Lady Baltimore Part 21

"Miss Josephine St. Michael desires to call upon you," he said, "and I fancy that her nephew will escort her."

"In all this rain?" said the bride.

"Oh, it's letting up, letting up! Good night, Mistress Trevise. Good night, sir; I am glad to have met you." He shook hands with Mrs.

Braintree's husband. "We fellows," he whispered, "who fought in the war have had war enough." And bidding the general company good night, and kissing the bride again, he left us even as the poetess returned from her room with the ma.n.u.script.

I soon wished that I had escaped with him, because I feared what Mrs.

Braintree might say when the verses should be finished; and so, I think, did her husband. We should have taken the hint which tactful Doctor Beaugarcon had meant, I began to believe, to give us in that whispered remark of his. But it had been given too lightly, and so we sat and heard the ode out. I am sure that the poetess, wrapped in the thoughts of her own composition, had lost sight of all but the phrasing of her poem and the strong feelings which it not unmusically voiced; there Is no other way to account for her being willing to read it in Mrs.

Braintree's presence.

Whatever gayety had filled me when the Boston lady had clashed with Juno was now changed to deprecation and concern. Indeed, I myself felt almost as if I were being physically struck by the words, until mere bewilderment took possession of me; and after bewilderment, a little, a very little, light, which, however, rapidly increased. We were the victors, we the North, and we had gone upon our way with songs and rejoicing--able to forget, because we were the victors. We had our victory; let the vanquished have their memory. But here was the cry of the vanquished, coming after forty years. It was the time which at first bewildered me; Juno had seen the war, Juno's bitterness I could comprehend, even if I could not comprehend her freedom in expressing it, but the poetess could not be more than a year or two older than I was; she had come after it was all over. Why should she prolong such memories and feelings? But my light increased as I remembered she had not written this for us, and that if she had not seen the flames of war, she had seen the ashes; for the ashes I had seen myself here in Kings Port, and had been overwhelmed by the sight, forty years later, more overwhelmed than I could possibly say to Mrs. Gregory St. Michael, or Mrs. Weguelin, or anybody. The strain of sitting and waiting for the end made my hands cold and my head hot, but nevertheless the light which had come enabled me to bend instantly to Mrs. Braintree and murmur a great and abused quotation to her:--

"Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner."

But my pet.i.tion could not move her. She was too old; she had seen the flames of war; and so she said to her husband:--

"Edward, will you please help me upstairs?"

And thus the lame, irreconcilable lady left the room with the a.s.sistance of her unhappy warrior, who must have suffered far more keenly than I did.

This departure left us all in a constraint which was becoming unbearable when the blessed doorbell rang and delivered us, and Miss Josephine St.

Michael entered with John Mayrant. He wore a most curious expression; his eyes went searching about the room, and at length settled upon Juno with a light in them as impish as that which had flickered in my own mood before the ode.

To my surprise, Miss Josephine advanced and gave me a special and marked greeting. Before this she had always merely bowed to me; to-night she held out her hand. "Of course my visit is not to you; but I am very glad to find you here and express the appreciation of several of us for your timely aid to Daddy Ben. He feels much shame in having said nothing to you himself."

And while I muttered those inevitable modest nothings which fit such occasions, Miss St. Michael recounted to the bride, whom she was ostensibly calling upon, and to the rest of our now once more harmonious circle, my adventures in the alleys of Africa. These loomed, even with Miss St. Michael's perfectly quiet and simple rendering of them, almost of heroic size, thanks doubtless to Daddy Ben's tropical imagery when he first told the tale; and before they were over Miss St. Michael's marked recognition of me actually brought from Juno some reflected recognition--only this resembled in its graciousness the original about as correctly as a hollow spoon reflects the human countenance divine.

Still, it was at Juno's own request that I brought down from my chamber and displayed to them the kettle-supporter.

I have said that Miss St. Michael's visit was ostensibly to the bride: and that is because for some magnetic reason or other I felt diplomacy like an undercurrent pa.s.sing among our chairs. Young John's expression deepened, whenever he watched Juno, to a devilishness which his polite manners veiled no better than a mosquito netting; and I believe that his aunt, on account of the battle between their respective nephews, had for family reasons deemed it advisable to pay, indirectly, under cover of the bride, a state visit to Juno; and I think that I saw Juno accepting it as a state visit, and that the two together, without using a word of spoken language, gave each other to understand that the recent deplorable circ.u.mstances were a closed incident. I think that his Aunt Josephine had desired young John to pay a visit likewise, and, to make sure of his speedy compliance, had brought him along with her--coerced him, as Juno would have said. He wore somewhat the look of having been "coerced," and he contributed remarkably few observations to the talk.

It was all harmonious, and decorous, and properly conducted, this state visit; yet even so, Juno and John exchanged at parting some verbal sweet-meats which rather stuck out from the smooth meringue of diplomacy.

She contemplated his bruise. "You are feeling stronger, I hope, than you have been lately? A bridegroom's health should be good."

He thanked her. "I am feeling better to-night than for many weeks."

The rascal had the thirty dollars visibly bulging that moment in his pocket. I doubt if he had acquainted his aunt with this episode, but she was certain to hear it soon; and when she did hear it, I rather fancy that she wished to smile--as I completely smiled alone in my bed that night thinking young John over.

But I did not go to sleep smiling; listening to the "Ode for the Daughters of Dixie" had been an ordeal too truly painful, because it disclosed live feelings which I had thought were dead, or rather, it disclosed that those feelings smouldered in the young as well as in the old. Doctor Beaugarcon didn't have them--he had fought them out, just as Mr. Braintree had fought them out; and Mrs. Braintree, like Juno, retained them, because she hadn't fought them out; and John Mayrant didn't have them, because he had been to other places; and I didn't have them--never had had them in my life, because I came into the world when it was all over. Why then--Stop, I told myself, growing very wakeful, and seeing in the darkness the light which had come to me, you have beheld the ashes, and even the sight has overwhelmed you; these others were born in the ashes, and have had ashes to sleep in and ashes to eat.

This I said to myself; and I remembered that War hadn't been all; that Reconstruction came in due season; and I thought of the "reconstructed"

negro, as Daddy Ben had so ingeniously styled him. These white people, my race, had been set beneath the reconstructed negro. Still, still, this did not justify the whole of it to me; my perfectly innocent generation seemed to be included in the unforgiving, unforgetting ode.

"I must have it out with somebody," I said. And in time I fell asleep.

XIII: The Girl Behind the Counter--III

I was still thinking the ode over as I dressed for breakfast, for which I was late, owing to my hair, which the changes in the weather had rendered somewhat recalcitrant. Yes; decidedly I must have it out with somebody. The weather was once more superb; and in the garden beneath my window men were already sweeping away the broken twigs and debris of the storm. I say "already," because it had not seemed to me to be the Kings Port custom to remove debris, or anything, with speed. I also had it in my mind to perform at lunch Aunt Carola's commission, and learn if the family of La Heu were indeed of royal descent through the Bombos. I intended to find this out from the girl behind the counter, but the course which our conversation took led me completely to forget about it.

As soon as I entered the Exchange I planted myself in front of the counter, in spite of the discouragement which I too plainly perceived in her countenance; the unfavorable impression which I had made upon her at our last interview was still in force.

I plunged into it at once. "I have a confession to make."

"You do me surprising honor."

"Oh, now, don't begin like that! I suppose you never told a lie."

"I'm telling the truth now when I say that I do not see why an entire stranger should confess anything to me."

"Oh, my goodness! Well, I told you a lie, anyhow; a great, successful, deplorable lie."

She opened her mouth under the shock of it, and I recited to her unsparingly my deception; during this recital her mouth gradually closed.

"Well, I declare, declare, declare!" she slowly and deliciously breathed over the sum total; and she considered me at length, silently, before her words came again, like a soft soliloquy. "I could never have believed it in one who"--here gayety flashed in her eyes suddenly--"parts his back hair so rigidly. Oh, I beg your pardon for being personal!" And her gayety broke in ripples. Some habitual instinct moved me to turn to the looking-gla.s.s. "Useless!" she cried, "you can't see it in that. But it's perfectly splendid to-day."

Nature has been kind to me in many ways--nay, prodigal; it is not every man who can perceive the humor in a jest of which he is himself the subject. I laughed with her. "I trust that I am forgiven," I said.

"Oh, yes, you are forgiven! Come out, General, and give the gentleman your right paw, and tell him that he is forgiven--if only for the sake of Daddy Ben." With these latter words she gave me a gracious nod of understanding. They were all thanking me for the kettle-supporter! She probably knew also the tale of John Mayrant, the cards, and the bedside.

The curly dog came out, and went through his part very graciously.

"I can guess his last name," I remarked.

"General's? How? Oh, you've heard it! I don't believe in you any more."

"That's not a bit handsome, after my confession. No, I'm getting to understand South Carolina a little. You came from the 'up-country,' you call your dog General; his name is General Hampton!"

Her laughter a.s.sented. "Tell me some more about South Carolina," she added with her caressing insinuation.

"Well, to begin with--"

"Go sit down at your lunch-table first. Aunt Josephine would never tolerate my encouraging gentlemen to talk to me over the counter."

I went back obediently, and then resumed: "Well, what sort of people are those who own the handsome garden behind Mrs. Trevise's!"

"I don't know them."

"Thank you; that's all I wanted."

"What do you mean?"

"They're new people. I could tell it from the way you stuck your nose in the air."

"Sir!"

"Oh, if you talk about my hair, I can talk about your nose, I think.

I suspected that they were: 'new people' because they cleaned up their garden immediately after the storm this morning. Now, I'll tell you something else: the whole South looks down on the whole North."