It was my lot to attend but one of the weddings which Hortense
precipitated (or at least determined) by her plunge into the water; and,
truth to say, the honor of my presence at the other was not requested;
therefore I am unable to describe the nuptials of Hortense and Charley.
But the papers were full of them; what the female guests wore, what the
male guests were worth, and what both ate and drank, were set forth in
many columns of printed matter; and if you did not happen to see this,
just read the account of the next wedding that occurs among the New York
yellow rich, and you will know how Charley and Hortense were married;
for it’s always the same thing. The point of mark in this particular
ceremony of union lay in Charley’s speech; Charley found a happy thought
at the breakfast. The bridal party (so the papers had it) sat on a
dais, and was composed exclusively of Oil, Sugar, Beef, Steel, and Union
Pacific; merely at this one table five hundred million dollars were
sitting (so the papers computed), and it helped the bridegroom to his
idea, when, by the importunate vociferations of the company, he was
forced to get on his unwilling legs.
“Poets and people of that sort say” (Charley concluded, after thanking
them) “that happiness cannot be bought with money. Well, I guess a poet
never does learn how to make a dollar do a dollar’s work. But I am no
poet; and I have learned it is as well to have a few dollars around. And
I guess that my friends and I, right here at this table, could organize
a corner in happiness any day we chose. And if we do, we will let you
all in on it.”
I am told that the bride looked superb, both in church and at the
reception which took place in the house of Kitty; and that General
Rieppe, in spite of his shattered health, maintained a noble appearance
through the whole ordeal of parting with his daughter. I noticed that
Beverly Rodgers and Gazza figured prominently among the invited guests:
Bohm did not have to be invited, for some time before the wedding he had
become the husband of the successfully divorced Kitty. So much for the
nuptials of Hortense and Charley; they were, as one paper pronounced
them, “up to date and distingue.” The paper omitted the accent in
the French word, which makes it, I think, fit this wedding even more
happily.
“So Hortense,” I said to myself as I read the paper, “has squared
herself with Charley after all.” And I sat wondering if she would
be happy. But she was not constructed for happiness. You cannot be
constructed for all the different sorts of experiences which this world
offers: each of our natures has its specialty. Hortense was constructed
for pleasure; and I have no doubt she got it, if not through Charley,
then by other means.
The marriage of Eliza La Heu and John Mayrant was of a different
quality; no paper pronounced it “up to date,” or bestowed any other
adjectival comments upon it; for, being solemnized in Kings Port, where
such purely personal happenings are still held (by the St. Michael
family, at any rate) to be no business of any one’s save those
immediately concerned, the event escaped the famishment of publicity.
Yes, this marriage was solemnized, a word that I used above without
forethought, and now repeat with intention; for certainly no respecter
of language would write it of the yellow rich and their blatant unions.
If you’re a Bohm or a Charley, you may trivialize or vulgarize or
bestialize your wedding, but solemnize it you don’t, for that is not “up
to date.”
And to the marriage of Eliza and John I went; for not only was the honor
of my presence requested, but John wrote me, in both their names, a
personal note, which came to me far away in the mountains, whither I had
gone from Kings Port. This was the body of the note:--
“To the formal invitation which you will receive, Miss La Heu joins her
wish with mine that you will not be absent on that day. We should
both really miss you. Miss La Heu begs me to add that if this is not
sufficient inducement, you shall have a slice of Lady Baltimore.”
Not a long note! But you will imagine how genuinely I was touched by
their joint message. I was not an old acquaintance, and I had done
little to help them in their troubles, but I came into the troubles;
with their memory of those days I formed a part, and it was a part which
it warmed me to know they did not dislike to recall. I had actually been
present at their first meeting, that day when John visited the Exchange
to order his wedding-cake, and Eliza had rushed after him, because in
his embarrassment he had forgotten to tell her the date for which he
wanted it. The cake had begun it, the cake had continued it, the cake
had brought them together; and in Eliza’s retrospect now I doubted If
she could find the moment when her love for John had awakened; but if
with women there ever is such a moment, then, as I have before said,
it was when the girl behind the counter looked across at the handsome,
blushing boy, and felt stirred to help him in his stumbling attempts to
be businesslike about that cake. If his youth unwittingly kindled hers,
how could he or she help that? But, had he ever once known it and shown
it to her during his period of bondage to Hortense, then, indeed, the
flame would have turned to ice in Eliza’s breast. What saved him for
her was his blind steadfastness against her. That was the very thing she
prized most, once it became hers; whereas, any secret swerving toward
her from Hortense during his heavy hours of probation would have
degraded John to nothing in Eliza’s eyes. And so, making all this out
by myself in the mountains after reading John’s note, I ordered from the
North the handsomest old china cake-dish that Aunt Carola could find
to be sent to Miss Eliza La Heu with my card. I wanted to write on
the card, “Rira bien qui viva le dernier”; but alas! so many pleasant
thoughts may never be said aloud in this world of ours. That I ordered
china, instead of silver, was due to my surmise that in Kings Port--or
at any rate by Mrs. Weguelin and Miss Josephine St. Michael--silver
from any one not of the family would be considered vulgar; it was only a
surmise, and, of course, it was precisely the sort of thing that I could
not verify by asking any of them.
But (you may be asking) how on earth did all this come about? What
happened in Kings Port on the day following that important swim which
Hortense and John took together in the waters of the harbor?
I wish that I could tell you all that happened, but I can only tell you
of the outside of things; the inside was wholly invisible and inaudible
to me, although we may be sure, I think, that when the circles that
widened from Hortense’s plunge reached the shores of the town, there
must have been in certain quarters a considerable splashing. I presume
that John communicated to somebody the news of his broken engagement;
for if he omitted to do so, with the wedding invitations to be out the
next day, he was remiss beyond excuse, and I think this very unlikely;
and I also presume (with some evidence to go on) that Hortense did not,
in the somewhat critical juncture of her fortunes, allow the grass to
grow under her feet--if such an expression may be used of a person who
is shut up in the stateroom of a steam yacht. To me John Mayrant made no
sign of any sort by word or in writing, and this is the highest proof
he ever gave me of his own delicacy, and also of his reliance upon
mine; for he must have been pretty sure that I had overheard those last
destiny-deciding words spoken between himself and Hortense in the boat,
as we reached the Hermana’s gangway. In John’s place almost any man,
even Beverly Rodgers, would have either dropped a hint at the moment, or
later sent me some line to the effect that the incident was, of
course, “between ourselves.” That would have been both permissible and
practical; but there it was, the difference between John of Kings Port
and us others; he was not practical when it came to something “between
gentlemen,” as he would have said. The finest flower of breeding
blossoms above the level of the practical, and that is why you do not
find it growing in the huge truck-garden of our age, save in corners
where it has not yet been uprooted. John’s silence to me was something
that I liked very much, and he must have found that it was not
misplaced.
The first external splash of the few that I have to narrate was a
negative manifestation, and occurred at breakfast: Juno supposed if the
wedding invitations would be out later in the day. The next splash was
somewhat louder on, was at dinner, when Juno inquired of Mrs. Trevise
if she had received any wedding invitation. At tea time was very decided
splashing. No invitation had come to anybody. Juno had called at five of
the St. Michael houses and got in at none of them, and there was a rumor
that the Hermana had disappeared from the harbor. So far, none of the
splashing had wet me but I now came in for a light sprinkle.
“Were you not on board that boat yesterday?” Juno inquired; and to see
her look at me you might have gathered that I was suspected of sinking
the vessel.
“A most delightful occasion!” I exclaimed, filling my face with a bright
blankness.
“Isn’t he awful to speak that way about Sunday!” said the up-country
bride.
This was a chance for the poetess, and she took it. “To me,” she mused,
“every day seems fraught with an equal holiness.”
“But I should think,” observed the Briton, “that you could knock off a
hymn better on Sundays.”
All this while Juno was looking at me, and I knew it, and therefore I
ate my food in a kindly sort of unconscious way, until she fired another
shot at me. “There is an absurd report that somebody fell overboard.”
“Dear me!” I laughed. “So that is what it has grown to already! I did go
out on the boat boom, and I did drop off--but into a boat.”
At this confession of mine the up-country bride became extraordinarily
arch on the subject of the well-known hospitality of steam yachts, and
for this I was honestly grateful to her; but Juno brooded still. “I hope
there is nothing wrong,” she said solemnly.
Feeling that silence at this point would not be golden, I went into it
with spirit I told them of our charming party, of General Rieppe’s
rich store of quotations, of the strict discipline on board the
well-appointed Hermana, of the great beauty of Hortense, and her evident
happiness when her lover was by her side. This talk of mine turned off
any curiosity or suspicion which the rest of the company may have begun
to entertain; but upon Juno I think it made scant impression, save
causing her to set me down as an imbecile. For there was Doctor
Beaugarcon when we came into the sitting-room, who told us before any
one could even say “How-do-you-do,” that Miss Hortense Rieppe had broken
her engagement with John Mayrant, and that he had it from Mrs. Cornerly,
whom he was visiting professionally. I caught the pitying look which
Juno threw at me at this news, and I was happy to have acquitted myself
so creditably in the manipulation of my secret: nobody asked me any more
questions!
There is almost nothing else to tell you of how the splashes broke
on Kings Port. Before the day when I was obliged to call in Doctor
Beaugarcon’s professional services (quite a sharp attack put me to bed
for half a week) I found merely the following things: the Hermana gone
to New York, the automobiles and the Replacers had also disappeared,
and people were divided on the not strikingly important question as to
whether Hortense and the General had accompanied Charley on the yacht,
or continued northward in an automobile, or taken the train. Gone, in
any case, the whole party indubitably was, leaving, I must say, a sense
of emptiness: the comedy was over, the players departed. I never heard
any one, not even Juno, doubt that it was Hortense who had broken the
engagement; this part of the affair was conducted by the principals
with great skill. Hortense had evidently written her version to the
Cornerlys, and not a word to any other effect ever came from John’s
mouth, of course. One result I had not looked for, though it was a
natural one: if the old ladies had felt indignation at Hortense for her
determination to marry John Mayrant, this indignation was doubled by her
determination not to! I fear that few of us live by logic, even in Kings
Port; and then, they had all called upon her in that garden for nothing!
The sudden thought of this made me laugh alone in my bed of sickness;
and when I came out of it, had such a thing been possible, I should have
liked to congratulate Miss Josephine St. Michael on her absence from the
garden occasion. I said, however, nothing to her, or to any of the other
ladies, upon this or any subject, for I was so unlucky as to find them
not at home when I paid my round of farewell visits. Nor (to my real
distress) did I see John Mayrant again. The boy wrote me (I received it
in bed) a short, warm note of regret, with nothing else in it save the
fact that he was leaving town, having become free from the Custom House
at last. I fancy that he ran away for a judicious interval. Who would
not?
Was there one person to whom he told the truth before he went? Did the
girl behind the counter hear the manner in which the engagement was
broken? Ah, none of us will ever know that! But, although I could not,
without the highest impropriety, have spoken to any of the old ladies
about this business, unless they had chosen to speak to me--and somehow
I feel that after the abrupt close of it not even Mrs. Gregory
St. Michael would have been likely to touch on the subject with an
outsider--there was nothing whatever to forbid my indulging in a
skirmish with Eliza La Heu; therefore I lunched at the Exchange on my
last day.
“To the mountains?” she said, in reply to my information about my plans
of travel.
“Doctor Beaugarcon says nothing else can so quickly restore me.”
“Stay there for the rhododendrons, then,” she bade me. “No sight more
beautiful in all the South.”
“Town seems deserted,” I pursued. “Everybody gone.”
“Oh, not everybody!”
“All the interesting people.”
“Thank you.”
“I meant, interesting to you.”
I saw her decide not to be angry; and her decision changed and saved our
conversation from the trashy, bantering tone which it was taking, and
brought it to a pass most unexpected to both of us.
She gave me a charming and friendly smile. “Well, you, at any rate, are
going away. And I am really sorry for that.”
Her eyes rested upon me with perfect frankness. I was not in love with
Eliza La Heu, but nearer to love than I had ever been then, and it would
have been easy, very easy, to let one’s self go straight onward into
love. There are for a man more ways of falling into that state than
romancers would have us to believe, and one of them is by an assent
of the will at a certain given moment, which the heart promptly
follows--just as a man in a moment decides he will espouse a cause, and
soon finds himself hotly fighting for it body and soul. I could have
gone out of that Exchange completely in love with Eliza La Heu; but my
will did not give its assent, and I saw John Mayrant not as a rival, but
as one whose happiness I greatly desired.
“Thank you,” I said, “for telling me you are sorry I am going. And
now, may I treat you more than ever as a friend, and tell you of a
circumstance which Kings Port does not know?”
It put her on her guard. “Don’t be indiscreet,” she laughed.
“Isn’t timely indiscretion discretion?”
“And don’t be clever,” she said. “Tell me what you have to say--if
you’re quite sure you’ll not be sorry.”
“Quite sure. There’s no reason--now that the untruth is properly and
satisfactorily established--that one person should not know that John
Mayrant broke that engagement.” And I told her the whole of it. “If I’m
outrageous to share this secret with you,” I concluded, “I can only say
that I couldn’t stand the unfairness any longer.”
“He jumped straight in?” said Eliza.
“Oh, straight!”
“Of course,” she murmured.
“And just after declaring that he wouldn’t.”
“Of course,” she murmured again. “And the current took them right away?”
“Instantly.”
“Was he very tired when you got to him?”
I answered this question and a number of others, backward and forward,
until she had led me to cover the whole incident about twice-and-a-half
times. Then she had a silence, and after this a reflection.
“How well they managed it!”
“Managed what?”
“The accepted version.”
“Oh, yes, indeed!”
“And you and I will not spoil it for them,” she declared.
As I took my final leave of her she put a flower in my buttonhole. My
reflection was then, and is now, that if she already knew the truth from
John himself, how well she managed it!
So that same night I took the lugubrious train which bore me with the
grossest deliberation to the mountains; and among the mountains and
their waterfalls I stayed and saw the rhododendrons, and was preparing
to journey home when the invitation came from John and Eliza.
I have already said that of this wedding no word was in the papers.
Kings Port by the war lost all material things, but not the others,
among which precious privacy remains to her; and, O Kings Port, may
you never lose your grasp of that treasure! May you never know the land
where the reporter blooms, where if any joy or grief befall you, the
public press rings your doorbell and demands the particulars, and if you
deny it the particulars, it makes them up and says something scurrilous
about you into the bargain. Therefore nothing was printed, morning
or evening, about John and Eliza. Nor was the wedding service held in
church to the accompaniment of nodding bonnets and gaping stragglers. No
eye not tender with regard and emotion looked on while John took Eliza
to his wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy
state of matrimony.
In Royal Street, not many steps from South Place, there stands a quiet
house a little back, upon whose face sorrow has struck many blows, but
made no deep wounds yet; no scorch from the fires of war is visible,
and the rending of the earthquake does not show too plainly; but there
hangs about the house a gravity that comes from seeing and suffering
much, and a sweetness from having sheltered many generations of smiles
and tears. The long linked chain of births and deaths here has not been
broken and scattered, and the grandchildren look out of the same windows
from which the grandsires gazed, whose faces now in picture frames still
watch serenely the sad present from their happy past. Therefore the
rooms lie in still depths of association, and from the walls, the
stairs, the furniture, flows the benign influence of undispersed
memories; it sheds its tempered radiance upon the old miniatures, and
upon every fresh flower that comes in from the garden; it seems to pass
through the open doors to and fro like a tranquil blessing; it is beyond
joy and pain, because time has distilled it from both of these; it
is the assembled essence of kinship and blood unity, enriched by each
succeeding brood that is born, is married, is fruitful in its turn, and
dies remembered; only the balm of faith is stronger to sustain and heal;
for that comes from heaven, while it is earth that gives us this; and
the sacred cup of it which our native land once held is almost empty.
Amid this influence John and Eliza were made one, and the faces of
the older generations grew soft beneath it, and pensive eyes became
lustrous, and into pale cheeks the rosy tint came like an echo faintly
back for a short hour. They made so little sound in their quiet
happiness of congratulation that it might have been a dream; and they
were so few that the house with the sense of its memories was not lost
with the movement and crowding, but seemed still to preside over the
whole, and send down its benediction.