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Arthur Conan Doyle - "The Captain of the Polestar"

Charles and Mary Lamb - "Tales of Shakespeare"

Ilya Tolstoy - "Reminiscences of Tolstoy"

Bayard Taylor - "Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home"

Lady Baltimore

O >> Owen Wister >> Lady Baltimore




"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 she quite as certainly inspired
whatever she allowed him to say to Charley.

As for Kitty, she knew that her brother was "set"; she always came back
to that.

If Hortense found this Sunday morning a passage of particularly delicate
steering, she showed it in no way, unless by that heightened radiance and
triumph of beauty which I had seen in her before. No; the splendor of the
day, the luxuries of the Hermana, the conviviality of the Replacers--all
melted the occasion down to an ease and enjoyment in which even John
Mayrant, with his grave face, was not perceptible, unless, like myself,
one watched him.

It was my full expectation that we should now get under way and proceed
among the various historic sights of Kings Port harbor, but of this I saw
no signs anywhere on board the Hermana. Abeam of the foremast her boat
booms remained rigged out on port and starboard, her boats riding to
painters, while her crew wore a look as generally lounging as that of her
passengers. Beverly Rodgers told me the reason: we had no pilot; the
negro Waterman engaged for this excursion in the upper waters had failed
of appearance, and when Charley was for looking up another, Kitty, Bohm,
and Gazza had dissuaded him.

"Kitty," said Beverly, "told me she didn't care about the musty old forts
and things, anyhow."

I looked at Kitty, and heard her tongue ticking away, like the little
clock she was; she had her Bohm, she had her nautical costume and her
Remsen cooler. These, with the lunch that would come in time, were enough
for her.

"But it was such a good chance!" I exclaimed in disappointment

"Chance for what, old man?"

"To see everything--the forts, the islands--and it's beautiful, you know,
all the way to the navy yard."

Beverly followed my glance to where the gay company was sitting among the
cracked ice, and bottles, and cigar boxes, chattering volubly, with its
back to the scenery. He gave his laisser-faire chuckle, and laid a hand
on my shoulder. "Don't worry 'em with forts and islands, old boy! They
know what they want. No living breed on earth knows better what it
wants."

"Well, they don't get it."

"Ho, don't they?"

"The cold fear of ennui gnaws at their vitals this minute."

Shrill laughter from Kitty and Gazza served to refute my theory.

"Of course, very few know what's the matter with them," I added. "You
seldom spot an organic disease at the start."

"Hm," said Beverly, lengthily. "You put a pin through some of 'em.
Hortense hasn't got the disease, though."

"Ah, she spotted it! She's taking treatment. It's likely to help her--for
a time."

He looked at me. "You know something;"

I nodded. He looked at Hortense, who was now seated among the noisy group
with quiet John beside her. She was talking to Bohm, she had no air of
any special relation to John, but there was a lustre about her that spoke
well for the treatment.

"Then it's coming off?" said Beverly.

"She has been too much for him," I answered.

Beverly misunderstood. "He doesn't look it."

"That's what I mean."

"But the fool can cut loose!"

"Oh, you and I have gone over all that! I've even gone over it with him."

Beverly looked at Hortense again. "And her fire-eater's fortune is about
double what it would have been. I don't see how she's going to square
herself with Charley."

"She'll wait till that's necessary. It isn't necessary to-day."

We had to drop our subject here, for the owner of the Hermana approached
us with the amiable purpose, I found, of making himself civil for a while
to me.

"I think you would have been interested to see the navy yard," I said to
him.

"I have seen it," Charley replied, in his slightly foreign, careful
voice. "It is not a navy yard. It is small politics and a big swamp. I
was not interested."

"Dear me!" I cried. "But surely it's going to be very fine!"

"Another gold brick sold to Uncle Sam." Charley's words seemed always to
drop out like little accurately measured coins from some minting machine.
"They should not have changed from the old place if they wanted a harbor
that could be used in war-time. Here they must always keep at least one
dredge going out at the jetties. So the enemy blows up your dredge and
you are bottled in, or bottled out. It is very simple for the enemy. And,
for Kings Port, navy yards do not galvanize dead trade. It was a gold
brick. You have not been on the Hermana before?"

He knew that I had not, but he wishes to show her to me; and I soon noted
a difference as radical as it was diverting between this banker-
yachtsman's speech when he talked of affairs on land and when he attempted
to deal with nautical matters. The clear, dispassionate finality of his
tone when phosphates, or railroads, or navy yards, or imperial loans were
concerned, left him, and changed to something very like a recitation of
trigonometry well memorized but not at all mastered; he could do that
particular sum, but you mustn't stop him; and I concluded that I would
rather have Charley for my captain during a panic in Wall Street than in
a hurricane at sea. He, too, wore highly pronounced sea clothes of the
ornamental kind; and though they fitted him physically, they hung baggily
upon his unmarine spirit; giving him the air, as it were, of a broiled
quail served on oyster shells. Beverly Rodgers, the consummate Beverly,
was the only man of us whose clothes seemed to belong to him; he looked
as if he could sail a boat.

While the cabin boy continued to rush among the guests with siphons, ice,
and fresh refreshments, Charley became the Hermana's guidebook for me;
and our interview gave me, I may say, entertainment unalloyed, although
there lay all the while, beneath the entertainment, my sadness and
concern about John. Charley was owner of the Hermana, there was no doubt
of that; she had cost him (it was not long before he told me) fifty
thousand dollars, and to run her it cost him a thousand a month. Yes, he
was her owner, but there it stopped, no matter with how solemn a face he
inspected each part of her, or spoke of her details; he was as much a
passenger on her as myself; and this was as plain on the equally solemn
faces of his crew, from the sailing-master down through the two
quartermasters to the five deck-hands, as was the color of the Hermana's
stack, which was, of course, yellow. She was a pole-mast, schooner-rigged
steam yacht, Charley accurately told me, with clipper bow and spiked
bowsprit.

"About a hundred tons?" I inquired.

"Yes. A hundred feet long, beam twenty feet, and she draws twelve feet,"
said Charley; and I thought I detected the mate listening to him.

He now called my attention to the flags, and I am certain that I saw the
sailing-master hide his mouth with his hand. Some of the deck-hands
seemed to gather delicately nearer to us.

"Sunday, of course," I said; and I pointed to the Jack flying from a
staff at the bow.

But Charley did not wish me to tell him about the flags, he wished to
tell me about the flags. "I am very strict about all this," he said, his
gravity and nauticality increasing with every word. "At the fore truck
flies our club burgee."

I went through my part, giving a solemn, silent, intelligent assent.

"That is my private signal at the main truck. It was designed by Miss
Rieppe."

As I again intelligently nodded, I saw the boatswain move an elbow into
the ribs of one of the quartermasters.

"On the staff at the taffrail I have the United States yacht ensign,"
Charley continued. "That's all," he said, looking about for more flags,
and (to his disappointment, I think) finding no more. For he added: "But
at twelve o'c--at eight bells, the crew's meal-flag will be in the port
fore rigging. While we are at lunch, my meal-flag will be in the
starboard main rigging."

"It should be there all day," I was tempted to remark to him, as my
wandering eye fell on the cabin boy carrying something more on a plate to
Kitty. But instead of this I said: "Well, she's a beautiful boat!"

Charley shook his head. "I'm going to get rid of her."

I was surprised. "Isn't she all right?" It seemed to me that the crew
behind us were very attentive now.

"There is not enough refrigerator space," said Charley. One of the
deck-hands whirled round instantly; but stolidity sat like adamant upon
the faces of the others as Charley turned in their direction, and we
continued our tour of the Hermana. Thus the little banker let me see his
little soul, deep down; and there I saw that to pass for a real
yachtsman--which he would never be able to do--was dearer to his pride
than to bring off successfully some huge and delicate matter in the
world's finance--which he could always do supremely well. "I'm just like
that, too," I thought to myself; and we returned to the gay Kitty.

But Kitty, despite her gayety, had serious thoughts upon her mind.
Charley's attentions to me had met all that politeness required, and as
we went aft again, his sister caused certain movements and rearrangements
to happen with chairs and people. I didn't know this at once, but I knew
it when I found myself somehow sitting with her and John, and saw
Hortense with Charley. Hortense looked over at Kitty with a something
that had in it both raised eyebrows and a shrug, though these visible
signs did not occur; and, indeed, so far as anything visible went (except
the look) you might have supposed that now Hortense had no thoughts for
any man in the world save Charley. And John was plainly more at ease with
Kitty! He began to make himself agreeable, so that once or twice she gave
him a glance of surprise. There was nothing to mark him out from the
others, except his paleness in the midst of their redness. Yachting
clothes bring out wonderfully how much you are in the habit of eating and
drinking; and an innocent stranger might have supposed that the Replacers
were richly sunburned from exposure to the blazing waters of Cuba and the
tropics. Kitty deemed it suitable to extol Kings Port to John. "Quaint"
was the word that did most of this work for her; she found everything
that, even the negroes; and when she had come to the end of it, she
supposed the inside must be just as "quaint" as the outside.

"It is," said John Mayrant. He was enjoying Kitty. Then he became
impertinent. "You ought to see it."

"Do you stay inside much?" said Kitty.

"We all do," said John. "Some of us never come out."

"But you came out?" Kitty suggested.

"Oh, I've been out," John returned. He was getting older. I doubt if the
past few years of his life had matured him as much as had the past few
days. Then he looked at Kitty in the eyes. "And I'd always come out--if
Romance rang the bell."

"Hm!" said Kitty. "Then you know that ring?"

"We begin to hear it early in Kings Port," remarked John. "About the age
of fourteen."

Kitty looked at him with an interest that now plainly revealed curiosity
also. It occurred to me that he could not have found any great
embarrassment in getting on at Newport. "What if I rang the bell myself?"
explained Kitty.

"Come in the evening," returned John. "We won't go home till morning."

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