Thus it was that I came to sojourn in the most appealing, the most
lovely, the most wistful town in America; whose visible sadness and
distinction seem also to speak audibly, speak in the sound of the quiet
waves that ripple round her Southern front, speak in the church-bells
on Sunday morning, and breathe not only in the soft salt air, but in the
perfume of every gentle, old-fashioned rose that blooms behind the
high garden walls of falling mellow-tinted plaster: Kings Port the
retrospective, Kings Port the belated, who from her pensive porticoes
looks over her two rivers to the marshes and the trees beyond, the
live-oaks, veiled in gray moss, brooding with memories! Were she my
city, how I should love her!
But though my city she cannot be, the enchanting image of her is mine to
keep, to carry with me wheresoever I may go; for who, having seen her,
could forget her? Therefore I thank Aunt Carola for this gift, and for
what must always go with it in my mind, the quiet and strange romance
which I saw happen, and came finally to share in. Why it is that my Aunt
no longer wishes to know either the boy or the girl, or even to hear
their names mentioned, you shall learn at the end, when I have finished
with the wedding; for this happy story of love ends with a wedding,
and begins in the Woman’s Exchange, which the ladies of Kings Port have
established, and (I trust) lucratively conduct, in Royal Street.
Royal Street! There’s a relevance in this name, a fitness to my errand;
but that is pure accident.
The Woman’s Exchange happened to be there, a decorous resort for those
who became hungry, as I did, at the hour of noon each day. In my very
pleasant boarding-house, where, to be sure, there was one dreadful
boarder, a tall lady, whom I soon secretly called Juno--but let
unpleasant things wait--in the very pleasant house where I boarded (I
had left my hotel after one night) our breakfast was at eight, and our
dinner not until three: sacred meal hours in Kings Port, as inviolable,
I fancy, as the Declaration of Independence, but a gap quite beyond the
stretch of my Northern vitals. Therefore, at twelve, it was my habit to
leave my Fanning researches for a while, and lunch at the Exchange upon
chocolate and sandwiches most delicate in savor. As, one day, I was
luxuriously biting one of these, I heard his voice and what he was
saying. Both the voice and the interesting order he was giving caused
me, at my small table, in the dim back of the room, to stop and watch
him where he stood in the light at the counter to the right of the
entrance door. Young he was, very young, twenty-two or three at the
most, and as he stood, with hat in hand, speaking to the pretty girl
behind the counter, his head and side-face were of a romantic and
high-strung look. It was a cake that he desired made, a cake for a
wedding; and I directly found myself curious to know whose wedding. Even
a dull wedding interests me more than other dull events, because it
can arouse so much surmise and so much prophecy; but in this wedding
I instantly, because of his strange and winning embarrassment, became
quite absorbed. How came it he was ordering the cake for it? Blushing
like the boy that he was entirely, he spoke in a most engaging voice:
“No, not charged; and as you don’t know me, I had better pay for it
now.”
Self-possession in his speech he almost had; but the blood in his cheeks
and forehead was beyond his control.
A reply came from behind the counter: “We don’t expect payment until
delivery.”
“But--a--but on that morning I shall be rather particularly engaged.”
His tones sank almost away on these words.
“We should prefer to wait, then. You will leave your address. In
half-pound boxes, I suppose?”
“Boxes? Oh, yes--I hadn’t thought--no--just a big, round one. Like this,
you know!” His arms embraced a circular space of air. “With plenty of
icing.”
I do not think that there was any smile on the other side of the
counter; there was, at any rate, no hint of one in the voice. “And how
many pounds?”
He was again staggered. “Why--a--I never ordered one before. I want
plenty--and the very best, the very best. Each person would eat a pound,
wouldn’t they? Or would two be nearer? I think I had better leave it
all to you. About like this, you know.” Once more his arms embraced a
circular space of air.
Before this I had never heard the young lady behind the counter enter
into any conversation with a customer. She would talk at length about
all sorts of Kings Port affairs with the older ladies connected with the
Exchange, who were frequently to be found there; but with a customer,
never. She always took my orders, and my money, and served me, with a
silence and a propriety that have become, with ordinary shopkeepers, a
lost art. They talk to one indeed! But this slim girl was a lady, and
consequently did the right thing, marking and keeping a distance between
herself and the public. To-day, however, she evidently felt it her
official duty to guide the hapless young, man amid his errors. He now
appeared to be committing a grave one.
“Are you quite sure you want that?” the girl was asking.
“Lady Baltimore? Yes, that is what I want.”
“Because,” she began to explain, then hesitated, and looked at him.
Perhaps it was in his face; perhaps it was that she remembered at this
point the serious difference between the price of Lady Baltimore (by
my small bill-of-fare I was now made acquainted with its price) and the
cost of that rich article which convention has prescribed as the cake
for weddings; at any rate, swift, sudden delicacy of feeling prevented
her explaining any more to him, for she saw how it was: his means were
too humble for the approved kind of wedding cake! She was too young, too
unskilled yet in the world’s ways, to rise above her embarrassment; and
so she stood blushing at him behind the counter, while he stood blushing
at her in front of it.
At length he succeeded in speaking. “That’s all, I believe.
Good-morning.”
At his hastily departing back she, too, murmured: “Good-morning.”
Before I knew it I had screamed out loudly from my table: “But he hasn’t
told you the day he wants it for!”
Before she knew it she had flown to the door--my cry had set her going,
as if I had touched a spring--and there he was at the door himself,
rushing back. He, too, had remembered. It was almost a collision, and
nothing but their good Southern breeding, the way they took it, saved it
from being like a rowdy farce.
“I know,” he said simply and immediately. “I am sorry to be so careless.
It’s for the twenty-seventh.”
She was writing it down in the order-book. “Very well. That is Wednesday
of next week. You have given us more time than we need.” She put
complete, impersonal business into her tone; and this time he marched
off in good order, leaving peace in the Woman’s Exchange.
No, not peace; quiet, merely; the girl at the counter now proceeded to
grow indignant with me. We were alone together, we two; no young man,
or any other business, occupied her or protected me. But if you suppose
that she made war, or expressed rage by speaking, that is not it at
all. From her counter in front to my table at the back she made her
displeasure felt; she was inaudibly crushing; she did not do it even
with her eye, she managed it--well, with her neck, somehow, and by the
way she made her nose look in profile. Aunt Carola would have embraced
her--and I should have liked to do so myself. She could not stand the
idea of my having, after all these days of official reserve that she had
placed between us, startled her into that rush to the door annihilated
her dignity at a blow. So did I finish my sandwiches beneath her
invisible but eloquent fire. What affair of mine was the cake? And
what sort of impertinent, meddlesome person was I, shrieking out my
suggestions to people with whom I had no acquaintance? These were the
things that her nose and her neck said to me the whole length of the
Exchange. I had nothing but my own weakness to thank; it was my interest
in weddings that did it, made me forget my decorum, the public place,
myself, everything, and plunge in. And I became more and more delighted
over it as the girl continued to crush me. My day had been dull, my
researches had not brought me a whit nearer royal blood; I looked at
my little bill-of-fare, and then I stepped forward to the counter,
adventurous, but polite.
“I should like a slice, if you please, of Lady Baltimore,” I said with
extreme formality.
I thought she was going to burst; but after an interesting second she
replied, “Certainly,” in her fit Regular Exchange tone; only, I thought
it trembled a little.
I returned to the table and she brought me the cake, and I had my first
felicitous meeting with Lady Baltimore. Oh, my goodness! Did you ever
taste it? It’s all soft, and it’s in layers, and it has nuts--but I
can’t write any more about it; my mouth waters too much.
Delighted surprise caused me once more to speak aloud, and with my mouth
full. “But, dear me, this Is delicious!”
A choking ripple of laughter came from the counter. “It’s I who make
them,” said the girl. “I thank you for the unintentional compliment.”
Then she walked straight back to my table. “I can’t help it,” she said,
laughing still, and her delightful, insolent nose well up; “how can
I behave myself when a man goes on as you do?” A nice white curly dog
followed her, and she stroked his ears.
“Your behavior is very agreeable to me,” I remarked.
“You’ll allow me to say that you’re not invited to criticise it. I
was decidedly put out with you for making me ridiculous. But you have
admired my cake with such enthusiasm that you are forgiven. And--may I
hope that you are getting on famously with the battle of Cowpens?”
I stared. “I’m frankly very much astonished that you should know about
that!”
“Oh, you’re just known all about in Kings Port.”
I wish that our miserable alphabet could in some way render the soft
Southern accent which she gave to her words. But it cannot. I could
easily misspell, if I chose; but how, even then, could I, for instance,
make you hear her way of saying “about”? “Aboot” would magnify it; and
besides, I decline to make ugly to the eye her quite special English,
that was so charming to the ear.
“Kings Port just knows all about you,” she repeated with a sweet and
mocking laugh.
“Do you mind telling me how?”
She explained at once. “This place is death to all incognitos.”
The explanation, however, did not, on the instant, enlighten me. “This?
The Woman’s Exchange, you mean?”
“Why, to be sure! Have you not heard ladies talking together here?”