girl you don’t like will very probably give birth to a water-drinking daughter--who in her turn may produce a bibulous progeny: how often must I tell you that nothing is final?”