“Go to Kings Port. You need a holiday,
at any rate. And I,” my Aunt handsomely
finished, “will make the journey a present to
you.”
This generosity made me at once, and sincerely, repentant
for my flippancy concerning Charles the Second and
Elizabeth. And so, partly from being tempted
by this apple of Eve, and partly because recent overwork
had tired me, but chiefly for her sake, and not to
thwart at the outset her kindly-meant ambitions for
me, I kissed the hand of my Aunt Carola and set forth
to Kings Port.
“Come back one of us,” was her parting
benediction.
Thus it was that I came to sojourn in the most appealing,
the most lovely, the most wistful town in America;
whose visible sadness and distinction seem also to
speak audibly, speak in the sound of the quiet waves
that ripple round her Southern front, speak in the
church-bells on Sunday morning, and breathe not only
in the soft salt air, but in the perfume of every
gentle, old-fashioned rose that blooms behind the high
garden walls of falling mellow-tinted plaster:
Kings Port the retrospective, Kings Port the belated,
who from her pensive porticoes looks over her two
rivers to the marshes and the trees beyond, the live-oaks,
veiled in gray moss, brooding with memories! Were
she my city, how I should love her!
But though my city she cannot be, the enchanting image
of her is mine to keep, to carry with me wheresoever
I may go; for who, having seen her, could forget her?
Therefore I thank Aunt Carola for this gift, and for
what must always go with it in my mind, the quiet and
strange romance which I saw happen, and came finally
to share in. Why it is that my Aunt no longer
wishes to know either the boy or the girl, or even
to hear their names mentioned, you shall learn at
the end, when I have finished with the wedding; for
this happy story of love ends with a wedding, and
begins in the Woman’s Exchange, which the ladies
of Kings Port have established, and (I trust) lucratively
conduct, in Royal Street.
Royal Street! There’s a relevance in this
name, a fitness to my errand; but that is pure accident.
The Woman’s Exchange happened to be there, a
decorous resort for those who became hungry, as I
did, at the hour of noon each day. In my very
pleasant boarding-house, where, to be sure, there was
one dreadful boarder, a tall lady, whom I soon secretly
called Juno—but let unpleasant things wait—in
the very pleasant house where I boarded (I had left
my hotel after one night) our breakfast was at eight,
and our dinner not until three: sacred meal hours
in Kings Port, as inviolable, I fancy, as the Declaration
of Independence, but a gap quite beyond the stretch
of my Northern vitals. Therefore, at twelve,
it was my habit to leave my Fanning researches for
a while, and lunch at the Exchange upon chocolate
and sandwiches most delicate in savor. As, one
