"And tell us," Mrs. Gregory continued, "if it's your opinion that a boy who has never been married is a better judge of matrimony's pitfalls than his father."

"Or than any older person who has bravely and worthily gone through with the experience," Mrs. Weguelin added.

"Ladies, I've no mind to argue. But we're ahead of Europe; we don't need their clumsy old plan."

Mrs. Gregory gave a gallant, incredulous snort. "I shall be interested to learn of anything that is done better here than in Europe."

"Oh, many things, surely! But especially the mating of the fashionable young. They don't need any parents to arrange for them; it's much better managed through precocity."

"Through precocity? I scarcely follow you."

And Mrs. Weguelin softly added, "You must excuse us if we do not follow you." But her softness nevertheless indicated that if there were any one present needing leniency, it was myself.

"Why, yes," I told them, "it's through precocity. The new-rich American no longer commits the blunder of keeping his children innocent. You'll see it beginning in the dancing-cla.s.s, where I heard an exquisite little girl of six say to a little boy, 'Go away; I can't dance with you, because my mamma says your mamma only keeps a maid to answer the doorbell.' When they get home from the dancing-cla.s.s, tutors in poker and bridge are waiting to teach them how to gamble for each other's little dimes. I saw a little boy in knickerbockers and a wide collar throw down the evening paper--"

"At that age? They read the papers?" interrupted Mrs. Gregory.

"They read nothing else at any age. He threw it down and said, 'Well, I guess there's not much behind this raid on Steel Preferred.' What need has such a boy for parents or grandparents? Presently he is travelling to a fashionable boarding-school in his father's private car. At college all his adolescent curiosities are lavishly gratified. His sister at home reads the French romances, and by eighteen she, too, knows (in her head at least) the whole of life, so that she can be perfectly trusted; she would no more marry a mere half-millionaire just because she loved him than she would appear twice in the same ball-dress. She and her ball-dresses are described in the papers precisely as if she were an animal at a show--which indeed is what she has become; and she's eager to be thus described, because she and her mother--even if her mother was once a lady and knew better--are haunted by one perpetual, sickening fear, the fear of being left out. And if you desire to pay correct ballroom compliments, you no longer go to her mother and tell her she's looking every bit as young as her daughter; you go to the daughter and tell her she's looking every bit as old as her mother, for that's what she wishes to do, that's what she tries for, what she talks, dresses, eats, drinks, goes to indecent plays and laughs for. Yes, we manage it through precocity, and the new-rich American parent has achieved at least one new thing under the sun, namely, the corruption of the child."

My ladies silently consulted each other's expressions, after which, in equal silence, their gaze returned to me; but their equally intent scrutiny was expressive of quite different things. It was with expectancy that Mrs. Gregory looked at me--she wanted more. Not so Mrs.

Weguelin; she gave me disapproval; it was shadowed in her beautiful, l.u.s.trous eyes that burned dark in her white face with as much fire as that of youth, yet it was not of youth, being deeply charged with retrospection.

In what, then, had I sinned? For the little lady's next words, coldly murmured, increased in me an uneasiness, as of sin:--

"You have told us much that we are not accustomed to hear in Kings Port."

"Oh, I haven't begun to tell you!" I exclaimed cheerily.

"You certainly have not told us," said Mrs. Gregory, "how your 'precocity' escapes this divorce degradation."

"Escape it? Those people think it is--well, provincial--not to have been divorced at least once!"

Mrs. Gregory opened her eyes, but Mrs. Weguelin shut her lips.

I continued: "Even the children, for their own little reasons, like it. Only last summer, in Newport, a young boy was asked how he enjoyed having a father and an ex-father."

"Ex-father!" said Mrs. Gregory. "Vice-father is what I should call him."

"Maria!" murmured Mrs. Weguelin, "how can you jest upon such topics?"

"I am far from jesting, Julia. Well, young gentleman, and what answer did this precious Newport child make?"

"He said (if you will pardon my giving you his little sentiment in his own quite expressive idiom), 'Me for two fathers! Double money birthdays and Christmases. See?' That was how he saw divorce."

Once again my ladies consulted each other's expressions; we moved along High Walk in such silence that I heard the stiff little rustle which the palmettos were making across the street; even these trees, you might have supposed, were whispering together over the horrors that I had recited in their decorous presence.

It was Mrs. Gregory who next spoke. "I can translate that last boy's language, but what did the other boy mean about a 'raid on Steel Preferred'--if I've got the jargon right?"

While I translated this for her, I felt again the disapproval in Mrs.

Weguelin's dark eyes; and my sins--for they were twofold--were presently made clear to me by this lady.

"Are such subjects as--as stocks" (she softly cloaked this word in scorn immeasurable)--"are such subjects mentioned in your good society at the North?"

I laughed heartily. "Everything's mentioned!"

The lady paused over my reply. "I am afraid you must feel us to be very old-fashioned in, Kings Port," she then said.

"But I rejoice in it!"

She ignored my not wholly dexterous compliment. "And some subjects," she pursued, "seem to us so grave that if we permit ourselves to speak of them at all we cannot speak of them lightly."

No, they couldn't speak of them lightly! Here, then, stood my two sins revealed; everything I had imparted, and also my tone of imparting it, had displeased Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael, not with the thing, but with me. I had transgressed her sound old American code of good manners, a code slightly pompous no doubt, but one in which no familiarity was allowed to breed contempt. To her good taste, there were things in the world which had, apparently, to exist, but which one banished from drawing-room discussion as one conceals from sight the kitchen and outhouses; one dealt with them only when necessity compelled, and never in small-talk; and here had I been, so to speak, small-talking them in that glib, modern, irresponsible cadence with which our brazen age rings and clatters like the beating of triangles and gongs. Not triangles and gongs, but rather strings and flutes, had been the music to which Kings Port society had attuned its measured voice.

I saw it all, and even saw that my own dramatic sense of Mrs. Weguelin's dignity had perversely moved me to be more flippant than I actually felt; and I promised myself that a more chastened tone should forthwith redeem me from the false position I had got into.

"My dear," said Mrs. Gregory to Mrs. Weguelin, "we must ask him to excuse our provincialism."

For the second time I was not wholly dexterous. "But I like it so much!"

I exclaimed; and both ladies laughed frankly.

Mrs. Gregory brought in a fable. "You'll find us all 'country mice'

here."

This time I was happy. "At least, then, there'll be no cat!" And this caused us all to make little bows.

But the word "cat" fell into our talk as does a drop of some acid into a chemical solution, instantly changing the whole to an unexpected new color. The unexpected new color was, in this instance, merely what had been latently lurking in the fluid of our consciousness all through and now it suddenly came out.

Mrs. Gregory stared over the parapet at the harbor. "I wonder if anybody has visited that steam yacht?"

"The Hermana?" I said. "She's waiting, I believe, for her owner, who is enjoying himself very much on land." It was a strong temptation to add, "enjoying himself with the cat," but I resisted it.

"Oh!" said Mrs. Gregory. "Possibly a friend of yours?"

"Even his name is unknown to me. But I gather that he may be coming to Kings Port--to attend Mr. John Mayrant's wedding next Wednesday week."

I hadn't gathered this; but one is at times driven to improvising. I wished so much to know if Juno was right about the engagement being broken, and I looked hard at the ladies as my words fairly grazed the "cat." This time I expected them to consult each other's expressions, and such, indeed, was their immediate proceeding.

"The Wednesday following, you mean," Mrs. Weguelin corrected.

"Postponed again? Dear me!"

Mrs. Gregory spoke this time. "General Rieppe. Less well again, it seems."

It would be like Juno to magnify a delay into a rupture. Then I had a hilarious thought, which I instantly put to the ladies. "If the poor General were to die completely, would the wedding be postponed completely?"

"There would not be the slightest chance of that," Mrs. Gregory declared. And then she p.r.o.nounced a sentence that was truly oracular: "She's coming at once to see for herself."

To which Mrs. Weguelin added with deeper condemnation than she had so far employed at all: "There is a rumor that she is actually coming in an automobile."