"I suppose you know that your friend, Mr. Mayrant, has resigned from the Custom House?"
I was, of course, careful not to give Juno the pleasure of seeing that she had surprised me. I bowed, and continued in silence to sip a little coffee; then, setting my coffee down, I observed that it would be some few days yet before the resignation could take effect; and, noticing that Juno was getting ready some new remark, I branched off and spoke to her of my excursion up the river this morning to see the azaleas in the gardens at Live Oaks.
"How lucky the weather is so magnificent!" I exclaimed.
"I shall be interested to hear," said Juno, "what explanation he finds to give Miss Josephine for his disrespectful holding out against her, and his immediate yielding to Miss Rieppe."
Here I deemed it safe to ask her, was she quite sure it had been at the instance of Miss Rieppe that John had resigned?
"It follows suspiciously close upon her arrival," stated Juno. She might have been speaking of a murder. "And how he expects to support a wife now — well, that is no affair of mine," Juno concluded, with a washing-her-hands-of-it air, as if up to this point she had always done her best for the wilful boy. She had blamed him savagely for not resigning, and now she was blaming him because he had resigned; and I ate my breakfast in much entertainment over this female acrobat in censure.
No more was said; I think that my manner of taking Juno's news had been perfectly successful in disappointing her. John's resignation, if it had really occurred, did certainly follow very close upon the arrival of Hortense; but I had spoken one true thought in intimating that I doubted if it was due to the influence of Miss Rieppe. It seemed to me to the highest degree unlikely that the boy in his present state of feeling would do anything he did not wish to do because his ladylove happened to wish it — except marry her! There was apparently no doubt that he would do that. Did she want him, poverty and all? Was she, even now, with eyes open, deliberately taking her last farewell days of automobiles and of steam yachts? That voice of hers, that rich summons, with its quiet certainty of power, sounded in my memory. "John," she had called to him from the automobile; and thus John had gone away in it, wedged in among Charley and the fat cushions and all the money and glass eyes. And now he had resigned from the Custom House! Yes, that was, whatever it signified, truly amazing — if true.
So I continued to ponder quite uselessly, until the up-country bride aroused me. She, it appeared, had been greatly carried away by the beauty of Live Oaks, and was making her David take her there again this morning; and she was asking me didn't I hope we shouldn't get stuck? The people had got stuck yesterday, three whole hours, right on a bank in the river; and wasn't it a sin and a shame to run a boat with ever so many passengers aground? By the doctrine of chances, I informed her, we had every right to hope for better luck to-day; and, with the assurance of how much my felicity was increased by the prospect of having her and David as company during the expedition, I betook myself meanwhile to my own affairs, which meant chiefly a call at the Exchange to inquire for Eliza La Heu, and a visit to the post-office before starting upon a several hours' absence.
A few steps from our front door I came upon John Mayrant, and saw at once too plainly that no ease had come to his spirit during the hours since the bridge. He was just emerging from an adjacent house.
"And have you resigned?" I asked him.
"Yes. That's done. You haven't seen Miss Rieppe this morning?"
"Why, she's surely not boarding with Mrs. Trevise?"
"No; stopping here with her old friend, Mrs. Cornerly." He indicated the door he had come from. "Of course, you wouldn't be likely to see her pass!" And with that he was gone.
That he was greatly stirred up by something there could be no doubt; never before had I seen him so abrupt; it seemed clear that anger had taken the place of despondency, or whatever had been his previous mood; and by the time I reached the post-office I had already imagined and dismissed the absurd theory that John was jealous of Charley, had resigned from the Custom House as a first step toward breaking his engagement, and had rung Mrs. Cornerly's bell at this early hour with the purpose of informing his lady-love that all was over between them. Jealousy would not be likely to produce this set of manifestations in young, foolish John; and I may say here at once, what I somewhat later learned, that the boy had come with precisely the opposite purpose, namely, to repeat and reenforce his steadfast constancy, and that it was something far removed from jealousy which had spurred him to this.
I found the girl behind the counter at her post, grateful to me for coming to ask how she was after the shock of yesterday, but unwilling to speak of it at all; all which she expressed by her charming manner, and by the other subjects she chose for conversation, and especially by the way in which she held out her hand when I took my leave.
Near the post-office I was hailed by Beverly Rodgers, who proclaimed to me at once a comic but genuine distress. He had already walked, he said (and it was but half-past nine o'clock, as he bitterly bade me observe on the church dial), more miles in search of a drink than his unarithmetical brain had the skill to compute. And he confounded such a town heartily; he should return as soon as possible to Charley's yacht, where there was civilization, and where he had spent the night. During his search he had at length come to a door of promising appearance, and gone in there, and they had explained to him that it was a dispensary. A beastly arrangement. What was the name of the razor-back hog they said had invented it? And what did you do for a drink in this confounded water-hole?
He would find it no water-hole, I told him; but there were methods which a stranger upon his first morning could scarce be expected to grasp. "I could direct you to a Dutchman," I said, "but you're too well dressed to win his confidence at once."
"Well, old man," began Beverly, "I don't speak Dutch, but give me a crack at the confidence."
However, he renounced the project upon learning what a Dutchman was. Since my hours were no longer dedicated to establishing the presence of royal blood in my veins I had spent them upon various local investigations of a character far more entertaining and akin to my taste. It was in truth quite likely that Beverly could in a very few moments, with his smile and his manner, find his way to any Dutchman's heart; he had that divine gift of winning over to him quickly all sorts and conditions of men; and my account of the ingenious and law-baffling contrivances, which you found at these little grocery shops, at once roused his curiosity to make a trial; but he decided that the club was better, if less picturesque. And he told me that all the men of the automobile party had received from John Mayrant cards of invitation to the club.
"Your fire-eater is a civil chap," said Beverly. "And by the way, do you happen to know," here he pulled from his pocket a letter and consulted its address, "Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael?"
I was delighted that he brought an introduction to this lady; Hortense Rieppe could not open for him any of those haughty doors; and I wished not only that Beverly (since he was just the man to appreciate it and understand it) should see the fine flower of Kings Port, but also that the fine flower of Kings Port should see him; the best blood of the South could not possibly turn out anything better than Beverly Rodgers, and it was horrible and humiliating to think of the other Northern specimens of men whom Hortense had imported with her. I was here suddenly reminded that the young woman was a guest of the Cornerlys, the people who swept their garden, the people whom Eliza La Heu at the Exchange did not "know"; and at this the remark of Mrs. Gregory St. Michael, when I had walked with her and Mrs. Weguelin, took on an added lustre of significance —