第19章 In the Churchyard(4)

This time he was slow."Well--well--why need they?Are not their lips more innocent than ours?Is not the association somewhat--?""My dear fellow,"I interrupted,"the association is,I think you'll have to agree,scarcely of my making!""That's true enough,"he laughed."And,as you say,very nice people do it everywhere.But not here.Have you ever noticed,"he now inquired with continued transparency,"how much harder they are on each other than we are on them?""Oh,yes!I've noticed that."I surmised it was this sort of thing he had earlier choked himself off from telling me in his unfinished complaint about his aunt;but I was to learn later that on this occasion it was upon the poor boy himself and not on the smoking habits of Miss Rieppe,that his aunt had heavily descended.I also reflected that if cigarettes were the only thing he deprecated in the lady of his choice,the lost illusion might be coaxed back.The trouble was that deprecated something fairly distant from cigarettes.The cake was my quite sufficient trouble;it stuck in my throat worse than the probably magnified gossip I had heard;this,for the present,I could manage to swallow.

He came out now with a personal note."I suppose you think I'm a ninny.""Never in the wildest dream!"

"Well,but too innocent for a man,anyhow."

"That would be an insult,"I declared laughingly.

"For I'm not innocent in the least.You'll find we're all men here,just as much as any men in the North you could pick out.South Carolina has never lacked sporting blood,sir.But in Newport--well,sir,we gentlemen down here,when we wish a certain atmosphere and all that,have always been accustomed to seek the demi-monde.""So it was with us until the women changed it.""The women,sir?"He was innocent!

"The 'ladies,'as you Southerners so chivalrously continue to style them.

The rich new fashionable ladies became so desperate in their competition for men's allegiance that they--well,some of them would,in the point of conversation,greatly scandalize the smart demi-monde."He nodded."Yes.I heard men say things in drawing-rooms to ladies that a gentleman here would have been taken out and shot for.And don't you agree with me,sir,that good taste itself should be a sort of religion?

I don't mean to say anything sacrilegious,but it seems to me that even if one has ceased to believe some parts of the Bible,even if one does not always obey the Ten Commandments,one is bound,not as a believer but as a gentleman,to remember the difference between grossness and refinement,between excess and restraint--that one can have and keep just as the pagan Greeks did,a moral elegance."He astonished me,this ardent,ideal,troubled boy;so innocent regarding the glaring facts of our new prosperity,so finely penetrating as to some of the mysteries of the soul.But he was of old Huguenot blood,and of careful and gentle upbringing;and it was delightful to find such a young man left upon our American soil untainted by the present fashionable idolatries.

"I bow to your creed of 'moral elegance,'"I cried."It never dies.It has outlasted all the mobs and all the religions.""They seemed to think,"he continued,pursuing his Newport train of thought,"that to prove you were a dead game sport you must behave like--behave like--"

"Like a herd of swine,"I suggested.

He was merry."Ah,if they only would--completely!""Completely what?"

"Behave so.Rush over a steep place into the sea."We sat in the quiet relish of his Scriptural idea,and the western crimson and the twilight began to come and mingle with the perfumes.John Mayrant's face changed from its vivacity to a sort of pensive wistfulness,which,for all the dash and spirit in his delicate features,was somehow the final thing one got from the boy's expression.It was as though the noble memories of his race looked out of his eyes,seeking new chances for distinction,and found instead a soil laid waste,an empty fatherland,a people benumbed past rousing.Had he not said,"Poor Kings Port!"as he tapped the gravestone?Moral elegance could scarcely permit a sigh more direct.