“Even the square piano and Mr. Pinckney,” he went on. “I didn’t suppose
anybody had thought things like that, except myself.”
“Oh,” I again said lightly, “any American--any, that is, of the
world--who has a colonial background for his family, has thought,
probably, very much the same sort of things. Of course it would be all
Greek or gibberish to the new people.”
He took me up with animation. “The new people! My goodness, sir, yes!
Have you seen them? Have you seen Newport, for instance?” His diction
now (and I was to learn it was always in him a sign of heightening
intensity) grew more and more like the formal speech of his ancestors.
“You have seen Newport?” he said.
“Yes; now and then.”
“But lately, sir? I knew we were behind the times down here, sir, but I
had not imagined how much. Not by any means! Kings Port has a long
road to go before she will consider marriage provincial and chastity
obsolete.”
“Dear me, Mr. Mayrant! Well, I must tell you that it’s not all quite
so--so advanced--as that, you know. That’s not the whole of Newport.”
He hastened to explain. “Certainly not, sir! I would not insult the
honorable families whom I had the pleasure to meet there, and to whom my
name was known because they had retained their good position since
the days when my great-uncle had a house and drove four horses there
himself. I noticed three kinds of Newport, sir.”
“Three?”
“Yes. Because I took letters; and some of the letters were to people
who--who once had been, you know; it was sad to see the thing, sir, so
plain against the glaring proximity of the other thing. And so you can
divide Newport into those who leave to sell their old family pictures,
those who have to buy their old family pictures, and the lucky few who
need neither buy nor sell, who are neither goin’ down nor bobbing up,
but who have kept their heads above the American tidal wave from the
beginning and continue to do so. And I don’t believe that there are any
nicer people in the world than those.”
“Nowhere!” I exclaimed. “When Near York does her best, what’s
better?--If only those best set the pace!”
“If only!” he assented. “But it’s the others who get into the papers,
who dine the drunken dukes, and make poor chambermaids envious a
thousand miles inland!”
“There should be a high tariff on drunken dukes,” I said.
“You’ll never get it!” he declared. “It’s the Republican party whose
daughters marry them.”
I rocked with enjoyment where I sat; he was so refreshing. And I agreed
with him so well. “You’re every bit as good as Miss Beaufain,” I cried.
“Oh, no; oh, no! But I often think if we could only deport the negroes
and Newport together to one of our distant islands, how happily our two
chief problems would be solved!”
I still rocked. “Newport would, indeed, enjoy your plan for it. Do go
on!” I entreated him But he had, for the moment, ceased; and I rose
to stretch my legs and saunter among the old headstones and the wafted
fragrance.
His aunt (or his cousin, or whichever of them it had been) was certainly
right as to his inheriting a pleasant and pointed gift of speech; and a
responsive audience helps us all. Such an audience I certainly was for
young John Mayrant, yet beneath the animation that our talk had filled
his eyes with lay (I seemed to see or feel) that other mood all the
time, the mood which had caused the girl behind the counter to say to
me that he was “anxious about something.” The unhappy youth, I was
gradually to learn, was much more than that--he was in a tangle of
anxieties. He talked to me as a sick man turns in bed from pain; the
pain goes on, but the pillow for a while is cool.
Here there broke upon us a little interruption, so diverting, so utterly
like the whole quaint tininess of Kings Port, that I should tell it
to you, even if it did not bear directly upon the matter which was
beginning so actively to concern me--the love difficulties of John
Mayrant.
It was the letter-carrier.
We had come, from our secluded seats, round a corner, and so by the
vestry door and down the walk beside the church, and as I read to myself
the initials upon the stones wherewith the walk was paved, I drew near
the half-open gateway upon Worship Street. The postman was descending
the steps of the post-office opposite. He saw me through the gate and
paused. He knew me, too! My face, easily marked out amid the resident
faces he was familiar with, had at once caught his attention; very
likely he, too, had by now learned that I was interested in the battle
of Cowpens; but I did not ask him this. He crossed over and handed me a
letter.
“No use,” he said most politely, “takin’ it away down to Mistress
Trevise’s when you’re right here, sir. Northern mail eight hours late
to-day,” he added, and bowing, was gone upon his route.
My home letter, from a man, an intimate running mate of mine, soon had
my full attention, for on the second page it said:--
“I have just got back from accompanying her to Baltimore. One of us
went as far as Washington with her on the train. We gave her a dinner
yesterday at the March Hare by way of farewell. She tried our new
toboggan fire-escape on a bet. Clean from the attic, my boy. I imagine
our native girls will rejoice at her departure. However, nobody’s
engaged to her, at least nobody here. How many may fancy themselves so
elsewhere I can’t say. Her name is Hortense Rieppe.”