Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister - HTML preview

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.

XX: What She Wanted Him For

He was neither at the window, nor in his bed, nor anywhere else to be seen, when I opened my eyes upon the world next morning; nor did any answer come when I called his name. I raised myself and saw outside the great branches of the wood, bathed from top to trunk in a sunshine that was no early morning's light; and upon this, the silence of the house spoke plainly to me not of man still sleeping, but of man long risen and gone about his business. I stepped barefoot across the wooden floor to where lay my watch, but it marked an unearthly hour, for I had neglected to wind it at the end of our long and convivial evening--of which my head was now giving me some news. And then I saw a note addressed to me from John Mayrant.

 "You are a good sleeper," it began, "but my conscience is clear as to the Bombo, called by some Kill-devil, about which I hope you will remember that I warned you."

He hoped I should remember! Of course I remembered everything; why did he say that? An apology for his leaving me followed; he had been obliged to take the early train because of the Custom House, where he was serving his final days; they would give me breakfast when ever I should be ready for it, and I was to make free of the place; I had better visit the old church (they had orders about the keys) and drive myself into Kings Port after lunch; the horses would know the way, if I did not. It was the boy's closing sentence which fixed my attention wholly, took it away from Kill-devil Bombo and my Aunt Carola's commission, for the execution of which I now held the clue, and sent me puzzling for the right interpretation of his words:-

"I believe that you will help your friend by that advice which startled me last night, but which I now begin to see more in than I did. Only between alternate injuries, he may find it harder to choose which is the least he can inflict, than you, who look on, find it. For in following your argument, he benefits himself so plainly that the benefit to the other person is very likely obscured to him. But, if you wish to, tell him a Southern gentleman would feel he ought to be shot either way. That's the honorable price for changing your mind in such a case."

No interpretation of this came to me. I planned and carried out my day according to his suggestion; a slow dressing with much cold water, a slow breakfast with much good hot coffee, a slow wandering beneath the dreamy branches of Udolpho,--this course cleared my head of the Bombo, and brought back to me our whole evening, and every word I had said to John, except that I had lost the solution which, last night, the triangle had held for me. At that moment, the triangle, and my whole dealing with the subject of monogamy, had seemed to contain the simplicity of genius; but it had all gone now, and I couldn't get it back; only, what I had contrived to say to John about his own predicament had been certainly well said; I would say that over again to-day. It was the boy and the meaning of his words which escaped me still, baffled me, and formed the whole subject of my attention, even when I was inside the Tern Creek church; so that I retain nothing of that, save a general quaintness, a general loneliness, a little deserted, forgotten token of human doings long since done, standing on its little acre of wilderness amid that solitude which suggests the departed presence of man, and which is so much more potent in the flavor of its desolation than the virgin wilderness whose solitude is still waiting for man to come.

It made no matter whether John had believed in the friend to whom I intended writing advice, or had seen through and accepted in good part my manoeuvre; he had considered my words, that was the point; and he had not slept in his bed, but on it, if sleep had come to him at all; this I found out while dressing. Several times I read his note over. "Between alternate injuries he may find it harder to choose." This was not an answer to me, but an explanation of his own perplexity. At times it sounded almost like an appeal, as if he were saying, "Do not blame me for not being convinced;" and if it was such appeal, why, then, taken with his resolve to do right at any cost, and his night of inward contention, it was poignant. "I believe that you will help your friend." Those words sounded better. But--"tell him a Southern gentleman ought to be shot either way." What was the meaning of this? A chill import rose from it into my thoughts, but that I dismissed. To die on account of Hortense! Such a thing was not to be conceived. And yet, given a high-strung nature, not only trapped by its own standards, but also wrought upon during many days by increasing exasperation and unhappiness while helpless in the trap, and with no other outlook but the trap: the chill import returned to me more than once, and was reasoned away, as, with no attention to my surroundings, I took a pair of oars, and got into a boat belonging to the lodge, and rowed myself slowly among the sluggish windings of Tern Creek.

Whence come those thoughts that we ourselves feel shame at? It shamed me now, as I pulled my boat along, that I should have thoughts of John which needed banishing. What tale would this be to remember of a boy's life, that he gave it to buy freedom from a pledge which need never have been binding? What pearl was this to cast before the sophisticated Hortense? Such act would be robbed of its sadness by its absurdity. Yet, surely, the bitterest tragedies are those of which the central anguish is lost amid the dust of surrounding paltriness. If such a thing should happen here, no one but myself would have seen the lonely figure of John Mayrant, standing by the window and looking out into the dark quiet of the wood; his name would be passed down for a little while as the name of a fool, and then he would be forgotten. "I believe that you will help your friend." Yes; he had certainly written that, and it now came to me that I might have said to him one thing more: Had he given Hortense the chance to know what his feelings to her had become? But he would merely have answered that here it was the duty of a gentleman to lie. Or, had he possibly, at Newport, ever become her lover too much for any escaping now? Had his dead passion once put his honor in a pawn which only marriage could redeem? This might fit all that had come, so far; and still, with such a two as they, I should forever hold the boy the woman's victim. But this did not fit what came after. Perhaps it was the late sitting of the night before, and the hushed and strange solitude of my surroundings now, that had laid my mind open to all these thoughts which my reason, in dealing with, answered continually, one by one, yet which returned, requiring to be answered again; for there are times when our uncomfortable eyes see through the appearances we have arranged for daily life, into the actualities which lie forever behind them.

 Going about thus in my boat, I rowed sleepiness into myself, and pushed into a nook where shade from some thick growth hid the boat and me from the sun; and there, almost enmeshed in the deep lattice of green, I placed my coat beneath my head, and prone in the boat's bottom I drifted into slumber. Once or twice my oblivion was pierced by the roaming honk of the automobile; but with no more than the half-melted consciousness that the Replacers were somewhere in the wood, oblivion closed over me again; and when it altogether left me, it was because of voices near me on the water, or on the bank. Their calls and laughter pushed themselves into my drowsiness, and soon after I grew aware that the Replacers were come here to see what was to be seen at Udolpho--the club, the old church, a country place with a fine avenue--and that it was the church they now couldn't get into, because my visit had disturbed the usual whereabouts of the key, of which Gazza was now going in search. I could have told him where to find it, but it pleased me not to disturb myself for this, as I listened to him assuring Kitty that it was probably in the cabin beyond the bridge, but not to be alarmed if he did not immediately return with it. Kitty, not without audible mirth, assured him that they should not be alarmed at all, to which the voice of Hortense supplemented, "Not at all." They were evidently in a boat, which Hortense herself was rowing, and which she seemed to bring to the bank, where I gathered that Kitty got out and sat while Hortense remained in the boat. There was the little talk and movement which goes with borrowing of a cigarette, a little exclamation about not falling out, accompanied by the rattle of a displaced oar, and then stillness, and the smell of tobacco smoke.

 Presently Kitty spoke. "Charley will be back to-night."

 To this I heard no reply.

 "What did his telegram say?" Kitty inquired, after another silence.

 "It's all right." This was Hortense. Her slow, rich murmur was as deliberate as always.

 "Mr. Bohm knew it would be," said Kitty. "He said it wouldn't take five minutes' talk from Charley to get a contract worth double what they were going to accept."

 After this, nothing came to me for several minutes, save the odor of the cigarettes.

Of course there was now but one proper course for me, namely, to utter a discreet cough, and thus warn them that some one was within earshot. But I didn't! I couldn't! Strength failed, curiosity won, my baser nature triumphed here, and I deliberately remained lying quiet and hidden. It was the act of no gentleman, you will say. Well, it was; and I must simply confess to it, hoping that I am not the only gentleman in the world who has, on occasion, fallen beneath himself.

 "Hortense Rieppe," began Kitty, "what do you intend to say to my brother after what he has done about those phosphates?"

 "He is always so kind," murmured Hortense.

 "Well, you know what it means."

 "Means?"

 "If you persist in this folly, you'll drop out."

 Hortense chose another line of speculation. "I wonder why your brother is so sure of me?"

 "Charley is a set man. And I've never seen him so set on anything as on you, Hortense Rieppe." "He is always so kind," murmured Hortense again.

"He's a man you'll always know just where to find," declared Kitty. "Charley is safe. He'll never take you by surprise, never fly out, never do what other people don't do, never make any one stare at him by the way he looks, or the way he acts, or anything he says, or--or--why, how you can hesitate between those two men after that ridiculous, childish, conspicuous, unusual scene on the bridge--"

 "Unusual. Yes," said Hortense.

Kitty's eloquence and voice mounted together. "I should think it was unusual! Tearing people's money up, and making a rude, awkward fuss that everybody had to smooth over as hard as they could! Why, even Mr. Rodgers says that sort of thing isn't done, and you're always saying he knows."

 "No," said Hortense. "It isn't done."

"Well, I've never seen anything approaching such behavior in our set. And he was ready to go further. Nobody knows where it might have gone to, if Charley's perfect coolness hadn't rebuked him and brought him to his senses. There's where it is, that's what I mean, Hortense, by saying you could always feel safe with Charley."

 Hortense put in a languid word. "I think I should always feel safe with Mr. Mayrant."

But Kitty was a simple soul. "Indeed you couldn't, Hortense! I assure you that you're mistaken. There's where you get so wrong about men sometimes. I have been studying that boy for your sake ever since we got here, and I know him through and through. And I tell you, you cannot count upon him. He has not been used to our ways, and I see no promise of his getting used to them. He will stay capable of outbreaks like that horrid one on the bridge. Wherever you take him, wherever you put him, no matter how much you show him of us, and the way we don't allow conspicuous things like that to occur, believe me, Hortense, he'll never learn, he'll never smooth down. You may brush his hair flat and keep him appearing like other people for a while, but a time will come, something will happen, and that boy'll be conspicuous. Charley would never be conspicuous."

 "No," assented Hortense.

 Kitty urged her point. "Why, I never saw or beard of anything like that on the bridge--that is, among--among--us!"

"No," assented Hortense, again, and her voice dropped lower with each statement. "One always sees the same thing. Always hears the same thing. Always the same thing." These last almost inaudible words sank away into the silent pool of Hortense's meditation.

 "Have another cigarette," said Kitty. "You've let yours fall into the water."

 I heard them moving a little, and then they must have resumed their seats.

 "You'll drop out of it," Kitty now pursued.

 "Into what shall I drop?"

"Just being asked to the big things everybody goes to and nobody counts. For even with the way Charley has arranged about the phosphates, it will not be enough to keep you in our swim--just by itself. He'll weigh more than his money, because he'll stay different--too different."

"He was not so different last summer." "Because he was not there long enough, my dear. He learned bridge quickly, and of course he had seen champagne before, and nobody had time to notice him. But he'll be married now and they will notice him, and they won't want him. To think of your dropping out!" Kitty became very earnest. "To think of not seeing you among us! You'll be in none of the small things; you'll never be asked to stay at the smart houses--why, not even your name will be in the paper! Not a foreigner you entertain, not a dinner you give, not a thing you wear, will ever be described next morning. And Charley's so set on you, and you're so just exactly made for each other, and it would all be so splendid, and cosey, and jolly! And to throw all this away for that crude boy!" Kitty's disdain was high at the thought of John.

 Hortense took a little time over it "Once," she then stated, "he told me he could drown in my hair as joyfully as the Duke of Clarence did in his butt of Malmsey wine!"

 Kitty gave a little scream. "Did you let him?"

 "One has to guard one's value at times."

 Kitty's disdain for John increased. "How crude!"

 Hortense did not make any answer.

 "How crude!" Kitty, after some silence, repeated. She seemed to have found the right word.

Steps sounded upon the bridge, and the voice of Gazza cried out that the stupid key was at the imbecile club-house, whither he was now going for it, and not to be alarmed. Their voices answered reassuringly, and Gazza was heard growing distant, singing some little song.

 Kitty was apparently unable to get away from John's crudity. "He actually said that?"

 "Yes."

 "Where was it? Tell me about it, Hortense."

 "We were walking in the country on that occasion."

 Kitty still lingered with it. "Did he look--I've never had any man--I wonder if--how did you feel?"

 "Not disagreeably." And Hortense permitted herself to laugh musically.

 Kitty's voice at once returned to the censorious tone. "Well, I call such language as that very--very--"

 Hortense helped her. "Operatic?"

 "He could never be taught in those ways either," declared Kitty. "You would find his ardor always untrained--provincial."

 Once more Hortense abstained from making any answer.

 Kitty grew superior. "Well, if that's to your taste, Hortense Rieppe!"

 "It was none of it like Charley," murmured Hortense.

 "I should think not! Charley's not crude. What do you see in that man?" "I like the way his hair curls above his ears."

 For this Kitty found nothing but an impatient exclamation.

And now the voice of Hortense sank still deeper in dreaminess,--down to where the truth lay; and from those depths came the truth, flashing upward through the drowsy words she spoke: "I think I want him for his innocence."

What light these words may have brought to Kitty, I had no chance to learn; for the voice of Gazza returning with the key put an end to this conversation. But I doubted if Kitty had it in her to fathom the nature of Hortense. Kitty was like a trim little clock that could tick tidily on an ornate shelf; she could go, she could keep up with time, with the rapid epoch to which she belonged, but she didn't really have many works. I think she would have scoffed at that last languorous speech as a piece of Hortense's nonsense, and that is why Hortense uttered it aloud: she was safe from being understood. But in my ears it sounded the note of revelation, the simple central secret of Hortense's fire, a flame fed overmuch with experience, with sophistication, grown cold under the ministrations of adroitness, and lighted now by the "crudity" of John's love-making. And when, after an interval, I had rowed my boat back, and got into the carriage, and started on my long drive from Udolpho to Kings Port, I found that there was almost nothing about all this which I did not know now. Hortense, like most riddles when you are told the answer, was clear:-

"I think I want him for his innocence."

Yes; she was tired of love-making whose down had been rubbed off; she hungered for love-making with the down still on, even if she must pay for it with marriage. Who shall say if her enlightened and modern eye could not look beyond such marriage (when it should grow monotonous) to divorce?

XXI: Hortense's Cigarette Goes Out

John was the riddle that I could not read. Among my last actions of this day was one that had been almost my earliest, and bedtime found me staring at his letter, as I stood, half undressed, by my table. The calm moon brought back Udolpho and what had been said there, as it now shone down upon the garden where Hortense had danced. I stared at John's letter as if its words were new to me, instead of being words that I could have fluently repeated from beginning to end without an error; it was as if, by virtue of mere gazing at the document, I hoped to wring more meaning from it, to divine what had been in the mind which had composed it; but instead of this, I seemed to get less from it, instead of more. Had the boy's purpose been to mystify me, he could scarce have done better. I think that he had no such intention, for it would have been wholly unlike him; but I saw no sign in it that I had really helped him, had really shaken his old quixotic resolve, nor did I see any of his having found a new way of his own out of the trap. I could not believe that the dark road of escape had taken any lodgement in his thought, but had only passed over it, like a cloud with a heavy shadow. But these are surmises at the best: if John had formed any plan, I can never know it, and Juno's remarks at breakfast on Sunday morning sounded strange, like something a thousand miles away. For she spoke of the wedding, and of the fact that it would certainly be a small one. She went over the names of the people who would have to be invited, and doubted if she were one of these. But if she should be, then she would go--for the sake of Miss Josephine St. Michael, she declared. In short, it was perfectly plain that Juno was much afraid of being left out, and that wild horses could not drag her away from it, if an invitation came to her. But, as I say, this side of the wedding seemed to have nothing to do with it, when I thought of all that lay beneath; my one interest to-day was to see John Mayrant, to get from him, if not by some word, then by some look or intonation, a knowledge of what he meant to do. Therefore, disappointment and some anxiety met me when I stepped from the Hermana's gangway upon her deck, and Charley asked me if he was coming. But the launch, sent back to wait, finally brought John, apologizing for his lateness.

 Meanwhile, I was pleased to find among the otherwise complete party General Rieppe. What I had seen of him from a distance held promise, and the hero's nearer self fulfilled it. We fell to each other's lot for the most natural of reasons: nobody else desired the company of either of us. Charley was making himself the devoted servant of Hortense, while Kitty drew Beverly, Bohm, and Gazza in her sprightly wake. To her, indeed, I made a few compliments during the first few minutes after my coming aboard, while every sort of drink and cigar was being circulated among us by the cabin boy. Kitty's costume was the most markedly maritime thing that I have ever beheld in any waters, and her white shoes looked (I must confess) supremely well on her pretty little feet. I am no advocate of sumptuary laws; but there should be one prohibiting big-footed women from wearing white shoes. Did these women know what a spatulated effect their feet so shod produce, no law would be needed. Yes, Kitty was superlatively, stridently maritime; you could have known from a great distance that she belonged to the very latest steam yacht class, and that she was perfectly ignorant of the whole subject. On her left arm, for instance, was worked a red propeller with one blade down, and two chevrons. It was the rating mark for a chief engineer, but this, had she known it, would not have disturbed her.

"I chose it," she told me in reply to my admiration of it, "because it's so pretty. Oh, won't we enjoy ourselves while those stupid old blue-bloods in Kings Port are going to church!" And with this she gave a skip, and ordered the cabin boy to bring her a Remsen cooler. Beverly Rodgers called for dwarf's blood, and I chose a horse's neck, and soon found myself in the society of the General.

He was sipping whiskey and plain water. "I am a rough soldiers sir," he explained to me, "and I keep to the simple beverage of the camp. Had we not 'rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of'?" And he waved a stately hand at my horse's neck. "You are acquainted with the works of Shakespeare?"

 I replied that I had a moderate knowledge of them, and assured him that a horse's neck was very simple.

 "Doubtless, sir; but a veteran is ever old-fashioned."

 "Papa," said Hortense, "don't let the sun shine upon your head."

 "Thank you, daughter mine." They said no more; but I presently felt that for some reason she watched him.

He moved farther beneath the awning, and I followed him. "Are you a father, sir? No? Then you cannot appreciate what it is to confide such a jewel as yon girl to another's keeping." He summoned the cabin boy, who brought him some more of the simple beverage of the camp, and I, feeling myself scarce at liberty to speak on matters so near to him and so far from me as his daughter's marriage, called his attention to the beautiful aspect of Kings Port, spread out before us in a long white line against the blue water.

 The General immediately seized his opportunity. "'Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain!' You are acquainted with the works of Goldsmith, sir?"

I professed some knowledge of this author also, and the General's talk flowed ornately onward. Though I had little to say to him about his daughter's marriage, he had much to say to me. Miss Josephine St. Michael would have been gratified to hear that her family was considered suitable for Hortense to contract an alliance with. "My girl is not stepping down, sir," the father assured me; and he commended the St. Michaels and the whole connection. He next alluded tragically but vaguely to misfortunes which had totally deprived him of income. I could not precisely fix what his inheritance had been; sometimes he spoke of cotton, but next it would be rice, and he touched upon sugar more than once; but, whatever it was, it had been vast and was gone. He told me that I could not imagine the feelings of a father who possessed a jewel and no dowry to give her. "A queen's estate should have been hers," he said. "But what! 'Who steals my purse steals trash.'" And he sat up, nobly braced by the philosophic thought. But he soon was shaking his head over his enfeebled health. Was I aware that he had been the cause of postponing the young people's joy twice? Twice had the doctors forbidden him to risk the emotions that would attend his giving his jewel away. He dwelt upon his shattered system to me, and, indeed, it required some dwelling on, for he was the picture of admirable preservation. "But I know what it is myself," he declared, "to be a lover and have bliss delayed. They shall be united now. A soldier must face all arrows. What!"

I had hoped he might quote something here, but was disappointed. His conversation would soon cease to interest me, should I lose the excitement of watching for the next classic; and my eye wandered from the General to the water, where, happily, I saw John Mayrant coming in the launch. I briskly called the General's attention to him, and was delighted with the unexpected result.

 "'Oh, young Lochinvar has come out of the West,'" said the General, lifting his glass.

 I touched it ceremoniously with mine. "The day will be hot," I said; "'The boy stood on the burning deck.'"

On this I made my escape from him, and, leaving him to his whiskey and his contemplating, I became aware that the eyes of the rest of the party were eager to watch the greeting between Hortense and John. But there was nothing to see. Hortense waited until her lover had made his apologies to Charley for being late, and, from the way they met, she might have been no more to him than Kitty was. Whatever might be thought, whatever might be known, by these onlookers, Hortense set the pace of how the open secret was to be taken. She made it, for all of us, as smooth and smiling as the waters of Kings Port were this fine day. How much did they each know? I asked myself how much they had shared in common. To these Replacers Kings Port had opened no doors; they and their automobile had skirted around the outside of all things. And if Charley knew about the wedding, he also knew that it had been already twice postponed. He, too, could have said, as Miss Eliza had once said to me, "The cake is not baked yet." The General's talk to me (I felt as I took in how his health had been the centred point) was probably the result of previous arrangements with Hortense herself; and