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"Mas' John, I speck de President he dun' know de cullud people like we knows 'um, else he nebber bin 'pint dat ar boss in de Cussum House, no, sah." After this effort he wiped his forehead and breathed hard. To my astonishment, the effort brought immediately a stern change over John Mayrant's face; then he answered in the kindest tones, "Thank you, Daddy Ben."
Next morning when I saw the weltering sky I resigned myself to a day of dullness; yet before its end I had caught a bright new glimpse of John Mayrant's abilities, and also had come, through tribulation, to a further understanding of the South; so that I do not, to-day, regret the tribulation.
"That's just about what he says himself," I rejoined, sitting down. "He thinks he ought to take the consequences." "Of course!" John Mayrant's face was very stern as he sat in judgment on himself. "But why should she take the consequences?" I asked. "What consequences?" "Being married to a man who doesn't want her, all her life, until death them do part. How's that?
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.
Neither Juno, therefore, nor any of them learned a word from me about the kettle-supporter incident. What I did take pains to inform the assembled company was my gratification that the report of Mr. Mayrant's engagement being broken was unfounded; and this caused Juno to observe that in that case Miss Rieppe must have the most imperative reasons for uniting herself to such a young man.
Yes, these ladies were forgetting about me in their using preoccupation over whatever crisis it was that now hung over John Mayrant's love affairs a preoccupation which was evidently part of Kings Port's universal buzz to-day, and which my joining them in the street had merely mitigated for a moment.
"Mas' John!" he called quite softly. His tone was fairly padded with caution, and I saw that in the pause which followed, his eye shot a swift look at the bruise on Mayrant's forehead, and another look, equally swift, at me. "Well, Daddy Ben, what is it?" The custodian shunted close to the gate which separated him from us.
For stronger even than his kindness, his ability, and his dishonesty is his self-preservation. He's going to stand up for the 'open shop' and sit down on the 'trust'; and I assure you that I don't in the least resemble the Evening Post." A look of inquiry was in John Mayrant's features. "The New York Evening Post," I repeated with surprise. Still the inquiry of his face remained.
Mayrant's family, who coerced him into this tardy reparation, and who feel unable to recognize him since his treasonable attitude in the Custom House." "Must be fairly hard to coerce a chap you can't recognize," said the Briton. An et cetera now spoke to the honeymoon bride from the up-country: "I heard Doctor Beaugarcon say he was coming to visit you this evening." "Yais," assented the bride.
I have several times mentioned that Kings Port, to my sense, was buzzing over John Mayrant's affairs; buzzing in the open, where one could hear it, and buzzing behind closed doors, where one could somehow feel it; I can only say that henceforth this buzzing ceased, dropped wholly away, as if Gossip were watching so hard that she forgot to talk, giving place to a great stillness in her kingdom.
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