Greater wars have begun from less causes and been waged more fiercely.
They say that an avalanche can be brought down from a mountain by a
whispered word. Small wonder, then, that the murmur of a vowel and the
murder of a consonant should precipitate upon the town of Carthage the
stored-up snows of tradition. Business was dull in the village and any
excitement was welcome. Before Emma's return there had been a certain
slight interest in pronunciation.
Orson Carver had for a time stimulated amusement by his droll talk. He
had been suspected for some time of being an impostor because he spoke
of his university as "Havvad." The Carthaginians did not expect him to
call it "Harrvarrd," as it was spelled, but they had always understood
that true graduates called it "Hawvawd," and local humorists won much
laughter by calling it "Haw-haw-vawd." Orson had bewildered them further
by a sort of cockneyism of misappropriated letters. He used the flat "a"
in words where Carthaginians used the soft, as in his own name and his
university's. He saved up the "r" that he dropped from its rightful
place and put it on where it did not belong, as in "idear." He had
provoked roars of laughter one evening when a practical joker requested
him to read a list of the books of the Bible, and he had mentioned
"Numbas, Joshuar, Ezrar, Nehemiar, Estha, Provubbs, Isaiar, Jeremiar."
Eventually he was eclipsed by another young man sent to a post in the
C., T. & R. Railroad by an ambitious parent--Jefferson Digney, of Yale.
Digney, born and raised in Virginia and removed to Georgia, had taken
his accent to New Haven and taken it away with him unsullied. His
Southern speech had given Carthage acute joy for a while.
Arthur Litton had commented once on the contrast between Orson and
Jefferson. "Neither of you can pronounce the name of his State," said
Arthur. "He calls it 'Jawja' and you call it 'Jahjar.'"
"What should it be?"
"Jorrjuh."
"Really!"
"You can't pronounce your own name."
"Oh, cahn't I?"
"No, you cahn't I. You call it 'Cavveh.' He calls it 'Cyahvah.'"
"What ought it to be?"
"Carrvurr--as it's spelt."
Yet another new-comer to the town was an Englishman, Anthony Hopper, a
younger son of a stock-holder abroad. He was not at all the Englishman
of the stage, and the Carthaginians were astonished to find that he did
not drop his "h's" or misapply them. And he never once said "fawncy,"
but flat "fancy." He did not call himself "Hanthony 'Opper," as they
expected. But he did take a "caold bahth in the mawning."
With a New Englander, an old Englander, and an Atlantan in the town,
Carthage took an astonishing interest in pronunciation that winter. When
conversation flagged anybody could raise a laugh by referring to their
outlandish pronunciations. Quoting their remarks took the place of such
parlor games as trying to say "She sells sea shells," or "The sea
ceaseth and it sufficeth us."
The foreigners entered into the spirit of it and retorted with
burlesques of Carthagese. They were received with excellent
sportsmanship. One might have been led to believe that the Carthaginians
took the matter of pronunciation lightly, since they could laugh
tolerantly at foreigners. This, however, was because the foreigners had
missed advantages of Carthaginian standards.
Emma Terriberry's crime was not in her pronunciation, but in the fact
that she had changed it. Having come from Carthage, she must forever
remain a Carthagenian or face down a storm of wrath. Her quarrel with
her lover was the beginning of a quarrel with the whole town.
Arthur Litton became suddenly a hero, like the first man wounded in a
war. The town rallied to his support. Emma was a heartless wretch, who
had insulted a faithful lover because he would not become as abject a
toady to the hateful East as she was. Her new name became a byword. Her
pronunciations were heard everywhere in the most ruthless parody. She
was accused of things that she never had said, things that nobody could
ever say.
They inflicted on her the impossible habit of consistency. She was
reported as calling a hat a "hot," a rat a "rot," of teaching her little
sister to read from the primer, "Is the cot on the mot?" Pronunciation
became a test of character. The soft "r" and the hard "a" were taken as
proofs of effeminate hypocrisy.
Carthage differed only in degree, not in kind, from old Italy at the
time of the "Sicilian Vespers," when they called upon everybody to
pronounce the word "ciceri." The natives who could say "chee-cheree"
escaped, but the poor French who could come no nearer than "seeseree"
were butchered. Gradually now in Carthage the foreigners from
Massachusetts, Georgia, England, and elsewhere ceased to be regarded
with tolerance. Their accents no longer amused. They gave offense.
In the railroad office there were six or seven of these new-comers. They
were driven together by indignation. They took up Amelie's cause; made
her their queen; declined invitations in which she was not included;
gave parties in her honor: took her buggy-riding. Each had his day.
A few girls could not endure her triumph. They broke away from the fold
and became renegades, timidly softening their speech. This infuriated
the others, and the town was split into Guelph and Ghibelline.
Amelie enjoyed the notoriety immensely. She flaunted her success. She
ridiculed the Carthage people as yokels. She burlesqued their jargon as
outrageously as they hers.
The soda-water fountains became battle-fields of backbiting and mockery.
The feuds were as bitter, if not as deadly, as those that flourished
around the fountains in medieval Italian towns. Two girls would perch on
the drug-store stools back to back, and bicker in pretended ignorance
of each other's presence. Tudie Litton would order "sahsahpahrillah,"
which she hated, just to mock Amelie's manner; and Amelie, assuming to
be ignorant of Tudie's existence, would retort by ordering "a
strorrburry sody wattur." Then each would laugh recklessly but
miserably.
The church at which the Terriberrys worshiped was almost torn apart by
the matter. The more ardent partisans felt that Amelie's unrepentant
soul had no right in the sacred edifice. Others urged that there should
be a truce to factions there, as in heaven. One Sunday dear old Dr.
Brearley, oblivious of the whole war, as of nearly everything else less
than a hundred years away, chose as his text Judges xii: 6:
"Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for
he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew
him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the
Ephraimites forty and two thousand."
If the anti-Amelites had needed any increase of enthusiasm they got it
now. They had Scripture on their side. If it were proper for the men of
Gilead, where the well-known balm came from, to slay forty-two thousand
people for a mispronunciation, surely the Carthaginians had authority to
stand by their "alturrs" and their "fi-urs" and protect them from those
who called them "altahs" and "fiahs."
No country except ours could foster such a feud. No language except the
chaos we fumble with could make it possible. By and by the war wore out
of its own violence. People ceased to care how a thing was said, and
began to take interest again in what was said. Those who had mimicked
Amelie had grown into the habit of mimicry until they half forgot their
scorn. The old-time flatness and burr began to soften from attrition, to
be modified because they were conspicuous. You would have heard Arthur
subduing his twang and unburring the "r." If you had asked him he would
have told you his name was either "Arthuh" or "Ahthur."
Amelie and her little bodyguard, on the other hand, grew so nervous of
the sacred emblems that they avoided their use. When they came to a word
containing an "a" or a final "r" they hesitated or sidestepped and let
it pass. Amelie fell into the habit of saying "couldn't" for "cahn't,"
and "A. M." for "mawning."
People began to smile when they met her, and she smiled back. Slowly
everybody that had "not been speaking" began speaking, bowing, chatting.
Now, when one of the disputed words drifted into the talk, each tried to
concede a little to the other's belief, as soldiers of the blue and the
gray trod delicately on one another's toes after peace was decreed.
Everybody was now half and half, or, as Tudie vividly spoke it, "haff
and hahf." You would hear the same person say "haff-pahst ten,"
"hahf-passt eleven," and "hahf-pahst twelve."
Carthage became as confused in its language as Alsace-Lorraine.
V
All through this tremendous feud Orson Carver had been faithful to
Amelie. Whether he had given Tudie the sack or she him was never
decided. But she was loyal to her dialect. He ceased to call; Tudie
ceased to invite him. They smiled coldly and still more coldly, and then
she ceased to see him when they met. He was simply transparent.
Orson was Amelie's first cavalier in Carthage. He found her mightily
attractive. She was brisk of wit and she adored his Boston and his ways.
She was sufficiently languorous and meek in the moonlight, too--an
excellent hammock-half.
But when the other Outlanders had begun to gather to her standard it
crowded the porch uncomfortably.
Dissension rose within the citadel. Orson's father had fought
Jefferson's father in 1861-65. The great-grandfathers of both of them
had fought Anthony Hopper's forefathers in '76-83. The pronunciations of
the three grew mutually distasteful, and dreadful triangular rows took
place on matters of speech.
Amelie sat in silence while they wrangled, and her thoughts reverted to
Arthur Litton. He had loved her well enough to be ashamed of her and
rebuke her. She was afraid that she had been a bit of a snob, a trifle
caddish. She had aired her new accent and her new clothes a trifle too
insolently. Old customs grew dear to her like old slippers. She
remembered the Littons' shabby buggy and the fuzzy horse, and the drives
Arthur and she had taken under the former moons.
Her father and mother had shocked her with their modes of speech when
she came home, and she had ventured to rebuke them. She felt now that
they ought to have spanked her. A great tenderness welled up in her
heart for them and their homely ways. She wanted to be like them.
The village was taking her back into its slumberous comfortableness.
She would waken from her reveries to hear the aliens arguing their alien
rules of speech. It suddenly struck her that they were all wrong,
anyway. She felt an impulse to run for a broom and sweep them off into
space. She grew curt with them. They felt the chill and dropped away,
all but Orson. At last his lonely mother bullied his father into
recalling him from the Western wilds.
He called on Amelie to bid a heartbreaking good-by. He was disconsolate.
He asked her to write to him. She promised she would. He was excited to
the point of proposing. She declined him plaintively. She could never
leave the old folks. "My place is here," she said.
He left her and walked down the street like a moving elegy.
He suffered agonies of regret till he met a girl on the East-bound
train. She was exceedingly pretty and he made a thrilling adventure of
scraping acquaintance with her mother first, and thus with her. They
were returning to Boston, too. They were his home folks.
When at last the train hurtled him back into Massachusetts he had almost
forgotten that he had ever been in Carthage. He had a sharp awakening.
When he flung his arms about his mother and told her how glad he was to
see her, her second exclamation was: "But how on uth did you acquiah
that ghahstly Weste'n accent?"
* * * * *
One evening in the far-off Middle West the lonely Amelie was sitting in
her creaking hammock, wondering how she could endure her loneliness,
plotting how she could regain her old lover. She was desperately
considering a call upon his sister. She would implore forgiveness for
her sin of vanity and beg Tudie's intercession with Arthur. She had
nearly steeled herself to this glorious contrition when she heard a
warning squeal from the front gate, a slow step on the front walk, and
hesitant feet on the porch steps.
And there he stood, a shadow against the shadow. In a sorrowful voice he
mumbled, "Is anybody home?"
"I am!" she cried. "I was hoping you would come."
"No!"
"Yes. I was just about ready to telephone you."
There was so much more than hospitality in her voice that he stumbled
forward. Their shadows collided and merged in one embrace.
"Oh, Amelie!" he sighed in her neck.
And she answered behind his left ear: "Don't call me Amelie any more. I
like Em betterr from you! It's so shorrt and sweet--as you say it. We'll
forget the passt forreverr."
"Am! my dolling!"
"Oh, Arrthurr!"