She had been strange, perceptibly strange, had Eliza La Heu; that was
the most which I could make out of it. I had angered her in some manner
wholly beyond my intention or understanding and not all at one fixed
point in our talk; her irritation had come out and gone in again in
spots all along the colloquy, and it had been a displeasure wholly
apart from that indignation which had flashed up in her over the negro
question. This, indeed, I understood well enough, and admired her for,
and admired still more her gallant control of it; as for the other, I
gave it up.
A sense of guilt--a very slight one, to be sure--dispersed my
speculations when I was preparing for dinner, and Aunt Carola’s
postscript, open upon my writing-table, reminded me that I had never
asked Miss La Heu about the Bombos. Well, the Bombos could keep! And I
descended to dinner a little late (as too often) to feel instantly in
the air that they had been talking about me. I doubt if any company
in the world, from the Greeks down through Machiavelli to the present
moment, has ever been of a subtlety adequate to conceal from an
observant person entering a room the fact that he has been the subject
of their conversation. This company, at any rate, did not conceal it
from me. Not even when the upcountry bride astutely greeted me with:--
“Why, we were just speaking of you! We were lust saying it would be a
perfect shame if you missed those flowers at Live Oaks.” And, at this,
various of the guests assured me that another storm would finish them;
upon which I assured every one that to-morrow should see me embark upon
the Live Oaks excursion boat, knowing quite well in my heart that some
decidedly different question concerning me had been hastily dropped upon
my appearance at the door. It poked up its little concealed head, did
this question, when the bride said later to me, with immense archness:--
“How any gentleman can help falling just daid in love with that lovely
young girl at the Exchange, I don’t see!”
“But I haven’t helped it!” I immediately exclaimed.
“Oh!” declared the bride with unerring perception, “that just shows
he hasn’t been smitten at all! Well, I’d be ashamed, if I was a single
gentleman.” And while I brought forth additional phrases concerning the
distracted state of my heart, she looked at me with large, limpid eyes.
“Anybody could tell you’re not afraid of a rival,” was her resulting
comment; upon which several of the et ceteras laughed more than seemed
to me appropriate.
I left them all free again to say what they pleased; for John Mayrant
called for me to go upon our walk while we were still seated at table,
and at table they remained after I had excused myself.
The bruise over John’s left eye was fading out, but traces of his
spiritual battle were deepening. During the visit which he had paid
(under compulsion, I am sure) to Juno at our boarding-house in company
with Miss Josephine St. Michael, his recent financial triumph at the
bedside had filled his face with diabolic elation as he confronted his
victim’s enraged but checkmated aunt; when to the thinly veiled venom
of her inquiry as to a bridegroom’s health he had retorted with venom as
thinly veiled that he was feeling better that night than for many weeks,
he had looked better, too; the ladies had exclaimed after his departure
what a handsome young man he was, and Juno had remarked how fervently
she trusted that marriage might cure him of his deplorable tendencies.
But to-day his vitality had sagged off beneath the weight of his
preoccupation: it looked to me as if, by a day or two more, the boy’s
face might be grown haggard.
Whether by intention, or, as is more likely, by the perfectly natural
and spontaneous working of his nature, he speedily made it plain to
me that our relation, our acquaintance, had progressed to a stage more
friendly and confidential. He did not reveal this by imparting any
confidence to me; far from it; it was his silence that indicated
the ease he had come to feel in my company. Upon our last memorable
interview he had embarked at once upon a hasty yet evidently
predetermined course of talk, because he feared that I might touch upon
subjects which he wished excluded from all discussion between us; to-day
he embarked upon nothing, made no conventional effort of any sort, but
walked beside me, content with my mere society; if it should happen that
either of us found a thought worth expressing aloud, good! and if this
should not happen, why, good also! And so we walked mutely and agreeably
together for a long while. The thought which was growing clear in my
mind, and which was decidedly worthy of expression, was also unluckily
one which his new reliance upon my discretion completely forbade my
uttering in even the most shadowy manner; but it was a conviction which
Miss Josephine St. Michael should have been quick to force upon him for
his good. Quite apart from selfish reasons, he had no right to marry a
girl whom he had ceased to care for. The code which held a “gentleman”
to his plighted troth in such a case did more injury to the “lady” than
any “jilting” could possibly do. Never until now had I thought this
out so lucidly, and I was determined that time and my own tact should
assuredly help me find a way to say it to him, if he continued in his
present course.
“Daddy Ben says you can’t be a real Northerner.”
This was his first observation, and I think that we must have walked a
mile before he made it.
“Because I pounded a negro? Of course, he retains your Southern
ante-bellum mythical notion of Northerners--all of us willing to have
them marry our sisters. Well, there’s a lady at our boarding-house who
says you are a real gambler.”
The impish look came curling round his lips, but for a moment only, and
it was gone.
“That shook Daddy Ben up a good deal.”
“Having his grandson do it, do you mean?”
“Oh, he’s used to his grandson! Grandsons in that race might just as
well be dogs for all they know or care about their progenitors. Yet
Daddy Ben spent his savings on educating Charles Cotesworth and two
more--but not one of them will give the old man a house to-day. If ever
I have a home--” John stopped himself, and our silence was no longer
easy; our unspoken thoughts looked out of our eyes so that they could
not meet. Yet no one, unless directly invited by him, had the right to
say to hint what I was thinking, except some near relative. Therefore,
to relieve this silence which had ceased to be agreeable, I talked
about Daddy Ben and his grandsons, and negro voting, and the huge lie of
“equality” which our lips vociferate and our lives daily disprove. This
took us comfortably away from weddings and cakes into the subject
of lynching, my violent condemnation of which surprised him; for our
discussion had led us over a wide field, and one fertile in well-known
disputes of the evergreen sort, conducted by the North mostly with more
theory than experience, and by the South mostly with more heat than
light; whereas, between John and me, I may say that our amiability
was surpassed only by our intelligence! Each allowed for the other’s
standpoint, and both met in many views: he would have voted against
the last national Democratic ticket but for the Republican upholding
of negro equality, while I assured him that such stupid and criminal
upholding was on the wane. He informed me that he did not believe the
pure blooded African would ever be capable of taking the intellectual
side of the white man’s civilization, and I informed him that we must
patiently face this probability, and teach the African whatever he could
profitably learn and no more; and each of us agreed with the other. I
think that we were at one, save for the fact that I was, after all, a
Northerner--and that is a blemish which nobody in Kings Port can quite
get over. John, therefore, was unprepared for my wholesale denunciation
of lynching.
“With your clear view of the negro,” he explained.
“My dear man, it’s my clear view of the white! It’s the white, the
American citizen, the ‘hope of humanity,’ as he enjoys being called,
who, after our English-speaking race has abolished public executions,
degenerates back to the Stone Age. It’s upon him that lynching works the
true injury.”
“They’re nothing but animals,” he muttered.
“Would you treat an animal in that way?” I inquired.
He persisted. “You’d do it yourself if you had to suffer from them.”
“Very probably. Is that an answer? What I’d never do would be to make a
show, an entertainment, a circus, out of it, run excursion trains to see
it--come, should you like your sister to buy tickets for a lynching?”
This brought him up rather short. “I should never take part myself,” he
presently stated, “unless it were immediate personal vengeance.”
“Few brothers or husbands would blame you,” I returned. “It would be
hard to wait for the law. But let no community which treats it as a
public spectacle presume to call itself civilized.”
He gave a perplexed smile, shaking his head over it. “Sometimes I think
civilization costs--”
“Civilization costs all you’ve got!” I cried.
“More than I’ve got!” he declared. “I’m mortal tired of civilization.”
“Ah, yes! What male creature is not? And neither of us will live quite
long enough to see the smash-up of our own.”
“Aren’t you sometimes inconsistent?” he inquired, laughing.
“I hope so,” I returned. “Consistency is a form of death. The dead are
the only perfectly consistent people.”
“And sometimes you sound like a Socialist,” he pursued, still laughing.
“Never!” I shouted. “Don’t class me with those untrained puppies of
thought. And you’ll generally observe,” I added, “that the more nobly
a Socialist vaporizes about the rights of humanity, the more wives and
children he has abandoned penniless along the trail of his life.”
He was livelier than ever at this. “What date have you fixed for the
smash-up of our present civilization?”
“Why fix dates? Is it not diversion enough to watch, and step handsomely
through one’s own part, with always a good sleeve to laugh in?”
Pensiveness returned upon him. “I shall be able to step through my own
part, I think.” He paused, and I was wondering secretly, “Does that
include the wedding?” when he continued: “What’s there to laugh at?”
“Why, our imperishable selves! For instance: we swear by universal
suffrage. Well, sows’ ears are an invaluable thing in their place,
on the head of the animal; but send them to make your laws, and what
happens? Bribery, naturally. The silk purse buys the sow’s ear. We swear
by Christianity, but dishonesty is our present religion. That little
phrase ‘In God We Trust’ is about as true as the silver dollar it’s
stamped on--worth some thirty-nine cents. We get awfully serious about
whether or no good can come of evil, when every sky-scraping thief
of finance is helping hospitals with one hand while the other’s in my
pocket; and good and evil attend each other, lead to each other, are
such Siamese twins that if separated they would both die. We make
phrases about peace, pity, and brotherhood, while every nation stands
prepared for shipwreck and for the sinking plank to which two are
clinging and the stronger pushes the weaker into the flood and thus
floats safe. Why, the old apple of wisdom, which Adam and Eve swallowed
and thus lost their innocence, was a gentle nursery drug compared
with the new apple of competition, which, as soon as chewed, instantly
transforms the heart into a second brain. But why worry, when nothing is
final? Haven’t you and I, for instance, lamented the present rottenness
of smart society? Why, when kings by the name of George sat on the
throne of England, society was just as drunken, just as dissolute! Then
a decent queen came, and society behaved itself; and now, here we come
round again to the Georges, only with the name changed! There’s nothing
final. So, when things are as you don’t like them, remember that and
bear them; and when they’re as you do like them, remember it and make
the most of them--and keep a good sleeve handy!”
“Have you got any creed at all?” he demanded.
“Certainly; but I don’t live up to it.”
“That’s not expected. May I ask what it is?”
“It’s in Latin.”
“Well, I can probably bear it. Aunt Eliza had a classical tutor for me.”
I always relish a chance to recite my favorite poet, and I began
accordingly:--
“Laetus in praesens animus quod ultra est
Oderit curare et--”
“I know that one!” he exclaimed, interrupting me. “The tutor made me
put it into English verse. I had the severest sort of a time. I ran away
from it twice to a deer-hunt.” And he, in his turn, recited:--
“Who hails each present hour with zest
Hates fretting what may be the rest,
Makes bitter sweet with lazy jest;
Naught is in every portion blest.”
I complimented him, in spite of my slight annoyance at being deprived by
him of the chance to declaim Latin poetry, which is an exercise that
I approve and enjoy; but of course, to go on with it, after he had
intervened with his translation, would have been flat.
“You have written good English, and very close to the Latin, too,” I
told him, “particularly in the last line.” And I picked up from the
bridge which we were crossing, an oyster-shell, and sent it skimming
over the smooth water that stretched between the low shores, wide, blue,
and vacant.
“I suppose you wonder why we call this the ‘New Bridge,’” he remarked.
“I did wonder when I first came,” I replied.
He smiled. “You’re getting used to us!”
This long structure wore, in truth, no appearance of yesterday. It was
newer than the “New Bridge” which it had replaced some fifteen years
ago, and which for forty years had borne the same title. Spanning
the broad river upon a legion of piles, this wooden causeway lies
low against the face of the water, joining the town with a serene and
pensive country of pines and live oaks and level opens, where glimpses
of cabin and plantation serve to increase the silence and the soft,
mysterious loneliness. Into this the road from the bridge goes straight
and among the purple vagueness gently dissolves away.
We watched a slow, deep-laden boat sliding down toward the draw, across
which we made our way, and drew near the further end of the bridge. The
straight avenue of the road in front of us took my eyes down its quiet
vista, until they were fixed suddenly by an alien object, a growing
dot, accompanied by dust, whence came the small, distorted honks of
an automobile. These fat, importunate sounds redoubled as the machine
rushed toward the bridge, growing up to its full staring, brazen
dimensions. Six or seven figures sat in it, all of the same dusty,
shrouded likeness, their big glass eyes and their masked mouths
suggesting some fabled, unearthly race, a family of replete and bilious
ogres; so that as they flew honking by us I called out to John:--
“Behold the yellow rich!” and then remembered that his Hortense probably
sat among them.
The honks redoubled, and we turned to see that the drawbridge had no
thought of waiting for them. We also saw a bewildered curly white dog
and a young girl, who called despairingly to him as he disappeared
beneath the automobile. The engine of murder could not, as is usual,
proceed upon its way, honking, for the drawbridge was visibly swinging
open to admit the passage of the boat. When John and I had run back near
enough to become ourselves a part of the incident, the white dog lay
still behind the stationary automobile, whose passengers were craning
their muffled necks and glass eyes to see what they had done, while one
of their number had got out, and was stooping to examine if the machine
had sustained any injuries. The young girl, with a face of anguish, was
calling the dog’s name as she hastened toward him, and her voice aroused
him: he lifted his head, got on his legs, and walked over to her, which
action on his part brought from the automobile a penetrating female
voice:--
“Well, he’s in better luck than that Savannah dog!”
But General was not in luck. He lay quietly down at the feet of his
mistress and we soon knew that life had passed from his faithful body.
The first stroke of grief, dealt her in such cruel and sudden form,
overbore the poor girl’s pride and reserve; she made no attempt to
remember or heed surroundings, but kneeling and placing her arms about
the neck of her dead servant, she spoke piteously aloud:--
“And I raised him, I raised him from a puppy!”
The female voice, at this, addressed the traveller who was examining the
automobile: “Charley, a five or a ten spot is what her feelings need.”
The obedient and munificent Charley straightened up from his stooping
among the mechanical entrails, dexterously produced money, and advanced
with the selected bill held out politely in his hand, while the glass
eyes and the masks peered down at the performance. Eliza La Heu had
perceived none of this, for she was intent upon General; nor had John
Mayrant, who had approached her with the purpose of coming to her
aid. But when Charley, quite at hand, began to speak words which were
instantly obliterated from my memory by what happened, the young girl
realized his intention and straightened stiffly, while John, with the
rapidity of light, snatched the extended bill from Charley’s hand, and
tearing it in four pieces, threw it in his face.
A foreign voice cackled from the automobile: “Oh la la! il a du
panache!”
But Charley now disclosed himself to be a true man of the world--the
financial world--by picking the pieces out of the mud; and, while
he wiped them and enclosed them in his handkerchief and with perfect
dignity returned them to his pocket, he remarked simply, with a shrug:
“As you please.” His accent also was ever so little foreign--that New
York downtown foreign, of the second generation, which stamps so, many
of our bankers.
The female now leaned from her seat, and with the tone of setting the
whole thing right, explained: “We had no idea it was a lady.”
“Doubtless you’re not accustomed to their appearance,” said John to
Charley.
I don’t know what Charley would have done about this; for while the
completely foreign voice was delightedly whispering, “Toujours
le panache!” a new, deep, and altogether different female voice
exclaimed:--
“Why, John, it’s you!”
So that was Hortense, then! That rich and quiet utterance was hers, a
schooled and studied management of speech. I found myself surprised,
and I knew directly why; that word of one of the old ladles, “I consider
that she looks like a steel wasp,” had implanted in me some definite
anticipations to which the voice certainly did not correspond. How
fervently I desired that she would lift her thick veil, while John, with
hat in hand, was greeting her, and being presented to her companions!
Why she had not spoken to John sooner was of course a recondite
question, and beyond my power to determine with merely the given
situation to guide me. Hadn’t she recognized him before? Had her
thick veil, and his position, and the general slight flurry of the
misadventure, intercepted recognition until she heard his voice when
he addressed Charley. Or had she known her lover at once, and rapidly
decided that the moment was an unpropitious one for a first meeting
after absence, and that she would pass on to Kings Port unrevealed, but
then had found this plan become impossible through the collision
between Charley and John? It was not until certain incidents of the days
following brought Miss Rieppe’s nature a good deal further home to me,
that a third interpretation of her delay in speaking to John dawned upon
my mind; that I was also made aware how a woman’s understanding of
the words “Steel wasp,” when applied by her to one of her own sex, may
differ widely from a man’s understanding of them; and that Miss Rieppe,
through her thick veil, saw from her seat in the automobile something
which my own unencumbered vision had by no means detected.
But now, here on the bridge, even her outward appearance was as shrouded
as her inward qualities--save such as might be audible in that voice,
as her skilful, well-placed speeches to one and the other of the company
tided over and carried off into ease this uneasy moment. All men, at
such a voice, have pricked up their ears since the beginning; there was
much woman in it; each slow, schooled syllable called its challenge to
questing man. But I got no chance to look in the eye that went with that
voice; she took all the advantages which her veil gave her; and how well
she used them I was to learn later.
In the general smoothing-out process which she was so capably effecting,
her attention was about to reach me, when my name was suddenly called
out from behind her. It was Beverly Rodgers, that accomplished and
inveterate bachelor of fashion. Ten years before, when I had seen much
of him, he had been more particular in his company, frequently declaring
in his genial, irresponsible way that New York society was going to the
devil. But many tempting dances on the land, and cruises on the water,
had taken him deep among our lower classes that have boiled up from
the bottom with their millions--and besides, there would be nothing
to marvel at in Beverly’s presence in any company that should include
Hortense Rieppe, if she carried out the promise of her voice.
Beverly was his customary, charming, effusive self, coming out of
the automobile to me with his “By Jove, old man,” and his “Who’d have
thought it, old fellow?” and sprinkling urbane little drops of jocosity
over us collectively, as the garden water-turning apparatus sprinkles
a lawn. His knowing me, and the way he brought it out, and even the
tumbling into the road of a few wraps and chattels of travel as he
descended from the automobile, and the necessity of picking these up and
handing them back with delightful little jocular apologies, such as, “By
Jove, what a lout I am,” all this helped the meeting on prodigiously,
and got us gratefully away from the disconcerting incident of the torn
money. Charley was helpful, too; you would never have supposed from the
polite small-talk which he was now offering to John Mayrant that he had
within some three minutes received the equivalent of a slap across the
eyes from that youth, and carried the soiled consequences in his pocket.
And such a thing is it to be a true man of the world of finance, that
upon the arrival now of a second automobile, also his property, and
containing a set of maids and valets, and also some live dogs sitting
up, covered with glass eyes and wrappings like their owners, munificent
Charley at once offered the dead dog and his mistress a place in it, and
begged she would let it take her wherever she wished to go. Everybody
exclaimed copiously and condolingly over the unfortunate occurrence.
What a fine animal he was, to be sure! What breed was he? Of course, he
wasn’t used to automobiles! Was it quite certain that he was dead? Quel
dommage! And Charley would be so happy to replace him.
And how was Eliza La Heu bearing herself amid these murmurously
chattered infelicities? She was listening with composure to the murmurs
of Hortense Rieppe, more felicitous, no doubt. Miss Rieppe, through her
veil, was particularly devoting herself to Miss La Lieu. I could not
hear what she said; the little chorus of condolence and suggestion
intercepted all save her tone, and that, indeed, coherently sustained
its measured cadence through the texture of fragments uttered by Charley
and the others. Eliza La Heu had now got herself altogether in hand,
and, saving her pale cheeks, no sign betrayed that the young girl’s
feelings had been so recently too strong for her. To these strangers,
ignorant of her usual manner, her present strange quietness may very
well have been accepted as her habit.
“Thank you,” she replied to munificent Charley’s offer that she would
use his second automobile. She managed to make her polite words cut like
a scythe. “I should crowd it.”
“But they shall get out and walk; it will be good for them,” said
Charley, indicating the valets and maids, and possibly the dogs, too.
Beverly Rodgers did much better than Charley. With a charming gesture
and bow, he offered his own seat in the first automobile. “I am going to
walk in any case,” he assured her.
“One gentleman among them,” I heard John Mayrant mutter behind me.
Miss La Heu declined, the chorus urged, but Beverly (who was indeed a
gentleman, every inch of him) shook his head imperceptibly at Charley;
and while the little exclamations--“Do come! So much more comfortable!
So nice to see more of you!”--dropped away, Miss La Heu had settled
her problem quite simply for herself. A little procession of vehicles,
townward bound, had gathered on the bridge, waiting until the closing of
the draw should allow them to continue upon their way. From these most
of the occupants had descended, and were staring with avidity at us all;
the great glass eyes and the great refulgent cars held them in timidity
and fascination, and the poor lifeless white body of General, stretched
beside the way, heightened the hypnotic mystery; one or two of the
boldest had touched him, and found no outward injury upon him; and this
had sent their eyes back to the automobile with increased awe. Eliza La
Heu summoned one of the onlookers, an old negro; at some word she said
to him he hurried back and returned, leading his horse and empty cart,
and General was lifted into this. The girl took her seat beside the old
driver.
“No,” she said to John Mayrant, “certainly not.”
I wondered at the needless severity with which she declined his offer to
accompany her and help her.
He stood by the wheel of the cart, looking up at her and protesting, and
I joined him.
“Thank you,” she returned, “I need no one. You will both oblige me by
saying no more about it.”
“John!” It was the slow, well-calculated utterance of Hortense Rieppe.
Did I hear in it the caressing note of love?
John turned.
The draw had swung to, the mast and sail of the vessel were separating
away from the bridge with a stealthy motion, men with iron bars were at
work fastening the draw secure, and horses’ hoofs knocked nervously upon
the wooden flooring as the internal churning of the automobiles burst
upon their innocent ears.
“John, if Mr. Rodgers is really not going with us--”