Chapter 5

“Never in the wildest dream!”

“Well, but too innocent for a man, anyhow.”

“That would be an insult,” I declared laughingly.

“For I’m not innocent in the least. You’ll find we’re all men here, just as much as any men in the North you could pick out. South Carolina has never lacked sporting blood, sir. But in Newport--well, sir, we gentlemen down here, when we wish a certain atmosphere and all that, have always been accustomed to seek the demi-monde.”

“So it was with us until the women changed it.”

“The women, sir?” He was innocent!

“The ‘ladies,’ as you Southerners so chivalrously continue to style them. The rich new fashionable ladies became so desperate in their competition for men’s allegiance that they--well, some of them would, in the point of conversation, greatly scandalize the smart demi-monde.”

He nodded. “Yes. I heard men say things in drawing-rooms to ladies that a gentleman here would have been taken out and shot for. And don’t you agree with me, sir, that good taste itself should be a sort of religion? I don’t mean to say anything sacrilegious, but it seems to me that even if one has ceased to believe some parts of the Bible, even if one does not always obey the Ten Commandments, one is bound, not as a believer but as a gentleman, to remember the difference between grossness and refinement, between excess and restraint--that one can have and keep just as the pagan Greeks did, a moral elegance.”

He astonished me, this ardent, ideal, troubled boy; so innocent regarding the glaring facts of our new prosperity, so finely penetrating as to some of the mysteries of the soul. But he was of old Huguenot blood, and of careful and gentle upbringing; and it was delightful to find such a young man left upon our American soil untainted by the present fashionable idolatries.

“I bow to your creed of ‘moral elegance,’” I cried. “It never dies. It has outlasted all the mobs and all the religions.”

“They seemed to think,” he continued, pursuing his Newport train of thought, “that to prove you were a dead game sport you must behave like--behave like--”

“Like a herd of swine,” I suggested.

He was merry. “Ah, if they only would--completely!”

“Completely what?”

“Behave so. Rush over a steep place into the sea.”

We sat in the quiet relish of his Scriptural idea, and the western crimson and the twilight began to come and mingle with the perfumes. John Mayrant’s face changed from its vivacity to a sort of pensive wistfulness, which, for all the dash and spirit in his delicate features, was somehow the final thing one got from the boy’s expression. It was as though the noble memories of his race looked out of his eyes, seeking new chances for distinction, and found instead a soil laid waste, an empty fatherland, a people benumbed past rousing. Had he not said, “Poor Kings Port!” as he tapped the gravestone? Moral elegance could scarcely permit a sigh more direct.

“I am glad that you believe it never dies,” he resumed. “And I am glad to find somebody to--talk to, you know. My friends here are everything friends and gentlemen should be, but they don’t--I suppose it’s because they have not had my special experiences.”

I sat waiting for the boy to go on with it. How plainly he was telling me of his “special experiences”! He and his creed were not merely in revolt against the herd of swine; there would be nothing special in that; I had met people before who were that; but he was tied by honor, and soon to be tied by the formidable nuptial knot, to a specimen devotee of the cult. He shouldn’t marry her if he really did not want to, and I could stop it! But how was I to begin spinning the first faint web of plan how I might stop it, unless he came right out with the whole thing? I didn’t believe he was the man to do that ever, even under the loosening inspiration of drink. In wine lies truth, no doubt; but within him, was not moral elegance the bottom truth that would, even in his cups, keep him a gentleman, and control all such revelations? He might smash the glasses, but he would not speak of his misgivings as to Hortense Rieppe.

He began again, “Nor do I believe that a really nice girl would continue to think as those few do, if she once got safe away from them. Why, my dear sir,” he stretched out his hand in emphasis, “you do not have to do anything untimely and extreme if you are in good earnest a dead game sport. The time comes, and you meet the occasion as the duck swims. There was one of them--the right kind.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Why--you’re leaning against her headstone!”

The little incongruity made us both laugh, but it was only for the instant. The tender mood of the evening, and all that we had said, sustained the quiet and almost grave undertone of our conference. My own quite unconscious act of rising from the grave and standing before him on the path to listen brought back to us our harmonious pensiveness.

“She was born in Kings Port, but educated in Europe. I don’t suppose until the time came that she ever did anything harder than speak French, or play the piano, or ride a horse. She had wealth and so had her husband. He was killed in the war, and so were two of her sons. The third was too young to go. Their fortune was swept away, but the plantation was there, and the negroes were proud to remain faithful to the family. She took hold of the plantation, she walked the rice-banks in high boots. She had an overseer, who, it was told her, would possibly take her life by poison or by violence. She nevertheless lived in that lonely spot with no protector except her pistol and some directions about antidotes. She dismissed him when she had proved he was cheating her; she made the planting pay as well as any man did after the war; she educated her last son, got him into the navy, and then, one evening, walking the river-banks too late, she caught the fever and died. You will understand she went with one step from cherished ease to single-handed battle with life, a delicately nurtured lady, with no preparation for her trials.”

“Except moral elegance,” I murmured.

“Ah, that was the point, sir! To see her you would never have guessed it! She kept her burdens from the sight of all. She wore tribulation as if it were a flower in her bosom. We children always looked forward to her coming, because she was so gay and delightful to us, telling us stories of the old times--old rides when the country was wild, old journeys with the family and servants to the Hot Springs before the steam cars were invented, old adventures, with the battle of New Orleans or a famous duel in them--the sort of stories that begin with (for you seem to know something of it yourself, sir) ‘Your grandfather, my dear John, the year that he was twenty, got himself into serious embarrassments through paying his attentions to two reigning beauties at once.’ She was full of stories which began in that sort of pleasant way.”

I said: “When a person like that dies, an impoverishment falls upon us; the texture of life seems thinner.”

“Oh, yes, indeed! I know what you mean--to lose the people one has always seen from the cradle. Well, she has gone away, she has taken her memories out of the world, the old times, the old stories. Nobody, except a little nutshell of people here, knows or cares anything about her any more; and soon even the nutshell will be empty.” He paused, and then, as if brushing aside his churchyard mood, he translated into his changed thought another classic quotation: “But we can’t dawdle over the ‘tears of things’; it’s Nature’s law. Only, when I think of the rice-banks and the boots and the pistol, I wonder if the Newport ladies, for all their high-balls, could do any better!”

The crimson had faded, the twilight was altogether come, but the little noiseless breeze was blowing still; and as we left the quiet tombs behind us, and gained Worship Street, I could not help looking back where slept that older Kings Port about which I had heard and had said so much. Over the graves I saw the roses, nodding and moving, as if in acquiescent revery.

VII: The Girl Behind the Counter--II

“Which of them is idealizing?” This was the question that I asked myself, next morning, in my boarding-house, as I dressed for breakfast; the next morning is--at least I have always found it so--an excellent time for searching questions; and to-day I had waked up no longer beneath the strong, gentle spell of the churchyard. A bright sun was shining over the eastern waters of the town, I could see from my upper veranda the thousand flashes of the waves; the steam yacht rode placidly and competently among them, while a coastwise steamer was sailing by her, out to sea, to Savannah, or New York; the general world was going on, and--which of them was idealizing? It mightn’t be so bad, after all. Hadn’t I, perhaps, over-sentimentalized to myself the case of John Mayrant? Hadn’t I imagined for him ever so much more anxiety than the boy actually felt? For people can idealize down just as readily as they can idealize up. Of Miss Hortense Rieppe I had now two partial portraits--one by the displeased aunts, the other by their chivalric nephew; in both she held between her experienced lips, a cigarette; there the similarity ceased. And then, there was the toboggan fire-escape. Well, I must meet the living original before I could decide whether (for me, at any rate) she was the “brute” as seen by the eyes of Mrs. Gregory St. Michael, or the “really nice girl” who was going to marry John Mayrant on Wednesday week. Just at this point my thoughts brought up hard again at the cake. No; I couldn’t swallow that any better this morning than yesterday afternoon! Allow the gentleman to pay for the feast! Better to have omitted all feast; nothing simpler, and it would have been at least dignified, even if arid. But then, there was the lady (a cousin or an aunt--I couldn’t remember which this morning) who had told me she wasn’t solicitous. What did she mean by that? And she had looked quite queer when she spoke about the phosphates. Oh, yes, to be sure, she was his intimate aunt! Where, by the way, was Miss Rieppe?

By the time I had eaten my breakfast and walked up Worship Street to the post-office I was full of it all again; my searching thoughts hadn’t simplified a single point. I always called for my mail at the post-office, because I got it sooner; it didn’t come to the boarding-house before I had departed on my quest for royal blood, whereas, this way, I simply got my letters at the corner of Court and Worship streets and walked diagonally across and down Court a few steps to my researches, which I could vary and alleviate by reading and answering news from home.

It was from Aunt Carola that I heard to-day. Only a little of what she said will interest you. There had been a delightful meeting of the Selected Salic Scions. The Baltimore Chapter had paid her Chapter a visit. Three ladies and one very highly connected young gentleman had come--an encouragingly full and enthusiastic meeting. They had lunched upon cocoa, sherry, and croquettes, after which all had been more than glad to listen to a paper read by a descendant of Edward the Third and the young gentleman, a descendant of Catherine of Aragon, had recited a beautiful original poem, entitled “My Queen Grandmother.” Aunt Carola regretted that I could not have had the pleasure and the benefit of this meeting, the young gentleman had turned out to be, also, a refined and tasteful musician, playing, upon the piano a favorite gavotte of Louis the Thirteenth “And while you are in Kings Port,” my aunt said; “I expect you to profit by associating with the survivors of our good American society--people such as one could once meet everywhere when I was young, but who have been destroyed by the invasion of the proletariat. You are in the last citadel of good-breeding. By the way, find out, if you can, if any of the Bombo connection are extant; as through them I should like, if possible, to establish a chapter of the Scions in South Carolina. Have you, met a Miss Rieppe, a decidedly striking young woman, who says she is from Kings Port, and who recently passed through here with a very common man dancing attendance on her? He owns the Hermana, and she is said to be engaged to him.”

This wasn’t as good as meeting Miss Rieppe myself; but the new angle at which I got her from my Aunt was distinctly a contribution toward the young woman’s likeness; I felt that I should know her at sight, if ever she came within seeing distance. And it would be entertaining to find that she was a Bombo; but that could wait; what couldn’t wait was the Hermana. I postponed the Fannings, hurried by the door where they waited for me, and, coming to the end of Court Street, turned to the right and sought among the wharves the nearest vista that could give me a view of the harbor. Between the silent walls of commerce desolated, and by the empty windows from which Prosperity once looked out, I threaded my way to a point upon the town’s eastern edge. Yes, that was the steam yacht’s name: the Hermana. I didn’t make it out myself, she lay a trifle too far from shore; but I could read from a little fluttering pennant that her owner was not on board; and from the second loafer whom I questioned I learned, besides her name, that she had come from New York here to meet her owner, whose name he did not know and whose arrival was still indefinite. This was not very much to find out; but it was so much more than I had found out about the Fannings that, although I now faithfully returned to my researches, and sat over open books until noon, I couldn’t tell you a word of what I read. Where was Miss Rieppe, and where was the owner of the Hermana? Also, precisely how ill was the hero of Chattanooga, her poor dear father?

At the Exchange I opened the door upon a conversation which, in consequence, broke off abruptly; but this much I came in for:--

“Nothing but the slightest bruise above his eye. The other one is in bed.”

It was the severe lady who said this; I mean that lady who, among all the severe ones I had met, seemed capable of the highest exercise of this quality, although she had not exercised it in my presence. She looked, in her veil and her black street dress, as aloof, and as coldly scornful of the present day, as she had seemed when sitting over her embroidery; but it was not of 1818, or even 1840, that she had been talking just now: it was this morning that somebody was bruised, somebody was in bed.

The handsome lady acknowledged my salutation completely, but not encouragingly, and then, on the threshold, exchanged these parting sentences with the girl behind the counter:--

“They will have to shake hands. He was not very willing, but he listened to me. Of course, the chastisement was right--but it does not affect my opinion of his keeping on with the position.”

“No, indeed, Aunt Josephine!” the girl agreed. “I wish he wouldn’t. Did you say it was his right eye?”

“His left.” Miss Josephine St. Michael inclined her head once more to me and went out of the Exchange. I retired to my usual table, and the girl read in my manner, quite correctly, the feelings which I had not supposed I had allowed to be evident. She said:--

“Aunt Josephine always makes strangers think she’s displeased with them.”

I replied like the young ass which I constantly tell myself I have ceased to be: “Oh, displeasure is as much notice as one is entitled to from Miss St. Michael.”

The girl laughed with her delightful sweet mockery.

“I declare, you’re huffed! Now don’t tell me you’re not. But you mustn’t be. When you know her, you’ll know that that awful manner means Aunt Josephine is just being shy. Why, even I’m not afraid of her George Washington glances any more!”

“Very well,” I laughed, “I’ll try to have your courage.” Over my chocolate and sandwiches I sat in curiosity discreditable, but natural. Who was in bed--who would have to shake hands? And why had they stopped talking when I came in? Of course, I found myself hoping that John Mayrant had put the owner of the Hermana in bed at the slight cost of a bruise above his left eye. I wondered if the cake was again countermanded, and I started upon that line. “I think I’ll have to-day, if you please, another slice of that Lady Baltimore.” And I made ready for another verbal skirmish.

“I’m so sorry! It’s a little stale to-day. You can have the last slice, if you wish.”

“Thank you, I will.” She brought it. “It’s not so very stale,” I said. “How long since it has been made?”

“Oh, it’s the same you’ve been having. You’re its only patron just now.”

“Well, no. There’s Mr. Mayrant.”

“Not for a week yet, you remember.”

So the wedding was on yet. Still, John might have smashed the owner of the Hermana.

“Have you seen him lately?” I asked.

There was something special in the way she looked. “Not to-day. Have you?”

“Never in the forenoon. He has his duties and I have mine.”

She made a little pause, and then, “What do you think of the President?”

“The President?” I was at a loss.

“But I’m afraid you would take his view--the Northern view,” she mused.

It gave me, suddenly, her meaning. “Oh, the President of the United States! How you do change the subject!”

Her eyes were upon me, burning with sectional indignation, but she seemed to be thinking too much to speak. Now, here was a topic that I had avoided, and she had plumped it at me. Very well; she should have my view.

“If you mean that a gentleman cannot invite any respectable member of any race he pleases to dine privately in his house--”

“His house!” She was glowing now with it. “I think he is--I think he is--to have one of them--and even if he likes it, not to remember--cannot speak about him!” she wound up “I should say unbecoming things.” She had walked out, during these words, from behind the counter and as she stood there in the middle of the long room you might have thought she was about to lead a cavalry charge. Then, admirably, she put it all under, and spoke on with perfect self-control. “Why can’t somebody explain it to him? If I knew him, I would go to him myself, and I would say, Mr. President, we need not discuss our different tastes as to dinner company. Nor need we discuss how much you benefit the colored race by an act which makes every member of it immediately think that he is fit to dine with any king in the world. But you are staying in a house which is partly our house, ours, the South’s, for we, too, pay taxes, you know. And since you also know our deep feeling--you may even call it a prejudice, if it so pleases you--do you not think that, so long as you are residing in that house, you should not gratuitously shock our deep feeling?” She swept a magnificent low curtsy at the air.

“By Jove, Miss La Heu!” I exclaimed, “you put it so that it’s rather hard to answer.”

“I’m glad it strikes you so.”

“But did it make them all think they were going to dine?”

“Hundreds of thousands. It was proof to them that they were as good as anybody--just as good, without reading or writing or anything. The very next day some of the laziest and dirtiest where we live had a new strut, like the monkey when you put a red flannel cap on him--only the monkey doesn’t push ladies off the sidewalk. And that state of mind, you know,” said Miss La Heu, softening down from wrath to her roguish laugh, “isn’t the right state of mind for racial progress! But I wasn’t thinking of this. You know he has appointed one of them to office here.”

A light entered my brain: John Mayrant had a position at the Custom House! John Mayrant was subordinate to the President’s appointee! She hadn’t changed the subject so violently, after all.

I came squarely at it. “And so you wish him to resign his position?”

But I was ahead of her this time.

“The Chief of Customs?” she wonderingly murmured.

I brought her up with me now. “Did Miss Josephine St. Michael say it was over his left eye?”

The girl instantly looked everything she thought. “I believe you were present!” This was her highly comprehensive exclamation, accompanied also by a blush as splendidly young as John Mayrant had been while he so stammeringly brought out his wishes concerning the cake. I at once decided to deceive her utterly, and therefore I spoke the exact truth: “No, I wasn’t present.”

They did their work, my true words; the false impression flowed out of them as smoothly as California claret from a French bottle.

“I wonder who told you?” my victim remarked. “But it doesn’t really matter. Everybody is bound to know it. You surely were the last person with him in the churchyard?”

“Gracious!” I admitted again with splendidly mendacious veracity. “How we do find each other out in Kings Port!”

It was not by any means the least of the delights which I took in the company of this charming girl that sometimes she was too much for me, and sometimes I was too much for her. It was, of course, just the accident of our ages; in a very few years she would catch up, would pass, would always be too much for me. Well, to-day it was happily my turn; I wasn’t going to finish lunch without knowing all she, at any rate, could tell me about the left eye and the man in bed.

“Forty years ago,” I now, with ingenuity, remarked, “I suppose it would have been pistols.”

She assented. “And I like that better--don’t you--for gentlemen?”

“Well, you mean that fists are--”

“Yes,” she finished for me.

“All the same,” I maintained, “don’t you think that there ought to be some correspondence, some proportion, between the gravity of the cause and the gravity of--”

“Let the coal-heavers take to their fists!” she scornfully cried. “People of our class can’t descend--”

“Well, but,” I interrupted, “then you give the coal-heavers the palm for discrimination.”

“How’s that?”

“Why, perfectly! Your coal-heaver kills for some offenses, while for lighter ones he--gets a bruise over the left eye.”

“You don’t meet it, you don’t meet it! What is an insult ever but an insult?”

“Oh, we in the North notice certain degrees--insolence, impudence, impertinence, liberties, rudeness--all different.”

She took up my phrase with a sudden odd quietness. “You in the North.”

“Why, yes. We have, alas! to expect and allow for rudeness sometimes, even in our chosen few, and for liberties in their chosen few; it’s only the hotel clerk and the head waiter from whom we usually get impudence; while insolence is the chronic condition of the Wall Street rich.”

“You in the North!” she repeated. “And so your Northern eyes can’t see it, after all!” At these words my intelligence sailed into a great blank, while she continued: “Frankly--and forgive me for saying it--I was hoping that you were one Northerner who would see it.”

“But see what?” I barked in my despair.

She did not help me. “If I had been a man, nothing could have insulted me more than that. And that’s what you don’t see,” she regretfully finished. “It seems so strange.”

I sat in the midst of my great blank, while her handsome eyes rested upon me. In them was that look of a certain inquiry and a certain remoteness with which one pauses, in a museum, before some specimen of the cave-dwelling man.

“You comprehend so much,” she meditated slowly, aloud; “you’ve been such an agreeable disappointment, because your point of view is so often the same as ours.” She was still surveying me with the specimen expression, when it suddenly left her. “Do you mean to sit there and tell me,” she broke out, “that you wouldn’t have resented it yourself?”

“O dear!” my mind lamentably said to itself, inside. Of what may have been the exterior that I presented to her, sitting over my slice of Lady Baltimore, I can form no impression.

“Put yourself in his place,” the girl continued.

“Ah,” I gasped, “that is always so easy to say and so hard to do.”