“Some of these people are my people,” he said, beginning to move.
The old custodian stood smiling, familiar, respectful, disappointed.
“Some of ‘em my people, too, Mas’ John,” he cannily observed.
I put a little silver in his hand. “Didn’t I see a box somewhere,” I
said, “with something on it about the restoration of the church?”
“Something on it, but nothing in it!” exclaimed Mayrant; at which
moderate pleasantry the custodian broke into extreme African merriment
and ambled away. “You needn’t have done it,” protested the Southerner,
and I naturally claimed my stranger’s right to pay my respects in this
manner. Such was our introduction, agreeable and unusual.
A silence then unexpectedly ensued and the formality fell colder than
ever upon us. The custodian’s departure had left us alone, looking at
each other across all the unexpressed knowledge that each knew the other
had. Mayrant had come impulsively back to me from his aunts, without
stopping to think that we had never yet exchanged a word; both of us
were now brought up short, and it was the cake that was speaking volubly
in our self-conscious dumbness. It was only after this brief, deep gap
of things unsaid that John Mayrant came to the surface again, and began
a conversation of which, on both our parts, the first few steps were
taken on the tiptoes of an archaic politeness; we trod convention like a
polished French floor; you might have expected us, after such deliberate
and graceful preliminaries, to dance a verbal minuet.
We, however, danced something quite different, and that conversation
lasted during many days, and led us, like a road, up hill and down dale
to a perfect acquaintance. No, not perfect, but delightful; to the end
he never spoke to me of the matter most near him, and I but honor him
the more for his reticence.
Of course his first remark had to be about Kings Port and me; had he
understood rightly that this was my first visit?
My answer was equally traditional.
It was, next, correct that he should allude to the weather; and his
reference was one of the two or three that it seems a stranger’s destiny
always to hear in a place new to him: he apologized for the weather--so
cold a season had not, in his memory, been experienced in Kings Port; it
was to the highest point exceptional.
I exclaimed that it had been, to my Northern notions, delightfully mild
for March. “Indeed,” I continued, “I have always said that if March
could be cut out of our Northern climate, as the core is cut out of
an apple, I should be quite satisfied with eleven months, instead of
twelve. I think it might prolong one’s youth.”
The fire of that season lighted in his eyes, but he still stepped upon
polished convention. He assured me that the Southern September hurricane
was more deplorable than any Northern March could be. “Our zone should
be called the Intemperate zone,” said he.
“But never in Kings Port,” I protested; “with your roses
out-of-doors--and your ladies indoors!”
He bowed. “You pay us a high compliment.”