“Yais. Didn’t you know?”
“The V-C phosphate works?”
“Why, yais. Haven’t you been to see them yet? He ought to, oughtn’t he,
David? ‘Specially now they’ve found those deposits up the river were
just as rich as they hoped, after all.”
“Whose? Mr. Mayrant’s?” I asked with such sharpness that the bride was
surprised.
David hadn’t attended to the name. It was some trust estate, he thought;
Regent Tom, or some such thing.
“And they thought it was no good,” said the bride. “And it’s aivry bit
as good as the Coosaw used to be. Better than Florida or Tennessee.”
My eyes instinctively turned to where they had last seen the launch; of
course it wasn’t there any more. Then I spoke to David.
“Do you know what a phosphate bed looks like? Can one see it?”
“This kind you can,” he answered. “But it’s not worth your trouble.
Just a kind of a square hole you dig along the river till you strike the
stuff. What you want to see is the works.”
No, I didn’t want to see even the works; they smelt atrociously, and I
do not care for vats, and acids, and processes: and besides, had I not
seen enough? My eyes went down the river again where that launch had
gone; and I wondered if the wedding-cake would be postponed any more.
Regent Tom? Oh, yes, to be sure! John Mayrant had pointed out to me the
house where he had lived; he had been John’s uncle. So the old gentleman
had left his estate in trust! And now--! But certainly Hortense would
have won the battle of Chattanooga!
“Don’t be too sure about all this,” I told myself cautiously. But there
are times when cautioning one’s self is quite as useless as if somebody
else had cautioned one; my reason leaped with the rapidity of intuition;
I merely sat and looked on at what it was doing. All sorts of odds
and ends, words I hadn’t understood, looks and silences I hadn’t
interpreted, little signs that I had thought nothing of at first, but
which I had gradually, through their multiplicity, come to know meant
something, all these broken pieces fitted into each other now, fell
together and made a clear pattern of the truth, without a crack in
it--Hortense had never believed in that story about the phosphates
having failed--“pinched out,” as they say of ore deposits. There she
had stood between her two suitors, between her affianced John and the
besieging Charley, and before she would be off with the old love and on
with the new, she must personally look into those phosphates. Therefore
she had been obliged to have a sick father and postpone the wedding two
or three times, because her affairs--very likely the necessity of making
certain of Charley--had prevented her from coming sooner to Kings Port.
And having now come hither, and having beheld her Northern and her
Southern lovers side by side--had the comparison done something to her
highly controlled heart? Was love taking some hitherto unknown liberties
with that well-balanced organ? But what an outrage had been perpetrated
upon John! At that my deductions staggered in their rapid course. How
could his aunts--but then it had only been one of them; Miss Josephine
had never approved of Miss Eliza’s course; it was of that that Mrs.
Weguelin St. Michael had so emphatically reminded Mrs. Gregory in my
presence when we had strolled together upon High Walk, and those two
ladies had talked oracles in my presence. Well, they were oracles no
longer!
When the boat brought us back to the wharf, there were the rest of my
flowers unbestowed, and upon whom should I bestow them? I thought first
of Eliza La Heu, but she wouldn’t be at the Exchange so late as this.
Then it seemed well to carry them to Mrs. Weguelin. Something, however,
prompted me to pass her door, and continue vaguely walking on until I
came to the house where Miss Josephine and Miss Eliza lived; and here I
rang the bell and was admitted.
They were sitting as I had seen them first, the one with her embroidery,
and the other on the further side of a table, whereon lay an open
letter, which in a few moments I knew must have been the subject of the
discussion which they finished even as I came forward.
“It was only prolonging an honest mistake.” That was Miss Eliza.
“And it has merely resulted in clinching what you meant it to finish.”
That was Miss Josephine.
I laid my flowers upon the table, and saw that the letter was in John
Mayrant’s hand. Of course.
I avoided looking at it again; but what had he written, and why had he
written? His daily steps turned to this house--unless Miss Josephine had
banished him again.
The ladies accepted my offering with gracious expressions, and while I
told them of my visit to Live Oaks, and poured out my enthusiasm, the
servant was sent for and brought water and two beautiful old china
bowls, in which Miss Eliza proceeded to arrange the flowers with her
delicate white hands. She made them look exquisite with an old lady’s
art, and this little occupation went on as we talked of indifferent
subjects.
But the atmosphere of that room was charged with the subject of which we
did not speak. The letter lay on the table; and even as I struggled to
sustain polite conversation, I began to know what was in it, though I
never looked at it again; it spoke out as clearly to me as the launch
had done. I had thought, when I first entered, to tell the ladies
something of my meeting with Hortense Rieppe; I can only say that I
found this impossible. Neither of them referred to her, or to John, or
to anything that approached what we were all thinking of; for me to do
so would have assumed the dimensions of a liberty; and in consequence of
this state of things, constraint sat upon us all, growing worse, and
so pervading our small-talk with discomfort that I made my visit a very
short one. Of course they were civil about this when I rose, and begged
me not to go so soon; but I knew better. And even as I was getting my
hat and gloves in the hall I could tell by their tones that they had
returned to the subject of that letter. But in truth they had never left
it; as the front door shut behind me I felt as if they had read it aloud
to me.