第63章 What She Came to See(6)

My rule-breaking turned out all to my advantage.The admirable and important negro was so pacified by my liberal amends that he not only placed the flowers which I had bought in a bucket of water to wait in freshness until my tour of the gardens should be finished and the moment for me to return upon the boat should arrive,but he also honored me with his own special company;and instead of depositing me in one of the groups of other travellers,he took me to see the sights alone,as if Iwere somebody too distinguished to receive my impressions with the common herd.Thus I was able to linger here and there,and even to return to certain points for another look.

I shall not attempt to describe the azaleas at Live Oaks.You will understand me quite well,I am sure,when I say that I had heard the peo-ple at Mrs.Trevise's house talk so much about them,and praise them so superlatively,that I was not prepared for much:my experience of life had already included quite a number of azaleas.Moreover,my meeting with Hortense and Charley had taken me far away from flowers.But when that marvelous place burst upon me,I forgot Hortense.I have seen gardens,many gardens,in England,in France;in Italy;I have seen what can be done in great hothouses,and on great terraces;what can be done under a roof,and what can be done in the open air with the aid of architecture and sculpture and ornamental land and water;but no horticulture that Ihave seen devised by mortal man approaches the unearthly enchantment of the azaleas at Live Oaks.It was not like seeing flowers at all;it was as if there,in the heart of the wild and mystic wood,in the gray gloom of those trees veiled and muffled in their long webs and skeins of hanging moss,a great,magic flame of rose and red and white burned steadily.You looked to see it vanish;you could not imagine such a thing would stay.All idea of individual petals or species was swept away in this glowing maze of splendor,this transparent labyrinth of rose and red and white,through which you looked beyond,into the gray gloom of the hanging moss and the depths of the wild forest trees.

I turned back as often as I could,and to the last I caught glimpses of it,burning,glowing,and shining like some miracle,some rainbow exorcism,with its flooding fumes of orange-rose and red and white,merging magically.It was not until I reached the landing,and made my way on board again,that Hortense returned to my thoughts.She hadn't come to see the miracle;not she!I knew that better than ever.And who was the other man in the launch?

"Wasn't it perfectly elegant!"exclaimed the up-country bride.And upon my assenting,she made a further declaration to David:"It's just aivry bit as good as the Isle of Champagne."This I discovered to be a comic opera,mounted with spendthrift brilliance,which David had taken her to see at the town of Gonzales,just before they were married.

As we made our way down the bending river she continued to make many observations to me in that up-country accent of hers,which is a fashion of speech that may be said to differ as widely from the speech of the low-country as cotton differs from rice.I began to fear that,in spite of my truly good intentions,I was again failing to be as "attentive"as the occasion demanded;and so I presented her with my floral tribute.

She was immediately arch."I'd surely be depriving somebody!"and on this I got to the full her limpid look.

I assured her that this would not be so,and pointed to the other flowers I had.

Accordingly,after a little more archness,she took them,as she had,of course,fully meant to do from the first;she also took a woman's revenge."I'll not be any more lonesome going down than I was coming up,"she said."David's enough."And this led me definitely to conclude that David had secured a helpmate who could take care of herself,in spite of the limpidity of her eyes.

A steel wasp?Again that misleading description of Mrs.Weguelin St.

Michael's,to which,since my early days in Kings Port,my imagination may be said to have been harnessed,came back into my mind.I turned its injustice over and over beneath the light which the total Hortense now shed upon it--or rather,not the total Hortense,but my whole impression of her,as far as I had got;I got a good deal further before we had finished.To the slow,soft accompaniment of these gliding river shores,where all the shadows had changed since morning,so that new loveliness stood revealed at every turn,my thoughts dwelt upon this perfected specimen of the latest American moment--so late that she contained nothing of the past,and a great deal of to-morrow.I basked myself in the memory of her achieved beauty,her achieved dress,her achieved insolence,her luxurious complexity.She was even later than those quite late athletic girls,the Amazons of the links,whose big,hard football faces stare at one from public windows and from public punts,whose giant,manly strides take them over leagues of country and square miles of dance-floor,and whose bursting,blatant,immodest health glares upon sea-beaches and round supper tables.Hortense knew that even now the hour of such is striking,and that the American boy will presently turn with relief to a creature who will more clearly remind him that he is a man and that she is a woman.

But why was the insolence of Hortense offensive,when the insolence of Eliza La Heu was not?Both these extremely feminine beings could exercise that quality in profusion,whenever they so wished;wherein did the difference lie?Perhaps I thought,in the spirit of its exercise;Eliza was merely insolent when she happened to feel like it;and man has always been able to forgive woman for that--whether the angels do or not,but Hortense,the world-wise,was insolent to all people who could not be of use to her;and all I have to say is,that if the angels can forgive them,they're welcome;I can't!