John, after a silence, said: "That is a very curious view."

"That is the view I shall give my friend," I answered. "I shall tell him that in keeping on he is not at bottom honestly thinking of the girl and her welfare, but of himself and the public opinion he's afraid of, if he breaks his engagement. And I shall tell him that if I'm in church and they come to the place where they ask if any man knows just cause or impediment, I shall probably call out, 'He does! His heart's not in it. This is not marriage that he's committing. You're pronouncing your blessing upon a fraud.'"

John sat now a long time silent, holding his extinct cigar. The lamp was almost burned dry; we had blown out the expiring candles some while since. "That is a very curious view," he repeated. "I should like to hear what your friend says in answer."

This finished our late sitting. We opened the door and went out for a brief space into the night to get its pure breath into our lungs, and look to the distant place where the moon had sailed. Then we went to bed, or rather, I did; for the last thing that I remembered was John, standing by the window of our bedroom still dressed, looking out into the forest.



XX: What She Wanted Him For

He was neither at the window, nor in his bed, nor anywhere else to be seen, when I opened my eyes upon the world next morning; nor did any answer come when I called his name. I raised myself and saw outside the great branches of the wood, bathed from top to trunk in a sunshine that was no early morning's light; and upon this, the silence of the house spoke plainly to me not of man still sleeping, but of man long risen and gone about his business. I stepped barefoot across the wooden floor to where lay my watch, but it marked an unearthly hour, for I had neglected to wind it at the end of our long and convivial evening—of which my head was now giving me some news. And then I saw a note addressed to me from John Mayrant.

"You are a good sleeper," it began, "but my conscience is clear as to the Bombo, called by some Kill-devil, about which I hope you will remember that I warned you."

He hoped I should remember! Of course I remembered everything; why did he say that? An apology for his leaving me followed; he had been obliged to take the early train because of the Custom House, where he was serving his final days; they would give me breakfast when ever I should be ready for it, and I was to make free of the place; I had better visit the old church (they had orders about the keys) and drive myself into Kings Port after lunch; the horses would know the way, if I did not. It was the boy's closing sentence which fixed my attention wholly, took it away from Kill-devil Bombo and my Aunt Carola's commission, for the execution of which I now held the clue, and sent me puzzling for the right interpretation of his words:—

"I believe that you will help your friend by that advice which startled me last night, but which I now begin to see more in than I did. Only between alternate injuries, he may find it harder to choose which is the least he can inflict, than you, who look on, find it. For in following your argument, he benefits himself so plainly that the benefit to the other person is very likely obscured to him. But, if you wish to, tell him 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 day according to his suggestion; a slow dressing with much cold water, a slow breakfast with much good hot coffee, a slow wandering beneath the dreamy branches of Udolpho,—this course cleared my head of the Bombo, and brought back to me our whole evening, and every word I had said to John, except that I had lost the solution which, last night, the triangle had held for me. At that moment, the triangle, and my whole dealing with the subject of monogamy, had seemed to contain the simplicity of genius; but it had all gone now, and I couldn't get it back; only, what I had contrived to say to John about his own predicament had been certainly well said; I would say that over again to-day. It was the boy and the meaning of his words which escaped me still, baffled me, and formed the whole subject of my attention, even when I was inside the Tern Creek church; so that I retain nothing of that, save a general quaintness, a general loneliness, a little deserted, forgotten token of human doings long since done, standing on its little acre of wilderness amid that solitude which suggests the departed presence of man, and which is so much more potent in the flavor of its desolation than the virgin wilderness whose solitude is still waiting for man to come.

It made no matter whether John had believed in the friend to whom I intended writing advice, or had seen through and accepted in good part my manoeuvre; he had considered my words, that was the point; and he had not slept in his bed, but on it, if sleep had come to him at all; this I found out while dressing. Several times I read his note over. "Between alternate injuries he may find it harder to choose." This was not an answer to me, but an explanation of his own perplexity. At times it sounded almost like an appeal, as if he were saying, "Do not blame me for not being convinced;" and if it was such appeal, why, then, taken with his resolve to do right at any cost, and his night of inward contention, it was poignant. "I believe that you will help your friend." Those words sounded better. But—"tell him a Southern gentleman ought to be shot either way." What was the meaning of this? A chill import rose from it into my thoughts, but that I dismissed. To die on account of Hortense! Such a thing was not to be conceived. And yet, given a high-strung nature, not only trapped by its own standards, but also wrought upon during many days by increasing exasperation and unhappiness while helpless in the trap, and with no other outlook but the trap: the chill 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 got into a boat belonging to the lodge, and rowed myself slowly among the sluggish windings of Tern Creek.

Whence come those thoughts that we ourselves feel shame at? It shamed me now, as I pulled my boat along, that I should have thoughts of John which needed banishing. What tale would this be to remember of a boy's life, that he gave it to buy freedom from a pledge which need never have been binding? What pearl was this to cast before the sophisticated Hortense? Such act would be robbed of its sadness by its absurdity. Yet, surely, the bitterest tragedies are those of which the central anguish is lost amid the dust of surrounding paltriness. If such a thing should happen here, no one but myself would have seen the lonely figure of John Mayrant, standing by the window and looking out into the dark quiet of the wood; his name would be passed down for a little while as the name of a fool, and then he would be forgotten. "I believe that you will help your friend." Yes; he had certainly written that, and it now came to me that I might have said to him one thing more: Had he given Hortense the chance to know what his feelings to her had become? But he would merely have answered that here it was the duty of a gentleman to lie. Or, had he possibly, at Newport, ever become her lover too much for any escaping now? Had his dead passion once put his honor in a pawn which only marriage could redeem? This might fit all that had come, so far; and still, with such a two as they, I should forever hold the boy the woman's victim. But this did not fit what came after. Perhaps it was the late sitting of the night before, and the hushed and strange solitude of my surroundings now, that had laid my mind open to all these thoughts which my reason, in dealing with, answered continually, one by one, yet which returned, requiring to be answered again; for there are times when our uncomfortable eyes see through the appearances we have arranged for daily life, into the actualities which lie forever behind them.

Going about thus in my boat, I rowed sleepiness into myself, and pushed into a nook where shade from some thick growth hid the boat and me from the sun; and there, almost enmeshed in the deep lattice of green, I placed my coat beneath my head, and prone in the boat's bottom I drifted into slumber. Once or twice my oblivion was pierced by the roaming honk of the automobile; but with no more than the half-melted consciousness that the Replacers were somewhere in the wood, oblivion closed over me again; and when it altogether left me, it was because of voices near me on the water, or on the bank. Their calls and laughter pushed themselves into my drowsiness, and soon after I grew aware that the Replacers were come here to see what was to be seen at Udolpho—the club, the old church, a country place with a fine avenue—and that it was the church they now couldn't get into, because my visit had disturbed the usual whereabouts of the key, of which Gazza was now going in search. I could have told him where to find it, but it pleased me not to disturb myself for this, as I listened to him assuring Kitty that it was probably in the cabin beyond the bridge, but not to be alarmed if he did not immediately return with it. Kitty, not without audible mirth, assured him that they should not be alarmed at all, to which the voice of Hortense supplemented, "Not at all." They were evidently in a boat, which Hortense herself was rowing, and which she seemed to bring to the bank, where I gathered that Kitty got out and sat while Hortense remained in the boat. There was the little talk and movement which goes with borrowing of a cigarette, a little exclamation about not falling out, 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 as deliberate as always.

"Mr. Bohm knew it would be," said Kitty. "He said it wouldn't take five minutes' talk from Charley to get a contract worth double what they were going to accept."

After this, nothing came to me for several minutes, save the odor of the cigarettes.

Of course there was now but one proper course for me, namely, to utter a discreet cough, and thus warn them that some one was within earshot. But I didn't! I couldn't! Strength failed, curiosity won, my baser nature triumphed here, and I deliberately remained lying quiet and hidden. It was the act of no gentleman, you will say. Well, it was; and I must simply confess to it, hoping that I am not the only gentleman in the world who has, on occasion, fallen beneath himself.

"Hortense Rieppe," began Kitty, "what do you intend to say to my brother after 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 brother is so sure of me?"

"Charley is a set man. And I've never seen him so set on anything as on you, 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, never do what other people don't do, never make any one stare at him by the way he looks, or the way he acts, or anything he says, or—or—why, how you 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 was unusual! Tearing people's money up, and making a rude, awkward fuss that 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 he knows."

"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 gone to, if Charley's perfect coolness hadn't rebuked him and brought him to his senses. There's where it is, that's what I mean, Hortense, by saying you could always feel safe with Charley."

Hortense put in a languid word. "I think I should always feel safe with Mr. Mayrant."

But Kitty was a simple soul. "Indeed you couldn't, Hortense! I assure you that you're mistaken. There's where you get so wrong about men sometimes. I have been studying that boy for your sake ever since we got here, and I know him through and through. And I tell you, you cannot count upon him. He has not been used to our ways, and I see no promise of his getting used to them. He will stay capable of outbreaks like that horrid one on the bridge. Wherever you take him, wherever you put him, no matter how much you show him of us, and the way we don't allow conspicuous things like that to occur, believe me, Hortense, he'll never learn, he'll never smooth down. You may brush his hair flat and keep him appearing like other people for a while, but a time will come, something will happen, and that boy'll be conspicuous. Charley would never be conspicuous."

"No," assented Hortense.

Kitty urged her point. "Why, I never saw or beard of anything like that on the bridge—that is, among—among—us!"

"No," assented Hortense, again, and her voice dropped lower with each statement. "One always sees the same thing. Always hears the same thing. Always the same thing." These last almost inaudible words sank away into the silent pool of Hortense's meditation.

"Have another cigarette," said Kitty. "You've let yours fall into the water."

I heard them moving a little, and then they must have resumed their seats.

"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 will not be enough to keep you in our swim—just by itself. He'll weigh more than 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 bridge quickly, and of course he had seen champagne before, and nobody had time to notice him. But he'll be married now and they will notice him, and they won't want him. To think of your dropping out!" Kitty became very earnest. "To think of not seeing you among us! You'll be in none of the small 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 next morning. And Charley's so set on you, and you're so just exactly made for 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 high at the thought of John.

Hortense took a little time over it "Once," she then stated, "he told me he could drown in my hair as joyfully as the Duke of Clarence did in his butt 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 have found the right word.

Steps sounded upon the bridge, and the voice of Gazza cried out that the stupid key was at the imbecile club-house, whither he was now going for it, and not to be alarmed. Their voices answered reassuringly, and Gazza was heard growing distant, singing some little song.

Kitty was apparently unable to get away from John's crudity. "He actually 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—I wonder 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 call such language as that very—very—"

Hortense helped her. "Operatic?"

"He could never be taught in those ways either," declared Kitty. "You would 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,—down to where the truth lay; and from those depths came the truth, flashing upward through the drowsy words she spoke: "I think I want him for his innocence."

What light these words may have brought to Kitty, I had no chance to learn; for the voice of Gazza returning with the key put an end to this conversation. But I doubted if Kitty had it in her to fathom the nature of Hortense. Kitty was like a trim little clock that could tick tidily on an ornate shelf; she could go, she could keep up with time, with the rapid epoch to which she belonged, but she didn't really have many works. I think she would have scoffed at that last languorous speech as a piece of Hortense's nonsense, and that is why Hortense uttered it aloud: she was safe from being understood. But in my ears it sounded the note of revelation, the simple central secret of Hortense's fire, a flame fed overmuch with experience, with sophistication, grown cold under the ministrations of adroitness, and lighted now by the "crudity" of John's love-making. And when, after an interval, I had rowed my boat back, and got into the carriage, and started on my long drive from Udolpho to Kings Port, I found that there was almost nothing about all this which I did not know now. Hortense, like most riddles when you are told 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; she hungered for love-making with the down still on, even if she must pay for it with marriage. Who shall say if her enlightened and modern eye could not look beyond such marriage (when it should grow monotonous) to divorce?



XXI: Hortense's Cigarette Goes Out

John was the riddle that I could not read. Among my last actions of this day was one that had been almost my earliest, and bedtime found me staring at his letter, as I stood, half undressed, by my table. The calm moon brought back Udolpho and what had been said there, as it now shone down upon the garden where Hortense had danced. I stared at John's letter as if its words were new to me, instead of being words that I could have fluently repeated from beginning to end without an error; it was as if, by virtue of mere gazing at the document, I hoped to wring more meaning from it, to divine what had been in the mind which had composed it; but instead of this, I seemed to get less from it, instead of more. Had the boy's purpose been to mystify me, he could scarce have done better. I think that he had no such intention, for it would have been wholly unlike him; but I saw no sign in it that I had really helped him, had really shaken his old quixotic resolve, nor did I see any of his having found a new way of his own out of the trap. I could not believe that the dark road of escape had taken any lodgement in his thought, but had only passed over it, like a cloud with a heavy shadow. But these are surmises at the best: if John had formed any plan, I can never know it, and Juno's remarks at breakfast on Sunday morning sounded strange, like something a thousand miles away. For she spoke of the wedding, and of the fact that it would certainly be a small one. She went over the names of the people who would have to be invited, and doubted if she were one of these. But if she should be, then she would go—for the sake of Miss Josephine St. Michael, she declared. In short, it was perfectly plain that Juno was much afraid of being left out, and that wild horses could not drag her away from it, if an invitation came to her. But, as I say, this side of the wedding seemed to have nothing to do with it, when I thought of all that lay beneath; my one interest to-day was to see John Mayrant, to get from him, if not by some word, then by some look or intonation, a knowledge of what he meant to do. Therefore, disappointment and some anxiety met me when I stepped from the Hermana's gangway upon her deck, and Charley asked me if he was coming. But the launch, sent back to wait, finally brought John, apologizing for his lateness.

Meanwhile, I was pleased to find among the otherwise complete party General Rieppe. What I had seen of him from a distance held promise, and the hero's nearer self fulfilled it. We fell to each other's lot for the most natural of reasons: nobody else desired the company of either of us. Charley was making himself the devoted servant of Hortense, while Kitty drew Beverly, Bohm, and Gazza in her sprightly wake. To her, indeed, I made a few compliments during the first few minutes after my coming aboard, while every sort of drink and cigar was being circulated among us by the cabin boy. Kitty's costume was the most markedly maritime thing that I have ever beheld in any waters, and her white shoes looked (I must confess) supremely well on her pretty little feet. I am no advocate of sumptuary laws; but there should be one prohibiting big-footed women from wearing white shoes. Did these women know what a spatulated effect their feet so shod produce, no law would be needed. Yes, Kitty was superlatively, stridently maritime; you could have known from a great distance that she belonged to the very latest steam yacht class, and that she was perfectly ignorant of the whole subject. On her left arm, for instance, was worked a red propeller with one blade down, and two chevrons. It was the rating mark for a chief engineer, but this, had she known it, would not have disturbed her.

"I chose it," she told me in reply to my admiration of it, "because it's so pretty. Oh, won't we enjoy ourselves while those stupid old blue-bloods in Kings Port are going to church!" And with this she gave a skip, and ordered the cabin boy to bring her a Remsen cooler. Beverly Rodgers called for dwarf's blood, and I chose a horse's neck, and soon found myself in the society of the General.

He was sipping whiskey and plain water. "I am a rough soldiers sir," he explained to me, "and I keep to the simple beverage of the camp. Had we not 'rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of'?" And he waved a stately hand at my horse's neck. "You are acquainted with the works of Shakespeare?"

I replied that I had a moderate knowledge of them, and assured him that a horse's neck was very simple.

"Doubtless, sir; but a veteran is ever old-fashioned."

"Papa," said Hortense, "don't let the sun shine upon your head."

"Thank you, daughter mine." They said no more; but I presently felt that for some reason she watched him.

He moved farther beneath the awning, and I followed him. "Are you a father, sir? No? Then you cannot appreciate what it is to confide such a jewel as yon girl to another's keeping." He summoned the cabin boy, who brought him some more of the simple beverage of the camp, and I, feeling myself scarce at liberty to speak on matters so near to him and so far from me as his daughter's marriage, called his attention to the beautiful aspect of Kings Port, spread out before us in a long white line against the blue water.

The General immediately seized his opportunity. "'Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain!' You are acquainted with the works of Goldsmith, sir?"

I professed some knowledge of this author also, and the General's talk flowed ornately onward. Though I had little to say to him about his daughter's marriage, he had much to say to me. Miss Josephine St. Michael would have been gratified to hear that her family was considered suitable for Hortense to contract an alliance with. "My girl is not stepping down, sir," the father assured me; and he commended the St. Michaels and the whole connection. He next alluded tragically but vaguely to misfortunes which had totally deprived him of income. I could not precisely fix what his inheritance had been; sometimes he spoke of cotton, but next it would be rice, and he touched upon sugar more than once; but, whatever it was, it had been vast and was gone. He told me that I could not imagine the feelings of a father who possessed a jewel and no dowry to give her. "A queen's estate should have been hers," he said. "But what! 'Who steals my purse steals trash.'" And he sat up, nobly braced by the philosophic thought. But he soon was shaking his head over his enfeebled health. Was I aware that he had been the cause of postponing the young people's joy twice? Twice had the doctors forbidden him to risk the emotions that would attend his giving his jewel away. He dwelt upon his shattered system to me, and, indeed, it required some dwelling on, for he was the picture of admirable preservation. "But I know what it is myself," he declared, "to be a lover and have bliss delayed. They shall be united now. A soldier must face all arrows. What!"

I had hoped he might quote something here, but was disappointed. His conversation would soon cease to interest me, should I lose the excitement of watching for the next classic; and my eye wandered from the General to the water, where, happily, I saw John Mayrant coming in the launch. I briskly called the General's attention to him, and was delighted with the unexpected result.

"'Oh, young Lochinvar has come out of the West,'" said the General, lifting his glass.

I touched it ceremoniously with mine. "The day will be hot," I said; "'The boy stood on the burning deck.'"

On this I made my escape from him, and, leaving him to his whiskey and his contemplating, I became aware that the eyes of the rest of the party were eager to watch the greeting between Hortense and John. But there was nothing to see. Hortense waited until her lover had made his apologies to Charley for being late, and, from the way they met, she might have been no more to him than Kitty was. Whatever might be thought, whatever might be known, by these onlookers, Hortense set the pace of how the open secret was to be taken. She made it, for all of us, as smooth and smiling as the waters of Kings Port were this fine day. How much did they each know? I asked myself how much they had shared in common. To these Replacers Kings Port had opened no doors; they and their automobile had skirted around the outside of all things. And if Charley knew about the wedding, he also knew that it had been already twice postponed. He, too, could have said, as Miss Eliza had once said to me, "The cake is not baked yet." The General's talk to me (I felt as I took in how his health had been the centred point) was probably the result of previous arrangements with Hortense herself; and she quite as certainly inspired whatever she allowed him to say to Charley.

As for Kitty, she knew that her brother was "set"; she always came back to that.

If Hortense found this Sunday morning a passage of particularly delicate steering, she showed it in no way, unless by that heightened radiance and triumph of beauty which I had seen in her before. No; the splendor of the day, the luxuries of the Hermana, the conviviality of the Replacers—all melted the occasion down to an ease and enjoyment in which even John Mayrant, with his grave face, was not perceptible, unless, like myself, one watched him.

It was my full expectation that we should now get under way and proceed among the various historic sights of Kings Port harbor, but of this I saw no signs anywhere on board the Hermana. Abeam of the foremast her boat booms remained rigged out on port and starboard, her boats riding to painters, while her crew wore a look as generally lounging as that of her passengers. Beverly Rodgers told me the reason: we had no pilot; the negro Waterman engaged for this excursion in the upper waters had failed of appearance, and when Charley was for looking up another, Kitty, Bohm, and Gazza had dissuaded him.

"Kitty," said Beverly, "told me she didn't care about the musty old forts and things, anyhow."

I looked at Kitty, and heard her tongue ticking away, like the little clock she was; she had her Bohm, she had her nautical costume and her Remsen cooler. These, with the lunch that would come in time, were enough for her.

"But it was such a good chance!" I exclaimed in disappointment

"Chance for what, old man?"

"To see everything—the forts, the islands—and it's beautiful, you know, all the way to the navy yard."

Beverly followed my glance to where the gay company was sitting among the cracked ice, and bottles, and cigar boxes, chattering volubly, with its back to the scenery. He gave his laisser-faire chuckle, and laid a hand on my shoulder. "Don't worry 'em with forts and islands, old boy! They know what they want. No living breed on earth knows better what it wants."

"Well, they don't get it."

"Ho, don't they?"

"The cold fear of ennui gnaws at their vitals this minute."

Shrill laughter from Kitty and Gazza served to refute my theory.

"Of course, very few know what's the matter with them," I added. "You seldom spot an organic disease at the start."

"Hm," said Beverly, lengthily. "You put a pin through some of 'em. Hortense hasn't got the disease, though."

"Ah, she spotted it! She's taking treatment. It's likely to help her—for a time."

He looked at me. "You know something."

I nodded. He looked at Hortense, who was now seated among the noisy group with quiet John beside her. She was talking to Bohm, she had no air of any special relation to John, but there was a lustre about her that spoke well for the treatment.

"Then it's coming off?" said Beverly.

"She has been too much for him," I answered.

Beverly misunderstood. "He doesn't look it."

"That's what I mean."

"But the fool can cut loose!"

"Oh, you and I have gone over all that! I've even gone over it with him."

Beverly looked at Hortense again. "And her fire-eater's fortune is about double what it would have been. I don't see how she's going to square herself with Charley."

"She'll wait till that's necessary. It isn't necessary to-day."

We had to drop our subject here, for the owner of the Hermana approached us with the amiable purpose, I found, of making himself civil for a while to me.

"I think you would have been interested to see the navy yard," I said to him.

"I have seen it," Charley replied, in his slightly foreign, careful voice. "It is not a navy yard. It is small politics and a big swamp. I was not interested."

"Dear me!" I cried. "But surely it's going to be very fine!"

"Another gold brick sold to Uncle Sam." Charley's words seemed always to drop out like little accurately measured coins from some minting machine. "They should not have changed from the old place if they wanted a harbor that could be used in war-time. Here they must always keep at least one dredge going out at the jetties. So the enemy blows up your dredge and you are bottled in, or bottled out. It is very simple for the enemy. And, for Kings Port, navy yards do not galvanize dead trade. It was a gold brick. You have not been on the Hermana before?"

He knew that I had not, but he wishes to show her to me; and I soon noted a difference as radical as it was diverting between this banker-yachtsman's speech when he talked of affairs on land and when he attempted to deal with nautical matters. The clear, dispassionate finality of his tone when phosphates, or railroads, or navy yards, or imperial loans were concerned, left him, and changed to something very like a recitation of trigonometry well memorized but not at all mastered; he could do that particular sum, but you mustn't stop him; and I concluded that I would rather have Charley for my captain during a panic in Wall Street than in a hurricane at sea. He, too, wore highly pronounced sea clothes of the ornamental kind; and though they fitted him physically, they hung baggily upon his unmarine spirit; giving him the air, as it were, of a broiled quail served on oyster shells. Beverly Rodgers, the consummate Beverly, was the only man of us whose clothes seemed to belong to him; he looked as if he could sail a boat.

While the cabin boy continued to rush among the guests with siphons, ice, and fresh refreshments, Charley became the Hermana's guidebook for me; and our interview gave me, I may say, entertainment unalloyed, although there lay all the while, beneath the entertainment, my sadness and concern about John. Charley was owner of the Hermana, there was no doubt of that; she had cost him (it was not long before he told me) fifty thousand dollars, and to run her it cost him a thousand a month. Yes, he was her owner, but there it stopped, no matter with how solemn a face he inspected each part of her, or spoke of her details; he was as much a passenger on her as myself; and this was as plain on the equally solemn faces of his crew, from the sailing-master down through the two quartermasters to the five deck-hands, as was the color of the Hermana's stack, which was, of course, yellow. She was a pole-mast, schooner-rigged steam yacht, Charley accurately told me, with clipper bow and spiked bowsprit.

"About a hundred tons?" I inquired.

"Yes. A hundred feet long, beam twenty feet, and she draws twelve feet," said Charley; and I thought I detected the mate listening to him.

He now called my attention to the flags, and I am certain that I saw the sailing-master hide his mouth with his hand. Some of the deck-hands seemed to gather delicately nearer to us.

"Sunday, of course," I said; and I pointed to the Jack flying from a staff at the bow.

But Charley did not wish me to tell him about the flags, he wished to tell me about the flags. "I am very strict about all this," he said, his gravity and nauticality increasing with every word. "At the fore truck flies our club burgee."

I went through my part, giving a solemn, silent, intelligent assent.

"That is my private signal at the main truck. It was designed by Miss Rieppe."

As I again intelligently nodded, I saw the boatswain move an elbow into the ribs of one of the quartermasters.

"On the staff at the taffrail I have the United States yacht ensign," Charley continued. "That's all," he said, looking about for more flags, and (to his disappointment, I think) finding no more. For he added: "But at twelve o'c—at eight bells, the crew's meal-flag will be in the port fore rigging. While we are at lunch, my meal-flag will be in the starboard main rigging."

"It should be there all day," I was tempted to remark to him, as my wandering eye fell on the cabin boy carrying something more on a plate to Kitty. But instead of this I said: "Well, she's a beautiful boat!"

Charley shook his head. "I'm going to get rid of her."

I was surprised. "Isn't she all right?" It seemed to me that the crew behind us were very attentive now.

"There is not enough refrigerator space," said Charley. One of the deck-hands whirled round instantly; but stolidity sat like adamant upon the faces of the others as Charley turned in their direction, and we continued our tour of the Hermana. Thus the little banker let me see his little soul, deep down; and there I saw that to pass for a real yachtsman—which he would never be able to do—was dearer to his pride than to bring off successfully some huge and delicate matter in the world's finance—which he could always do supremely well. "I'm just like that, too," I thought to myself; and we returned to the gay Kitty.

But Kitty, despite her gayety, had serious thoughts upon her mind. Charley's attentions to me had met all that politeness required, and as we went aft again, his sister caused certain movements and rearrangements to happen with chairs and people. I didn't know this at once, but I knew it when I found myself somehow sitting with her and John, and saw Hortense with Charley. Hortense looked over at Kitty with a something that had in it both raised eyebrows and a shrug, though these visible signs did not occur; and, indeed, so far as anything visible went (except the look) you might have supposed that now Hortense had no thoughts for any man in the world save Charley. And John was plainly more at ease with Kitty! He began to make himself agreeable, so that once or twice she gave him a glance of surprise. There was nothing to mark him out from the others, except his paleness in the midst of their redness. Yachting clothes bring out wonderfully how much you are in the habit of eating and drinking; and an innocent stranger might have supposed that the Replacers were richly sunburned from exposure to the blazing waters of Cuba and the tropics. Kitty deemed it suitable to extol Kings Port to John. "Quaint" was the word that did most of this work for her; she found everything that, even the negroes; and when she had come to the end of it, she supposed the inside must be just as "quaint" as the outside.

"It is," said John Mayrant. He was enjoying Kitty. Then he became impertinent. "You ought to see it."

"Do you stay inside much?" said Kitty.

"We all do," said John. "Some of us never come out."

"But you came out?" Kitty suggested.

"Oh, I've been out," John returned. He was getting older. I doubt if the past few years of his life had matured him as much as had the past few days. Then he looked at Kitty in the eyes. "And I'd always come out—if Romance rang the bell."

"Hm!" said Kitty. "Then you know that ring?"

"We begin to hear it early in Kings Port," remarked John. "About the age of fourteen."

Kitty looked at him with an interest that now plainly revealed curiosity also. It occurred to me that he could not have found any great embarrassment in getting on at Newport. "What if I rang the bell myself?" explained Kitty.

"Come in the evening," returned John. "We won't go home till morning."

Kitty kissed her hand to him, and, during the pleased giggle that she gave, I saw her first taking in John and then Hortense. Kitty was thinking, thinking, of John's "crudity." And so I made a little experiment for myself.

"I wonder if men seem as similar in making love as women do in receiving it?"

"They aren't!" shouted both John and Kitty, in the same indignant breath. Their noise brought Bohm to listen to us.

This experiment was so much a success that I promptly made another for the special benefit of Bohm, Kitty's next husband. I find it often delightful to make a little gratuitous mischief, just to watch the victims. I addressed Kitty. "What would you do if a man said he could drown in your hair as joyfully as the Duke of Clarence did in his butt of Malmsey?"

"Why—why—" gasped Kitty, "why—why—"

I suppose it gave John time; but even so he was splendid.

"She has heard it said!" This was his triumphant shout. I should not have supposed that Kitty could have turned any redder, but she did. John buried his nose in his tall glass, and gulped a choking quantity of its contents, and mopped his face profusely; but little good that effected. There sat this altogether innocent pair, deeply suffused with the crimson of apparent guilt, and there stood Kitty's next husband, eyeing them suspiciously. My little gratuitous mischief was a perfect success, and remains with me as one of the bright spots in this day of pleasure.

Vivacious measures from the piano brought Kitty to her feet.

"There's Gazza!" she cried. "We'll make him sing!" And on the instant she was gone down the companionway. Bohm followed her with a less agitated speed, and soon all were gone below, leaving John and me alone on the deck, sitting together in silence.

John lolled back in his chair, slowly sipping at his tall glass, and neither of us made any remark. I think he wanted to ask me how I came to mention the Duke of Clarence; but I did not see how he very well could, and he certainly made no attempt to do so. Thus did we sit for some time, hearing the piano and the company grow livelier and louder with solos, and choruses, and laughter. By and by the shadow of the awning shifted, causing me to look up, when I saw the shores slowly changing; the tide had turned, and was beginning to run out. Land and water lay in immense peace; the long, white, silent picture of the town with its steeples on the one hand, and on the other the long, low shore, and the trees behind. Into this rose the high voice of Gazza, singing in broken English, "Razzla-dazzla, razzla-dazzla," while his hearers beat upon glasses with spoons—at least so I conjectured.

"Aren't you coming, John?" asked Hortense, appearing at the companionway. She looked very bacchanalian. Her splendid amber hair was half riotous, and I was reminded of the toboggan fire-escape.

He obeyed her; and now I had the deck entirely to myself, or, rather, but one other and distant person shared it with me. The hour had come, the bells had struck; Charley's crew was eating its dinner below forward; Charley's guests were drinking their liquor below aft; Charley's correct meal-flag was to be seen in the port fore rigging, as he had said, red and triangular; and away off from me in the bow was the anchor watch, whom I dreamily watched trying to light his pipe. His matches seemed to be bad; and the brotherly thought of helping him drifted into my mind—and comfortably out of it again, without disturbing my agreeable repose. It had been really entertaining in John to tell Kitty that she ought to see the inside of Kings Port; that was like his engaging impishness with Juno. If by any possible contrivance (and none was possible) Kitty and her Replacers could have met the inside of Kings Port, Kitty would have added one more "quaint" impression to her stock, and gone away in total ignorance of the quality of the impression she had made—and Bohm would probably have again remarked, "Worse than Sunday." No; the St. Michaels and the Replacers would never meet in this world, and I see no reason that they should in the next. John's light and pleasing skirmish with Kitty gave me the glimpse of his capacities which I had lacked hitherto. John evidently "knew his way about," as they say; and I was diverted to think how Miss Josephine St. Michael would have nodded over his adequacy and shaken her head at his squandering it on such a companion. But it was no squandering; the boy's heavy spirit was making a gallant "bluff" at playing up with the lively party he had no choice but to join, and this one saw the moment he was not called upon to play up.

The peaceful loveliness that floated from earth and water around me triumphed over the jangling hilarity of the cabin, and I dozed away, aware that they were now all thumping furiously in chorus, while Gazza sang something that went, "Oh, she's my leetle preety poosee pet." When I roused, it was Kitty's voice at the piano, but no change in the quality of the song or the thumping; and Hortense was stepping on deck. She had a cigarette, her beauty flashed with devilment, and John followed her. "They are going to have an explanation," I thought, as I saw his face. If that were so, then Kitty had blundered in her strategy and hurt Charley's cause; for after the two came Gazza, as obviously "sent" as any emissary ever looked: Kitty took care of the singing, while Gazza intercepted any tete-a-tete. I rose and made a fourth with them, and even as I was drawing near, the devilment in Hortense's face sank inward beneath cold displeasure.

I had never been a welcome person to Hortense, and she made as little effort to conceal this as usual. Her indifferent eyes glanced at me with drowsy insolence, and she made her beautiful, low voice as remote and inattentive as her skilful social equipment could render it.

"It is so hot in the cabin."

This was all she had for me. Then she looked at Gazza with returning animation.

"Oh, la la!" said Gazza. "If it is hot in the cabin!" And he flirted his handkerchief back and forth.

"I think I had the best of it," I remarked. "All the melody and none of the temperature."

Hortense saw no need of noticing me further

"The singer has the worst of it," said Gazza.

"But since you all sang!" I laughed.

"Miss Rieppe, she is cool," continued Gazza. "And she danced. It is not fair."

John contributed nothing. He was by no means playing up now. He was looking away at the shore.

Gazza hummed a little fragment. "But after lunch I will sing you good music."

"So long as it keeps us cool," I suggested.

"Ah, no! It will not be cool music!" cried Gazza—"for those who understand."

"Are those boys bathing?" Hortense now inquired.

We watched the distant figures, and presently they flashed into the water.

"Oh, me!" sighed Gazza. "If I were a boy!"

Hortense looked at him. "You would be afraid." The devilment had come out again, suddenly and brilliantly:

"I never have been afraid!" declared Gazza.

"You would not jump in after me," said Hortense, taking his measure more and more provokingly.

Gazza laid his hand on his heart. "Where you go, I will go!"

Hortense looked at him, and laughed very slightly and lightly.

"I swear it! I swear!" protested Gazza.

John's eyes were now fixed upon Hortense.

"Would you go?" she asked him

"Decidedly not!" he returned. I don't know whether he was angry or anxious.

"Oh, yes, you would!" said Hortense; and she jumped into the water, cigarette and all.

"Get a boat, quick," said John to me; and with his coat flung off he was in the river, whose current Hortense could scarce have reckoned with; for they were both already astern as I ran out on the port boat boom.

Gazza was dancing and shrieking, "Man overboard!" which, indeed, was the correct expression, only it did not apply to himself. Gazza was a very sensible person. I had, as I dropped into the nearest boat, a brisk sight of the sailing-master, springing like a jack-in-the-box on the deserted deck, with a roar of "Where's that haymaker?" His reference was to the anchor watch. The temptation to procure good matches to light his pipe had ended (I learned later) by proving too much for this responsible sailor-man, and he had unfortunately chosen for going below just the unexpected moment when it had entered the daring head of Hortense to perform this extravagance. Of course, before I had pulled many strokes, the deck of the Hermana was alive with many manifestations of life-saving and they had most likely been in time. But I am not perfectly sure of this; the current was strong, and a surprising distance seemed to broaden between me and the Hermana before another boat came into sight around her stern. By then, or just after that (for I cannot clearly remember the details of these few anxious minutes), I had caught up with John, whose face, and total silence, as he gripped the stern of the boat with one hand and held Hortense with the other, plainly betrayed it was high time somebody came. A man can swim (especially in salt water) with his shoes on, and his clothes add nothing of embarrassment, if his arms are free; but a woman's clothes do not help either his buoyancy or the freedom of his movement. John now lifted Hortense's two hands, which took a good hold of the boat. From between her lips the dishevelled cigarette, bitten through and limp, fell into the water. The boat felt the weight of the two hands to it.

"Take care," I warned John.

Hortense opened her eyes and looked at me; she knew that I meant her. "I'll not swamp you." This was her first remark. Her next was when, after no incautious haste, I had hauled her in over the stern, John working round to the bow for the sake of balance: "I was not dressed for swimming." Very quietly did Hortense speak; very coolly, very evenly; no fainting—and no flippancy; she was too game for either.

After this, whatever emotions she had felt, or was feeling, she showed none of them, unless it was by her complete silence. John's coming into the boat we managed with sufficient dexterity; aided by the horrified Charley, who now arrived personally in the other boat, and was for taking all three of us into that. But this was altogether unnecessary; he was made to understand that such transferences as it would occasion were superfluous, and so one of his men stepped into our boat to help me to row back against the current; and for this I was not unthankful.

Our return took, it appeared to me, a much longer time than everything else which had happened. When I looked over my shoulder at the Hermana, she seemed an incredible distance off, and when I looked again, she had grown so very little nearer that I abandoned this fruitless proceeding. Charley's boat had gone ahead to announce the good news to General Rieppe as soon as possible. But if our return was long to me, to Hortense it was not so. She sat beside her lover in the stern, and I knew that he was more to her than ever: it was her spirit also that wanted him now. Poor Kitty's words of prophecy had come perversely true: "Something will happen, and that boy'll be conspicuous." Well, it had happened with a vengeance, and all wrong for Kitty, and all wrong for me! Then I remembered Charley, last of all. My doubt as to what he would have done, had he been on deck, was settled later by learning from his own lips that he did not know how to swim.

Yes, the sentimental world (and by that I mean the immense and mournful preponderance of fools, and not the few of true sentiment) would soon be exclaiming: "How romantic! She found her heart! She had a glimpse of Death's angel, and in that light saw her life's true happiness!" But I should say nothing like that, nor would Miss Josephine St. Michael, if I read that lady at all right. She didn't know what I did about Hortense. She hadn't overheard Sophistication confessing amorous curiosity about Innocence; but the old Kings Port lady's sound instinct would tell her that a souse in the water wasn't likely to be enough to wash away the seasoning of a lifetime; and she would wait, as I should, for the day when Hortense, having had her taste of John's innocence, and having grown used to the souse in the water, would wax restless for the Replacers, for excitement, for complexity, for the prismatic life. Then it might interest her to corrupt John; but if she couldn't, where would her occupation be, and how were they going to pull through?

But now, there sat Hortense in the stern, melted into whatever best she was capable of; it had come into her face, her face was to be read—for the first time since I had known it—and, strangely enough, I couldn't read John's at all. It seemed happy, which was impossible.

"Way enough!" he cried suddenly, and, at his command, the sailor and I took in our oars. Here was Hermana's gangway, and crowding faces above, and ejaculations and tears from Kitty. Yes, Hortense would have liked that return voyage to last longer. I was first on the gangway, and stood to wait and give them a hand out; but she lingered, and; rising slowly, spoke her first word to him, softly:—

"And so I owe you my life."

"And so I restore it to you complete," said John, instantly.

None could have heard it but myself—unless the sailor, beyond whose comprehension it was—and I doubted for a moment if I could have heard right; but it was for a moment only. Hortense stood stiff, and then, turning, came in front of him, and I read her face for an instant longer before the furious hate in it was mastered to meet her father's embrace, as I helped her up the gang.

"Daughter mine!" said the General, with a magnificent break in his voice.

But Hortense was game to the end. She took Kitty's-hysterics and the men's various grades of congratulation; her word to Gazza would have been supreme, but for his imperishable rejoinder.

"I told you you wouldn't jump," was what she said.

Gazza stretched both arms, pointing to John. "But a native! He was surer to find you!"

At this they all remembered John, whom they thus far hadn't thought of.

"Where is that lion-hearted boy?" the General called out.

John hadn't got out of the boat; he thought he ought to change his clothes, he said; and when Charley, truly astonished, proffered his entire wardrobe and reminded him of lunch, it was thank you very much, but if he could be put ashore—I looked for Hortense, to see what she would do, but Hortense, had gone below with Kitty to change her clothes, and the genuinely hearty protestations from all the rest brought merely pleasantly firm politeness from John, as he put on again the coat he had flung off on jumping. At least he would take a drink, urged Charley. Yes, thank you, he would; and he chose brandy-and-soda, of which he poured himself a remarkably stiff one. Charley and I poured ourselves milder ones, for the sake of company.

"Here's how," said Charley to John.

"Yes, here's how," I added more emphatically.

John looked at Charley with a somewhat extraordinary smile. "Here's unquestionably how!" he exclaimed.

We had a gay lunch; I should have supposed there was plenty of room in the Hermana's refrigerator; nor did the absence of Hortense and John, the cause of our jubilation, at all interfere with the jubilation itself; by the time the launch was ready to put me ashore, Gazza had sung several miles of "good music" and double that quantity of "razzla-dazzla," and General Rieppe was crying copiously, and assuring everybody that God was very good to him. But Kitty had told us all that she intended Hortense to remain quiet in her cabin; and she kept her word.

Quite suddenly, as the launch was speeding me toward Kings Port, I exclaimed aloud: "The cake!"

And, I thought, the cake was now settled forever.



XXII: Behind the Times

It was my lot to attend but one of the weddings which Hortense precipitated (or at least determined) by her plunge into the water; and, truth to say, the honor of my presence at the other was not requested; therefore I am unable to describe the nuptials of Hortense and Charley. But the papers were full of them; what the female guests wore, what the male guests were worth, and what both ate and drank, were set forth in many columns of printed matter; and if you did not happen to see this, just read the account of the next wedding that occurs among the New York yellow rich, and you will know how Charley and Hortense were married; for it's always the same thing. The point of mark in this particular ceremony of union lay in Charley's speech; Charley found a happy thought at the breakfast. The bridal party (so the papers had it) sat on a dais, and was composed exclusively of Oil, Sugar, Beef, Steel, and Union Pacific; merely at this one table five hundred million dollars were sitting (so the papers computed), and it helped the bridegroom to his idea, when, by the importunate vociferations of the company, he was forced to get on his unwilling legs.

"Poets and people of that sort say" (Charley concluded, after thanking them) "that happiness cannot be bought with money. Well, I guess a poet never does learn how to make a dollar do a dollar's work. But I am no poet; and I have learned it is as well to have a few dollars around. And I guess that my friends and I, right here at this table, could organize a corner in happiness any day we chose. And if we do, we will let you all in on it."

I am told that the bride looked superb, both in church and at the reception which took place in the house of Kitty; and that General Rieppe, in spite of his shattered health, maintained a noble appearance through the whole ordeal of parting with his daughter. I noticed that Beverly Rodgers and Gazza figured prominently among the invited guests: Bohm did not have to be invited, for some time before the wedding he had become the husband of the successfully divorced Kitty. So much for the nuptials of Hortense and Charley; they were, as one paper pronounced them, "up to date and distingue." The paper omitted the accent in the French word, which makes it, I think, fit this wedding even more happily.

"So Hortense," I said to myself as I read the paper, "has squared herself with Charley after all." And I sat wondering if she would be happy. But she was not constructed for happiness. You cannot be constructed for all the different sorts of experiences which this world offers: each of our natures has its specialty. Hortense was constructed for pleasure; and I have no doubt she got it, if not through Charley, then by other means.

The marriage of Eliza La Heu and John Mayrant was of a different quality; no paper pronounced it "up to date," or bestowed any other adjectival comments upon it; for, being solemnized in Kings Port, where such purely personal happenings are still held (by the St. Michael family, at any rate) to be no business of any one's save those immediately concerned, the event escaped the famishment of publicity. Yes, this marriage was solemnized, a word that I used above without forethought, and now repeat with intention; for certainly no respecter of language would write it of the yellow rich and their blatant unions. If you're a Bohm or a Charley, you may trivialize or vulgarize or bestialize your wedding, but solemnize it you don't, for that is not "up to date."

And to the marriage of Eliza and John I went; for not only was the honor of my presence requested, but John wrote me, in both their names, a personal note, which came to me far away in the mountains, whither I had gone from Kings Port. This was the body of the note:—

"To the formal invitation which you will receive, Miss La Heu joins her wish with mine that you will not be absent on that day. We should both really miss you. Miss La Heu begs me to add that if this is not sufficient inducement, you shall have a slice of Lady Baltimore."

Not a long note! But you will imagine how genuinely I was touched by their joint message. I was not an old acquaintance, and I had done little to help them in their troubles, but I came into the troubles; with their memory of those days I formed a part, and it was a part which it warmed me to know they did not dislike to recall. I had actually been present at their first meeting, that day when John visited the Exchange to order his wedding-cake, and Eliza had rushed after him, because in his embarrassment he had forgotten to tell her the date for which he wanted it. The cake had begun it, the cake had continued it, the cake had brought them together; and in Eliza's retrospect now I doubted If she could find the moment when her love for John had awakened; but if with women there ever is such a moment, then, as I have before said, it was when the girl behind the counter looked across at the handsome, blushing boy, and felt stirred to help him in his stumbling attempts to be businesslike about that cake. If his youth unwittingly kindled hers, how could he or she help that? But, had he ever once known it and shown it to her during his period of bondage to Hortense, then, indeed, the flame would have turned to ice in Eliza's breast. What saved him for her was his blind steadfastness against her. That was the very thing she prized most, once it became hers; whereas, any secret swerving toward her from Hortense during his heavy hours of probation would have degraded John to nothing in Eliza's eyes. And so, making all this out by myself in the mountains after reading John's note, I ordered from the North the handsomest old china cake-dish that Aunt Carola could find to be sent to Miss Eliza La Heu with my card. I wanted to write on the card, "Rira bien qui viva le dernier"; but alas! so many pleasant thoughts may never be said aloud in this world of ours. That I ordered china, instead of silver, was due to my surmise that in Kings Port—or at any rate by Mrs. Weguelin and Miss Josephine St. Michael—silver from any one not of the family would be considered vulgar; it was only a surmise, and, of course, it was precisely the sort of thing that I could not verify by asking any of them.

But (you may be asking) how on earth did all this come about? What happened in Kings Port on the day following that important swim which Hortense and John took together in the waters of the harbor?

I wish that I could tell you all that happened, but I can only tell you of the outside of things; the inside was wholly invisible and inaudible to me, although we may be sure, I think, that when the circles that widened from Hortense's plunge reached the shores of the town, there must have been in certain quarters a considerable splashing. I presume that John communicated to somebody the news of his broken engagement; for if he omitted to do so, with the wedding invitations to be out the next day, he was remiss beyond excuse, and I think this very unlikely; and I also presume (with some evidence to go on) that Hortense did not, in the somewhat critical juncture of her fortunes, allow the grass to grow under her feet—if such an expression may be used of a person who is shut up in the stateroom of a steam yacht. To me John Mayrant made no sign of any sort by word or in writing, and this is the highest proof he ever gave me of his own delicacy, and also of his reliance upon mine; for he must have been pretty sure that I had overheard those last destiny-deciding words spoken between himself and Hortense in the boat, as we reached the Hermana's gangway. In John's place almost any man, even Beverly Rodgers, would have either dropped a hint at the moment, or later sent me some line to the effect that the incident was, of course, "between ourselves." That would have been both permissible and practical; but there it was, the difference between John of Kings Port and us others; he was not practical when it came to something "between gentlemen," as he would have said. The finest flower of breeding blossoms above the level of the practical, and that is why you do not find it growing in the huge truck-garden of our age, save in corners where it has not yet been uprooted. John's silence to me was something that I liked very much, and he must have found that it was not misplaced.

The first external splash of the few that I have to narrate was a negative manifestation, and occurred at breakfast: Juno supposed if the wedding invitations would be out later in the day. The next splash was somewhat louder on, was at dinner, when Juno inquired of Mrs. Trevise if she had received any wedding invitation. At tea time was very decided splashing. No invitation had come to anybody. Juno had called at five of the St. Michael houses and got in at none of them, and there was a rumor that the Hermana had disappeared from the harbor. So far, none of the splashing had wet me but I now came in for a light sprinkle.

"Were you not on board that boat yesterday?" Juno inquired; and to see her look at me you might have gathered that I was suspected of sinking the vessel.

"A most delightful occasion!" I exclaimed, filling my face with a bright blankness.

"Isn't he awful to speak that way about Sunday!" said the up-country bride.

This was a chance for the poetess, and she took it. "To me," she mused, "every day seems fraught with an equal holiness."

"But I should think," observed the Briton, "that you could knock off a hymn better on Sundays."

All this while Juno was looking at me, and I knew it, and therefore I ate my food in a kindly sort of unconscious way, until she fired another shot at me. "There is an absurd report that somebody fell overboard."

"Dear me!" I laughed. "So that is what it has grown to already! I did go out on the boat boom, and I did drop off—but into a boat."

At this confession of mine the up-country bride became extraordinarily arch on the subject of the well-known hospitality of steam yachts, and for this I was honestly grateful to her; but Juno brooded still. "I hope there is nothing wrong," she said solemnly.

Feeling that silence at this point would not be golden, I went into it with spirit I told them of our charming party, of General Rieppe's rich store of quotations, of the strict discipline on board the well-appointed Hermana, of the great beauty of Hortense, and her evident happiness when her lover was by her side. This talk of mine turned off any curiosity or suspicion which the rest of the company may have begun to entertain; but upon Juno I think it made scant impression, save causing her to set me down as an imbecile. For there was Doctor Beaugarcon when we came into the sitting-room, who told us before any one could even say "How-do-you-do," that Miss Hortense Rieppe had broken her engagement with John Mayrant, and that he had it from Mrs. Cornerly, whom he was visiting professionally. I caught the pitying look which Juno threw at me at this news, and I was happy to have acquitted myself so creditably in the manipulation of my secret: nobody asked me any more questions!

There is almost nothing else to tell you of how the splashes broke on Kings Port. Before the day when I was obliged to call in Doctor Beaugarcon's professional services (quite a sharp attack put me to bed for half a week) I found merely the following things: the Hermana gone to New York, the automobiles and the Replacers had also disappeared, and people were divided on the not strikingly important question as to whether Hortense and the General had accompanied Charley on the yacht, or continued northward in an automobile, or taken the train. Gone, in any case, the whole party indubitably was, leaving, I must say, a sense of emptiness: the comedy was over, the players departed. I never heard any one, not even Juno, doubt that it was Hortense who had broken the engagement; this part of the affair was conducted by the principals with great skill. Hortense had evidently written her version to the Cornerlys, and not a word to any other effect ever came from John's mouth, of course. One result I had not looked for, though it was a natural one: if the old ladies had felt indignation at Hortense for her determination to marry John Mayrant, this indignation was doubled by her determination not to! I fear that few of us live by logic, even in Kings Port; and then, they had all called upon her in that garden for nothing! The sudden thought of this made me laugh alone in my bed of sickness; and when I came out of it, had such a thing been possible, I should have liked to congratulate Miss Josephine St. Michael on her absence from the garden occasion. I said, however, nothing to her, or to any of the other ladies, upon this or any subject, for I was so unlucky as to find them not at home when I paid my round of farewell visits. Nor (to my real distress) did I see John Mayrant again. The boy wrote me (I received it in bed) a short, warm note of regret, with nothing else in it save the fact that he was leaving town, having become free from the Custom House at last. I fancy that he ran away for a judicious interval. Who would not?

Was there one person to whom he told the truth before he went? Did the girl behind the counter hear the manner in which the engagement was broken? Ah, none of us will ever know that! But, although I could not, without the highest impropriety, have spoken to any of the old ladies about this business, unless they had chosen to speak to me—and somehow I feel that after the abrupt close of it not even Mrs. Gregory St. Michael would have been likely to touch on the subject with an outsider—there was nothing whatever to forbid my indulging in a skirmish with Eliza La Heu; therefore I lunched at the Exchange on my last day.

"To the mountains?" she said, in reply to my information about my plans of travel.

"Doctor Beaugarcon says nothing else can so quickly restore me."

"Stay there for the rhododendrons, then," she bade me. "No sight more beautiful in all the South."

"Town seems deserted," I pursued. "Everybody gone."

"Oh, not everybody!"

"All the interesting people."

"Thank you."

"I meant, interesting to you."

I saw her decide not to be angry; and her decision changed and saved our conversation from the trashy, bantering tone which it was taking, and brought it to a pass most unexpected to both of us.

She gave me a charming and friendly smile. "Well, you, at any rate, are going away. And I am really sorry for that."

Her eyes rested upon me with perfect frankness. I was not in love with Eliza La Heu, but nearer to love than I had ever been then, and it would have been easy, very easy, to let one's self go straight onward into love. There are for a man more ways of falling into that state than romancers would have us to believe, and one of them is by an assent of the will at a certain given moment, which the heart promptly follows—just as a man in a moment decides he will espouse a cause, and soon finds himself hotly fighting for it body and soul. I could have gone out of that Exchange completely in love with Eliza La Heu; but my will did not give its assent, and I saw John Mayrant not as a rival, but as one whose happiness I greatly desired.

"Thank you," I said, "for telling me you are sorry I am going. And now, may I treat you more than ever as a friend, and tell you of a circumstance which Kings Port does not know?"

It put her on her guard. "Don't be indiscreet," she laughed.

"Isn't timely indiscretion discretion?"

"And don't be clever," she said. "Tell me what you have to say—if you're quite sure you'll not be sorry."

"Quite sure. There's no reason—now that the untruth is properly and satisfactorily established—that one person should not know that John Mayrant broke that engagement." And I told her the whole of it. "If I'm outrageous to share this secret with you," I concluded, "I can only say that I couldn't stand the unfairness any longer."

"He jumped straight in?" said Eliza.

"Oh, straight!"

"Of course," she murmured.

"And just after declaring that he wouldn't."

"Of course," she murmured again. "And the current took them right away?"

"Instantly."

"Was he very tired when you got to him?"

I answered this question and a number of others, backward and forward, until she had led me to cover the whole incident about twice-and-a-half times. Then she had a silence, and after this a reflection.

"How well they managed it!"

"Managed what?"

"The accepted version."

"Oh, yes, indeed!"

"And you and I will not spoil it for them," she declared.

As I took my final leave of her she put a flower in my buttonhole. My reflection was then, and is now, that if she already knew the truth from John himself, how well she managed it!

So that same night I took the lugubrious train which bore me with the grossest deliberation to the mountains; and among the mountains and their waterfalls I stayed and saw the rhododendrons, and was preparing to journey home when the invitation came from John and Eliza.

I have already said that of this wedding no word was in the papers. Kings Port by the war lost all material things, but not the others, among which precious privacy remains to her; and, O Kings Port, may you never lose your grasp of that treasure! May you never know the land where the reporter blooms, where if any joy or grief befall you, the public press rings your doorbell and demands the particulars, and if you deny it the particulars, it makes them up and says something scurrilous about you into the bargain. Therefore nothing was printed, morning or evening, about John and Eliza. Nor was the wedding service held in church to the accompaniment of nodding bonnets and gaping stragglers. No eye not tender with regard and emotion looked on while John took Eliza to his wedded wife, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy state of matrimony.

In Royal Street, not many steps from South Place, there stands a quiet house a little back, upon whose face sorrow has struck many blows, but made no deep wounds yet; no scorch from the fires of war is visible, and the rending of the earthquake does not show too plainly; but there hangs about the house a gravity that comes from seeing and suffering much, and a sweetness from having sheltered many generations of smiles and tears. The long linked chain of births and deaths here has not been broken and scattered, and the grandchildren look out of the same windows from which the grandsires gazed, whose faces now in picture frames still watch serenely the sad present from their happy past. Therefore the rooms lie in still depths of association, and from the walls, the stairs, the furniture, flows the benign influence of undispersed memories; it sheds its tempered radiance upon the old miniatures, and upon every fresh flower that comes in from the garden; it seems to pass through the open doors to and fro like a tranquil blessing; it is beyond joy and pain, because time has distilled it from both of these; it is the assembled essence of kinship and blood unity, enriched by each succeeding brood that is born, is married, is fruitful in its turn, and dies remembered; only the balm of faith is stronger to sustain and heal; for that comes from heaven, while it is earth that gives us this; and the sacred cup of it which our native land once held is almost empty.

Amid this influence John and Eliza were made one, and the faces of the older generations grew soft beneath it, and pensive eyes became lustrous, and into pale cheeks the rosy tint came like an echo faintly back for a short hour. They made so little sound in their quiet happiness of congratulation that it might have been a dream; and they were so few that the house with the sense of its memories was not lost with the movement and crowding, but seemed still to preside over the whole, and send down its benediction.

When it was my turn to shake the hands of bride and groom, John asked:—

"What did your friend do with your advice?"

And I replied. "He has taken it."

"Perhaps not that," John returned, "but you must have helped him to see his way."

When the bride came to cut the cake, she called me to her and fulfilled her promise.

"You have always liked my baking," she said.

"Then you made it after all," I answered.

"I would not have been married without doing so," she declared sweetly.

When the time came for them to go away, they were surrounded with affectionate God-speeds; but Miss Josephine St. Michael waited to be the last, standing a little apart, her severe and chiselled face turned aside, and seeming to watch a mocking-bird that was perched in his cage at a window halfway up the stairs.

"He is usually not so silent," Miss Josephine said to me. "I suppose we are too many visitors for him."

Then I saw that the old lady, beneath her severity, was deeply moved; and almost at once John and Eliza came down the stairs. Miss Josephine took each of them to her heart, but she did not trust herself to speak; and a single tear rolled down her face, as the boy and girl continued to the hall-door. There Daddy Ben stood, and John's gay good-by to him was the last word that I heard the bridegroom say. While we all stood silently watching them as they drove away from the tall iron gate, the mocking-bird on the staircase broke into melodious ripples of song.



XXIII: Poor Aunt Carola!

And now here goes my language back into the small-clothes that it wore at the beginning of all, when I told you something of that colonial society, the Selected Salic Scions, dear to the heart of my Aunt. It were beyond my compass to approach this august body of men and women with the respect that is its due, did I attire myself in that modern garment which, in the phrase of the vulgar, is denoted pants.

You will scarce have forgot, I must suppose, the importance set by my Aunt Carola upon the establishing of the Scions in new territories, wherever such persons as were both qualified by their descent and in themselves worthy, should be found; and you will remember that I was bidden by her to look in South Carolina for members of the Bombo connection which she was inclined to suspect existed in that state. My neglect to make this inquiry for my kind Aunt now smote me sharply when all seemed too late. John Mayrant had spoken of Kill-devil Bombo, the very personage through whom lay Aunt Carola's claim to kingly lineage, and I had let John Mayrant go away upon his honeymoon without ever questioning him upon this subject. As I looked back upon the ease with which I might have settled the matter, and forward to my return empty-handed to the generous relative to whom I owed this agreeable experience of travel, I felt guilty indeed. I wrote a letter to follow John Mayrant into whatever retreat of bliss he had betaken himself to, and I begged him earnestly to write me at his early convenience all that he might know of Bombos in South Carolina. Consequently, I was able, on reaching home, to meet Aunt Carola with some sort of countenance, and to assure her that I expected presently to be furnished with authentic and valuable particulars.

I now learned that the Selected Salic Scions had greatly increased in numbers during my short absence. It appeared that the origin of the whole movement had sprung from a needy but ingenious youth in some manufacturing town of New England. This lad had a cousin, who had amassed from nothing a noble fortune by inventing one day a speedy and convenient fashion of opening beer bottles; and this cousin's achievement had set him to looking about him. He soon discovered that in our great republic everywhere there were living hundreds and thousands of men and women who were utterly unaware that they were descended from kings. Borrowing a little money to float him, he set up The American Almanach de Gotha and began (for the minimum sum of fifty dollars a pedigree) to reveal to these eager people the chain of links that connected them with royalty. Thus, in a period of time the brevity of which is incredible, this young man passed from complete indigence to a wife and four automobiles, or an automobile and four wives—I don't remember which he had the four of. There was so much royal blood about that it had spilled into several rival organizations, each bitterly warring with the other; but my Aunt assured me that her society was the only one that any respectable person belonged to.

I am minded to announce a rule of discreet conduct: Never read aloud any letter that you have not first read to yourself. Had I observed this rule—but listen:—

It so happened that Aunt Carola was at luncheon with us when the postman brought John Mayrant's answer to my inquiry, and at the sight of his handwriting I thoughtlessly exclaimed to my Aunt that here at last we had all there was to be known concerning the Bombos in South Carolina; with this I tore open the missive and embarked upon a reading of it for the edification of all present. I pass over the beginning of John's communication, because it was merely the observations of a man upon his honeymoon, and was confined to laudatory accounts of scenery and weather, and the beauty of all life when once one saw it with his eyes truly opened.

"No Bombos ever came to Carolina," he now continued, "that I know of, or that Aunt Josephine knows of, which is more to the point. Aunt Josephine has copied me a passage from the writings of William Byrd, Esq., of Westover, Virginia, in which mention is made, not of the family, but of a rum punch which seems to have been concocted first by Admiral Bombo, from a New England brand of rum so very deadly that it was not inaptly styled 'kill-devil' by the early planters of the colony. That the punch drifted to Carolina and still survives there, you have reason to know. Therefore if any remote ancestors of yours contracted an alliance with Kill-devil Bombo, I can imagine no resulting offspring of such union but a series of severe attacks of delir—"

"What?" interrupted Aunt Carola, at this point, in her most formidable voice. "What's that stuff you're reading, Augustus?"

I shook in my shoes. "Why, Aunt, it's John—"

"Not another word, sir! And never let me hear his name again. To think—to think—" But here Aunt Carola's face grew extremely red, and she choked so decidedly that Uncle Andrew poured her a glass of water.

The rest of our luncheon was conducted with remarkable solemnity.

As we were rising from table, my Aunt said:—

"It was high time, Augustus, that you came home. You seem to have got into very strange company down there."

This was the last reference to the Bombos that my Aunt ever made in my hearing. Of course it is preposterous to suppose that she traces her descent from a king through a mere bowl of punch, and her being still the president of the Selected Salic Scions is proof irrefutable that her claim rests upon a more solid foundation.



XXIV: Post Scriptum

I think that John Mayrant, Jr., is going to look like his mother. I was very glad to be present when he was christened, and at this ceremony I did not feel as I had felt the year before at the wedding; for then I had known well enough that if the old ladies found any blemish on that occasion, it was my being there! To them I must remain forever a "Yankee," a wall perfectly imaginary and perfectly real between us; and the fact that young John could take any other view of me, was to them a sign of that "radical" tendency in him which they were able to forgive solely because he was of the younger generation and didn't know any better.

And with these thoughts in my mind, and remembering a certain very grave talk I had once held with Eliza in the Exchange about the North and the South, in which it was my good fortune to make her see that there is on our soil nowadays such a being as an American, who feels, wherever he goes in our native land, that it is all his, and that he belongs everywhere to it, I looked at the little John Mayrant, and then I said to his mother:—

"And will you teach him 'Dixie' and 'Yankee Doodle' as well?"

But Eliza smiled at me with friendly, inscrutable eyes.

"Oh," said John, "you mustn't ask too much of the ladies. I'll see to all that."

Perhaps he will. And an education at Harvard College need not cause the boy to forget his race, or his name, or his traditions, but only to value them more, as they should be valued. And the way that they should be valued is this: that the boy in thinking of them should say to himself, "I am proud of my ancestors; let my life make them proud of me."

But, in any case, is it not pleasant to think of the boy being brought up by Eliza, and not by Hortense?

And so my portrait of Kings Port is finished. That the likeness is not perfect, I am only too sensible. No painter that I have heard of ever satisfies the whole family. But, should any of the St. Michaels see this picture, I trust they may observe that if some of the touches are faulty, true admiration and love of his subject animated the artist's hand; and if Miss Josephine St. Michael should be pleased with any of it, I could wish that she might indicate this by sending me a Lady Baltimore; we have no cake here that approaches it.

THE END