Owen Wister - Lady Baltimore

When Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael came back with the keys and their custodian, Bohm was listening to the slow, clear words of Charley, in which he evidently found something that at length interested him — a little. Bohm, it seemed, did not often speak himself: possibly once a week. His way was to let other people speak to him when there were signs in his face that he was hearing anything which they said, it was a high compliment to them, and of course Charley could command Bohm's ear; for Charley, although he was as neat as any barber, and let Hortense walk on him because he looked beyond that, and purposed to get her, was just as potent in the financial world as Bohm, could bring a borrowing empire to his own terms just as skillfully as could Bohm; was, in short, a man after Bohm's own — I had almost said heart: the expression is so obstinately embedded in our language! Bohm, listening, and Charley, talking, had neither of them noticed Mrs. Weguelin's arrival; they stood ignoring her, while she waited, casting a timid eye upon them. But Beverly, suddenly perceiving this, and begging her pardon for them, brought the party together, and we moved in among the old graves.

"Ah!" said Gazza, bending to read the quaint words cut upon one of them, as we stopped while the door at the rear of the church was being opened, "French!"

"It was the mother-tongue of these colonists," Mrs. Weguelin explained to him.

"Ah! like Canada!" cried Gazza. "But what a pretty bit is that!" And he stood back to admire a little glimpse, across a street, between tiled roofs and rusty balconies, of another church steeple. "Almost, one would say, the Old World," Gazza declared.

"Our world is not new," said Mrs. Weguelin; and she passed into the church.

Kings Port holds many sacred nooks, many corners, many vistas, that should deeply stir the spirit and the heart of all Americans who know and love their country. The passing traveller may gaze up at certain windows there, and see History herself looking out at him, even as she looks out of the windows of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. There are also other ancient buildings in Kings Port, where History is shut up, as in a strong-box, — such as that stubborn old octagon, the powder-magazine of Revolutionary times, which is a chest holding proud memories of blood and war. And then there are the three churches. Not strong-boxes, these, but shrines, where burn the venerable lamps of faith. And of these three houses of God, that one holds the most precious flame, the purest light, which treasures the holy fire that came from France. The English colonists, who sat in the other two congregations, came to Carolina's soil to better their estate; but it was for liberty of soul, to lift their ardent and exalted prayer to God as their own conscience bade them, and not as any man dictated, that those French colonists sought the New World. No Puritan splendor of independence and indomitable courage outshines theirs. They preached a word as burning as any that Plymouth or Salem ever heard. They were but a handful, yet so fecund was their marvelous zeal that they became the spiritual leaven of their whole community. They are less known than Plymouth and Salem, because men of action, rather than men of letters, have sprung from the loins of the South; but there they stand, a beautiful beacon, shining upon the coasts of our early history. Into their church, then, into the shrine where their small lamp still burns, their devout descendant, Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael led our party, because in her eyes Kings Port could show nothing more precious and significant. There had been nothing to warn her that Bohm and Charley were Americans who neither knew nor loved their country, but merely Americans who knew their country's wealth and loved to acquire every penny of it that they could.

And so, following the steps of our delicate and courteous guide, we entered into the dimness of the little building; and Mrs. Weguelin's voice, lowered to suit the sanctity which the place had for her, began to tell us very quietly and clearly the story of its early days.

I knew it, or something of it, from books; but from this little lady's lips it took on a charm and graciousness which made it fresh to me. I listened attentively, until I felt, without at first seeing the cause, that dulling of enjoyment, that interference with the receptive attention, which comes at times to one during the performance of music when untimely people come in or go out. Next, I knew that our group of listeners was less compact; and then, as we moved from the first point in the church to a new one, I saw that Bohm and Charley were dropping behind, and I lingered, with the intention of bringing them closer.

"But there was nothing in it," I heard Charley's slow monologue continuing behind me to the silent Bohm. "We could have bought the Parsons road at that time. 'Gentlemen,' I said to them, 'what is there for us in tide-water at Kings Port? '"

It was not to be done, and I rejoined Mrs. Weguelin and those of the party who were making some show of attention to her quiet little histories and explanations; and Kitty's was the next voice which I heard ring out—

"Oh, you must never let it fall to pieces! It's the cunningest little fossil I've seen in the South."

"So," said Charley behind me, "we let the other crowd buy their strategic point; and I guess they know they got a gold brick."

I moved away from the financiers, I endeavored not to hear their words; and in this much I was successful; but their inappropriate presence had got, I suppose upon my nerves; at any rate, go where I would in the little church, or attend as I might and did to what Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael said about the tablets, and whatever traditions their inscriptions suggested to her, that quiet, low, persistent banker's voice of Charley's pervaded the building like a draft of cold air. Once, indeed, he addressed Mrs. Weguelin a question. She was telling Beverly (who followed her throughout, protectingly and charmingly, with his most devoted attention and his best manner) the honorable deeds of certain older generations of a family belonging to this congregation, some of whose tombs outside had borne French inscriptions.

"My mother's family," said Mrs. Weguelin.

"And nowadays," inquired Beverly, "what do they find instead of military careers?"

"There are no more of us nowadays; they — they were killed in the war."

And immediately she smiled, and with her hand she made a light gesture, as if to dismiss this subject from mutual embarrassment and pain.

"I might have known better," murmured the understanding Beverly.

But Charley now had his question. "How many, did you say?"

"How many?" Mrs. Weguelin did not quite understand him.

"Were killed?" explained Charley.

Again there was a little pause before Mrs. Weguelin answered, "My four brothers met their deaths."

Charley was interested. "And what was the percentage of fatality in their regiments?"

"Oh," said Mrs. Weguelin, "we did not think of it in that way." And she turned aside.

"Charley," said Kitty, with some precipitancy, "do make Mr. Bohm look at the church!" and she turned after Mrs. Weguelin. "It is such a gem!"

But I saw the little lady try to speak and fail, and then I noticed that she was leaning against a window-sill.

Beverly Rodgers also noticed this, and he hastened to her.

"Thank you," she returned to his hasty question, "I am quite well. If you are not tired of it, shall we go on?"

"It is such a gem!" repeated Kitty, throwing an angry glance at Charley and Bohm. And so we went on.

Yes, Kitty did her best to cover it up; Kitty, as she would undoubtedly have said herself, could see a few things. But nobody could cover it up, though Beverly was now vigilant in his efforts to do so. Indeed, Replacers cannot be covered up by human agency; they bulge, they loom, they stare, they dominate the road of life, even as their automobiles drive horses and pedestrians to the wall. Bohm, roused from his financial torpor by Kitty's sharp command, did actually turn his eyes upon the church, which he had now been inside for some twenty minutes without noticing. Instinct and long training had given his eye, when it really looked at anything, a particular glance — the glance of the Replacer — which plainly calculated: "Can this be made worth money to me?" and which died instantly to a glaze of indifference on seeing that no money could be made. Bohm's eye, accordingly, waked and then glazed. Manners, courtesy, he did not need, not yet; he had looked at them with his Replacer glance, and, seeing no money in them, had gone on looking at railroads, and mines, and mills, — and bare shoulders, and bottles. Should manners and courtesy come, some day, to mean money to him, then he could have them, in his fashion, so that his admirers and his apologists should alike declare of him, "A rough diamond, but consider what he has made of himself!"