Owen Wister - Lady Baltimore

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 banker accent. "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 me a certain impatience which I might otherwise have missed in those last words of hers. From Charley it brought out, I feel quite sure, the speech which (in some form) she had been expecting from him as her confederate in this unwelcome and inopportune interview with me, and which his less highly schooled perceptions had not suggested to him until prompted by her.

"I should have been very glad to include you in our launch party if I had known you were coming here to-day," lied little Charley.

"Thank you so much!" I murmured; and I fancy that after this Hortense hated me worse than ever. Well, why should I play her game? If anybody had any claim upon me, was it she? I would get as much diversion as I could from this encounter.

Hortense had looked at Charley when she spoke for my benefit, and it now pleased me very much to look at him when I spoke for hers.

"I could almost give up the gardens for the sake of returning with you," I said to him.

This was most successful in producing a perceptible silence before Hortense said, "Do come."

I wanted to say to her, "You are quite splendid — as splendid as you look, through and through! You wouldn't have run away from any battle of Chattanooga!" But what I did say was, "These flowers here will fade, but may I not hope to see you again in Kings Port?"

She was looking at me with eyes half closed; half closed for the sake of insolence — and better observation; when eyes like that take on drowsiness, you will be wise to leave all your secrets behind you, locked up in the bank, or else toss them right down on the open table. Well, I tossed mine down, thereto precipitated by a warning from the stranger in the launch —

"We shall need all the tide we can get."

"I'm sure you'd be glad to know," I then said immediately (to Charley, of course), "that Miss La Heu, whose dog you killed, is back at her work as usual this morning."

"Thank you," returned Charley. "If there could be any chance for me to replace—"

"Miss La Heu is her name?" inquired Hortense. "I did not catch it yesterday. She works, you say?"

"At the Woman's Exchange. She bakes cakes for weddings — among her other activities."

"So interesting!" said Hortense; and bowing to me, she allowed the spellbound Charley to help her down into the launch.

Each step of the few that she had to take was upon unsteady footing, and each was taken with slow security and grace, and with a mastery of her skirts so complete that they seemed to do it of themselves, falling and folding in the soft, delicate curves of discretion.

For the sake of not seeming too curious about this party, I turned from watching it before the launch had begun to move, and it was immediately hidden from me by the bank, so that I did not see it get away. As I crossed an open space toward the gardens I found myself far behind the other pilgrims, whose wandering bands I could half discern among winding walks and bordering bushes. I was soon taken into somewhat reprimanding charge by an admirable, if important, negro, who sighted me from a door beneath the porch of the house, and advanced upon me speedily. From him I learned at once the rule of the place, that strangers were not allowed to "go loose," as he expressed it; and recognizing the perfect propriety of this restriction, I was humble, and even went so far as to put myself right with him by quite ample purchases of the beautiful flowers that he had for sale; some of these would be excellent for the up-country bride, who certainly ought to have repentance from me in some form for my silence as we had come up the river: the scenery had caused me most ungallantly to forget her.

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 I were 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 people 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 I have 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.