by Owen Wister
VII: The Girl Behind the Counter--II
"Which of them is idealizing?" This was the question that I askedmyself, next morning, in my boarding-house, as I dressed for breakfast;the next morning is--at least I have always found it so--an excellenttime for searching questions; and to-day I had waked up no longerbeneath the strong, gentle spell of the churchyard. A bright sun wasshining over the eastern waters of the town, I could see from my upperveranda the thousand flashes of the waves; the steam yacht rode placidlyand competently among them, while a coastwise steamer was sailing byher, out to sea, to Savannah, or New York; the general world was goingon, and--which of them was idealizing? It mightn't be so bad, afterall. Hadn't I, perhaps, over-sentimentalized to myself the case of JohnMayrant? Hadn't I imagined for him ever so much more anxiety than theboy actually felt? For people can idealize down just as readily asthey can idealize up. Of Miss Hortense Rieppe I had now two partialportraits--one by the displeased aunts, the other by their chivalricnephew; in both she held between her experienced lips, a cigarette;there the similarity ceased. And then, there was the tobogganfire-escape. Well, I must meet the living original before I could decidewhether (for me, at any rate) she was the "brute" as seen by the eyesof Mrs. Gregory St. Michael, or the "really nice girl" who was goingto marry John Mayrant on Wednesday week. Just at this point my thoughtsbrought up hard again at the cake. No; I couldn't swallow that anybetter this morning than yesterday afternoon! Allow the gentleman to payfor the feast! Better to have omitted all feast; nothing simpler, andit would have been at least dignified, even if arid. But then, there wasthe lady (a cousin or an aunt--I couldn't remember which this morning)who had told me she wasn't solicitous. What did she mean by that? Andshe had looked quite queer when she spoke about the phosphates. Oh,yes, to be sure, she was his intimate aunt! Where, by the way, was MissRieppe?
By the time I had eaten my breakfast and walked up Worship Street tothe post-office I was full of it all again; my searching thoughtshadn't simplified a single point. I always called for my mail atthe post-office, because I got it sooner; it didn't come to theboarding-house before I had departed on my quest for royal blood,whereas, this way, I simply got my letters at the corner of Court andWorship streets and walked diagonally across and down Court a fewsteps to my researches, which I could vary and alleviate by reading andanswering news from home.
It was from Aunt Carola that I heard to-day. Only a little of whatshe said will interest you. There had been a delightful meeting of theSelected Salic Scions. The Baltimore Chapter had paid her Chapter avisit. Three ladies and one very highly connected young gentleman hadcome--an encouragingly full and enthusiastic meeting. They had lunchedupon cocoa, sherry, and croquettes, after which all had been more thanglad to listen to a paper read by a descendant of Edward the Third andthe young gentleman, a descendant of Catherine of Aragon, had reciteda beautiful original poem, entitled "My Queen Grandmother." Aunt Carolaregretted that I could not have had the pleasure and the benefit of thismeeting, the young gentleman had turned out to be, also, a refined andtasteful musician, playing, upon the piano a favorite gavotte of Louisthe Thirteenth "And while you are in Kings Port," my aunt said; "Iexpect you to profit by associating with the survivors of our goodAmerican society--people such as one could once meet everywhere whenI was young, but who have been destroyed by the invasion of theproletariat. You are in the last citadel of good-breeding. By the way,find out, if you can, if any of the Bombo connection are extant; asthrough them I should like, if possible, to establish a chapter ofthe Scions in South Carolina. Have you, met a Miss Rieppe, a decidedlystriking young woman, who says she is from Kings Port, and who recentlypassed through here with a very common man dancing attendance on her? Heowns the Hermana, and she is said to be engaged to him."
This wasn't as good as meeting Miss Rieppe myself; but the new angle atwhich I got her from my Aunt was distinctly a contribution toward theyoung woman's likeness; I felt that I should know her at sight, if evershe came within seeing distance. And it would be entertaining to findthat she was a Bombo; but that could wait; what couldn't wait was theHermana. I postponed the Fannings, hurried by the door where they waitedfor me, and, coming to the end of Court Street, turned to the right andsought among the wharves the nearest vista that could give me a view ofthe harbor. Between the silent walls of commerce desolated, and by theempty windows from which Prosperity once looked out, I threaded my wayto a point upon the town's eastern edge. Yes, that was the steam yacht'sname: the Hermana. I didn't make it out myself, she lay a trifle too farfrom shore; but I could read from a little fluttering pennant that herowner was not on board; and from the second loafer whom I questioned Ilearned, besides her name, that she had come from New York here tomeet her owner, whose name he did not know and whose arrival was stillindefinite. This was not very much to find out; but it was so much morethan I had found out about the Fannings that, although I now faithfullyreturned to my researches, and sat over open books until noon, Icouldn't tell you a word of what I read. Where was Miss Rieppe, andwhere was the owner of the Hermana? Also, precisely how ill was the heroof Chattanooga, her poor dear father?
At the Exchange I opened the door upon a conversation which, inconsequence, broke off abruptly; but this much I came in for:--
"Nothing but the slightest bruise above his eye. The other one is inbed."
It was the severe lady who said this; I mean that lady who, among allthe severe ones I had met, seemed capable of the highest exercise ofthis quality, although she had not exercised it in my presence. Shelooked, in her veil and her black street dress, as aloof, and as coldlyscornful of the present day, as she had seemed when sitting over herembroidery; but it was not of 1818, or even 1840, that she had beentalking just now: it was this morning that somebody was bruised,somebody was in bed.
The handsome lady acknowledged my salutation completely, but notencouragingly, and then, on the threshold, exchanged these partingsentences with the girl behind the counter:--
"They will have to shake hands. He was not very willing, but he listenedto me. Of course, the chastisement was right--but it does not affect myopinion of his keeping on with the position."
"No, indeed, Aunt Josephine!" the girl agreed. "I wish he wouldn't. Didyou say it was his right eye?"
"His left." Miss Josephine St. Michael inclined her head once more to meand went out of the Exchange. I retired to my usual table, and thegirl read in my manner, quite correctly, the feelings which I had notsupposed I had allowed to be evident. She said:--
"Aunt Josephine always makes strangers think she's displeased withthem."
I replied like the young ass which I constantly tell myself I haveceased to be: "Oh, displeasure is as much notice as one is entitled tofrom Miss St. Michael."
The girl laughed with her delightful sweet mockery.
"I declare, you're huffed! Now don't tell me you're not. But you mustn'tbe. When you know her, you'll know that that awful manner means AuntJosephine is just being shy. Why, even I'm not afraid of her GeorgeWashington glances any more!"
"Very well," I laughed, "I'll try to have your courage." Over mychocolate and sandwiches I sat in curiosity discreditable, but natural.Who was in bed--who would have to shake hands? And why had they stoppedtalking when I came in? Of course, I found myself hoping that JohnMayrant had put the owner of the Hermana in bed at the slight cost ofa bruise above his left eye. I wondered if the cake was againcountermanded, and I started upon that line. "I think I'll have to-day,if you please, another slice of that Lady Baltimore." And I made readyfor another verbal skirmish.
"I'm so sorry! It's a little stale to-day. You can have the last slice,if you wish."
"Thank you, I will." She brought it. "It's not so very stale," I said."How long since it has been made?"
"Oh, it's the same you've been having. You're its only patron just now."
"Well, no. There's Mr. Mayrant."
"Not for a week yet, you remember."
So the wedding was on yet. Still, John might have
smashed the owner ofthe Hermana.
"Have you seen him lately?" I asked.
There was something special in the way she looked. "Not to-day. Haveyou?"
"Never in the forenoon. He has his duties and I have mine."
She made a little pause, and then, "What do you think of the President?"
"The President?" I was at a loss.
"But I'm afraid you would take his view--the Northern view," she mused.
It gave me, suddenly, her meaning. "Oh, the President of the UnitedStates! How you do change the subject!"
Her eyes were upon me, burning with sectional indignation, but sheseemed to be thinking too much to speak. Now, here was a topic that Ihad avoided, and she had plumped it at me. Very well; she should have myview.
"If you mean that a gentleman cannot invite any respectable member ofany race he pleases to dine privately in his house--"
"His house!" She was glowing now with it. "I think he is--I thinkhe is--to have one of them--and even if he likes it, not toremember--cannot speak about him!" she wound up "I should say unbecomingthings." She had walked out, during these words, from behind the counterand as she stood there in the middle of the long room you might havethought she was about to lead a cavalry charge. Then, admirably, sheput it all under, and spoke on with perfect self-control. "Why can'tsomebody explain it to him? If I knew him, I would go to him myself, andI would say, Mr. President, we need not discuss our different tastes asto dinner company. Nor need we discuss how much you benefit the coloredrace by an act which makes every member of it immediately think thathe is fit to dine with any king in the world. But you are staying ina house which is partly our house, ours, the South's, for we, too, paytaxes, you know. And since you also know our deep feeling--you may evencall it a prejudice, if it so pleases you--do you not think that, solong as you are residing in that house, you should not gratuitouslyshock our deep feeling?" She swept a magnificent low curtsy at the air.
"By Jove, Miss La Heu!" I exclaimed, "you put it so that it's ratherhard to answer."
"I'm glad it strikes you so."
"But did it make them all think they were going to dine?"
"Hundreds of thousands. It was proof to them that they were as good asanybody--just as good, without reading or writing or anything. The verynext day some of the laziest and dirtiest where we live had a new strut,like the monkey when you put a red flannel cap on him--only the monkeydoesn't push ladies off the sidewalk. And that state of mind, you know,"said Miss La Heu, softening down from wrath to her roguish laugh, "isn'tthe right state of mind for racial progress! But I wasn't thinking ofthis. You know he has appointed one of them to office here."
A light entered my brain: John Mayrant had a position at the CustomHouse! John Mayrant was subordinate to the President's appointee! Shehadn't changed the subject so violently, after all.
I came squarely at it. "And so you wish him to resign his position?"
But I was ahead of her this time.
"The Chief of Customs?" she wonderingly murmured.
I brought her up with me now. "Did Miss Josephine St. Michael say it wasover his left eye?"
The girl instantly looked everything she thought. "I believe you werepresent!" This was her highly comprehensive exclamation, accompaniedalso by a blush as splendidly young as John Mayrant had been while heso stammeringly brought out his wishes concerning the cake. I at oncedecided to deceive her utterly, and therefore I spoke the exact truth:"No, I wasn't present."
They did their work, my true words; the false impression flowed out ofthem as smoothly as California claret from a French bottle.
"I wonder who told you?" my victim remarked. "But it doesn't reallymatter. Everybody is bound to know it. You surely were the last personwith him in the churchyard?"
"Gracious!" I admitted again with splendidly mendacious veracity. "Howwe do find each other out in Kings Port!"
It was not by any means the least of the delights which I took in thecompany of this charming girl that sometimes she was too much forme, and sometimes I was too much for her. It was, of course, just theaccident of our ages; in a very few years she would catch up, wouldpass, would always be too much for me. Well, to-day it was happily myturn; I wasn't going to finish lunch without knowing all she, at anyrate, could tell me about the left eye and the man in bed.
"Forty years ago," I now, with ingenuity, remarked, "I suppose it wouldhave been pistols."
She assented. "And I like that better--don't you--for gentlemen?"
"Well, you mean that fists are--"
"Yes," she finished for me.
"All the same," I maintained, "don't you think that there ought to besome correspondence, some proportion, between the gravity of the causeand the gravity of--"
"Let the coal-heavers take to their fists!" she scornfully cried."People of our class can't descend--"
"Well, but," I interrupted, "then you give the coal-heavers the palm fordiscrimination."
"How's that?"
"Why, perfectly! Your coal-heaver kills for some offenses, while forlighter ones he--gets a bruise over the left eye."
"You don't meet it, you don't meet it! What is an insult ever but aninsult?"
"Oh, we in the North notice certain degrees--insolence, impudence,impertinence, liberties, rudeness--all different."
She took up my phrase with a sudden odd quietness. "You in the North."
"Why, yes. We have, alas! to expect and allow for rudeness sometimes,even in our chosen few, and for liberties in their chosen few; it's onlythe hotel clerk and the head waiter from whom we usually get impudence;while insolence is the chronic condition of the Wall Street rich."
"You in the North!" she repeated. "And so your Northern eyes can'tsee it, after all!" At these words my intelligence sailed into a greatblank, while she continued: "Frankly--and forgive me for saying it--Iwas hoping that you were one Northerner who would see it."
"But see what?" I barked in my despair.
She did not help me. "If I had been a man, nothing could have insultedme more than that. And that's what you don't see," she regretfullyfinished. "It seems so strange."
I sat in the midst of my great blank, while her handsome eyes restedupon me. In them was that look of a certain inquiry and a certainremoteness with which one pauses, in a museum, before some specimen ofthe cave-dwelling man.
"You comprehend so much," she meditated slowly, aloud; "you've been suchan agreeable disappointment, because your point of view is so often thesame as ours." She was still surveying me with the specimen expression,when it suddenly left her. "Do you mean to sit there and tell me," shebroke out, "that you wouldn't have resented it yourself?"
"O dear!" my mind lamentably said to itself, inside. Of what may havebeen the exterior that I presented to her, sitting over my slice of LadyBaltimore, I can form no impression.
"Put yourself in his place," the girl continued.
"Ah," I gasped, "that is always so easy to say and so hard to do."
My remark proved not a happy one. She made a brief, cold pause overit, and then, as she wheeled round from me, back to the counter: "NoSoutherner would let pass such an affront."
It was final. She regained her usual place, she resumed her ledger; thecurly dog, who had come out to hear our conversation, went in again; Iwas disgraced. Not only with the profile of her short, belligerentnose, but with the chilly way in which she made her pencil move over theledger, she told me plainly that my self-respect had failed to meether tests. This was what my remarkable ingenuity had achieved for me. Iswallowed the last crumbs of Lady Baltimore, and went forward to settlethe account.
"I suppose I'm scarcely entitled to ask for a fresh one to-morrow," Iventured. "I am so fond of this cake."
Her officialness met me adequately. "Certainly the public is entitled towhatever we print upon our bill-of-fare."
Now this was going to be too bad! Henceforth I was to rank merely as"the public," no matter how much Lady Baltimore I should lunch upon! Ahappy thought seized me
, and I spoke out instantly on the strength ofit.
"Miss La Heu, I've a confession to make."
But upon this beginning of mine the inauspicious door opened and youngJohn Mayrant came in. It was all right about his left eye; anybody couldsee that bruise!
"Oh!" he exclaimed, hearty, but somewhat disconcerted. "To think offinding you here! You're going? But I'll see you later?"
"I hope so," I said. "You know where I work."
"Yes--yes. I'll come. We've all sorts of things more to say, haven't we?We--good-by!"
Did I hear, as I gained the street, something being said about theGeneral, and the state of his health?