It was to me continuously a matter of satisfaction and of interest to
see Hortense disturbed--whether for causes real or imaginary--about
the security of her title to her lover John, nor can I say that my
misinterpreted bunch of roses diminished this satisfaction. I should
have been glad to know if the accomplished young woman had further
probed that question and discovered the truth, but it seemed scarce
likely that she could do this without the help of one of three persons,
Eliza and myself who knew all, or John who knew nothing; for the
up-country bride, and whatever other people in Kings Port there were
to whom the bride might gayly recite the tale of my roses, were none
of them likely to encounter Miss Rieppe; their paths and hers would not
meet until they met in church at the wedding of Hortense and John. No,
she could not have found out the truth; for never in the world would
she, at this eleventh hour, risk a conversation with John upon a subject
so full of well-packed explosives; and so she must be simply keeping
on both him and Eliza an eye as watchful as lay in her power. As for
Charley, what bait, what persuasion, what duress she had been able to
find that took him at an hour so critical from her side to New York, I
could not in the least conjecture. Had she said to the little banker,
Go, because I must think it over alone? It did not seem strong enough.
Or had she said, Go, and on your return you shall have my answer? Not
adequate either, I thought. Or had it been, If you don’t go, it shall
be “no,” to-day and forever? This last was better; but there was no
telling, nor did Beverly Rodgers, to whom I propounded all my theories,
have any notion of what was between Hortense and Charley. He only knew
that Charley was quite aware of the existence of John, but had always
been merely amused at the notion of him.
“So have you been merely amused,” I reminded him.
“Not since that look I saw her give him, old chap. I know she wants him,
only not why she wants him. And Charley, you know--well, of course, poor
Charley’s a banker, just a banker and no more; and a banker is merely
the ace in the same pack where the drummer is the two-spot. Our American
civilization should be called Drummer’s Delight--and there’s nothing in
your fire-eater to delight a drummer: he’s a gentleman, he’ll be only
so-so rich, and he’s away back out of the lime-light, while poor old
Charley’s a bounder, and worth forty millions anyhow, and right in the
centre of the glare. How should he see any danger in John?”
“I wonder if he hasn’t begun to?”
“Well, perhaps. He and Hortense have been ‘talking business’; I know
that. Oh--and why do you think she said he must go to New York? To make
a better deal for the fire-eater’s phosphates than his fuddling old
trustee here was going to close with. Charley said that could be
arranged by telegram. But she made him go himself! She’s extraordinary.
He’ll arrive in town to-morrow, he’ll leave next day, he’ll reach here
by the Southern on Saturday night in time for our Sunday yacht picnic,
and then something has got to happen, I should think.”
Here was another key, unlocking a further piece of knowledge for me. I
had not been able to guess why Hortense should be keeping Charley “on”;
but how natural was this policy, when understood clearly! She still
needed Charley’s influence in the world of affairs. Charley’s final
service was to be the increasing of his successful rival’s fortune. I
wondered what Charley would do, when the full extent of his usefulness
dawned upon him; and with wonder renewed I thought of General Rieppe,
and this daughter he had managed to beget. Surely the mother of
Hortense, whoever she may have been, must have been a very richly
endowed character!
“Something has most certainly got to happen and soon,” I said to Beverly
Rodgers. “Especially if my busy boarding-house bodies are right in
saying that the invitations for the wedding are to be out on Monday.”
Well, I had Friday, I had Udolpho; and there, while on that excursion,
when I should be alone with John Mayrant during many hours, and
especially the hours of deep, confidential night, I swore to myself on
oath I would say to the boy the last word, up to the verge of offense,
that my wits could devise. Apart from a certain dramatic excitement as
of battle--battle between Hortense and me--I truly wished to help him
out of the miserable mistake his wrong standard, his chivalry gone
perverted, was spurring him on to make; and I had a comic image of
myself, summoning Miss Josephine, summoning Miss Eliza, summoning Mrs.
Gregory and Mrs. Weguelin, and the whole company of aunts and cousins,
and handing to them the rescued John with the single but sufficient
syllable: “There!”
He was in apparent spirits, was John, at that hour of our departure
for Udolpho; he pretended so well that I was for a while altogether
deceived. He had wished to call for me with the conveyance in which he
should drive us out into the lonely country through the sunny afternoon;
but instead, I chose to walk round to where he lived, and where I
found him stuffing beneath the seats of the vehicle the baskets and the
parcels which contained the provisions for our ample supper.
“I have never seen you drink hearty yet, and now I purpose to,” said
John.
As the packing was finishing Miss Josephine St. Michael came by; and the
sight of the erect old lady reminded me that of all Kings Port figures
known to me and seen in the garden paying their visit of ceremony to
Hortense, she alone--she and Eliza La Heu--had been absent. Eliza’s
declining to share in that was well-nigh inevitable, but Miss Josephine
was another matter. Perhaps she had considered her sister’s going there
to be enough; at any rate, she had not been party to the surrender,
and this gave me whimsical satisfaction. Moreover, it had evidently
occasioned no ruffle in the affectionate relations between herself and
John.
“John,” said she, “as you drive by, do get me a plumber.”
“Much better get a burglar, Aunt Josephine. Cheaper in the end, and
neater work.”
It was thus, at the outset, that I came to believe John’s spirits were
high; and this illusion he successfully kept up until after we had left
the plumber and Kings Port several sordid miles behind us; the
approach to Kings Port this way lies through dirtiest Africa. John
was loquacious; John discoursed upon the Replacers; Mrs. Weguelin St.
Michael had quite evidently expressed to her own circle what she thought
of them; and the town in consequence, although it did not see them or
their automobiles, because it appeared they were gone some twenty miles
inland upon an excursion to a resort where was a large hotel, and a
little variety in the way of some tourists of the Replacer stripe,--the
town kept them well in its mind’s eye. The automobiles would have
sufficed to bring them into disrepute, but Kings Port had a better
reason in their conduct in the church; and John found many things to
say to me, as we drove along, about Bohm and Charley and Kitty. Gazza he
forgot, although, as shall appear in its place, Gazza was likely to live
a long while in his memory. Beverly Rodgers he, of course, recognized
as being a gentleman--it was clear that Beverly met with Kings Port’s
approval--and, from his Newport experiences, John was able to make out
quite as well as if he had heard Beverly explain it himself the whole
wise philosophic system of joining with the Replacers in order that you
be not replaced yourself.
“In his shoes mightn’t I do the same?” he surmised. “I fear I’m not as
Spartan as my aunts--only pray don’t mention it to them!”
And then, because I had been answering him with single syllables, or
with nods, or not at all, he taxed me with my taciturnity; he even went
so far as to ask me what thoughts kept me so silent--which I did not
tell him.
“I am wondering,” I told him instead, “how much they steal every week.”
“Those financiers?”
“Yes. Bohm is president of an insurance company, and Charley’s a
director, and reorganizes railroads.”
“Well, if other people share your pleasant opinion of them, how do they
get elected?”
“Other people share their pleasant spoils--senators, vestrymen--you
can’t be sure who you’re sitting next to at dinner any more. Come live
North. You’ll find the only safe way is never to know anybody worth more
than five millions--if you wish to keep the criminal classes off your
visiting list.”
This made him merry. “Put ‘em in jail, then!”
“Ah, the jail!” I returned. “It’s the great American joke. It reverses
the rule of our smart society. Only those who have no incomes are
admitted.”
“But what do you have laws and lawyers for?”
“To keep the rich out of jail. It’s called ‘professional etiquette.’”
“Your picture flatters!”
“You flatter me; it’s only a photograph. Come North and see.”
“One might think, from your account, the American had rather be bad than
good.”
“O dear, no! The American had much rather be good than bad!”
“Your admission amazes me!”
“But also the American had rather be rich than good. And he is having
his wish. And money’s golden hand is tightening on the throat of liberty
while the labor union stabs liberty in the back--for trusts and unions
are both trying to kill liberty. And the soul of Uncle Sam has turned
into a dollar-inside his great, big, strong, triumphant flesh; so that
even his new religion, his own special invention, his last offering to
the creeds of the world, his gatherer of converted hordes, his Christian
Science, is based upon physical benefit.”
John touched the horses. “You’re particularly cheerful to-day!”
“No. I merely summarize what I’m seeing.”
“Well, a moral awakening will come,” he declared.
“Inevitably. To-morrow, perhaps. The flesh has had a good, long,
prosperous day, and the hour of the spirit must be near striking. And
the moral awakening will be followed by a moral slumber, since, in
the uncomprehended scheme of things, slumber seems necessary; and you
needn’t pull so long a face, Mr. Mayrant, because the slumber will be
followed by another moral awakening. The alcoholic society girl
you don’t like will very probably give birth to a water-drinking
daughter--who in her turn may produce a bibulous progeny: how often must
I tell you that nothing is final?”
John Mayrant gave the horses a somewhat vicious lash after these last
words of mine; and, as he made no retort to them, we journeyed some
little distance in silence through the mild, enchanting light of the
sun. My deliberate allusion to alcoholic girls had made plain what I
had begun to suspect. I could now discern that his cloak of gayety
had fallen from him, leaving bare the same harassed spirit, the same
restless mood, which had been his upon the last occasion when we had
talked at length together upon some of the present social and political
phases of our republic--that day of the New Bridge and the advent of
Hortense. Only, upon that day, he had by his manner in some subtle
fashion conveyed to me a greater security in my discretion than I felt
him now to entertain. His many observations about the Replacers, with
always the significant and conspicuous omission of Hortense, proved more
and more, as I thought it over, that his state was unsteady. Even now,
he did not long endure silence between us; yet the eagerness which he
threw into our discussions did not, it seemed to me, so much proceed
from present interest in their subjects (though interest there was at
times) as from anxiety lest one particular subject, ever present with
him, should creep in unawares. So much I, at any rate, concluded, and
bided my time for the creeping in unawares, content meanwhile to
parry some of the reproaches which he now and again cast at me with an
earnestness real or feigned.
We had made now considerable progress, and were come to a space of sand
and cabins and intersecting railroad tracks, where freight cars and
locomotives stood, and negroes of all shapes, but of one lowering and
ragged appearance, lounged and stared.
“There used to be a murder here about once a day,” said John, “before
the dispensary system. Now, it is about once a week.”
“That law is of benefit, then?” I inquired.
“To those who drink the whiskey, possibly; certainly to those who sell
it!” And he condensed for me the long story of the state dispensary,
which in brief appeared to be that South Carolina had gone into the
liquor business. The profits were to pay for compulsory education; the
liquor was to be pure; society and sobriety were to be advanced: such
had been the threefold promise, of which the threefold fulfillment
was--defeat of the compulsory education bill, a political monopoly
enriching favored distillers, “and lately,” said John, “a thoroughly
democratic whiskey for the plain people. Pay ten cents for a bottle of
X, if you’re curious. It may not poison you--but the murders are coming
up again.”
“What a delightful example of government ownership!” I exclaimed.
But John in Kings Port was not in the way of hearing that cure-all
policy discussed, and I therefore explained it to him. He did not seem
to grasp my explanation.
“I don’t see how it would change anything,” he remarked, “beyond
switching the stealing from one set of hands to another.”
I put on a face of concern. “What? You don’t believe in our patent
American short-cuts?”
“Short-cuts?”
“Certainly. Short-cuts to universal happiness, universal honesty,
universal everything. For instance: Don’t make a boy study four years
for a college degree; just cut the time in half, and you’ve got a
short-cut to education. Write it down that man is equal. That settles
it. You’ll notice how equal he is at once. Write it down that the negro
shall vote. You’ll observe how instantly he is fit for the suffrage.
Now they want it written down that government shall take all the wicked
corporations, because then corruption will disappear from the face of
the earth. You’ll find the farmers presently having it written down that
all hens must hatch their eggs in a week, and next, a league of earnest
women will advocate a Constitutional amendment that men only shall bring
forth children. Oh, we Americans are very thorough!” And I laughed.
But John’s face was not gay. “Well,” he mused, “South Carolina took a
short-cut to pure liquor and sober citizens--and reached instead a new
den of thieves. Is the whole country sick?”
“Sick to the marrow, my friend; but young and vigorous still. A nation
in its long life has many illnesses before the one it dies of. But we
shall need some strong medicine if we do not get well soon.”
“What kind?”
“Ah, that’s beyond any one! And we have several things the matter with
us--as bad a case, for example, of complacency as I’ve met in history.
Complacency’s a very dangerous disease, seldom got rid of without the
purge of a great calamity. And worse, where does our dishonesty begin,
and where end? The boy goes to college, and there in football it awaits
him; he graduates, and in the down-town office it smirks at him; he
rises into the confidence of his superiors, the town’s chief citizens,
and finds their gray hairs crowned with it,--the very men he has looked
up to, believed in, his ideals, his examples, the merchant prince,
the railroad magnate, the president of insurance companies--all dirty
rascals! Presently he faces worldly success or failure, and then, in
the new ocean of mind that has swallowed morals up, he sinks with his
isolated honesty, like a fool, or swims to respectability with his
brother knaves. And into this mess the immigrant sewage of Europe is
steadily pouring. Such is our continent to-day, with all its fair winds
and tides and fields favorable to us, and only our shallow, complacent,
dishonest selves against us! But don’t let these considerations make you
gloomy; for (I must say it again) nothing is final; and even if we rot
before we ripen--which would be a wholly novel phenomenon--we shall have
made our contribution to mankind in demonstrating by our collapse that
the sow’s ear belongs with the rest of the animal, and not in the voting
booth or the legislature, and that the doctrine of universal suffrage
should have waited until men were born honest and equal. That in itself
would be a memorable service to have rendered.”
We had come into the divine, sad stillness of the woods, where the warm
sunlight shone through the gray moss, lighting the curtained solitudes
away and away into the depths of the golden afternoon; and somewhere
amid the miles of sleeping wilderness sounded the hoarse honk of the
automobile. The Replacers were abroad, enjoying what they could in this
country where they did not belong, and which did not as yet belong to
them. Once again we heard their honk off to our left, from a farther
distance, and I am glad to say that we did not see them at all.
“If,” said John Mayrant, “what you have said is true, the nation had
better get on its knees and pray God to give it grace.”
I looked at the boy and saw that his countenance had grown very fine.
“The act,” I said, “would bring grace, wherever it comes from.”
“Yes,” he assented. “If in the stars and awfulness of space there’s
nothing, that does not trouble me; for my greater self is inside me,
safe. And our country has a greater self somewhere. Think!”
“I do not have to think,” I replied, “when I know the nobleness we have
risen to at times.”
“And I,” he pursued, “happen to believe it is not all only stars and
space; and that God, as much as any ship-builder, rejoices to watch
every tiniest boat meet and brave the storm.”
Out of his troubles he had brought such mood, sweetness instead of
bitterness; he was saying as plainly as if his actual words said it,
“Misfortune has come to me, and I am going to make the best of it.” His
nobleness, his moral elegance, compelled him to this, and I envied him,
not sure if I myself, thus placed, would acquit myself so well. And
there was in his sweetness a contagion that strangely reconciled me to
the troubled aspects of our national hour. I thought, “Invisible among
our eighty millions there is a quiet legion living untainted in the
depths, while the yellow rich, the prismatic scum and bubbles, boil on
the surface.” Yes, he had accidentally helped me, and I wished doubly
that I might help him. It was well enough he should feel he must not
shirk his duty, but how much better if he could be led to see that
marrying where he did not love was no duty of his.
I knew what I had to say to him, but lacked the beginning of it; and
of this beginning I was in search as we drove up among the live-oaks of
Udolpho to the little club-house, or hunting lodge, where a negro and
his wife received us, and took the baskets and set about preparing
supper. My beginning sat so heavily upon my attention that I took
scant notice of Udolpho as we walked about its adjacent grounds in the
twilight before supper, and John Mayrant pointed out to me its fine old
trees, its placid stream, and bade me admire the snug character of the
hunting lodge, buried away for bachelors’ delights deep in the heart of
the pleasant forest. I heard him indulging in memories and anecdotes of
date sittings after long hunts; but I was myself always on a hunt for my
beginning, and none of his words clearly reached my intelligence until I
was aware of his reciting an excellently pertinent couplet:--
“If you would hold your father’s land,
You must wash your throat before your hand--”
and found myself standing by the lodge table, upon which he had set two
glasses, containing, I soon ascertained, gin, vermouth, orange bitters,
and a cherry at the bottom--all which he had very skillfully mingled
himself in the happiest proportions.
“The poetry,” he remarked, “is hereditary in my family;” and setting
down the empty glasses we also washed our hands. A moon half-grown
looked in at the window from the filmy darkness, and John, catching
sight of it, paused with the wet soap in his hand and stared out at the
dimly visible trees. “Oh, the times, the times!” he murmured to himself,
gazing long; and then with a sort of start he returned to the present
moment, and rinsed and dried his hands. Presently we were sitting at the
table, pledging each other in well-cooled champagne; and it was not long
after this that not only the negro who waited on us was plainly reveling
in John’s remarks, but also the cook, with her bandannaed ebony head
poked round the corner of the kitchen door, was doing her utmost to lose
no word of this entertainment. For John, taking up the young and the
old, the quick and the dead, of masculine Kings Port, proceeded to
narrate their private exploits, until by coffee-time he had unrolled for
me the richest tapestry of gayeties that I remember, and I sat without
breath, tearful and aching, while the two negroes had retired far into
the kitchen to muffle their emotions.
“Tom, oh Tom! you Tom!” called John Mayrant; and after the man had come
from the kitchen: “You may put the punch-bowl and things on the table,
and clear away and go to bed. My Great-uncle Marston Chartain,” he
continued to me, “was of eccentric taste, and for the last twenty years
of his life never had anybody to dinner but the undertaker.” He paused
at this point to mix the punch, and then resumed: “But for all that, he
appears to have been a lively old gentleman to the end, and left us his
version of a saying which is considered by some people an improvement on
the original, ‘Cherchez la femme.’ Uncle Marston had it, ‘Hunt the other
woman.’ Don’t go too fast with that punch; it isn’t as gentle as it
seems.”
But John and his Uncle Marston had between them given me my beginning,
and, as I sat sipping my punch, I ceased to hear the anecdotes which
followed. I sat sipping and smoking, and was presently aware of the
deepening silence of the night, and of John no longer at the table, but
by the window, looking out into the forest, and muttering once more,
“Oh, the times, the times!”
“It’s always a triangle,” I began.
He turned round from his window. “Triangle?” He looked at my glass of
punch, and then at me. “Go easy with the Bombo,” he repeated.
“Bombo?” I echoed. “You call this Bombo? You don’t know how remarkable
that is, but that’s because you don’t know Aunt Carola, who is very
remarkable, too. Well, never mind her now. Point is, it’s always a
triangle.”
“I haven’t a doubt of it,” he replied.
“There you’re right. And so was your uncle. He knew. Triangle.” Here I
found myself nodding portentously at John, and beating the table with my
finger very solemnly.
He stood by his window seeming to wait for me. And now everything in
the universe grew perfectly clear to me; I rose on mastering tides of
thought, and all problems lay disposed of at my feet, while delicious
strength and calm floated in my brain and being. Nothing was difficult
for me. But I was getting away from the triangle, and there was John
waiting at the window, and I mustn’t say too much, mustn’t say too much.
My will reached out and caught the triangle and brought it close, and I
saw it all perfectly clear again.
“What are they all,” I said, “the old romances? You take Paris and Helen
and Menelaus. What’s that? You take Launcelot and Arthur and Guinevere.
You take Paola and Francesca and her husband, what’s-his-name, or
Tristram and Iseult and Mark. Two men, one woman. Triangle and trouble.
Other way around you get Tannhauser and Venus and Elizabeth; two women,
one man; more triangle and more trouble. Yes.” And I nodded at him
again. The tide of my thought was pulling me hard away from this to
other important world-problems, but my will held, struggling, and I kept
to it.
“You wait,” I told him. “I know what I mean. Trouble is, so hard to
advise him right.”
“Advise who right?” inquired John Mayrant.
It helped me wonderfully. My will gripped my floating thoughts and held
them to it. “Friend of mine in trouble; though why he asks me when I’m
not married--I’d be married now, you know, but afraid of only one wife.
Man doesn’t love twice; loves thrice, four, six, lots of times; but they
say only one wife. Ought to be two, anyhow. Much easier for man to marry
then.”
“Wouldn’t it be rather immoral?” John asked.
“Morality is queer thing. Like kaleidoscope. New patterns all the time.
Abraham and wives--perfectly respectable. You take Pharaohs--or kings of
that sort--married own sisters. All right then. Perfectly horrible now,
of course. But you ask men about two wives. They’d say something to be
said for that idea. Only there are the women, you know. They’d never.
But I’m going to tell my friend he’s doing wrong. Going to write him
to-night. Where’s ink?”
“It won’t go to-night,” said John. “What are you going to tell him?”
“Going to tell him, since only one wife, wicked not to break his
engagement.”
John looked at me very hard, as he stood by the window, leaning on the
sill. But my will was getting all the while a stronger hold, and my
thoughts were less and less inclined to stray to other world-problems;
moreover, below the confusion that still a little reigned in them was
the primal cunning of the old Adam, the native man, quite untroubled and
alert--it saw John’s look at me and it prompted my course.
“Yes,” I said. “He wants the truth from me. Where’s his letter? No harm
reading you without names.” And I fumbled in my pocket.
“Letter gone. Never mind. Facts are: friend’s asked girl. Girl’s said
yes. Now he thinks he’s bound by that.”
“He thinks right,” said John.
“Not a bit of it. You take Tannhauser. Engagement to Venus all a
mistake. Perfectly proper to break it. Much more than proper. Only
honorable thing he could do. I’m going to write it to him. Where’s ink?”
And I got up.
John came from his window and sat down at the table. His glass was
empty, his cigar gone out, and he looked at me. But I looked round the
room for the ink, noting in my search the big fireplace, simple, wooden,
unornamented, but generous, and the plain plaster walls of the lodge,
whereon hung two or three old prints of gamebirds; and all the while I
saw John out of the corner of my eye, looking at me.
He spoke first. “Your friend has given his word to a lady; he must stand
by it like a gentleman.
“Lot of difference,” I returned, still looking round the room, “between
spirit and letter. If his heart has broken the word, his lips can’t make
him a gentleman.”
John brought his fist down on the table. “He had no business to get
engaged to her! He must take the consequences.”
That blow of the fist on the table brought my thoughts wholly clear and
fixed on the one subject; my will had no longer to struggle with them,
they worked of themselves in just the way that I wanted them to do.
“If he’s a gentleman, he must stand to his word,” John repeated, “unless
she releases him.”
I fumbled again for my letter. “That’s just about what he says himself,”
I rejoined, sitting down. “He thinks he ought to take the consequences.”
“Of course!” John Mayrant’s face was very stern as he sat in judgment on
himself.
“But why should she take the consequences?” I asked.
“What consequences?”
“Being married to a man who doesn’t want her, all her life, until
death them do part. How’s that? Having the daily humiliation of his
indifference, and the world’s knowledge of his indifference. How’s that?
Perhaps having the further humiliation of knowing that his heart belongs
to another woman. How’s that? That’s not what a girl bargains for. His
standing to his word is not an act of honor, but a deception. And in
talking about ‘taking the consequences,’ he’s patting his personal
sacrifice on the back and forgetting all about her and the sacrifice
he’s putting her to. What’s the brief suffering of a broken engagement
to that? No: the true consequences that a man should shoulder for making
such a mistake is the poor opinion that society holds of him for placing
a woman in such a position; and to free her is the most honorable thing
he can do. Her dignity suffers less so than if she were a wife chained
down to perpetual disregard.”
John, after a silence, said: “That is a very curious view.”
“That is the view I shall give my friend,” I answered. “I shall tell him
that in keeping on he is not at bottom honestly thinking of the girl and
her welfare, but of himself and the public opinion he’s afraid of, if
he breaks his engagement. And I shall tell him that if I’m in church
and they come to the place where they ask if any man knows just cause or
impediment, I shall probably call out, ‘He does! His heart’s not in
it. This is not marriage that he’s committing. You’re pronouncing your
blessing upon a fraud.’”
John sat now a long time silent, holding his extinct cigar. The lamp
was almost burned dry; we had blown out the expiring candles some while
since. “That is a very curious view,” he repeated. “I should like to
hear what your friend says in answer.”
This finished our late sitting. We opened the door and went out for a
brief space into the night to get its pure breath into our lungs, and
look to the distant place where the moon had sailed. Then we went to
bed, or rather, I did; for the last thing that I remembered was John,
standing by the window of our bedroom still dressed, looking out into
the forest.