The very "talking to" that Tudie believed her brother ought to give his
betrothed he was giving her at that moment at the other end of the
porch. Arthur had hesitated to attempt the reproof. It was not pleasant
to broach the subject, and he knew that it was dangerous, since Em was
high-spirited. Even when she expressed a wonder at the coolness of
everybody's behavior he could not find the courage for the lecture
seething in his indignant heart.
He was worrying through a perfunctory consolation: "Oh, you just imagine
that people are cold to you, Em. Everybody's tickled to death to have
you home. You see, Em--"
"I wish you wouldn't call me Em," she said.
"It's your name, isn't it?"
"It's a part of my old name; but I've changed Emma to Amelie. After this
I want to be called Amelie."
If she had announced her desire to wear trousers on the street, or to
smoke a pipe in church, or even to go in for circus-riding, he could not
have been more appalled than he was at what she said.
"Amelie?" he gasped. "What in the name of--of all that's sensible is
that for?"
"I hate Em. It's ugly. It sounds like a letter of the alphabet. I like
Amelie better. It's pretty and I choose it."
"But look here, Em--"
"Amelie."
"This is carrying things too blamed far."
He was not entirely heedless of her own welfare. He had felt the
animosity and ridicule that had gathered like sultry electricity in the
atmosphere when Emma had murmured at the station those words that Orson
had not heard.
Orson, seated with Tudie at one end of the porch, heard them now at the
other end of the porch as they were quoted with mockery by Arthur. Orson
and Tudie forgot their own quarrel in the supernal rapture of
eavesdropping somebody's else wrangle.
"When you got off the train," Arthur groaned, "you knocked me off my
pins by what you said to your father and mother."
"And what did I say?" said Em in innocent wonder.
"You said, 'Oh, my dolling m'mah, I cahn't believe it's you'!"
"What was wrong with that?"
"You used to call her 'momma' and you called me 'darrling.' And you
wouldn't have dared to say 'cahn't'! When I heard you I wanted to die.
Then you grabbed your father and gurgled, 'Oh, p'pah, you deah old
angel!' I nearly dropped in my tracks, and so did your father. And then
you turned to me and I knew what was coming! I tried to stop you, but I
couldn't. And you said it! You called me 'Ahthuh'!"
"Isn't that your name, deah?"
"No, it is not! My name is 'Arrthurr' and you know it! 'Ahthuh'! what do
you think I am? My name is good honest 'Arrthurr.'" He said it like a
good honest watch-dog, and he gnarred the "r" in the manner that made
the ancients call it the canine letter.
Amelie, born Emma, laughed at his rage. She tried to appease him. "I
think 'Ahthuh' is prettiah. It expresses my tendah feelings bettah. The
way you say it, it sounds like garrgling something."
But her levity in such a crisis only excited her lover the more.
"Everybody at the station was laughing at you. To-night when you
traipsed down the stairs, looking so pretty in your new dress, you had
to spoil everything by saying: 'What a chahming pahty. Shall we dahnce,
Ahthuh?' I just wanted to die."
The victim of his tirade declined to wither. She answered: "I cahn't
tell you how sorry I am to have humiliated you. But if it's a sin to
speak correctly you'll have to get used to it."
"No, I won't; but you'll get over it. You can live it down in time; but
don't you dare try to change your name to Amelie. They'd laugh you out
of Carthage."
"Oh, would they now? Well, Amelie is my name for heahaftah, and if you
don't want to call me that you needn't call me anything."
"Look here, Em."
"Amelie."
"Emamelie! for Heaven's sake don't be a snob!"
"You're the snob, not I. There's just as much snobbery in sticking to
mispronunciation as there is in being correct. And just as much
affectation in talking with a burr as in dropping it. You think it's all
right for me to dress as they do in New York. Why shouldn't I talk the
same way? If it's all right for me to put on a pretty gown and weah my
haiah the most becoming way, why cahn't I improve my name, too? You
cahn't frighten me. I'm not afraid of you or the rest of your backwoods
friends. Beauty is my religion, and if necessary I'll be a mahtah to
it."
"You'll be a what?"
"A mahtah."
"Do you mean a motto?"
"I mean what you'd call a marrtyrr. But I won't make you one. I'll
release you from our engagement, and you can go back to Liddy Sovey. I
understand you've been rushing her very hahd. And you needn't take me
home. I'll get back by the gahden pahth."
She rose and swept into the house, followed by her despairing swain.
Orson and Tudie eavesdropped in silence. Tudie was full of scorn.
Amelie's arguments were piffle or worse to her, and her willingness to
undergo "martyrdom" for them was the most arrant pigheadedness, as the
martyrdom of alien creeds usually is.
Orson, the alien, was full of amazement. Here was a nice young man in
love with a beautiful young woman. He had been devoted for years, and
now, because she had slightly altered her habits in one vowel and one
consonant, their love was curdled.