Lady Baltimore Part 41

"Get a boat, quick," said John to me; and with his coat flung off he was in the river, whose current Hortense could scarce have reckoned with; for they were both already astern as I ran out on the port boat boom.

Gazza was dancing and shrieking, "Man overboard!" which, indeed, was the correct expression, only it did not apply to himself. Gazza was a very sensible person. I had, as I dropped into the nearest boat, a brisk sight of the sailing-master, springing like a jack-in-the-box on the deserted deck, with a roar of "Where's that haymaker?" His reference was to the anchor watch. The temptation to procure good matches to light his pipe had ended (I learned later) by proving too much for this responsible sailor-man, and he had unfortunately chosen for going below just the unexpected moment when it had entered the daring head of Hortense to perform this extravagance. Of course, before I had pulled many strokes, the deck of the Hermana was alive with many manifestations of life-saving and they had most likely been in time. But I am not perfectly sure of this; the current was strong, and a surprising distance seemed to broaden between me and the Hermana before another boat came into sight around her stern. By then, or just after that (for I cannot clearly remember the details of these few anxious minutes), I had caught up with John, whose face, and total silence, as he gripped the stern of the boat with one hand and held Hortense with the other, plainly betrayed it was high time somebody came. A man can swim (especially in salt water) with his shoes on, and his clothes add nothing of embarra.s.sment, if his arms are free; but a woman's clothes do not help either his buoyancy or the freedom of his movement. John now lifted Hortense's two hands, which took a good hold of the boat. From between her lips the dishevelled cigarette, bitten through and limp, fell into the water. The boat felt the weight of the two hands to it.

"Take care," I warned John.

Hortense opened her eyes and looked at me; she knew that I meant her.

"I'll not swamp you." This was her first remark. Her next was when, after no incautious haste, I had hauled her in over the stern, John working round to the bow for the sake of balance: "I was not dressed for swimming." Very quietly did Hortense speak; very coolly, very evenly; no fainting--and no flippancy; she was too game for either.

After this, whatever emotions she had felt, or was feeling, she showed none of them, unless it was by her complete silence. John's coming into the boat we managed with sufficient dexterity; aided by the horrified Charley, who now arrived personally in the other boat, and was for taking all three of us into that. But this was altogether unnecessary; he was made to understand that such transferences as it would occasion were superfluous, and so one of his men stepped into our boat to help me to row back against the current; and for this I was not unthankful.

Our return took, it appeared to me, a much longer time than everything else which had happened. When I looked over my shoulder at the Hermana, she seemed an incredible distance off, and when I looked again, she had grown so very little nearer that I abandoned this fruitless proceeding.

Charley's boat had gone ahead to announce the good news to General Rieppe as soon as possible. But if our return was long to me, to Hortense it was not so. She sat beside her lover in the stern, and I knew that he was more to her than ever: it was her spirit also that wanted him now. Poor Kitty's words of prophecy had come perversely true: "Something will happen, and that boy'll be conspicuous." Well, it had happened with a vengeance, and all wrong for Kitty, and all wrong for me! Then I remembered Charley, last of all. My doubt as to what he would have done, had he been on deck, was settled later by learning from his own lips that he did not know how to swim.

Yes, the sentimental world (and by that I mean the immense and mournful preponderance of fools, and not the few of true sentiment) would soon be exclaiming: "How romantic! She found her heart! She had a glimpse of Death's angel, and in that light saw her life's true happiness!" But I should say nothing like that, nor would Miss Josephine St. Michael, if I read that lady at all right. She didn't know what I did about Hortense.

She hadn't overheard Sophistication confessing amorous curiosity about Innocence; but the old Kings Port lady's sound instinct would tell her that a souse in the water wasn't likely to be enough to wash away the seasoning of a lifetime; and she would wait, as I should, for the day when Hortense, having had her taste of John's innocence, and having grown used to the souse in the water, would wax restless for the Replacers, for excitement, for complexity, for the prismatic life. Then it might interest her to corrupt John; but if she couldn't, where would her occupation be, and how were they going to pull through?

But now, there sat Hortense in the stern, melted into whatever best she was capable of; it had come into her face, her face was to be read--for the first time since I had known it--and, strangely enough, I couldn't read John's at all. It seemed happy, which was impossible.

"Way enough!" he cried suddenly, and, at his command, the sailor and I took in our oars. Here was Hermana's gangway, and crowding faces above, and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns and tears from Kitty. Yes, Hortense would have liked that return voyage to last longer. I was first on the gangway, and stood to wait and give them a hand out; but she lingered, and; rising slowly, spoke her first word to him, softly:--

"And so I owe you my life."

"And so I restore it to you complete," said John, instantly.

None could have heard it but myself--unless the sailor, beyond whose comprehension it was--and I doubted for a moment if I could have heard right; but it was for a moment only. Hortense stood stiff, and then, turning, came in front of him, and I read her face for an instant longer before the furious hate in it was mastered to meet her father's embrace, as I helped her up the gang.

"Daughter mine!" said the General, with a magnificent break in his voice.

But Hortense was game to the end. She took Kitty's-hysterics and the men's various grades of congratulation; her word to Gazza would have been supreme, but for his imperishable rejoinder.

"I told you you wouldn't jump," was what she said.

Gazza stretched both arms, pointing to John. "But a native! He was surer to find you!"

At this they all remembered John, whom they thus far hadn't thought of.

"Where is that lion-hearted boy?" the General called out.

John hadn't got out of the boat; he thought he ought to change his clothes, he said; and when Charley, truly astonished, proffered his entire wardrobe and reminded him of lunch, it was thank you very much, but if he could be put ash.o.r.e--I looked for Hortense, to see what she would do, but Hortense, had gone below with Kitty to change her clothes, and the genuinely hearty protestations from all the rest brought merely pleasantly firm politeness from John, as he put on again the coat he had flung off on jumping. At least he would take a drink, urged Charley.

Yes, thank you, he would; and he chose brandy-and-soda, of which he poured himself a remarkably stiff one. Charley and I poured ourselves milder ones, for the sake of company.

"Here's how," said Charley to John.

"Yes, here's how," I added more emphatically.

John looked at Charley with a somewhat extraordinary smile. "Here's unquestionably how!" he exclaimed.

We had a gay lunch; I should have supposed there was plenty of room in the Hermana's refrigerator; nor did the absence of Hortense and John, the cause of our jubilation, at all interfere with the jubilation itself; by the time the launch was ready to put me ash.o.r.e, Gazza had sung several miles of "good music" and double that quant.i.ty of "razzla-dazzla," and General Rieppe was crying copiously, and a.s.suring everybody that G.o.d was very good to him. But Kitty had told us all that she intended Hortense to remain quiet in her cabin; and she kept her word.

Quite suddenly, as the launch was speeding me toward Kings Port, I exclaimed aloud: "The cake!"

And, I thought, the cake was now settled forever.

XXII: Behind the Times

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 n.o.ble 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 b.e.s.t.i.a.lize 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 embarra.s.sment 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, blus.h.i.+ng 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 sh.o.r.es of the town, there must have been in certain quarters a considerable splas.h.i.+ng. 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 gra.s.s 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 splas.h.i.+ng. 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 splas.h.i.+ng 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.