under
gigantic obelisks; to earn a
monument here you must win a battle,
or do, at any rate, something more than adulterate sugar and oil. The
particular
monument by which young John Mayrant and I found ourselves
standing, when we reached the point about the ladies and the thorns, had
a look of importance and it caught his eye, bringing him back to where we
were. Upon his pointing to it, and before we had
spoken or I had seen the
name, I inquired
eagerly: "Not the
lieutenant of the Bon Homme
Richard?" and then saw that Mayrant was not the name upon it.
My knowledge of his
gallant sea-fighting namesake visibly gratified him.
"I wish it were," he said; "but I am descended from this man, too. He was
a
statesman, and some of his
brilliant powers were inherited by his
children--but they have not come so far down as me. In 1840, his
daughter, Miss Beaufain--"
I laid my hand right on his shoulder. "Don't you do it, John Mayrant!" I
cried. "Don't you tell me that. Last night I caught myself
saying that
instead of my prayers."
Well, it killed the minuet dead; he sat flat down on the low stone coping
that bordered the path to which we had wandered back--and I sat flat down
opposite him. The
venerable custodian, passing along a
neighboring path,
turned his head and stared at our noise.
"Lawd, see those chillun goin' on!" he muttered. "Mas' John, don't you
get too scandalous, tellin' strangers 'bout the old famblies."
Mayrant
pointed to me. "He's
responsible, Daddy Ben. I'm being just as
good as gold. Honest injun!"
The custodian marched slowly on his way, shaking his head. "Mas' John he
do go on," he
repeated. His office was not alone the care and the showing
off of the graveyard, but another duty, too, as native and
peculiar to
the soil as the very cotton and the rice: this loyal servitor cherished
the honor of the "old famblies," and chide their young descendants
whenever he considered that they needed it.
Mayrant now sat revived after his
collapse of mirth, and he addressed me
from his gravestone. "Yes, I ought to have
foreseen it."
"Foreseen--?" I didn't at once catch the inference.
"All my aunts and cousins have been talking to you."
"Oh, Miss Beaufain and the Earl of Mainridge! Well, but it's quite
worth--"
"Knowing by heart!" he broke in with new merriment.
I kept on. "Why not? They tell those things everywhere--where they're so
lucky as to possess them! It's a flawless specimen."
"Of 1840 repartee?" He spoke with increasing pauses. "Yes. We do at least
possess that. And some wine of about the same date--and even considerably
older."
"All the better for age," I exclaimed.
But the blue eyes of Mayrant were far away and full of shadow. "Poor
Kings Port," he said very slowly and quietly. Then he looked at me with
the steady look and the smile that one sometimes has when giving voice to
a
sorrowfulconviction against which one has tried to struggle. "Poor
Kings Port," he
affectionatelyrepeated. His hand tapped
lightly two or
three times upon the gravestone upon which he was seated. "Be honest
and say that you think so, too," he demanded, always with his smile.
But how was I to agree aloud with what his silent hand had expressed?
Those inaudible taps on the stone spoke clearly enough; they said: "Here
lies Kings Port, here lives Kings Port. Outside of this is our true
death, on the
vacantwharves, in the empty streets. All that we have left
is the
immortality which these
historic names have won." How could I tell
him that I thought so, too? Nor was I as sure of it then as he was. And
besides, this was a young man whose spirit was almost surely, in
suffering; ill fortune both material and of the heart, I seemed to
suspect, had made him wounded and bitter in these immediate days; and the
very suppression he was exercising hurt him the more deeply. So I
replied,
honestly, as he had asked: "I hope you are mistaken."
"That's because you haven't been here long enough," he declared.
Over us,
gently, from somewhere across the gardens and the walls, came a
noiseless water
breeze, to which the roses moved and nodded among the
tombs. They gave him a fanciful thought. "Look at them! They belong to
us, and they know it. They're
saying, 'Yes; yes; yes,' all day long. I
don't know why on earth I'm talking in this way to you!" he broke off