Part 18

She did not help me. “If I had been a man, nothing could have insulted me more than that. And that’s what you don’t see,” she regretfully finished. “It seems so strange.”

I sat in the midst of my great blank, while her handsome eyes rested upon me. In them was that look of a certain inquiry and a certain remoteness with which one pauses, in a museum, before some specimen of the cave-dwelling man.

“You comprehend so much,” she meditated slowly, aloud; “you’ve been such an agreeable disappointment, because your point of view is so often the same as ours.” She was still surveying me with the specimen expression, when it suddenly left her. “Do you mean to sit there and tell me,” she broke out, “that you wouldn’t have resented it yourself?”

“O dear!” my mind lamentably said to itself, inside. Of what may have been the exterior that I presented to her, sitting over my slice of Lady Baltimore, I can form no impression.

“Put yourself in his place,” the girl continued.

“Ah,” I gasped, “that is always so easy to say and so hard to do.”

My remark proved not a happy one. She made a brief, cold pause over it, and then, as she wheeled round from me, back to the counter: “No Southerner would let pass such an affront.”

It was final. She regained her usual place, she resumed her ledger; the curly dog, who had come out to hear our conversation, went in again; I was disgraced. Not only with the profile of her short, belligerent nose, but with the chilly way in which she made her pencil move over the ledger, she told me plainly that my self-respect had failed to meet her tests. This was what my remarkable ingenuity had achieved for me. I swallowed the last crumbs of Lady Baltimore, and went forward to settle the account.

“I suppose I’m scarcely entitled to ask for a fresh one to-morrow,” I ventured. “I am so fond of this cake.”

Her officialness met me adequately. “Certainly the public is entitled to whatever we print upon our bill-of-fare.”

Now this was going to be too bad! Henceforth I was to rank merely as “the public,” no matter how much Lady Baltimore I should lunch upon! A happy thought seized me, and I spoke out instantly on the strength of it.

“Miss La Heu, I’ve a confession to make.”

But upon this beginning of mine the inauspicious door opened and young John Mayrant came in. It was all right about his left eye; anybody could see that bruise!

“Oh!” he exclaimed, hearty, but somewhat disconcerted. “To think of finding you here! You’re going? But I’ll see you later?”

“I hope so,” I said. “You know where I work.”

“Yes--yes. I’ll come. We’ve all sorts of things more to say, haven’t we? We--good-by!”

Did I hear, as I gained the street, something being said about the General, and the state of his health?

VIII: Midsummer-Night’s Dream

You may imagine in what state of wondering I went out of that place, and how little I could now do away with my curiosity. By the droll looks and head-turnings which followed me from strangers that passed me by in the street, I was made aware that I must be talking aloud to myself, and the words which I had evidently uttered were these: “But who in the world can he have smashed up?”

Of course, beneath the public stare and smile I kept the rest of my thoughts to myself; yet they so possessed and took me from my surroundings, that presently, while crossing Royal Street, I was nearly run down by an electric car. Nor did even this serve to disperse my preoccupation; my walk back to Court and Chancel streets is as if it had not been; I can remember nothing about it, and the first account that I took of external objects was to find myself sitting in my accustomed chair in the Library, with the accustomed row of books about the battle of Cowpens waiting on the table in front of me. How long we had thus been facing each other, the books and I, I’ve not a notion. And with such mysterious machinery are we human beings filled--machinery that is in motion all the while, whether we are aware of it or not--that now, with some part of my mind, and with my pencil assisting, I composed several stanzas to my kingly ancestor, the goal of my fruitless search; and yet during the whole process of my metrical exercise I was really thinking and wondering about John Mayrant, his battles and his loves.

ODE ON INTIMATIONS OF ROYALTY

I sing to thee, thou Great Unknown, Who canst connect me with a throne Through uncle, cousin, aunt, or sister, But not, I trust, through bar sinister.

Chorus: Gules! Gules! and a cuckoo peccant!

Such was the frivolous opening of my poem, which, as it progressed, grew even less edifying; I have quoted this fragment merely to show you how little reverence for the Selected Salic Scions was by this time left in my spirit, and not because the verses themselves are in the least meritorious; they should serve as a model for no serious-minded singer, and they afford a striking instance of that volatile mood, not to say that inclination to ribaldry, which will at seasons crop out in me, do what I will. It is my hope that age may help me to subdue this, although I have observed it in some very old men.

I did not send my poem to Aunt Carola, but I wrote her a letter, even there and then, couched in terms which I believe were altogether respectful. I deplored my lack of success in discovering the link that was missing between me and king’s blood; I intimated my conviction that further effort on my part would still be met with failure; and I renounced with fitting expressions of disappointment my candidateship for the Scions thanking Aunt Carola for her generosity, by which I must now no longer profit. I added that I should remain in Kings Port for the present, as I was finding the climate of decided benefit to my health, and the courtesy of the people an education in itself.

Whatever pain at missing the glory of becoming a Scion may have lingered with me after this was much assuaged in a few days by my reading an article in a New York paper, which gave an account of a meeting of my Aunt’s Society, held in that city. My attention was attracted to this article by the prominent heading given to it: THEY WORE THEIR CROWNS. This in very conspicuous Roman capitals, caused me to sit up. There must have been truth in some of it, because the food eaten by the Scions was mentioned as consisting of sandwiches, sherry and croquettes; yet I think that the statement that the members present addressed each other according to the royal families from which they severally traced descent, as, for example, Brother Guelph and Sister Plantagenet, can scarce have beers aught but an exaggeration; nevertheless, the article brought me undeniable consolation for my disappointment.

After finishing my letter to Aunt Carola I should have hastened out to post it and escape from Cowpens, had I not remembered that John Mayrant had more or less promised to meet me here. Now, there was but a slender chance that he boy would speak to me on the subject of his late encounter; this I must learn from other sources; but he might speak to me about something that would open a way for my hostile preparations against Miss Rieppe. So far he had not touched upon his impending marriage in any way, but this reserve concerning a fact generally known among the people whom I was seeing could hardly go on long without becoming ridiculous. If he should shun mention of it to-day, I would take this as a plain sign that he did not look forward to it with the enthusiasm which a lover ought to feel for his approaching bliss; and on such silence from him I would begin, if I could, to undermine his intention of keeping an engagement of the heart when the heart no longer entered into it.

While my thoughts continued to be busied over this lover and his concerns, I noticed the works of William Shakespeare close beside me upon a shelf; and although it was with no special purpose in mind that I took out one of the volumes and sat down with it to wait for John Mayrant, in a little while an inspiration came to me from its pages, so that I was more anxious than ever the boy should not fail to meet me here in the Library.