Lady Baltimore | Page 9

to make ugly to the eye her quite special English,
that was so charming to the ear.
"Kings Port just knows all about you," she repeated with a sweet and
mocking laugh.
"Do you mind telling me how?"

She explained at once. "This place is death to all incognitos."
The explanation, however, did not, on the instant, enlighten me. "This?
The Woman's Exchange, you mean?"
"Why, to be sure! Have you not heard ladies talking together here?"
I blankly repealed her words. "Ladies talking?"
She nodded.
"Oh!" I cried. "How dull of me! Ladies talking! Of course!"
She continued. "It was therefore widely known that you were
consulting our South Carolina archives at the library--and then that
notebook you bring marked you out the very first day. Why, two hours
after your first lunch we just knew all about you!"
"Dear me!" said I.
"Kings Port is ever ready to discuss strangers," she further explained.
"The Exchange has been going on five years, and the resident families
have discussed each other so thoroughly here that everything is known;
therefore a stranger is a perfect boon." Her gayety for a moment
interrupted her, before she continued, always mocking and always
sweet: "Kings Port cannot boast intelligence offices for servants; but if
you want to know the character and occupation of your friends, come to
the Exchange!" How I wish I could give you the raciness, the contagion,
of her laughter! Who would have dreamed that behind her primness all
this frolic lay in ambush? "Why," she said, "I'm only a plantation girl;
it's my first week here, and I know every wicked deed everybody as
done since 1812!"
She went back to her counter. It had been very merry; and as I was
settling the small debt for my lunch I asked: "Since this is the proper
place for information, will you kindly tell me whose wedding that cake
is for?"

She was astonished." You don't know? And I thought you were quite a
clever Ya--I beg your pardon--Northerner.
"Please tell me, since I know you're quite a clever Reb--I beg your
pardon--Southerner."
"Why, it's his own! Couldn't you see that from his bashfulness?"
"Ordering his own wedding cake?" Amazement held me. But the door
opened, one of the elderly ladies entered, the girl behind the counter
stiffened to primness in a flash, and I went out into Royal Street as the
curly dog's tail wagged his greeting to the newcomer.

III: Kings Port Talks
Of course I had at once left the letters of introduction which Aunt
Carola had given me; but in my ignorance of Kings Port hours I had
found everybody at dinner when I made my first round of calls between
half-past three and five--an experience particularly regrettable, since I
had hurried my own dinner on purpose, not then aware that the hours at
my boarding-house were the custom of the whole town. (These hours
even since my visit to Kings Port, are beginning to change. But such
backsliding is much condemned.) Upon an afternoon some days later,
having seen in the extra looking-glass, which I had been obliged to
provide for myself, that the part in my back hair was perfect, I set forth
again, better informed.
As I rang the first doorbell, another visitor came up the steps, a
beautiful old lady in widow's dress, a cardcase in her hand.
"Have you rung, sir?" said she, in a manner at once gentle and
voluminous.
"Yes, madam."
Nevertheless she pulled it again. "It doesn't always ring," she explained,
"unless one is accustomed to it, which you are not."

She addressed me with authority, exactly like Aunt Carola, and with
even greater precision in her good English and good enunciation.
Unlike the girl at the Exchange, she had no accent; her language was
simply the perfection of educated utterance; it also was racy with the
free censoriousness which civilized people of consequence are apt to
exercise the world over. "I was sorry to miss your visit," she began (she
knew me, you see, perfectly); "you will please to come again soon, and
console me for my disappointment. I am Mrs. Gregory St. Michael, and
my house is in Le Maire Street (Pronounced in Kings Port, Lammarree)
as you have been so civil as to find out. And how does your Aunt
Carola do in these contemptible times? You can tell her from me that
vulgarization is descending, even upon Kings Port."
"I cannot imagine that!" I exclaimed.
"You cannot imagine it because you don't know anything about it,
young gentleman! The manners of some of our own young people will
soon be as dishevelled as those in New York. Have you seen our town
yet, or is it all books with you? You should not leave without a look