Lady Baltimore. Owen Wister

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СКАЧАТЬ recent overwork had tired me, but chiefly for her sake, and not to thwart at the outset her kindly-meant ambitions for me, I kissed the hand of my Aunt Carola and set forth to Kings Port.

      “Come back one of us,” was her parting benediction.

II: I Vary My Lunch

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      Thus it was that I came to sojourn in the most appealing, the most lovely, the most wistful town in America; whose visible sadness and distinction seem also to speak audibly, speak in the sound of the quiet waves that ripple round her Southern front, speak in the church-bells on Sunday morning, and breathe not only in the soft salt air, but in the perfume of every gentle, old-fashioned rose that blooms behind the high garden walls of falling mellow-tinted plaster: Kings Port the retrospective, Kings Port the belated, who from her pensive porticoes looks over her two rivers to the marshes and the trees beyond, the live-oaks, veiled in gray moss, brooding with memories! Were she my city, how I should love her!

      But though my city she cannot be, the enchanting image of her is mine to keep, to carry with me wheresoever I may go; for who, having seen her, could forget her? Therefore I thank Aunt Carola for this gift, and for what must always go with it in my mind, the quiet and strange romance which I saw happen, and came finally to share in. Why it is that my Aunt no longer wishes to know either the boy or the girl, or even to hear their names mentioned, you shall learn at the end, when I have finished with the wedding; for this happy story of love ends with a wedding, and begins in the Woman’s Exchange, which the ladies of Kings Port have established, and (I trust) lucratively conduct, in Royal Street.

      Royal Street! There’s a relevance in this name, a fitness to my errand; but that is pure accident.

      The Woman’s Exchange happened to be there, a decorous resort for those who became hungry, as I did, at the hour of noon each day. In my very pleasant boarding-house, where, to be sure, there was one dreadful boarder, a tall lady, whom I soon secretly called Juno—but let unpleasant things wait—in the very pleasant house where I boarded (I had left my hotel after one night) our breakfast was at eight, and our dinner not until three: sacred meal hours in Kings Port, as inviolable, I fancy, as the Declaration of Independence, but a gap quite beyond the stretch of my Northern vitals. Therefore, at twelve, it was my habit to leave my Fanning researches for a while, and lunch at the Exchange upon chocolate and sandwiches most delicate in savor. As, one day, I was luxuriously biting one of these, I heard his voice and what he was saying. Both the voice and the interesting order he was giving caused me, at my small table, in the dim back of the room, to stop and watch him where he stood in the light at the counter to the right of the entrance door. Young he was, very young, twenty-two or three at the most, and as he stood, with hat in hand, speaking to the pretty girl behind the counter, his head and side-face were of a romantic and high-strung look. It was a cake that he desired made, a cake for a wedding; and I directly found myself curious to know whose wedding. Even a dull wedding interests me more than other dull events, because it can arouse so much surmise and so much prophecy; but in this wedding I instantly, because of his strange and winning embarrassment, became quite absorbed. How came it he was ordering the cake for it? Blushing like the boy that he was entirely, he spoke in a most engaging voice: “No, not charged; and as you don’t know me, I had better pay for it now.”

      Self-possession in his speech he almost had; but the blood in his cheeks and forehead was beyond his control.

      A reply came from behind the counter: “We don’t expect payment until delivery.”

      “But—a—but on that morning I shall be rather particularly engaged.” His tones sank almost away on these words.

      “We should prefer to wait, then. You will leave your address. In half-pound boxes, I suppose?”

      “Boxes? Oh, yes—I hadn’t thought—no—just a big, round one. Like this, you know!” His arms embraced a circular space of air. “With plenty of icing.”

      I do not think that there was any smile on the other side of the counter; there was, at any rate, no hint of one in the voice. “And how many pounds?”

      He was again staggered. “Why—a—I never ordered one before. I want plenty—and the very best, the very best. Each person would eat a pound, wouldn’t they? Or would two be nearer? I think I had better leave it all to you. About like this, you know.” Once more his arms embraced a circular space of air.

      Before this I had never heard the young lady behind the counter enter into any conversation with a customer. She would talk at length about all sorts of Kings Port affairs with the older ladies connected with the Exchange, who were frequently to be found there; but with a customer, never. She always took my orders, and my money, and served me, with a silence and a propriety that have become, with ordinary shopkeepers, a lost art. They talk to one indeed! But this slim girl was a lady, and consequently did the right thing, marking and keeping a distance between herself and the public. To-day, however, she evidently felt it her official duty to guide the hapless young, man amid his errors. He now appeared to be committing a grave one.

      “Are you quite sure you want that?” the girl was asking.

      “Lady Baltimore? Yes, that is what I want.”

      “Because,” she began to explain, then hesitated, and looked at him. Perhaps it was in his face; perhaps it was that she remembered at this point the serious difference between the price of Lady Baltimore (by my small bill-of-fare I was now made acquainted with its price) and the cost of that rich article which convention has prescribed as the cake for weddings; at any rate, swift, sudden delicacy of feeling prevented her explaining any more to him, for she saw how it was: his means were too humble for the approved kind of wedding cake! She was too young, too unskilled yet in the world’s ways, to rise above her embarrassment; and so she stood blushing at him behind the counter, while he stood blushing at her in front of it.

      At length he succeeded in speaking. “That’s all, I believe. Good-morning.”

      At his hastily departing back she, too, murmured: “Good-morning.”

      Before I knew it I had screamed out loudly from my table: “But he hasn’t told you the day he wants it for!”

      Before she knew it she had flown to the door—my cry had set her going, as if I had touched a spring—and there he was at the door himself, rushing back. He, too, had remembered. It was almost a collision, and nothing but their good Southern breeding, the way they took it, saved it from being like a rowdy farce.

      “I know,” he said simply and immediately. “I am sorry to be so careless. It’s for the twenty-seventh.”

      She was writing it down in the order-book. “Very well. That is Wednesday of next week. You have given us more time than we need.” She put complete, impersonal business into her tone; and this time he marched off in good order, leaving peace in the Woman’s Exchange.

      No, not peace; quiet, merely; the girl at the counter now proceeded to grow indignant with me. We were alone together, we two; no young man, or any other business, occupied her or protected me. But if you suppose that she made war, or expressed rage by speaking, that is not it at all. From her counter in front to my table at the back she made her displeasure felt; she was inaudibly crushing; she did not do it even with her eye, she managed it—well, with her neck, somehow, and by the way she made her nose look in profile. Aunt Carola would have embraced her—and I should have liked to do so myself. She could СКАЧАТЬ