第36章 High Walk and the Ladies(5)

"Oh,well!you will hear anything in a boarding-house.Indeed,that would be a great deal too good to be true.""May I ask where Miss Rieppe is all this while?""The last news was from Palm Beach,where the air was said to be necessary for the General.""But,"Mrs.Weguelin repeated,"we have every reason to believe that she is coming here in an automobile.""We shall have to call,of course,"added Mrs.Gregory to her,not to me;they were leaving me out of it.Yes,these ladies were forgetting about me in their using preoccupation over whatever crisis it was that now hung over John Mayrant's love affairs--a preoccupation which was evidently part of Kings Port's universal buzz to-day,and which my joining them in the street had merely mitigated for a moment.I did not wish to be left out of it;I cannot tell you why--perhaps it was contagious in the local air--but a veritable madness of craving to know about it seized upon me.

Of course,I saw that Miss Rieppe was,almost too grossly and obviously,"playing for time";the health of people's fathers did not cause weekly extensions of this sort.But what was it that the young lady expected time to effect for her?Her release,formally,by her young man,on the ground of his worldly ill fortune?Or was it for an offer from the owner of the Hermana that she was waiting,before she should take the step of formally releasing John Mayrant?No,neither of these conjectures seemed to furnish a key to the tactics of Miss Rieppe and the theory that each of these affianced parties was strategizing to cause the other to assume the odium of breaking their engagement,with no result save that of repeatedly countermanding a wedding-cake,struck me as belonging admirably to a stage-comedy in three acts,but scarcely to life as we find it.Besides,poor John Mayrant was,all too plainly,not strategizing;he was playing as straight a game as the honest heart of a gentleman could inspire.And so,baffled at all points,I said (for I simply had to try something which might lead to my sharing in Kings Port's vibrating secret):--"I can't make out whether she wants to marry him or not."Mrs.Gregory answered."That is just what she is coming to see for herself.""But since her love was for his phosphates only--!"was my natural exclamation.

It caused (and this time I did not expect it)my inveterate ladies to consult each other's expressions.They prolonged their silence so much that I spoke again:--"And backing out of this sort of thing can be done,I should think,quite as cleverly,and much more simply,from a distance."It was Mrs.Weguelin who answered now,or,rather,who headed me off.

"Have you been able to make out whether he wants to marry her or not?""Oh,he never comes near any of that with me!""Certainly not.But we all understand that he has taken a fancy to you,and that you have talked much with him."So they all understood this,did they?This,too,had played its little special part in the buzz?Very well,then,nothing of my private impressions should drop from my lips here,to be quoted and misquoted and battledored and shuttlecocked,until it reached the boy himself (as it would inevitably)in fantastic disarrangement.I laughed."Oh,yes!I have talked much with him.Shakespeare,I think,was our latest subject."Mrs.Weguelin was plainly watching for something to drop."Shakespeare!"Her tone was of surprise.

I then indulged myself in that most delightful sort of impertinence,which consists in the other person's not seeing it."You wouldn't be likely to have heard of that yet.It occurred only before dinner to-day.

But we have also talked optimism,pessimism,sociology,evolution--Mr.

Mayrant would soon become quite--"I stopped myself on the edge of something very clumsy.

But sharp Mrs.Gregory finished for me."Yes,you mean that if he didn't live in Kings Port (where we still have reverence,at any rate),he fit would imbibe all the shallow quackeries of the hour and resemble all the clever young donkeys of the minute.""Maria!"Mrs.Weguelin murmurously expostulated.

Mrs.Gregory immediately made me a handsome but equivocal apology."I wasn't thinking of you at all!"she declared gayly;and it set me doubting if perhaps she hadn't,after all,comprehended my impertinence.

"And,thank Heaven!"she continued,"John is one of us,in spite of his present stubborn course."But Mrs.Weguelin's beautiful eyes were resting upon me with that disapproval I had come to know.To her,sociology and evolution and all "isms"were new-fangled inventions and murky with offense;to touch them was defilement,and in disclosing them to John Mayrant I was a corrupter of youth.She gathered it all up into a word that was radiant with a kind of lovely maternal gentleness:--"We should not wish John to become radical."

In her voice,the whole of old Kings Port was enshrined:hereditary faith and hereditary standards,mellow with the adherence of generations past,and solicitous for the boy of the young generation.I saw her eyes soften at the thought of him;and throughout the rest of our talk to its end her gaze would now and then return to me,shadowed with disapproval.