Chapter X (8)

Somerset had first met the Princess Rabomirski and her daughter three years before, at Spa. They were staying at the same hotel, a very modest one, which, to Somerset’s mind, ill accorded with the princess’ pretensions. Bernheim was also in attendance, but he disposed his valet, his motor car and himself in the luxurious Hôtel d’Orange, as befitted a man of his quality; also he was in attendance not on Ottilie, but on the princess, who at that time was three years younger and a trifle less painted. Now at Illerville-sur-Mer the trio were stopping at the Hôtel Splendide, a sumptuous hostelry, whose season prices were far above Somerset’s moderate means. He contented himself with the little hotel next door, and hated the Hôtel Splendide and all that it contained, save Ottilie, with all his heart. But at Spa, the princess was evidently in low water from which she did not seem to be rescued by her varying luck at the tables. Ottilie was then a child of seventeen, and Somerset was less attracted by her delicate beauty than by her extraordinary loneliness. Day after day, night after night, he would come upon her sitting solitary on one of the settees in the gaming room, like a forgotten fan or flower, or wandering wistfully from table to table, idly watching the revolving wheels. Sometimes she would pause behind her mother’s or Bernheim’s chair to watch their game; but the princess called her a little _porte-malheur_ and would drive her away. In the mornings or on other rare occasions, when the elder inseparables were not playing roulette, Ottilie hovered round them at a distance, as disregarded as a shadow that followed them in space of less dimensions, as it were, wherever they went. In the Casino rooms, if men spoke to her, she replied in shy monosyllables and shrank away. Somerset, who had made regular acquaintance with the princess at the hotel and who took a chivalrous pity on her loneliness, she admitted first to a timid friendship and then to a childlike intimacy. Her face would brighten and her heart beat a little faster when she saw his young, well-knit figure appear in the distance; for she knew he would come straight to her and take her from the hot rooms heavy with perfumes and tobacco on to the cool balcony and talk of all manner of pleasant things. And Somerset found in this neglected little sham princess what his youth was pleased to designate a flower-like soul. Those were idyllic hours. The princess, glad to get the embarrassing child out of the way, took no notice of the intimacy. Somerset fell in love.

It lasted out a three years’ separation during which he did not hear from her. He had written to several addresses, but a cold post office returned his letters undelivered, and his only consolation was to piece together from various sources the unedifying histories of the Princess Rabomirski and Count Bernheim, of the holy Roman Empire. He came to Illerville-sur-Mer for an August holiday. The first thing he did when shown into his hotel bedroom was to gaze out of the window at the beach and the sea. The first person his eyes rested upon was the little Princess Ottilie issuing, alone as usual, from the doors of the next hotel.

He had been at Illerville a fortnight--a fortnight of painful joy. Things had changed. Their interviews had been mostly stolen, for the Princess Rabomirski had rudely declined to renew the acquaintance and had forbidden Ottilie to speak to him. The girl, though apparently as much neglected as ever, was guarded against him with peculiar ingenuity. Somerset, aware that Ottilie, now grown from a child into an exquisitely beautiful and marriageable young woman, was destined by a hardened sinner like the princess for a wealthier husband than a poor newspaper man with no particular prospects, could not, however, quite understand the reason for the virulent hatred of which he was the object. He overheard the princess one day cursing her daughter in execrable German for having acknowledged his bow a short time before. Their only undisturbed time together was in the sea during the bathing hour. The princess, hating the pebbly beach, which cut to pieces her high-heeled shoes, never watched the bathers, and Bernheim, who did not bathe--Somerset, prejudiced, declared that he did not even wash--remained in his bedroom till the hour of _déjeuner_. Ottilie, attended only by her maid, came down to the water’s edge, threw off her peignoir, and, plunging into the water, found Somerset waiting.

Now, Somerset was a strong swimmer. Moderately proficient at all games as a boy and an undergraduate, he had found that swimming was the only sport in which he excelled, and he had cultivated and maintained the art. Oddly enough, the little Princess Ottilie, in spite of her apparent fragility, was also an excellent and fearless swimmer. She had another queer delight for a creature so daintily feminine--the _salle d’armes_--so that the muscles of her young limbs were firm and well-ordered. But the sea was her passion. If an additional bond between Somerset and herself were needed, it would have been this. Yet, though it is a pleasant thing to swim far away into the loneliness of the sea with the object of one’s affections, the conditions do not encourage sustained conversation on subjects of vital interest. On the day when Somerset learned that his little princess was engaged to Bernheim he burned to tell her more than could be spluttered out in ten fathoms of water. So he urged her to an assignation.

At half-past ten she joined him at the bottom of the Casino steps. The shingly _plage_ was deserted, but on the terrace above the throng was great, owing to the breathless heat of the night.

“Thank Heaven you have come,” said he. “Do you know how I have longed for you?”

She glanced up wistfully into his face. In her simple cream dress and burnt straw hat adorned with white roses round the brim, she looked very fair and childlike.

“You mustn’t say such things,” she whispered. “They are wrong now. I am engaged to be married.”

“I won’t hear of it,” said Somerset. “It is a horrible nightmare--your engagement. Don’t you know that I love you? I loved you the first minute I set my eyes on you at Spa.”

Princess Ottilie sighed, and they walked along the boards behind the bathing machines, and down the rattling beach to the shelter of a fishing boat, where they sat down, screened from the world, with the murmuring sea in front of them. Somerset talked of his love and the hatefulness of Bernheim. The little princess sighed again.

“I have worse news still,” she said. “It will pain you. We are going to Paris to-morrow, and then on to Aix-les-Bains. They have just decided. They say the baccarat here is silly, and they might as well play for bonbons. So we must say good-by to-night--and it will be good-by for always.”

“I, too, will come to Aix-les-Bains,” said Somerset.

“No, no,” she answered, quickly. “It would only bring trouble on me, and do no good. We must part to-night. Don’t you think it hurts me?”

“But you must love me,” said Somerset.

“I do,” she said, simply, “and that is why it hurts. Now I must be going back.”

“Ottilie,” said Somerset, grasping her hands, “need you ever go back?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Come away from this hateful place with me--now, this minute. You need never see Bernheim again as long as you live. Listen. My friend Ross has a motor car. I can manage it--so there will be only us two. Run into your hotel for a thick cloak, and meet me as quickly as you can behind the tennis courts. If we go full speed we’ll catch the night boat at Dieppe. It will be a wild race for our life happiness. Come!”

In his excitement he rose and pulled her to her feet. They faced each other for a few glorious moments, panting for breath, and then Princess Ottilie broke down and cried bitterly.

“I can’t, dear, I can’t. I must marry Bernheim. It is to save my mother from something dreadful. I don’t know what it is--but she went on her knees to me, and I promised.”

“If there’s a woman in Europe capable of getting out of her difficulties unaided it is the Princess Rabomirski,” said Somerset. “I am not going to let you be sold. You are mine, Ottilie, and, by Heaven! I’m going to have you. Come.”

He urged, he pleaded, he put his strong arms around her as if he would carry her away bodily. He did everything that a frantic young man could do. But the more the little princess wept, the more inflexible she became. Somerset had not realized before this steel in her nature. Raging and vehemently urging, he accompanied her back to the Casino steps.

“Would you like to say good-by to me to-morrow morning, instead of to-night?” she asked, holding out her hand.

“I am never going to say good-by,” cried Somerset.

“I shall slip out to-morrow morning for a last swim--at six o’clock,” she said, unheeding his exclamation. “Our train goes at ten.” Then she came very close to him.

“Vince, dear, if you love me, don’t make me more unhappy than I am.”

It was an appeal to his chivalry. He kissed her hand and said:

“At six o’clock.”

But Somerset had no intention of bidding her a final farewell in the morning. If he followed her the world over he would snatch her out of the arms of the accursed Bernheim and marry her by main force. As for the foreign telegrams of the _Daily Post_, he cared not how they would be subedited. He went to bed with lofty disregard of Fleet Street and bread and butter. As for the shame from which Ottilie’s marriage would save her sainted mother, he did not believe a word of it. She was selling Ottilie to Bernheim for cash down. He stayed awake most of the night plotting schemes for the rescue of his princess. It would be an excellent plan to insult Bernheim and slay him outright in a duel. Its disadvantages lay in his own imperfections as a duelist, and for the first time he cursed the benign laws of his country. At length he fell asleep; woke up to find it daylight and leaped to his feet in a horrible scare. But a sight of his watch reassured him. It was only five o’clock. At half-past he put on a set of bathing things and sat down by the window to watch the hall door of the Hôtel Splendide. At six out came the familiar figure of the little princess draped in her white peignoir. She glanced up at Somerset’s window. He waved his hand, and in a minute or two they were standing side by side at the water’s edge. It was far away from the regular bathing place marked by the bathing cabins, and further still from the fishing end of the beach, where alone at that early hour were signs of life visible. The town behind them slept in warmth and light. The sea stretched out blue and unrippled in the still air. A little bank of purple cloud on the horizon presaged a burning day.

The little princess dropped her peignoir and kicked off her straw-soled shoes and gave her hand to her companion. He glanced at the little white feet, which he was tempted to fall down and kiss, and then at the wistful face below the blue-silk foulard knotted in front over the bathing cap. His heart leaped at her bewildering sweetness. She was the morning incarnate.

She read his eyes, and flushed pink.

“Let us go in,” she said.

They waded in together, hand in hand, until they were waist deep. Then they struck out, making for the open sea. The sting of the night had already passed from the water. To their young blood it felt warm. They swam near together, Ottilie using a steady breast stroke and Somerset a side stroke, so that he could look at her flushed and glistening face. From the blue of the sea and the blue of the sky and the light blue of the silk foulard, the blue of her eyes grew magically deep.

“There seems to be nothing but you and I in God’s universe, Ottilie,” said he. She smiled at him. He drew quite close to her.

“If we could only go on straight until we found an enchanted island which we could have as our kingdom!”

“The sea must be our kingdom,” said Ottilie.

“Or its depths. Shall we dive down and look for the ‘ceiling of amber, the pavement of pearl,’ and the ‘red gold throne in the heart of the sea’ for the two of us?”

“We should be happier than in the world,” replied the little princess.

They swam on slowly, dreamily, in silence. The mild waves lapped against their ears and their mouths. The morning sun lay at their backs and its radiance fell athwart the bay. Through the stillness came the faint echo of a fisherman on the far beach hammering at his boat. Beyond that and the gentle swirl of the water there was no sound. After a while they altered their course so as to reach a small boat that lay at anchor for the convenience of the stronger swimmers. They clambered up and sat on the gunwale, their feet dangling in the sea.

“Is my princess tired?” he asked.

She laughed in merry scorn.

“Tired? Why, I could swim twenty times as far. Do you think I have no muscle? Feel. Don’t you know I fence all the winter?”

She braced her bare arm. He felt the muscle; then relaxing it by drawing down her wrist, he kissed it very gently.

“Soft and strong--like yourself,” said he. Ottilie said nothing, but looked at her white feet through the transparent water. She thought that in letting him kiss her arm, and feeling as though he had kissed right through to her heart, she was exhibiting a pitiful lack of strength. Somerset looked at her askance, uncertain. For nothing in the world would he have offended.

“Did you mind?” he whispered.

She shook her head and continued to look at her feet. Somerset felt a great happiness pulse through him.

“If I gave you up,” said he, “I should be the poorest-spirited dog that ever whined.”

“Hush!” she said, putting her hand in his. “Let us think only of the present happiness.”

They sat silent for a moment, contemplating the little red-roofed town of Illerville-sur-Mer, which nestled in greenery beyond the white sweep of the beach, and the rococo hotels and the Casino, whose cupolas flashed gaudily in the morning sun. From the northeastern end of the bay stretched a long line of sheer white cliff as far as the eye could reach. Toward the west it was bounded by a narrow headland running far out to sea.

“It looks like a frivolous little Garden of Eden,” said Somerset, “but I wish we could never set foot in it again.”

“Let us dive in and forget it,” said Ottilie.

She slipped into the water. Somerset stood on the gunwale and dived. When he came up and had shaken the salt water from his nostrils, he joined her in two or three strokes.

“Let us go round the point to the little beach the other side.”

She hesitated. It would take a long time to swim there, rest and swim back. Her absence might be noticed. But she felt reckless. Let her drink this hour of happiness to the full. What mattered anything that could follow? She smiled assent, and they struck out steadily for the point. It was good to have the salt smell, and the taste of the brine, and the pleasant smart of the eyes; and to feel their mastery of the sea. As they threw out their flashing white arms and topped each tiny wave, they smiled in exultation. To them it seemed impossible that anyone could drown. For the buoyant hour they were creatures of the element. Now and then a gull circled before them, looked at them unconcernedly, as if they were in some way of his kindred, and swept away into the distance. A tired white butterfly settled for a moment on Ottilie’s head; then light-heartedly fluttered away seaward to its doom. They swam on and on and they neared the point. They slackened for a moment, and he brought his face close to hers.

“If I said: ‘Let us swim on for ever and ever,’ would you do it?”

“Yes,” she said, looking deep into his eyes.

After a while they floated restfully. The last question and answer seemed to have brought them a great peace. They were conscious of little save the mystery of the cloudless ether above their faces and the infinite sea that murmured in their ears strange harmonies of love and death--harmonies woven from the human yearnings of every shore and the hushed secrets of eternal time. So close were they bodily together that now and then hand touched hand and limb brushed limb. A happy stillness of the soul spread its wings over them and they felt it to be a consecration of their love. Presently his arm sought her, encircled her, brought her head on his shoulder.

“Rest a little,” he whispered.

She closed her eyes, surrendered her innocent self to the flooding rapture of the moment. The horrors that awaited her passed from her brain. He had come to the lonely child like a god out of heaven. He had come to the frightened girl like a new terror. He was by her side now, the man whom of all men God had made to accomplish her womanhood and to take all of soul and body, sense and brain, that she had to give. Their salt lips met in a first kiss of passion. Words would have broken the spell of the enchantment cast over them by the infinite spaces of sea and sky. They drifted on and on, the subtle, subconscious movement of foot and hand keeping them afloat. The little princess moved closer to him so as to feel more secure around her the circling pressure of his arm. He laughed a man’s short, exultant laugh, and gripped her more tightly. Never had he felt his strength more sure. His right arm and his legs beat rhythmically, and he felt the pulsation of the measured strokes of his companion’s feet, and the water swirled past his head so that he knew they were making way most swiftly. Of exertion there was no sense whatever. He met her eyes fixed through half-shut lids upon his face. He lost count of time and space. Now and then a little wave broke over their faces and they laughed and cleared the brine from their mouths and drew more close together.

“If it wasn’t for that,” she whispered once, “I could go to sleep.”

Soon they felt the gentle rocking of the sea increase and waves broke more often over them. Somerset was the first to note the change. Loosening his hold of Ottilie, he trod water and looked around. To his amazement, they were still abreast of the point, but far out to sea. He gazed at it uncomprehendingly for an instant, and then a sudden recollection smote him like a message of death. They had caught the edge of the current against which swimmers were warned, and the current held them in its grip and was sweeping them on while they floated foolishly. A swift glance at Ottilie showed him that she, too, realized the peril. With the outgoing tide it was almost impossible to reach the shore.

“Are you afraid?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Not with you.”

He scanned the land and the sea. On the arc of their horizon lay the black hull of a tramp steamer going eastward. Far away to the west was a speck of white, and against the pale sky a film of smoke. Landward, beyond the shimmering water, stretched the sunny bay, and the Casino was just visible. Its gilt cupolas shot tiny flames. The green-topped point, its hither side deep in shadow, reached out helplessly for them. Somerset and Ottilie still paused, doing nothing more than keeping themselves afloat, and they felt the current drifting them ever seaward.

“It looks like death,” he said, gravely. “Are you afraid to die?”

Again Ottilie said: “Not with you.”

He looked at the land, and he looked at the white speck and the puff of smoke. Then suddenly his heart leaped with the thrilling inspiration of a wild impossibility.

“Let us leave Illerville and France behind us. Death is as certain either way.”

The little princess looked at him wonderingly.

“Where are we going?”

“To England.”

“Anywhere but Illerville,” she said.

He struck out seaward, she followed. Each saw the other’s face white and set. They had current and tide with them, they swam steadily, undistressed. After a silence she called to him.

“Vince, if we go to our kingdom under the sea, you will take me down in your arms?”

“In a last kiss,” he said.

He had heard--as who has not?--of love being stronger than death. Now he knew its truth. But he swore to himself a great oath that they should not die.

“I shall take my princess to a better kingdom,” he said, later.

* * * * *

Presently he heard her breathing painfully. She could not hold out much longer.

“I will carry you,” he said.

An expert swimmer, she knew the way to hold his shoulders and leave his arms unimpeded. The contact of her light young form against his body thrilled him and redoubled his strength. He held his head for a second high out of the water and turned half round.

“Do you think I am going to let you die--now?”

The white speck had grown into a white hull, and Somerset was making across its track. To do so he must deflect slightly from the line of the current. His great battle began.

He swam doggedly, steadily, husbanding his strength. If the vessel justified his first flash of inspiration, and if he could reach her, he knew how he should act. As best he could, for it was no time for speech, he told Ottilie his hopes. He felt the spray from her lips upon his cheek, as she said:

“It seems sinful to wish for greater happiness than this.”

After that there was utter silence between them. At first he thought exultingly of Bernheim and the Princess Rabomirski, and the rage of their wicked hearts; of the future glorified by his little princess of the unconquerable soul; of the present’s mystic consummation of their marriage. But gradually mental concepts lost sharpness of definition. Sensation began to merge itself into a half-consciousness of stroke on stroke through the illimitable waste. Despite the laughing morning sunshine, the sky became dark and lowering. The weight on his neck grew heavier. At first Ottilie had only rested her arms. Now her feet were as lead, and sank behind him; her clasp tightened about his shoulders. He struggled on through a welter of sea and mist. Strange sounds sang in his ears, as if over them had been clamped great sea shells. At each short breath his throat gulped down bitter water. A horrible pain crept across his chest. His limbs seemed paralyzed, and yet he remained above the surface. The benumbed brain wondered at the miracle.

The universe broke upon his vision as a blurred mass of green and white. He recognized it vaguely as his kingdom beneath the sea, and, as in a dream, he remembered his promise. He slipped round. His lips met Ottilie’s. His arms wound about her, and he sank holding her tightly clasped.

* * * * *

Strange things happened. He was pulled hither and thither by sea monsters welcoming him to his kingdom. In a confused way he wondered that he could breathe so freely in the depths of the ocean. Unutterable happiness stole over him. The kingdom was _real_. His sham princess would be queen in very truth. But where was she?

He opened his eyes and found himself lying on the deck of a ship. A couple of men were doing funny things to his arms. A rosy-faced man in white ducks and a yachting cap stood over him with a glass of brandy. When he had drunk the spirit, the rosy man laughed.

“That was a narrow shave. We got you just in time. We were nearly right on you. The young woman is doing well. My wife is looking after her.”

As soon as he could collect his faculties, Somerset asked:

“Are you the _Mavis_?”

“Yes.”

“I felt sure of it. Are you Sir Henry Ransome?”

“That’s my name.”

“I heard you were expected at Illerville to-day,” said Somerset. “That is why I made for you.”

The two men who had been doing queer things with his arms wrapped him in a blanket and propped him up against the deck cabin.

“But what on earth were you two young people doing in the middle of the English Channel?” asked the owner of the _Mavis_.

“We were eloping,” said Somerset.

The other looked at him for a bewildered moment and burst into a roar of laughter. He turned to the cabin door and disappeared, to emerge a moment afterward followed by a lady in a morning wrapper.

“What do you think, Marian? It’s an elopement.”

Somerset smiled at them.

“Have you ever heard of the Princess Rabomirski? You have? Well, this is her daughter. Perhaps you know of the Count Bernheim, who is always about with the princess?”

“I trod on him last winter at Monte Carlo,” said Sir Henry Ransome.

“He survives,” said Somerset, “and has bought the Princess Ottilie from her mother. He’s not going to get her. She belongs to me. My name is Somerset, and I am foreign subeditor of the _Daily Post_.”

“I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Somerset,” said Sir Henry, with a smile. “And now, what can I do for you?”

“If you lend us some clothes, and take us to any port on earth save Illerville-sur-Mer, you will earn our eternal gratitude.”

Sir Henry looked doubtful. “We have made our arrangements for Illerville,” said he.

His wife broke in:

“If you don’t take these romantic beings straight to Southampton, I’ll never set my foot upon this yacht again.”

“It was you, my dear, who were crazy to come to Illerville.”

“Don’t you think,” said Lady Ransome, “you might provide Mr. Somerset with some dry things?”

* * * * *

Four hours afterward Somerset sat on deck by the side of Ottilie, who, warmly wrapped, lay on a long chair. He pointed to the far-away coast line of the Isle of Wight.

“Behold our kingdom!” said he.

The little princess laughed.

“That is not our kingdom.”

“Well, what is?”

“Just the little bit of space that contains both you and me,” she said.

THE MOST EXCLUSIVE CITY IN AMERICA

By

Anne Rittenhouse

The mighty colony of rich tourists who go South with the birds have begun to love two quaint, historic Southern cities. One hears gossip and anecdote of them in the Fifth Avenue clubs and the Philadelphia and Chicago drawing rooms. Many a man has become instantly _persona grata_ in Northern centers because he registered from one of these towns.

Each city has recognized this advent of an army of Northerners in a different way--a way which indicates the heart and soul of the people. Charleston sits and smiles behind its jalousie blinds--a conservative relic of Huguenot days. Augusta leaps eagerly forward to meet them, commercially, if not always socially.

The difference between these two cities lying so close together, separated by the great yellow Savannah River, which leisurely picks its way among the rice savannas, is understood but not defined by the tourists. They are more desirous to enter into the social life, of these two places than they are of any other winter resort, for, while the South is honeycombed with Northern hotels, they are usually laid along the lines that will make capital for promoters. Beyond the climate and the visitors, there is nothing.

Palm Beach is an imitation of Monaco. It is not a city. It is without history. New Orleans is the quaintest city alive in America, but its horizon is broader, its basis more substantial, than any other Southern city, and it is not such a Mecca for the casual traveler. Neither is Richmond, with all its history and picturesque tradition.

Atlanta is the Chicago of the South, and is too busy with its future to remember it has not a cobwebbed past. Aiken, the best-known cottage resort of the South, is a suburb of Augusta. It is but a village in the pines.

This is the reason Charleston and Augusta stand with the Northerners for character study, history and individual charm. Yet thousands of travelers, eager as they are about it, know almost nothing of the core of these two cities. They dwell lovingly on the quaint houses of the one and the great street of the other, but the blinds are jealously down. The wooden shutters of the domestic life are kept closed. So they miss that which is most exquisite, most appealing, in any city--personality.

Charleston is, without doubt, the most exclusive city in America. It gives nothing out to the stranger beyond its physical beauty and tempered climate. One keen observer said of it: “It has only one equal--a German principality, where almost everyone is royal and noble and all intermarried. Other places and social codes exist, of course--New York, Chicago, Denver--but not for Charleston.”

A small child of that city was asked where Charleston was placed. Proudly she said, “It is between the Cooper and the Ashley Rivers, which join and _form_ the ocean.”

When the Bostonian speaks grandly of the _Mayflower_, the Huguenot of Charleston smiles. He is remembering that Jean Ribaut landed a Huguenot emigration in Port Royal fifty-eight years before the Puritans landed in Massachusetts Bay. The Knickerbocker has no boast to make before the South Carolinian, because the Dutch settled New York over half a century later than Port Royal was begun.

Charleston was settled by aristocrats from France, and later from England--men who came from the court and wore the garments and spoke the language of the world’s highest circle. Like New Orleans, it sprang into life as a cultured community. It had not the struggle upward for social position. The great names it held then are its first names to-day. And the world recognizes the bearers of these names as those who have the hallmark of admission into the reserved social corners of America.

The St. Cecilia Society exists in all its former charm and exclusiveness. It is the oldest dancing club in America, as far as the Charlestonian has any record, although the Philadelphian claims this honor for the Quaker City’s famous Assemblies. It has not changed in one iota since the early days of the eighteenth century, and, as far as possible, the names of its managers have continued the same.

Josiah Quincy, who went to Charleston in 1773, says of the city, in his diary: “It far surpasses all I ever saw or ever expect to see in America.”

As early as January, 1734, Charleston had its drama, which was probably the first theatrical performance in America. Its citizens went to college in England; and Mr. Snowden, who knows his Charleston as Thackeray knew his London, says South Carolina headed all the colonies in the list of the London Inns of Court, and up to the time of the Revolution had forty-five law students there.

When the Philadelphian speaks serenely of the Liberty Bell, the Charlestonian smiles and remembers that in 1765 South Carolina took the first step for a Continental Union, and that in Charleston was formulated the first independent constitution in any of the colonies; also that she furnished three of the signers of the Declaration of Independence--Arthur Middleton, Thomas Heyward and Thomas Lynch, Jr. To the world of art it gave Charles Fraser, the great miniaturist; and Malbone also did his work there. The private houses held Gainsboroughs, Stuarts, Romneys and Wests in the eighteenth century.

These are a few of the reasons that give the Charlestonian that serene pride in self, country and relatives. This serenity broods over the city; and the shock of wars, earthquakes, tidal wave and stupendous fires has not shaken it.

Its laws of behavior and its rules of society are without change. Whatever happens in the rest of the world need not be followed there. There is a story told of the sexton of the famous old St. Michael’s, the notable church, and of Crum, the negro whom President Roosevelt made collector of the port. Crum brought several Northerners in a carriage to the door. It was at an hour when no one was allowed in the church. Crum insisted upon going in and taking his guests to the belfry to see the famous bells. The sexton declined to allow it.

The negro collector drew himself up and said to the sexton:

“You surely don’t know who I am. My name is Crum.”

“Well, you could be the whole loaf and you wouldn’t be allowed in St. Michael’s,” was the laconic answer.

It is easily inferred that the sexton was none too sorry to give a verbal blow to the negro collector who persuaded white men from the North to be his guests.

The Charleston negro who belongs to “the quality” shares and echoes his master’s pride of birth and social tradition. The man who for decades has delivered invitations for all the exclusive parties prides himself on knowing every person worth speaking to in the city. A certain Northern woman, who was kindly received in Charleston, gave a large ball. She asked this colored man to carry the invitations for her. In looking over the list, he made several suggestions concerning people who should be crossed out, and those who should be put on.

The Northern woman asked if he was quite sure he knew where all these people lived. His answer was delightful.

“Madam,” he said, “if there is any person in Charleston who lives where I don’t know, that person shouldn’t be invited to your ball.”

Another colored retainer of a famous family has a stiff-necked belief that nothing can happen to such aristocracy. A fire broke out in an adjoining house on a back street, burned through the dividing fence and destroyed the carriages in the stable. The master upbraided the old negro for allowing it to happen when he could easily have removed the traps. He said: “Massa, who’d ever t’ink dey fire would come in we yard!”

Another negro butler, who dominated the household of a certain judge, was serving at table one day when a second judge from up the State was present. Both men were equally well-born of an ancient and honorable ancestry, but the up-country man had not the graces of table etiquette.

When the fish course was served, he said to his host:

“Judge, I’d like to have some rice with this fish.”

“Did you hear the judge?” was asked the negro butler by the host.

The man gave a certain look at his master, then one of extreme annoyance at the guest. Leaning over, he whispered distinctly in the ear of the up-country judge:

“We don’t serve rice with fish in Charleston.”

The inner life of this Huguenot city is little known to the public, because Charleston won’t have it known. The same exclusiveness and privacy pervade her social and domestic system in the beginning of the twentieth as in the eighteenth century.

No detailed description of this feeling could so firmly fix it in the mind of the stranger as a remark made by a member of one of the oldest families in the city. When a certain history of the Revolution was published, it had a chapter on the part played in it by men of South Carolina. Included in this was an intimate description of the bravery of a Charleston general. An ancestor of this man wrote at once to the publisher:

“You will be so kind as to leave out in your next edition all allusions to my ancestor, General ----. What he did in the Revolution is a purely private and family matter, and we do not wish it boldly displayed for the public to read.”

In the next edition of the book the career of the Charlestonian was left out!

This pride, however, works in another way. The well-born Charlestonian expects the world to know who he is and whence he sprang.

This story is told--possibly as a joke, by Charlestonians--of an elderly man at the head of a family a member of which signed the Declaration of Independence. He presented a check to be cashed at a bank in another Southern city. The cashier told him he would have to be identified. To which he replied: “My God, has it come to this, that a M----n must be identified in America!”

Socially, Charleston exercises a spell over the visitor. A famous Northern lawyer, who went South last winter for the first time, could not make up his mind to step off the train into the Charleston station because of his rebellious feeling against that first shot at Sumter; so he went on to Florida. Coming back, he determined to conquer his prejudice and take a look at the Battery and St. Michael’s. He remained for days. His observant criticism for once failed him.

“What people! What culture! What society!” This was all he could say, but his exclamation points grew larger and longer after each phrase.

The first evidence of social quaintness in the town is the way the first families live. Here comes the strain of French blood. The venerable houses are placed among dense foliage, the side, never the front, of the house facing the street. In this side are the parlor and upper bedroom windows, which are never open to the public streets, but covered with wooden shutters. Instead of a front doorbell to ring, there is a small gate with a bell. This you tinkle, and a servant lets you in. There is a long piazza running the full side length of the house, which is often used as a sitting room. The piazza is usually protected by jalousie blinds. If the formal caller finds it deserted, he is shown in the reception room, with closed shutters, but in the warm days all informal entertaining is done on the piazza.

A Western visitor said he knew it would not be as hard for a stranger to pass St. Peter as to get by one of the heirloom butlers at a Charleston gate.

Some of these houses are nearly two centuries old, and in many of them the family name has been unchanged in that time. To sit on those “galleries” of the Charleston aristocracy in the fragrant days of early spring is one of the social memories that cling for life. There are the wonderful voices of the people who are talking. The accent is without imitation. It stands aloof as a study in folklore from any other accent in the South. It is a perceptible mixture of French and English, impossible to imitate or classify.

The air is salty with the breezes that drift past Sumter from the sea, and keen with roses, jasmine and magnolias. The Spanish moss, trailing to the ground from sturdy oaks, is silver in the moonlight, mysterious in the shadow.

The pathways called residence streets are lines between lawns and flowers. There is something here of the atmosphere of New Orleans, something of the pungent odor and nerve-soothing softness, but the Charlestonian is reposeful and the Creole is nervous and _staccato_.

You feel that here is a corner where things need not change, where evolution is not worship, where the strenuous life is not considered and may be thought a trifle vulgar.

It is not the simplicity of the simple-minded, not the stolid repose of the uneducated. It is the calmness of those who have helped to make history, who have achieved much, and who, believing they have no superiors, are not made restless with social ambition.

The stranger who can lead those on the “galleries” to talk of days that have gone, of characters who exist, of quaint traditions that are kept, is fortunate. He has lifted a veil that hides much that is delightful and unique.

It is told of the Charlestonian by his neighbors, that he often criticises some improvement in another part of the South with the remark, “If that change is progress, I want to progress backward.”

Charleston protects her age and her traditions against all newcomers. She is not poor, she has few vagrants, she is not without a solid bank account, she is the greatest phosphate shipping port in the world, but, as a New York editorial writer said of her, “no tragedy that has passed over her, or no change that has been made in America, has ever been able to interrupt her prosperity or discourage her fixed purpose to be comfortable.” She would no more change her architecture, or willingly introduce new blood into her best families, than she would uproot the gravestones of her first inhabitants, who rest in St. Michael’s, or remove the shells of the bombardment from her walls.

Her manners, her society, her behavior in drawing room, ballroom and street, are those of an older and more elegant world. Why should she change? The girls in all other parts of the South may go unchaperoned to balls, but she does not allow her girls to do it. Neither does the exclusive Philadelphian nor the Knickerbocker of New York.

Other clubs use their windows as lounging places for the curious, where idle men may sit and stare at the parade of women who pass on the street. Charleston considers this vulgar. The front windows of its club have drawn blinds. It is also regarded as beneath a gentleman to mention a woman’s name in the club.

Promoters can talk all they wish, but, charm they never so wisely, they can’t persuade the Charlestonian to welcome with delight a horde of unidentified tourists. Cottages are rented here and there for writers and artists and quiet people, but Charleston shakes her head when approached on the subject of huge hotels which will accommodate the man with millions from the swarming centers of America. She does not want her streets, her shops or her atmosphere invaded by aliens.

It is almost impossible to think of her graciously accepting new blood and new customs. The most notable person who came there would, if accepted, owe his reception to the fact that one of her own had said something of him. In this she has her counterpart in the creole of New Orleans.

General John B. Gordon described this feeling in the French city with a story of the Civil War. A Virginia soldier was boasting of General Robert E. Lee during the first year of the war.

“Lee? Lee? I think I have heard General Beauregard speak well of Lee,” answered the Creole zouave, as he rolled his cigarette.

Even the best lovers of innovation should eagerly desire Charleston to retain its serenity. New ways would mean tearing down old places, not at once, but in the end. And this would mean historical desecration.

St. Michael’s, its famous Episcopal church, should never be swamped by incongruous buildings, as New York’s famous old churches have been.

It is to be preserved not only because of its socially exclusive congregation, but because of the manifold troubles it has outlived.

Among its own people it is jestingly referred to as the Chapel of Ease of the St. Cecilia Society, but every South Carolinian ardently loves the old building. It was first opened for service in 1761, and is still the finest piece of church architecture in the South. In 1782 the English took possession of the bells, and sent them to Great Britain. The next year they were bought and sent back to Charleston. When General Sherman was an unwelcome guest in 1865, two bells were stolen and the rest made useless. These were sent to England, and a new set recast by the firm which had made them in 1764. The same patterns were exactly followed, and the bells replaced in 1867. During the great earthquake of 1886, the bells and belfry were fearfully shaken, but no harm came.

Augusta is not without her fine old past, too, but she is sharply different in her modern standpoint from her sister city across the Savannah. She gives Charleston the same adjective that New York kindly bestows on Philadelphia--the word “slow.”

Augusta is a modern. She eagerly discusses and adopts that which is new. She says of the Huguenot city that she “is joined to her idols, let her alone.” And while she may now and then run after new gods, she valiantly protects herself from any such reputation, and refers to Atlanta, the capital city, as “new, so new.”

If Charleston says, “Oglethorpe--adventurers,” too often, Augusta daringly answers back that the morals of the court of Louis were not quite swamped in the French _émigrés_ by Calvinism.

But it is a merry war, a family tiff, in which let the outsider beware of interfering.

Back of the rows of oaks are some splendid specimens of the finest early architecture for residence purposes; spacious homes, with rounded, vaulting white columns to support the arched façades which project over the windows of the second story.

In one of the great houses a ball was given last winter, where six spacious rooms on the lower floor were thrown open to the dancers, two square halls were given over to foliage, loungers and orchestra, and about three hundred guests were easily seated for an elaborate course supper.

These Augustans know how to entertain. They are a prosperous people, and they spend willingly and widely in New York on all the paraphernalia that goes to enhance the modern table. The women buy their clothes in New York whenever possible, and important dressmaking and tailor firms think it worth while to open up for part of the season at the two hotels that lure the Northern traveler. It is not the Northerner they cater to, but the Augustans.

Their social life is lavish and strenuous. The St. Valentine Ball, held once a year, is their oldest and most exclusive social function. While it has on its list the first families, still it is not such an institution as Charleston’s St. Cecilia, and there is constant talk of its being dissolved. It has an exclusive series during the season of dinner dances at its Country Club, which is one of the handsomest in the South.

Far from discouraging tourists’ hotels, Augusta is anxious for them. When the winter emigrants from the ice-swept North come well recommended, they are received into the fashionable life of the place. These people are always dazed at the magnitude and charm of the social life. Less the millionaire splendor, a season in Augusta is quite as time-absorbing as one in New York or Boston.

A New York bride who went there for two weeks on her honeymoon last year attended five balls and dances, twelve luncheons, ten afternoon teas and as many suppers, with a dozen invitations for morning card parties. The bridegroom naïvely remarked, “I’ve never been on a honeymoon before, but this one doesn’t seem like the real thing.”

It is almost certain that no town with equal population in the East compares socially with the brilliancy of private life in this town on the Savannah.

The tea and sandwich afternoon “at homes” of the East are poverty-stricken affairs in the mind of an Augusta hostess.

“I wouldn’t treat a casual caller worse than that,” one of them remarked, after looking at the fare provided at a smart Northern afternoon affair, where the daughter of the house was being introduced to society.

At an Augusta “tea” one receives the daintiest dishes the markets offer, with wines and punch, prepared so as to follow out some artistic color scheme. Massive silver, candelabra, mahogany, lace and embroidered damasks, and profusion of Southern flowers, make these dining rooms a pungent memory with those who have had the good fortune to be asked behind the closed shutters.

Augusta is so modern in its desires and endeavors that it makes two tourists’ hotels, which crown its hills, a part of its social life. One is in Georgia, one in South Carolina, for the city is built on both sides of the Savannah River; and in these are given smart dinners and dances by the residents.

It is true they often refer to the guests of the hotels and to the Aiken cottagers as “the Yankee millionaires,” as though they belonged to another flag, and knew not the star-spangled banner. But if these people have anything to teach, Augusta wants to learn it.

Commercially, she is rapidly going ahead in an extensive cotton and manufacturing business, but her business streets do not give any idea of how progressive is her financial and personal element. There is still the _dolce far niente_ to be expected in every Southern town except Atlanta and Richmond. The victorias still stop in front of drug stores and wait for the clerks to bring soda water out to the occupants on thirsty days; even occasionally one sees an ox team on the central street; but the personal element, the people, have a zestful, sprightly contact with modern life, and leap forward to meet its requirements and demands. The Augustan is modernizing himself and his home. Rapid transit in the business atmosphere may come later. It is bound to come, for the soul of the people has reached out toward it. It now remains merely a question of money; and Augusta is frankly striving after money, and making it.

The Easterner and Westerner do not see beneath the surface of the seeming commercial indolence. They are used to their own spick and span little towns, filled to the brim with bustle, noise, activity and the whoop-la of American get-ahead-of-your-neighbor atmosphere.

It may be that this will never be quite duplicated in a sub-tropical climate. But the business is there, even if the men do walk slowly.

The tourist, looking at commercial externals only, naturally marvels at the gowns of the women, the artistic and lavish homes, the unbridled entertaining and the constant touch its richer members keep with New York, nearly nine hundred miles away. Its people discuss the last play, the best opera and the newest dishes at Sherry’s as easily as they do home gossip. Naturally, this is not true of all the people, but it fairly represents the attitude of the leading set.

The New York trip has been made easy by the “Yankee millionaires,” who have made Augusta part of an elaborate railway and hotel system.

Of course there remains--and praise be that it is so--those of the old _régime_. They are not altogether carried away by this elated modern spirit. They do not entertain tourists or the passing cottager. They are not quite sure but the new spirit may bring the Newport morals. They recoil from the constant phrase, “They do it in New York.”

They remind the imitative younger generation that a well-born Southerner has nothing to learn in manners and morals, and that progress is not always improvement.

They point to Charleston as the dignified ideal of all that is old and best.

They sigh, and say, “Things are not as they used to be.”

To which _Punch_ would again reply, “They never were.”

THE GATE

I who had wandered a weary mile, harkened a voice and knocked.
Lo, Love answered, with song and smile,
Though the wind of autumn mocked;
All in the dawn I beheld Love’s face, set in a rose of flame--
Oh, song is sweet in a lonely place
And Love called me by name!

“Stay while the rose and the song are one, linger with Love for a day!”
“And what of the heart at set of sun
When it fares on its lonely way?”
“Nay, bide with Love in the flower of dawn, only the dawn with me!”
“And what of the heart when it wanders on?
And what of the night to be?”

“Think not of night, but of Love’s fair face, thine for a golden morn!”
Oh, song is sweet in a lonely place,
But I turned to the rock and thorn.
For had I lingered a fleeting while, what of the Road of Years?
I, who had wandered a weary mile,
Fared on to the Well of Tears.

VIRGINIA WOODWARD CLOUD.

THE WAY OF A MAN

_By_ Robert Adger Bowen

The beach was comparatively deserted. After the week-end, which had been unusually gay, the few scattered groups gathered under the hired umbrellas, with here and there the flash of an individual crimson or green parasol, scarcely served to populate the stretch of hot sand.