Lady Baltimore. Owen Wister

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СКАЧАТЬ beneath her invisible but eloquent fire. What affair of mine was the cake? And what sort of impertinent, meddlesome person was I, shrieking out my suggestions to people with whom I had no acquaintance? These were the things that her nose and her neck said to me the whole length of the Exchange. I had nothing but my own weakness to thank; it was my interest in weddings that did it, made me forget my decorum, the public place, myself, everything, and plunge in. And I became more and more delighted over it as the girl continued to crush me. My day had been dull, my researches had not brought me a whit nearer royal blood; I looked at my little bill-of-fare, and then I stepped forward to the counter, adventurous, but polite.

      “I should like a slice, if you please, of Lady Baltimore,” I said with extreme formality.

      I thought she was going to burst; but after an interesting second she replied, “Certainly,” in her fit Regular Exchange tone; only, I thought it trembled a little.

      I returned to the table and she brought me the cake, and I had my first felicitous meeting with Lady Baltimore. Oh, my goodness! Did you ever taste it? It’s all soft, and it’s in layers, and it has nuts—but I can’t write any more about it; my mouth waters too much.

      Delighted surprise caused me once more to speak aloud, and with my mouth full. “But, dear me, this Is delicious!”

      A choking ripple of laughter came from the counter. “It’s I who make them,” said the girl. “I thank you for the unintentional compliment.” Then she walked straight back to my table. “I can’t help it,” she said, laughing still, and her delightful, insolent nose well up; “how can I behave myself when a man goes on as you do?” A nice white curly dog followed her, and she stroked his ears.

      “Your behavior is very agreeable to me,” I remarked.

      “You’ll allow me to say that you’re not invited to criticise it. I was decidedly put out with you for making me ridiculous. But you have admired my cake with such enthusiasm that you are forgiven. And—may I hope that you are getting on famously with the battle of Cowpens?”

      I stared. “I’m frankly very much astonished that you should know about that!”

      “Oh, you’re just known all about in Kings Port.”

      I wish that our miserable alphabet could in some way render the soft Southern accent which she gave to her words. But it cannot. I could easily misspell, if I chose; but how, even then, could I, for instance, make you hear her way of saying “about”? “Aboot” would magnify it; and besides, I decline to make ugly to the eye her quite special English, that was so charming to the ear.

      “Kings Port just knows all about you,” she repeated with a sweet and mocking laugh.

      “Do you mind telling me how?”

      She explained at once. “This place is death to all incognitos.”

      The explanation, however, did not, on the instant, enlighten me. “This? The Woman’s Exchange, you mean?”

      “Why, to be sure! Have you not heard ladies talking together here?”

      I blankly repealed her words. “Ladies talking?”

      She nodded.

      “Oh!” I cried. “How dull of me! Ladies talking! Of course!”

      She continued. “It was therefore widely known that you were consulting our South Carolina archives at the library—and then that notebook you bring marked you out the very first day. Why, two hours after your first lunch we just knew all about you!”

      “Dear me!” said I.

      “Kings Port is ever ready to discuss strangers,” she further explained. “The Exchange has been going on five years, and the resident families have discussed each other so thoroughly here that everything is known; therefore a stranger is a perfect boon.” Her gayety for a moment interrupted her, before she continued, always mocking and always sweet: “Kings Port cannot boast intelligence offices for servants; but if you want to know the character and occupation of your friends, come to the Exchange!” How I wish I could give you the raciness, the contagion, of her laughter! Who would have dreamed that behind her primness all this frolic lay in ambush? “Why,” she said, “I’m only a plantation girl; it’s my first week here, and I know every wicked deed everybody as done since 1812!”

      She went back to her counter. It had been very merry; and as I was settling the small debt for my lunch I asked: “Since this is the proper place for information, will you kindly tell me whose wedding that cake is for?”

      She was astonished. “You don’t know? And I thought you were quite a clever Ya—I beg your pardon—Northerner.

      “Please tell me, since I know you’re quite a clever Reb—I beg your pardon—Southerner.”

      “Why, it’s his own! Couldn’t you see that from his bashfulness?”

      “Ordering his own wedding cake?” Amazement held me. But the door opened, one of the elderly ladies entered, the girl behind the counter stiffened to primness in a flash, and I went out into Royal Street as the curly dog’s tail wagged his greeting to the newcomer.

III: Kings Port Talks

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      Of course I had at once left the letters of introduction which Aunt Carola had given me; but in my ignorance of Kings Port hours I had found everybody at dinner when I made my first round of calls between half-past three and five—an experience particularly regrettable, since I had hurried my own dinner on purpose, not then aware that the hours at my boarding-house were the custom of the whole town. (These hours even since my visit to Kings Port, are beginning to change. But such backsliding is much condemned.) Upon an afternoon some days later, having seen in the extra looking-glass, which I had been obliged to provide for myself, that the part in my back hair was perfect, I set forth again, better informed.

      As I rang the first doorbell, another visitor came up the steps, a beautiful old lady in widow’s dress, a cardcase in her hand.

      “Have you rung, sir?” said she, in a manner at once gentle and voluminous.

      “Yes, madam.”

      Nevertheless she pulled it again. “It doesn’t always ring,” she explained, “unless one is accustomed to it, which you are not.”

      She addressed me with authority, exactly like Aunt Carola, and with even greater precision in her good English and good enunciation. Unlike the girl at the Exchange, she had no accent; her language was simply the perfection of educated utterance; it also was racy with the free censoriousness which civilized people of consequence are apt to exercise the world over. “I was sorry to miss your visit,” she began (she knew me, you see, perfectly); “you will please to come again soon, and console me for my disappointment. I am Mrs. Gregory St. Michael, and my house is in Le Maire Street (Pronounced in Kings Port, Lammarree) as you have been so civil as to find out. And how does your Aunt Carola do in these contemptible times? You can tell her from me that vulgarization is descending, even upon Kings Port.”

      “I cannot imagine that!” I exclaimed.

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