“Which of them is idealizing?” This was the question that I asked
myself, next morning, in my boarding-house, as I dressed for breakfast;
the next morning is--at least I have always found it so--an excellent
time for searching questions; and to-day I had waked up no longer
beneath the strong, gentle spell of the churchyard. A bright sun was
shining over the eastern waters of the town, I could see from my upper
veranda the thousand flashes of the waves; the steam yacht rode placidly
and competently among them, while a coastwise steamer was sailing by
her, out to sea, to Savannah, or New York; the general world was going
on, and--which of them was idealizing? It mightn’t be so bad, after
all. Hadn’t I, perhaps, over-sentimentalized to myself the case of John
Mayrant? Hadn’t I imagined for him ever so much more anxiety than the
boy actually felt? For people can idealize down just as readily as
they can idealize up. Of Miss Hortense Rieppe I had now two partial
portraits--one by the displeased aunts, the other by their chivalric
nephew; in both she held between her experienced lips, a cigarette;
there the similarity ceased. And then, there was the toboggan
fire-escape. Well, I must meet the living original before I could decide
whether (for me, at any rate) she was the “brute” as seen by the eyes
of Mrs. Gregory St. Michael, or the “really nice girl” who was going
to marry John Mayrant on Wednesday week. Just at this point my thoughts
brought up hard again at the cake. No; I couldn’t swallow that any
better this morning than yesterday afternoon! Allow the gentleman to pay
for the feast! Better to have omitted all feast; nothing simpler, and
it would have been at least dignified, even if arid. But then, there was
the lady (a cousin or an aunt--I couldn’t remember which this morning)
who had told me she wasn’t solicitous. What did she mean by that? And
she had looked quite queer when she spoke about the phosphates. Oh,
yes, to be sure, she was his intimate aunt! Where, by the way, was Miss
Rieppe?
By the time I had eaten my breakfast and walked up Worship Street to
the post-office I was full of it all again; my searching thoughts
hadn’t simplified a single point. I always called for my mail at
the post-office, because I got it sooner; it didn’t come to the
boarding-house before I had departed on my quest for royal blood,
whereas, this way, I simply got my letters at the corner of Court and
Worship streets and walked diagonally across and down Court a few
steps to my researches, which I could vary and alleviate by reading and
answering news from home.
It was from Aunt Carola that I heard to-day. Only a little of what
she said will interest you. There had been a delightful meeting of the
Selected Salic Scions. The Baltimore Chapter had paid her Chapter a
visit. Three ladies and one very highly connected young gentleman had
come--an encouragingly full and enthusiastic meeting. They had lunched
upon cocoa, sherry, and croquettes, after which all had been more than
glad to listen to a paper read by a descendant of Edward the Third and
the young gentleman, a descendant of Catherine of Aragon, had recited
a beautiful original poem, entitled “My Queen Grandmother.” Aunt Carola
regretted that I could not have had the pleasure and the benefit of this
meeting, the young gentleman had turned out to be, also, a refined and
tasteful musician, playing, upon the piano a favorite gavotte of Louis
the Thirteenth “And while you are in Kings Port,” my aunt said; “I
expect you to profit by associating with the survivors of our good
American society--people such as one could once meet everywhere when
I was young, but who have been destroyed by the invasion of the
proletariat. You are in the last citadel of good-breeding. By the way,
find out, if you can, if any of the Bombo connection are extant; as
through them I should like, if possible, to establish a chapter of
the Scions in South Carolina. Have you, met a Miss Rieppe, a decidedly
striking young woman, who says she is from Kings Port, and who recently
passed through here with a very common man dancing attendance on her? He
owns the Hermana, and she is said to be engaged to him.”
This wasn’t as good as meeting Miss Rieppe myself; but the new angle at
which I got her from my Aunt was distinctly a contribution toward the
young woman’s likeness; I felt that I should know her at sight, if ever
she came within seeing distance. And it would be entertaining to find
that she was a Bombo; but that could wait; what couldn’t wait was the
Hermana. I postponed the Fannings, hurried by the door where they waited
for me, and, coming to the end of Court Street, turned to the right and
sought among the wharves the nearest vista that could give me a view of
the harbor. Between the silent walls of commerce desolated, and by the
empty windows from which Prosperity once looked out, I threaded my way
to a point upon the town’s eastern edge. Yes, that was the steam yacht’s
name: the Hermana. I didn’t make it out myself, she lay a trifle too far
from shore; but I could read from a little fluttering pennant that her
owner was not on board; and from the second loafer whom I questioned I
learned, besides her name, that she had come from New York here to
meet her owner, whose name he did not know and whose arrival was still
indefinite. This was not very much to find out; but it was so much more
than I had found out about the Fannings that, although I now faithfully
returned to my researches, and sat over open books until noon, I
couldn’t tell you a word of what I read. Where was Miss Rieppe, and
where was the owner of the Hermana? Also, precisely how ill was the hero
of Chattanooga, her poor dear father?
At the Exchange I opened the door upon a conversation which, in
consequence, broke off abruptly; but this much I came in for:--
“Nothing but the slightest bruise above his eye. The other one is in
bed.”
It was the severe lady who said this; I mean that lady who, among all
the severe ones I had met, seemed capable of the highest exercise of
this quality, although she had not exercised it in my presence. She
looked, in her veil and her black street dress, as aloof, and as coldly
scornful of the present day, as she had seemed when sitting over her
embroidery; but it was not of 1818, or even 1840, that she had been
talking just now: it was this morning that somebody was bruised,
somebody was in bed.
The handsome lady acknowledged my salutation completely, but not
encouragingly, and then, on the threshold, exchanged these parting
sentences with the girl behind the counter:--
“They will have to shake hands. He was not very willing, but he listened
to me. Of course, the chastisement was right--but it does not affect my
opinion of his keeping on with the position.”
“No, indeed, Aunt Josephine!” the girl agreed. “I wish he wouldn’t. Did
you say it was his right eye?”
“His left.” Miss Josephine St. Michael inclined her head once more to me
and went out of the Exchange. I retired to my usual table, and the
girl read in my manner, quite correctly, the feelings which I had not
supposed I had allowed to be evident. She said:--
“Aunt Josephine always makes strangers think she’s displeased with
them.”
I replied like the young ass which I constantly tell myself I have
ceased to be: “Oh, displeasure is as much notice as one is entitled to
from Miss St. Michael.”
The girl laughed with her delightful sweet mockery.
“I declare, you’re huffed! Now don’t tell me you’re not. But you mustn’t
be. When you know her, you’ll know that that awful manner means Aunt
Josephine is just being shy. Why, even I’m not afraid of her George
Washington glances any more!”
“Very well,” I laughed, “I’ll try to have your courage.” Over my
chocolate and sandwiches I sat in curiosity discreditable, but natural.
Who was in bed--who would have to shake hands? And why had they stopped
talking when I came in? Of course, I found myself hoping that John
Mayrant had put the owner of the Hermana in bed at the slight cost of
a bruise above his left eye. I wondered if the cake was again
countermanded, and I started upon that line. “I think I’ll have to-day,
if you please, another slice of that Lady Baltimore.” And I made ready
for another verbal skirmish.
“I’m so sorry! It’s a little stale to-day. You can have the last slice,
if you wish.”
“Thank you, I will.” She brought it. “It’s not so very stale,” I said.
“How long since it has been made?”
“Oh, it’s the same you’ve been having. You’re its only patron just now.”
“Well, no. There’s Mr. Mayrant.”
“Not for a week yet, you remember.”
So the wedding was on yet. Still, John might have smashed the owner of
the Hermana.
“Have you seen him lately?” I asked.
There was something special in the way she looked. “Not to-day. Have
you?”
“Never in the forenoon. He has his duties and I have mine.”
She made a little pause, and then, “What do you think of the President?”
“The President?” I was at a loss.
“But I’m afraid you would take his view--the Northern view,” she mused.
It gave me, suddenly, her meaning. “Oh, the President of the United
States! How you do change the subject!”
Her eyes were upon me, burning with sectional indignation, but she
seemed to be thinking too much to speak. Now, here was a topic that I
had avoided, and she had plumped it at me. Very well; she should have my
view.
“If you mean that a gentleman cannot invite any respectable member of
any race he pleases to dine privately in his house--”
“His house!” She was glowing now with it. “I think he is--I think
he is--to have one of them--and even if he likes it, not to
remember--cannot speak about him!” she wound up “I should say unbecoming
things.” She had walked out, during these words, from behind the counter
and as she stood there in the middle of the long room you might have
thought she was about to lead a cavalry charge. Then, admirably, she
put it all under, and spoke on with perfect self-control. “Why can’t
somebody explain it to him? If I knew him, I would go to him myself, and
I would say, Mr. President, we need not discuss our different tastes as
to dinner company. Nor need we discuss how much you benefit the colored
race by an act which makes every member of it immediately think that
he is fit to dine with any king in the world. But you are staying in
a house which is partly our house, ours, the South’s, for we, too, pay
taxes, you know. And since you also know our deep feeling--you may even
call it a prejudice, if it so pleases you--do you not think that, so
long as you are residing in that house, you should not gratuitously
shock our deep feeling?” She swept a magnificent low curtsy at the air.
“By Jove, Miss La Heu!” I exclaimed, “you put it so that it’s rather
hard to answer.”
“I’m glad it strikes you so.”
“But did it make them all think they were going to dine?”
“Hundreds of thousands. It was proof to them that they were as good as
anybody--just as good, without reading or writing or anything. The very
next day some of the laziest and dirtiest where we live had a new strut,
like the monkey when you put a red flannel cap on him--only the monkey
doesn’t push ladies off the sidewalk. And that state of mind, you know,”
said Miss La Heu, softening down from wrath to her roguish laugh, “isn’t
the right state of mind for racial progress! But I wasn’t thinking of
this. You know he has appointed one of them to office here.”
A light entered my brain: John Mayrant had a position at the Custom
House! John Mayrant was subordinate to the President’s appointee! She
hadn’t changed the subject so violently, after all.