Each recent remarkable occurrence had obliterated its predecessor, and
it was with difficulty that I made a straight parting in my hair. Had it
been Miss Rieppe that John so suddenly ran away to? It seemed now more
as if the boy had been running away from somebody. The waitress had
stared at him with extraordinary interest; she had seen his bruise;
perhaps she knew how he had got it. Her excitement--had he smashed up
his official superior at the custom house? That would be an impossible
thing, I told myself instantly; as well might a nobleman cross swords
with a peasant. Perhaps the stare of the waitress had reminded him of
his bruise, and he might have felt disinclined to show himself with it
in a company of gossiping strangers. Still, that would scarcely account
for it--the dismay with which he had so suddenly left me. Was Juno
the cause--she had come up behind me; he must have seen her and her
portentous manner approaching--had the boy fled from her?
And then, his fierce outbreak about taking orders from a negro when I
was moralizing over the misfortune of marrying a jackass! I got a sort
of parting in my hair, and went down to the dining room.
Juno was there before me, with her bonnet, or rather her headdress,
still on, and I heard her making apologies to Mrs. Trevise for being so
late. Mrs. Trevise, of course, sat at the head of her table, and Juno
sat at her right hand. I was very glad not to have a seat near Juno,
because this lady was, as I have already hinted, an intolerable person
to me. Either her Southern social position or her rent (she took the
whole second floor, except Mrs. Trevise’s own rooms) was of importance
to Mrs. Trevise; but I assure you that her ways kept our landlady’s
cold, impervious tact watchful from the beginning to the end of almost
every meal. Juno was one of those persons who possess so many and such
strong feelings themselves that they think they have all the feelings
there are; at least, they certainly consider no one’s feelings but
their own. She possessed an inexhaustible store of anecdote, but it was
exclusively about our Civil War; you would have supposed that nothing
else had ever happened in the world. When conversation among the rest of
us became general, she preserved a cold and acrid inattention; when
the fancy took her to open her own mouth, it was always to begin some
reminiscence, and the reminiscence always began: “In September, 1862,
when the Northern vandals,” etc., etc., or “When the Northern vandals
were repulsed by my husband’s cousin, General Braxton Bragg,” etc., etc.
Now it was not that I was personally wounded by the term, because at the
time of the vandals I was not even born, and also because I know that
vandals cannot be kept out of any army. Deeply as I believed the March
to the Sea to have been imperative, of “Sherman’s bummers” and their
excesses I had a fair historic knowledge and a very poor opinion; and
this I should have been glad to tell Juno, had she ever given me the
chance; but her immodest sympathy for herself froze all sympathy for
her. Why could she not preserve a well-bred silence upon her sufferings,
as did the other old ladies I had met in Kings Port? Why did she drag
them in, thrust them, poke them, shove them at you? Thus it was that for
her insulting disregard of those whom her words might wound I
detested Juno; and as she was a woman, and nearly old enough to be
my grandmother, it was, of course, out of the question that I should
retaliate. When she got very bad indeed, it was calm Mrs. Trevise’s
last, but effective, resort to tinkle a little handbell and scold one of
the waitresses whom its sound would then summon from the kitchen. This
bell was tinkled not always by any means for my sake; other travellers
from the North there were who came and went, pausing at Kings Port
between Florida and their habitual abodes.
At present our company consisted of Juno; a middle-class Englishman
employed in some business capacity in town; a pair of very young
honeymooners from the “up-country”; a Louisiana poetess, who wore the
long, cylindrical ringlets of 1830, and who was attending a convention
the Daughters of Dixie; two or three males and females, best described
as et ceteras; and myself. “I shall only take a mouthful for the sake
of nourishment,” Juno was announcing, “and then I shall return to his
bedside.”
“Is he very suffering?” inquired the poetess, in melodious accent.
“It was an infamous onslaught,” Juno replied.
The poetess threw up her eyes and crooned, “Noble, doughty champion!”
“You may say so indeed, madam,” said Juno.
“Raw beefsteak’s jolly good for your eye,” observed the Briton.
This suggestion did not appear to be heard by Juno.
“I had a row with a chap,” the Briton continued. He’s my best friend
now. He made me put raw beefsteak--”
“I thank you,” interrupted Juno. “He requires no beefsteak, raw or
cooked.”
The face of the Briton reddened. “Too groggy to eat, is he?”
Mrs. Trevise tinkled her bell. “Daphne! I have said to you twice to hand
those yams.”
“I done handed ‘em twice, ma’am.”
“Hand them right away, Daphne, and don’t be so forgetful.” It was not
easy to disturb the composure of Mrs. Trevise.
The poetess now took up the broken thread. “Had I a son,” she declared,
“I would sooner witness him starve than hear him take orders from a
menial race.”
“But mightn’t starving be harder for him to experience than for you to
witness, y’ know?” asked the Briton.
At this one of the et ceteras made a sort of snuffing noise, and ate his
dinner hard.
It was the male honeymooner who next spoke. “Must have been quite a
tussle, ma’am.”
“It was an infamous onslaught!” repeated Juno. “Wish I’d seen it!”
sighed the honeymooner.
His bride smiled at him beamingly. “You’d have felt right lonesome to be
out of it, David.”
“No apology has yet been offered,” continued Juno.
“But must your nephew apologize besides taking a licking?” inquired the
Briton.
Juno turned an awful face upon hint. “It is from his brutal assailant
that apologies are due. Mr. Mayrant’s family” (she paused here for
blighting emphasis) “are well-bred people, and he will be coerced into
behaving like a gentleman for once.”
I checked an impulse here to speak out and express my doubts as to
the family coercion being founded upon any dissatisfaction with John’s
conduct.
“I wonder if reading or recitation might not soothe your nephew?” said
the poetess, now.
“I should doubt it,” answered Juno. “I have just come from his bedside.”
“I should so like to soothe him, if I could,” the poetess murmured. “If
he were well enough to hear my convention ode--”
“He is not nearly well enough,” said Juno.
The et cetera here coughed and blew his nose so remarkably that we all
started.
A short silence followed, which Juno relieved.
“I will give the young ruffian’s family the credit they deserve,” she
stated. “The whole connection despises his keeping the position.”
Another et cetera now came into it. “Is it known what exactly
precipitated the occurrence?”
Juno turned to him. “My nephew is a gentleman from whose lips no
unworthy word could ever fall.’
“Oh!” said the et cetera, mildly. “He said something, then?”
“He conveyed a well-merited rebuke in fitting terms.”
“What were the terms?” inquired the Briton.
Juno again did not hear him. “It was after a friendly game of cards.
My nephew protested against any gentleman remaining at the custom house
since the recent insulting appointment.”
I was now almost the only member of the party who had preserved strict
silence throughout this very interesting conversation, because, having
no wish to converse with Juno at any time, I especially did not desire
it now, just after her seeing me (I thought she must have seen me) in
amicable conference with the object of her formidable displeasure.
“Every Mayrant is ferocious that I ever heard of,” she continued. “You
cannot trust that seemingly delicate and human exterior. His father had
it, too--deceiving exterior and raging interior, though I will say for
that one that he would never have stooped to humiliate the family name
as his son is doing. His regiment was near by when the Northern vandals
burned our courthouse, and he made them run, I can tell you! It’s a
mercy for that poor girl that the scales have dropped from her eyes and
she has broken her engagement with him.”
“With the father?” asked a third et cetera.
Juno stared at the intruder.
Mrs. Trevise drawled a calm contribution. “The father died before this
boy was born.”
“Oh, I see!” murmured the et cetera, gratefully.
Juno proceeded. “No woman’s life would be safe with him.”
“But mightn’t he be safer for a person’s niece than for their nephew?”
said the Briton.
Mrs. Trevise’s hand moved toward the bell.
But Juno answered the question mournfully: “With such hereditary
bloodthirstiness, who can tell?” And so Mrs. Trevise moved her hand away
again.
“Excuse me, but do you know if the other gentleman is laid up, too?”
inquired the male honeymooner, hopefully.
“I am happy to understand that he is,” replied Juno.
In sheer amazement I burst out, “Oh!” and abruptly stopped.
But it was too late. I had instantly become the centre of interest. The
et ceteras and honeymooners craned their necks; the Briton leaned toward
me from opposite; the poetess, who had worn an absent expression since
being told that the injured champion was not nearly well enough to
listen to her ode, now put on her glasses and gazed at me kindly; while
Juno reared her headdress and spoke, not to me, but to the air in my
general neighborhood.
“Has any one later intelligence than what I bring from my nephew’s
bedside?”
So she hadn’t perceived who my companion at the step had been! Well, she
should be enlightened, they all should be enlightened, and vengeance was
mine. I spoke with gentleness:--
“Your nephew’s impressions, I fear, are still confused by his deplorable
misadventure.”
“May I ask what you know about his impressions?”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the hand of Mrs. Trevise move toward
her bell; but she wished to hear all about it more than she wished
concord at her harmonious table; and the hand stopped.
Juno spoke again. “Who, pray, has later news than what I bring?”
My enemy was in my hand; and an enemy in the hand is worth I don’t know
how many in the bush.
I answered most gently: “I do not come from Mr. Mayrant’s bedside,
because I have just left him at the front door in sound health--saving a
bruise over his left eye.”
During a second we all sat in a high-strung silence, and then Juno
became truly superb. “Who sees the scars he brazenly conceals?”
It took away my breath; my battle would have been lost, when the Briton
suggested: “But mayn’t he have shown those to his Aunt?”
We sat in no silence now; the first et cetera made extraordinary sounds
on his plate, Mrs. Trevise tinkled her handbell with more unction than I
had ever yet seen in her; and while she and Daphne interchanged streams
of severe words which I was too disconcerted to follow, the other et
ceteras and the honeymooners hectically effervesced into small talk. I
presently found myself eating our last course amid a reestablished calm,
when, with a rustle, Juno swept out from among us, to return (I suppose)
to the bedside. As she passed behind the Briton’s chair, that invaluable
person kicked me under the table, and on my raising my eyes to him he
gave me a large, robust wink.