Part 16 (2/2)

”Are such subjects as--as stocks” (she softly cloaked this word in scorn immeasurable)--”are such subjects mentioned in your good society at the North?”

I laughed heartily. ”Everything's mentioned!”

The lady paused over my reply. ”I am afraid you must feel us to be very old-fas.h.i.+oned in, Kings Port,” she then said.

”But I rejoice in it!”

She ignored my not wholly dexterous compliment. ”And some subjects,” she pursued, ”seem to us so grave that if we permit ourselves to speak of them at all we cannot speak of them lightly.”

No, they couldn't speak of them lightly! Here, then, stood my two sins revealed; everything I had imparted, and also my tone of imparting it, had displeased Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael, not with the thing, but with me. I had transgressed her sound old American code of good manners, a code slightly pompous no doubt, but one in which no familiarity was allowed to breed contempt. To her good taste, there were things in the world which had, apparently, to exist, but which one banished from drawing-room discussion as one conceals from sight the kitchen and outhouses; one dealt with them only when necessity compelled, and never in small-talk; and here had I been, so to speak, small-talking them in that glib, modern, irresponsible cadence with which our brazen age rings and clatters like the beating of triangles and gongs. Not triangles and gongs, but rather strings and flutes, had been the music to which Kings Port society had attuned its measured voice.

I saw it all, and even saw that my own dramatic sense of Mrs. Weguelin's dignity had perversely moved me to be more flippant than I actually felt; and I promised myself that a more chastened tone should forthwith redeem me from the false position I had got into.

”My dear,” said Mrs. Gregory to Mrs. Weguelin, ”we must ask him to excuse our provincialism.”

For the second time I was not wholly dexterous. ”But I like it so much!”

I exclaimed; and both ladies laughed frankly.

Mrs. Gregory brought in a fable. ”You'll find us all 'country mice'

here.”

This time I was happy. ”At least, then, there'll be no cat!” And this caused us all to make little bows.

But the word ”cat” fell into our talk as does a drop of some acid into a chemical solution, instantly changing the whole to an unexpected new color. The unexpected new color was, in this instance, merely what had been latently lurking in the fluid of our consciousness all through and now it suddenly came out.

Mrs. Gregory stared over the parapet at the harbor. ”I wonder if anybody has visited that steam yacht?”

”The Hermana?” I said. ”She's waiting, I believe, for her owner, who is enjoying himself very much on land.” It was a strong temptation to add, ”enjoying himself with the cat,” but I resisted it.

”Oh!” said Mrs. Gregory. ”Possibly a friend of yours?”

”Even his name is unknown to me. But I gather that he may be coming to Kings Port--to attend Mr. John Mayrant's wedding next Wednesday week.”

I hadn't gathered this; but one is at times driven to improvising. I wished so much to know if Juno was right about the engagement being broken, and I looked hard at the ladies as my words fairly grazed the ”cat.” This time I expected them to consult each other's expressions, and such, indeed, was their immediate proceeding.

”The Wednesday following, you mean,” Mrs. Weguelin corrected.

”Postponed again? Dear me!”

Mrs. Gregory spoke this time. ”General Rieppe. Less well again, it seems.”

It would be like Juno to magnify a delay into a rupture. Then I had a hilarious thought, which I instantly put to the ladies. ”If the poor General were to die completely, would the wedding be postponed completely?”

”There would not be the slightest chance of that,” Mrs. Gregory declared. And then she p.r.o.nounced a sentence that was truly oracular: ”She's coming at once to see for herself.”

To which Mrs. Weguelin added with deeper condemnation than she had so far employed at all: ”There is a rumor that she is actually coming in an automobile.”

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