It by no means lessened my pleasure to discern that Hortense must feel
herself to be in a predicament; and as I sat writing my answer to
the note, which was from Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael and contained an
invitation to me for the next afternoon, I thought of those pilots whose
dangers have come down to us from distant times through the songs of
ancient poets. The narrow and tempestuous channel between Scylla and
Charybdis bristled unquestionably with violent problems, but with none,
I should suppose, that called for a nicer hand upon the wheel, or an eye
more alert, than this steering of your little trireme to a successful
marriage, between one man who believed himself to be your destined
bridegroom and another who expected to be so, meanwhile keeping each
in ignorance of how close you were sailing to the other. In Hortense’s
place I should have wished to hasten the wedding now, have it safely
performed this afternoon, say, or to-morrow morning; thus precipitated
by some invaluable turn in the health of her poor dear father. But she
had worn it out, his health, by playing it for decidedly as much as it
could bear; it couldn’t be used again without risk; the date must stand
fixed; and, uneasy as she might have begun to be about John, Hortense
must, with no shortening of the course, get her boat in safe without
smashing it against either John or Charley. I wondered a little that she
should feel any uncertainty about her affianced lover. She must know how
much his word was to him, and she had had his word twice, given her
the second time to put his own honor right with her on the score of the
phosphates. But perhaps Hortense’s rich experiences of life had taught
her that a man’s word to a woman should not be subjected to the test
of another woman’s advent. On the whole, I suppose it was quite natural
those flowers should annoy her, and equally natural that Eliza, the
minx, should allow them to do so! There’s a joy to the marrow in
watching your enemy harried and discomfited by his own gratuitous
contrivances; you look on serenely at a show which hasn’t cost you a
groat. However, poor Eliza had not been so serene at the very end,
when she stormed out at me. For this I did not have to forgive her, of
course, little as I had merited such treatment. Had she not accepted my
flowers? But it was a gratification to reflect that in my sentimental
passages with her I had not gone to any great length; nothing, do I ever
find, is so irksome as the sense of having unwittingly been in a false
position. Was John, on his side, in love with her? Was it possible he
would fail in his word? So with these thoughts, while answering and
accepting Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael’s invitation to make one of a
party of strangers to whom she was going to show another old Kings Port
church, “where many of my ancestors lie,” as her note informed me, I
added one sentence which had nothing to do with the subject “She is a
steel wasp,” I ventured to say. And when on the next afternoon I met the
party at the church, I received from the little lady a look of highly
spiced comprehension as she gently remarked, “I was glad to get your
acceptance.”
When I went down to the dinner-table, Juno sat in her best clothes,
still discussing the Daughters of Dixie.
I can’t say that I took much more heed of this at dinner than I had
done at tea; but I was interested to hear Juno mention that she, too,
intended to call upon Hortense Rieppe. Kings Port, she said, must take
a consistent position; and for her part, so far as behavior went, she
didn’t see much to choose between the couple. “As to whether Mr. Mayrant
had really concealed the discovery of his fortune,” she continued, “I
asked Miss Josephine--in a perfectly nice way, of course. But old Mr.
St. Michael Beaugarcon, who has always had the estate in charge, did
that. It is only a life estate, unless Mr. Mayrant has lawful issue.
Well, he will have that now, and all that money will be his to
squander.”
Aunt Carola had written me again this morning, but I had been in no
haste to open her letter; my neglect of the Bombos did not weigh too
heavily upon me, I fear, but I certainly did put off reading what I
expected to be a reprimand. And concerning this I was right; her first
words betokened reprimand at once. “My dear nephew Augustus,” she began,
in her fine, elegant handwriting. That was always her mode of address
to me when something was coming, while at other times it would be, less
portentously, “My dear Augustus,” or “My dear nephew “; but whenever
my name and my relationship to her occurred conjointly, I took the
communication away with me to some corner, and opened it in solitude.
It wasn’t about the Bombos, though; and for what she took me to task I
was able to defend myself, I think, quite adequately. She found fault
with me for liking the South too much, and this she based upon the
enthusiastic accounts of Kings Port and its people that I had written
to her; nor had she at all approved of my remarks on the subject of the
negro, called forth by Daddy Ben and his grandson Charles Cotesworth.
“When I sent you (wrote Aunt Carola) to admire Kings Port good-breeding,
I did not send you to forget your country. Remember that those people
were its mortal enemies; that besides their treatment of our prisoners
in Libby and Andersonville (which killed my brother Alexander) they
displayed in their dealings, both social and political, an arrogance
in success and a childish petulance at opposition, which we who saw and
suffered can never forget, any more than we can forget our loved ones
who laid down their lives for this cause.”
These were not the only words with which Aunt Carola reproved what she
termed my “disloyalty,” but they will serve to indicate her feeling
about the Civil War. It was--on her side--precisely the feeling of all
the Kings Port old ladies on Heir side. But why should it be mine? And
so, after much thinking how I might best reply respectfully yet say to
Aunt Carola what my feeling was, I sat down upstairs at my window, and,
after some preliminary sentences, wrote:--
“There are dead brothers here also, who, like your brother, laid down
their lives for what they believed was their country, and whom their
sisters never can forget as you can never forget him. I read their
names upon sad church tablets, and their boy faces look out at me from
cherished miniatures and dim daguerreotypes. Upon their graves the women
who mourn them leave flowers as you leave flowers upon the grave of your
young soldier. You will tell me, perhaps, that since the bereavement
is equal, I have not justified my sympathy for these people. But the
bereavement was not equal. More homes here were robbed by death of their
light and promise than with us; and to this you must add the material
desolation of the homes themselves. Our roofs were not laid in ashes,
and to-day we sit in affluence while they sit in privation. You will
say to this, perhaps, that they brought it upon themselves. But even
granting that they did so, surely to suffer and to lose is more bitter
than to suffer and to win. My dear aunt, you could not see what I have
seen here, and write to me as you do; and if those years have left
upon your heart a scar which will not vanish, do not ask me, who came
afterward, to wear the scar also. I should then resemble certain of the
younger ones here, with less excuse than is theirs. As for the negro,
forgive me if I assure you that you retain an Abolitionist exaltation
for a creature who does not exist, or whose existence is an ineffectual
drop in the bucket, a creature on grateful knees raising faithful eyes
to one who has struck off his chains of slavery, whereas the creature
who does exist is--”
I paused here in my letter to Aunt Carola, and sought for some fitting
expression that should characterize for her with sufficient severity
the new type of deliberately worthless negro; and as I sought, my eyes
wandered to the garden next door, the garden of the Cornerlys. On a
bench near a shady arrangement of vines over bars sat Hortense Rieppe.
She was alone, and, from her attitude, seemed to be thinking deeply. The
high walls of the garden shut her into a privacy that her position near
the shady vines still more increased. It was evident that she had come
here for the sake of being alone, and I regretted that she was so turned
from me that I could not see her face. But her solitude did not long
continue; there came into view a gentleman of would-be venerable
appearance, who approached her with a walk carefully constructed for
public admiration, and who, upon reaching her, bent over with the same
sort of footlight elaboration and gave her a paternal kiss. I did not
need to hear her call him father; he was so obviously General Rieppe,
the prudent hero of Chattanooga, that words would have been perfectly
superfluous in his identification.
I was destined upon another day to hear the tones of his voice, and
thereupon may as well state now that they belonged altogether with the
rest of him. There is a familiar type of Northern fraud, and a Southern
type, equally familiar, but totally different in appearance. The
Northern type has the straight, flat, earnest hair, the shaven upper
lip, the chin-beard, and the benevolent religious expression. He will be
the president of several charities, and the head of one great business.
He plays no cards, drinks no wine, and warns young men to beware of
temptation. He is as genial as a hair-sofa; and he is seldom found out
by the public unless some financial crash in general affairs uncovers
his cheating, which lies most often beyond the law’s reach; and because
he cannot be put in jail, he quite honestly believes heaven is his
destination. We see less of him since we have ceased to be a religious
country, religion no longer being an essential disguise for him. The
Southern type, with his unction and his juleps, is better company,
unless he is the hero of too many of his own anecdotes. He is commonly
the possessor of a poetic gaze, a mane of silvery hair, and a noble
neck. As war days and cotton-factor days recede into a past more and
more filmed over with romance, he too grows rare among us, and I
regret it, for he was in truth a picturesque figure. General Rieppe was
perfect.
At first I was sorry that the distance they were from me rendered
hearing what they were saying impossible; very soon, however, the frame
of my open window provided me with a living picture which would have
been actually spoiled had the human voice disturbed its eloquent
pantomime.
General Rieppe’s daughter responded to her father’s caress but
languidly, turning to him her face, with its luminous, stationary
beauty. He pointed to the house, and then waved his hand toward the
bench where she sat; and she, in response to this, nodded slightly.
Upon which the General, after another kiss of histrionic paternity
administered to her forehead, left her sitting and proceeded along
the garden walk at a stately pace, until I could no longer see him.
Hortense, left alone upon the bench, looked down at the folds of her
dress, extended a hand and slowly rearranged one of them, and then, with
the same hand, felt her hair from front to back. This had scarce been
accomplished when the General reappeared, ushering Juno along the walk,
and bearing a chair with him. When they turned the corner at the arbor,
Hortense rose, and greetings ensued. Few objects could be straighter
than was Juno’s back; her card-case was in her hand, but her pocket was
not quite large enough for the whole of her pride, which stuck out so
that it could have been seen from a greater distance than my window.
The General would have departed, placing his chair for the visitor, when
Hortense waved for him an inviting hand toward the bench beside her;
he waved a similarly inviting hand, looking at Juno, who thereupon sat
firmly down upon the chair. At this the General hovered heavily, looking
at his daughter, who gave him no look in return, as she engaged in
conversation with Juno; and presently the General left them. Juno’s back
and Hortense’s front, both entirely motionless as they interviewed each
other’ presented a stiff appearance, with Juno half turned in her seat
and Hortense’s glance following her slight movement; the two then rose,
as the General came down the walk with two chairs and Mrs. Gregory and
Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael. Juno, with a bow to them, approached Hortense
by a step or two, a brief touch of their fingers was to be seen, and
Juno’s departure took place, attended by the heavy hovering of General
Rieppe.
“That’s why!” I said to myself aloud, suddenly, at my open window.
Immediately, however, I added, “but can it be?” And in my mind a whole
little edifice of reasons for Hortense’s apparent determination to marry
John instantly fabricated itself--and then fell down.
Through John she was triumphantly bringing stiff Kings Port to her, was
forcing them to accept her. But this was scarce enough temptation for
Hortense to marry; she could do very well without Kings Port--indeed,
she was not very likely to show herself in it, save to remind them, now
and then, that she was there, and that they could not keep her out any
more; this might amuse her a little, but the society itself would
not amuse her in the least. What place had it for her to smoke her
cigarettes in?
Eliza La Heu, then? Spite? The pleasure of taking something that
somebody else wanted? The pleasure of spoiling somebody else’s pleasure?
Or, more accurately, the pleasure of power? Well, yes; that might be it,
if Hortense Rieppe were younger in years, and younger, especially, in
soul; but her museum was too richly furnished with specimens of the
chase, she had collected too many bits and bibelots from life’s Hotel
Druot and the great bazaar of female competition, to pay so great a
price as marriage for merely John; particularly when a lady, even in
Newport, can have but one husband at a time in her collection. If she
did actually love John, as Beverly Rodgers had reluctantly come to
believe, it was most inappropriate in her! Had I followed out the train
of reasoning which lay coiled up inside the word inappropriate, I might
have reached the solution which eventually Hortense herself gave me,
and the jewelled recesses of her nature would have blazed still more
brilliantly to my eyes to-day; but in truth, my soul wasn’t old enough
yet to work Hortense out by itself, unaided!
While Mrs. Gregory and Mrs. Weguelin sat on their chairs, and Hortense
sat on her bench, tea was brought and a table laid, behind whose
whiteness and silver Hortense began slight offices with cups and sugar
tongs. She looked inquiry at her visitors, in answer to which Mrs.
Gregory indicated acceptance, and Mrs. Weguelin refusal. The beauty of
Hortense’s face had strangely increased since the arrival of these two
visitors. It shone resplendent behind the silver and the white cloth,
and her movement, as she gave the cup to Mrs. Gregory St. Michael, was
one of complete grace and admirable propriety. But once she looked away
from them in the direction of the path. Her two visitors rose and left
her, Mrs. Gregory setting her tea-cup down with a gesture that said
she would take no more, and, after their bows of farewell, Hortense sat
alone again pulling about the tea things.
I saw that by the table lay a card-case on the ground, evidently dropped
by Mrs. Gregory; but Hortense could not see it where she sat. Her quick
look along the path heralded more company and the General with more
chairs. Young people now began to appear, the various motions of whom
were more animated than the approaches and greetings and farewells of
their elders; chairs were moved and exchanged, the General was useful in
handling cups, and a number of faces unknown to me came and went, some
of them elderly ones whom I had seen in church, or passed while walking;
the black dresses of age mingled with the brighter colors of youth; and
on her bench behind the cups sat Hortense, or rose up at right moments,
radiant, restrained and adequate, receiving with deferential attention
the remarks of some dark-clothed elder, or, with sufficiently interested
countenance, inquiring something from a brighter one of her own
generation; but twice I saw her look up the garden path. None of them
stayed long, although when they were all gone the shadow of the garden
wall had come as far as the arbor; and once again Hortense sat alone
behind the table, leaning back with arms folded, and looking straight
in front of her. At last she stirred, and rose slowly, and then, with
a movement which was the perfection of timidity, began to advance, as
John, with his Aunt Eliza, came along the path. To John, Hortense with
familiar yet discreet brightness gave a left hand, as she waited for the
old lady; and then the old lady went through with it. What that embrace
of acknowledgment cost her cannot be measured, and during its process
John stood like a sentinel. Possibly this was the price of his
forgiveness to his Aunt Eliza.
The visitors accepted tea, and the beauty in Hortense’s face was now
supreme. The old lady sat, forgetting to drink her tea, but very still
in outward attitude, as she talked with Hortense; and the sight of one
hand in its glove lying motionless upon her best dress, suddenly almost
drew unexpected tears to my eyes. John was nearly as quiet as she, but
the glove that he held was twisted between his fingers. I expected
that he would stay with his Hortense when his aunt took her leave; he,
however, was evidently expected by the old lady to accompany her out and
back, I suppose, to her house, as was proper.
But John’s departure from Hortense differed from his meeting her. She
gave no left hand to him now; she gazed at him, and then, as the old
lady began to go toward the house, she moved a step toward him, and
then she cast herself into his arms! It was no acting, this, no skilful
simulation; her head sank upon his shoulder, and true passion spoke in
every line of that beautiful surrendered form, as it leaned against her
lover’s.
“So that’s why!” I exclaimed, once more aloud.
It was but a moment; and John, released, followed Miss Eliza. The old
lady walked slowly, with that half-failing step that betokens the body’s
weariness after great mental or moral strain. Indeed, as John regained
her side, she put her arm in his as if her feebleness needed his
support. Thus they went away together, the aunt and her beloved boy, who
had so sorely grieved and disappointed her.
But if this sight touched me, this glimpse of the vanquished leaving the
field after supreme acknowledgment of defeat, upon Hortense it wrought
another effect altogether. She stood looking after them, and as she
looked, the whole woman from head to foot, motionless as she was, seemed
to harden. Yet still she looked, until at length, slowly turning, her
eyes chanced to fall upon Mrs. Gregory St. Michael’s card-case. There
it lay, the symbol of Kings Port’s capitulation. She swooped down and
up with a flying curve of grace, holding her prey caught; and then,
catching also her handsome skirts on either side, she danced like a
whirling fan among the empty chairs.