David of the yellow heir and his limpid-looking bride were on the
horrible little excursion boat, watching for me and keeping with some

difficulty a chair next themselves that I might not have to stand up all
the way; and, as I came aboard, the bride called out to me her relief,

she had made sure that I would be late.
"David said you wouldn't," she announced in her clear up-country accent

across the parasols and heads of huddled tourists, "but I told him a
gentleman that's late to three meals aivry day like as not would forget

boats can't be kept hot in the kitchen for you."
I took my place in the chair beside her as hastily as possible, for there

is nothing that I so much dislike as being made conspicuous for any
reason whatever; and my thanks to her were, I fear, less gracious in

their manner than should have been the case. Nor did she find me, I must
suppose, as companionable during this excursion--during the first part of

it, at any rate--as a limpid-looking bride, who has kept at some pains a
seat beside her for a single gentleman, has the right to expect; the

brief hours of this morning had fed my preoccupation too richly, and I
must often have fallen silent.

The horrible little tug, or ferry, or wherry, or whatever its
contemptible inconvenience makes it fitting that this unclean and

snail-like craft should be styled, cast off and began to lumber along the
edges of the town with its dense cargo of hats and parasols and lunch

parcels. We were a most extraordinarylitter of man and womankind. There
was the severe New England type, improving each shining hour, and doing

it in bleak costume and with a thoroughlynortheast expression; there
were pink sunbonnets from (I should imagine) Spartanburg, or Charlotte,

or Greenville; there were masculine boots which yet bore incrusted upon
their heels the red mud of Aiken or of Camden; there was one fat,

jewelled exhalation who spoke of Palm Beach with the true stockyard
twang, and looked as if she swallowed a million every morning for

breakfast, and God knows how many more for the ensuing repasts; she was
the only detestable specimen among us; sunbonnets, boots, and even

ungenial New England proved on acquaintance kindly, simple, enterprising
Americans; yet who knows if sunbonnets and boots and all of us wouldn't

have become just as detestable had we but been as she was, swollen and
puffy with the acute indigestion of sudden wealth?

This reflection made me charitable, which I always like to be, and I
imparted it to the bride.

"My!" she said. And I really don't know what that meant.
But presently I understood well why people endured the discomfort of this

journey. I forgot the cinders which now and then showered upon us, and
the heat of the sun, and the crowded chairs; I forgot the boat and

myself, in looking at the passing shores. Our course took us round Kings
Port on three sides. The calm, white town spread out its width and length

beneath a blue sky softer than the tenderest dream; the white steeples
shone through the enveloping brightness, taking to each other, and to the

distant roofs beneath them, successive and changing relations, while the
dwindling mass of streets and edifices followed more slowly the veering

of the steeples, folded upon itself, and refolded, opened into new shapes
and closed again, dwindling always, and always white and beautiful; and

as the far-offvision of it held the eye, the few masts along the wharves
grew thin and went out into invisibility, the spires became as masts, the

distant drawbridge through which we had passed sank down into a mere
stretching line, and shining Kings Port was dissolved in the blue of

water and of air.
The curving and the narrowing of the river took it at last from view; and

after it disappeared the spindling chimneys and their smoke, which were
along the bank above the town and bridge, leaving us to progress through

the solitude of marsh and wood and shore. The green levels of stiff salt
grass closed in upon the breadth of water, and we wound among them,

looking across their silence to the deeper silence of the woods that
bordered them, the brooding woods, the pines and the liveoaks, misty with

the motionlesshanging moss, and misty also in that Southern air that
deepened when it came among their trunks to a caressing, mysterious,

purple veil. Every line of this landscape, the straight forest top, the
feathery breaks in it of taller trees, the curving marsh, every line and

every hue and every sound inscrutably spoke sadness. I heard a
mocking-bird once in some blossoming wild fruit tree that we gradually

reached and left gradually behind; and more than once I saw other
blossoms, and the yellow of the trailing jessamine; but the bird could

not sing the silence away, and spring with all her abundance could not
hide this spiritual autumn.

Dreams, a land of dreams, where even the high noon itself was dreamy; a
melting together of earth and air and water in one eternalgentleness of

revery! Whence came the melancholy of this? I had seen woods as solitary
and streams as silent, I had felt nature breathing upon me a greater awe;

but never before such penetrating and quiet sadness. I only know that
this is the perpetual mood of those Southern shores, those rivers that

wind in from the ocean among their narrowing marshes and their hushed
forests, and that it does not come from any memory of human hopes and

disasters, but from the elements themselves.
So did we move onward, passing in due time another bridge and a few

dwellings and some excavations, until the river grew quite narrow, and
there ahead was the landing at Live Oaks, with negroes idly watching for

us, and a launch beside the bank, and Charley and Hortense Rieppe about
to step into it. Another man stood up in the launch and talked to them

where they were on the landingplatform, and pointed down the river as we
approached; but evidently" target="_blank" title="ad.明显地">evidently he did not point at us. I looked hastily to see

what he was indicating to them, but I could see nothing save the solitary
river winding away between the empty woods and marshes.

So this was Hortense Rieppe! It was not wonderful that she had caused
young John to lose his heart, or, at any rate, his head and his senses;

nor was it wonderful that Charley, with his little bulging eyes, should
take her in his launchwhenever she would go; the wonderful thing was

that John, at his age and with his nature, should have got over it--if he
had got over it! I felt it tingling in me; any man would. Steel wasp

indeed!
She was slender, and oh, how well dressed! She watched the passengers get

off the boat, and I could not tell you from that first sight of her what
her face was like, but only her hair, the sunburnt amber of its masses

making one think of Tokay or Chateau-Yquem. She was watching me, I felt,
and then saw; and as soon as I was near she spoke to me without moving,

keeping one gloved hand lightly posed upon the railing of the platform,
so that her long arm was bent with perfect ease and grace. I swear that

none but a female eye could have detected any toboggan fire-escape.
Her words dropped with the same calculated deliberation, the same

composed and rich indifference. "These gardens are so beautiful."
Such was her first remark, chosen with some purpose, I knew quite well;

and I observed that I hoped I was not too late for their full perfection,
if too late to visit them in her company.

She turned her head slightly toward Charley. "We have been enjoying them
so much."

It was of absorbing interest to feel simultaneously in these brief
speeches he vouchsafed--speeches consummate in their inexpressive

flatness--the intentional coldness and the latent heat of the creature.
Since Natchez and Mobile (or whichever of them it had been that had

witnessed her beginnings) she had encountered many men and women, those
who could be of use to her and those who could not; and in dealing with

them she had tempered and chiselled her insolence to a perfect
instrument, to strike or to shield. And of her greatest gift, also, she

was entirely aware--how could she help being, with her evident experience?
She knew that round her whole form swam a delicious, invisible

sphere, a distillation that her veriest self sent forth, as gardenias do
their perfume, moving where she moved and staying where she stayed, and

compared with which wine was a feeble vapor for a man to get drunk on.
"Flowers are always so delightful."

That was her third speech, pronounced just like the others, in a low,
clear voice--simplicity arrived at by much well-practiced complexity. And

she still looked at Charley.
Charley now responded in his little bankeraccent. "It is a magnificent

collection." This he said looking at me, and moving a highly polished
finger-nail along a very slender mustache.

The eyes of Hortense now for a moment glanced at the mixed company of
boat-passengers, who were beginning to be led off in pilgrim groups by

the appointed guides.
"We were warned it would be too crowded," she remarked.

Charley was looking at her foot. I can't say whether or not the two light
taps that the foot now gave upon the floor of the landing brought out for