“We should not wish John to become radical.”
In her voice, the whole of old Kings Port was enshrined: hereditary faith and hereditary standards, mellow with the adherence of generations past, and solicitous for the boy of the young generation. I saw her eyes soften at the thought of him; and throughout the rest of our talk to its end her gaze would now and then return to me, shadowed with disapproval.
I addressed Mrs. Gregory. “By his ‘present stubborn course’ I suppose you mean the Custom House.”
“All of us deplore his obstinacy. His Aunt Eliza has strongly but vainly expostulated with him. And after that, Miss Josephine felt obliged to tell him that he need not come to see her again until he resigned a position which reflects ignominy upon us all.”
I suppressed a whistle. I thought (as I have said earlier) that I had caught a full vision of John Mayrant’s present plight. But my imagination had not soared to the height of Miss Josephine St. Michael’s act of discipline. This, it must have been, that the boy had checked himself from telling me in the churchyard. What a character of sterner times was Miss Josephine! I thought of Aunt Carola, but even she was not quite of this iron, and I said so to Mrs. Gregory. “I doubt if there be any old lady left in the North,” I said, “capable of such antique severity.”
But Mrs. Gregory opened my eyes still further. “Oh, you’d have them if you had the negro to deal with as we have him. Miss Josephine,” she added, “has to-day removed her sentence of banishment.”
I felt on the verge of new discoveries. “What!” I exclaimed, “and did she relent?”
“New circumstances intervened,” Mrs. Gregory loftily explained. “There was an occurrence—an encounter, in fact—in which John Mayrant fittingly punished one who had presumed. Upon hearing of it, this morning, Miss Josephine sent a message to John that he might resume visiting her.
“But that is perfectly grand!” I cried in my delight over Miss Josephine as a character.
“It is perfectly natural,” returned Mrs. Gregory, quietly. “John has behaved with credit throughout. He was at length made to see that circumstances forbade any breach between his family and that of the other young man. John held back—who would not, after such an insult?—but Miss Josephine was firm, and he has promised to call and shake hands. My cousin, Doctor Beaugarcon, assures me that the young man’s injuries are trifling—a week will see him restored and presentable again.”