"Not this time,"John Mayrant said."I wish to show our relics to this gentleman myself--if he will permit me?"This last was a question put to me with a courteous formality,a formality which a few minutes more were to see smashed to smithereens.
I told him that I should consider myself undeservedly privileged.
"Some of these people are my people,"he said,beginning to move.
The old custodian stood smiling,familiar,respectful,disappointed.
"Some of 'em my people,too,Mas'John,"he cannily observed.
I put a little silver in his hand."Didn't I see a box somewhere,"Isaid,"with something on it about the restoration of the church?""Something on it,but nothing in it!"exclaimed Mayrant;at which moderate pleasantry the custodian broke into extreme African merriment and ambled away."You needn't have done it,"protested the Southerner,and I naturally claimed my stranger's right to pay my respects in this manner.Such was our introduction,agreeable and unusual.
A silence then unexpectedly ensued and the formality fell colder than ever upon us.The custodian's departure had left us alone,looking at each other across all the unexpressed knowledge that each knew the other had.Mayrant had come impulsively back to me from his aunts,without stopping to think that we had never yet exchanged a word;both of us were now brought up short,and it was the cake that was speaking volubly in our self-conscious dumbness.It was only after this brief,deep gap of things unsaid that John Mayrant came to the surface again,and began a conversation of which,on both our parts,the first few steps were taken on the tiptoes of an archaic politeness;we trod convention like a polished French floor;you might have expected us,after such deliberate and graceful preliminaries,to dance a verbal minuet.
We,however,danced something quite different,and that conversation lasted during many days,and led us,like a road,up hill and down dale to a perfect acquaintance.No,not perfect,but delightful;to the end he never spoke to me of the matter most near him,and I but honor him the more for his reticence.
Of course his first remark had to be about Kings Port and me;had he understood rightly that this was my first visit?
My answer was equally traditional.
It was,next,correct that he should allude to the weather;and his reference was one of the two or three that it seems a stranger's destiny always to hear in a place new to him:he apologized for the weather--so cold a season had not,in his memory,been experienced in Kings Port;it was to the highest point exceptional.
I exclaimed that it had been,to my Northern notions,delightfully mild for March."Indeed,"I continued,"I have always said that if March could be cut out of our Northern climate,as the core is cut out of an apple,Ishould be quite satisfied with eleven months,instead of twelve.I think it might prolong one's youth."The fire of that season lighted in his eyes,but he still stepped upon polished convention.He assured me that the Southern September hurricane was more deplorable than any Northern March could be."Our zone should be called the Intemperate zone,"said he.
"But never in Kings Port,"I protested;"with your roses out-of-doors--and your ladies indoors!"
He bowed."You pay us a high compliment."
I smiled urbanely."If the truth is a compliment!""Our young ladies are roses,"he now admitted with a delicate touch of pride.
"Don't forget your old ones!I never shall."
There was pleasure in his face at this tribute,which,he could see,came from the heart.But,thus pictured to him,the old ladies brought a further idea quite plainly into his expression;and he announced it.
"Some of them are not without thorns."
"What would you give,"I quickly replied,"for anybody--man or woman--who could not,on an occasion,make themselves sharply felt?"To this he returned a full but somewhat absent-minded assent.He seemed to be reflecting that he himself didn't care to be the "occasion"upon which an old lady rose should try her thorns;and I was inclined to suspect that his intimate aunt had been giving him a wigging.
Anyhow,I stood ready to keep it up,this interchange of lofty civilities.I,too,could wear the courtly red-heels of eighteenth-century procedure,and for just as long as his Southern up-bringing inclined him to wear them;I hadn't known Aunt Carola for nothing!But we,as I have said,were not destined to dance any minuet.
