Part 18 (1/2)
”Ah,” said Mrs. Gregory, ”of course; gayeties and irregularities--”
”That is, if he's not above them,” I hastily subjoined.
”Not always, by any means,” Mrs. Gregory returned. ”Kings Port has been treated to some episodes--”
Mrs. Weguelin put in a word of defence. ”It is to be said, Maria, that John's irregularities have invariably been conducted with perfect propriety.”
”Oh,” said Mrs. Gregory, ”no Mayrant was ever known to be gross!”
”But this particular young lady,” said Mrs. Weguelin, ”would not be estranged by an masculine irregularities and gayeties. Not many.”
”How about infidelities?” I suggested. ”If he should flagrantly lose his heart to another?”
Mrs. Weguelin replied quickly. ”That answers very well where hearts are in question.”
”But,” said I, ”since phosphates are no longer--?”
There was a pause. ”It would be a new dilemma,” Mrs. Gregory then said slowly, ”if she turned out to care for him, after all.”
Throughout all this I was getting more and more the sense of how a total circle of people, a well-filled, wide circle of interested people, surrounded and cherished John Mayrant, made itself the setting of which he was the jewel; I felt in it, even stronger than the manifestation of personal affection (which certainly was strong enough), a collective sense of possession in him, a clan value, a pride and a guardians.h.i.+p concentrated and jealous, as of an heir to some princely estate, who must be worthy for the sake of a community even before he was worthy for his own sake. Thus he might amuse himself--it was in the code that princely heirs so should pour se deniaiser, as they neatly put it in Paris--thus might he and must he fight when his dignity was a.s.sailed; but thus might he not marry outside certain lines prescribed, or depart from his circle's established creeds, divine and social, especially to hold any position which (to borrow Mrs. Gregory's phrase) ”reflected ignominy” upon them all. When he transgressed, their very value for him turned them bitter against him. I know that all of us are more or less chained to our community, which is pleased to expect us to walk its way, and mightily displeased when we please ourselves instead by breaking the chain and walking our own way; and I know that we are forgiven very slowly; but I had not dreamed what a prisoner to communal criticism a young American could be until I beheld Kings Port over John Mayrant.
And to what estate was this prince heir? Alas, his inheritance was all of it the Past and none of it the Future; was the full churchyard and the empty wharves! He was paying dear for his princedom! And then, there was yet another sense of this beautiful town that I got here completely, suddenly crystallized, though slowly gathering ever since my arrival: all these old people were cl.u.s.tered about one young one. That was it; that was the town's ultimate tragic note: the old timber of the forest dying and the too spa.r.s.e new growth appearing scantily amid the tall, fine, venerable, decaying trunks. It had been by no razing to the ground and sowing with salt that the city had perished; a process less violent but more sad had done away with it. Youth, in the wake of commerce, had ebbed from Kings Port, had flowed out from the silent, mourning houses, and sought life North and West, and wherever else life was to be found.
Into my revery floated a phrase from a melodious and once favorite song: O tempo pa.s.sato perche non ritorni?
And John Mayrant? Why, then, had he tarried here himself? That is a hard saying about crabbed age and youth, but are not most of the sayings hard that are true? What was this young man doing in Kings Port with his brains, and his pride, and his energetic adolescence? If the Custom House galled him, the whole country was open to him; why not have tried his fortune out and away, over the hills, where the new cities lie, all full of future and empty of past? Was it much to the credit of such a young man to find himself at the age of twenty-three or twenty-four, sound and lithe of limb, yet tied to the ap.r.o.n strings of Miss Josephine, and Miss Eliza, and some thirty or forty other elderly female relatives?
With these thoughts I looked at the ladies and wondered how I might lead them to answer me about John Mayrant, without asking questions which might imply something derogatory to him or painful to them. I could not ever say to them a word which might mean, however indirectly, that I thought their beautiful, cherished town no place for a young man to go to seed in; this cut so close to the quick of truth that discourse must keep wide away from it. What, then, could I ask them? As I pondered, Mrs. Weguelin solved it for me by what she was saying to Mrs. Gregory, of which, in my preoccupation, I had evidently missed a part:--
”--if he should share the family bad taste in wives.”
”Eliza says she has no fear of that.”
”Were I Eliza, Hugh's performance would make me very uneasy.”
”Julia, John does not resemble Hugh.”
”Very decidedly, in coloring, Maria.”
”And Hugh found that girl in Minneapolis, Julia, where there was doubtless no pick for the poor fellow. And remember that George chose a lady, at any rate.”
Mrs. Weguelin gave to this a short a.s.sent. ”Yes.” It portended something more behind, which her next words duly revealed. ”A lady; but do--any--ladies ever seem quite like our own?
”Certainly not, Julia.”
You see, they were forgetting me again; but they had furnished me with a clue.
”Mr. John Mayrant has married brothers?”
”Two,” Mrs. Gregory responded. ”John is the youngest of three children.”