Jehoshaphat the Golden! For two days Twickenham Town has been standing
on its head and wriggling its heels in the air, and nothing has been
talked about since it appeared except its appearance. Every tongue in
town has had its say, and everybody in town has been on somebody else's
porch and talked it over; and as for Miss Susanna, I believe she cried
the whole night through, last night. The first night she was too dazed
to take it in. The Twickenham Town _Sentinel_ had it on its front page
in the middle column in letters indecently large, Miss Bettie Simcoe
says, and it certainly did make a sensation: "Mrs. Roger S. Payne
announces the engagement of her niece Elizabeth Hamilton Carter to Mr.
Algernon Grice Baker, of Perryville, Wisconsin," was what the
Twickenham-Towners waked up and read on Wednesday the 1st of August,
and if the dynamite-plant which has made business so good for Buzzard
Brothers, the undertakers, had exploded, it couldn't have caused more
of a stir. Twickenham wasn't only amazed; it was indignant, and it
couldn't believe it was true. But it was true, for the next day Miss
Susanna got a letter from Elizabeth, telling her all about her
engagement and that she would be home very soon and bring him with her,
and it was the night of the day the letter was received that Miss
Susanna went early to her room and locked her door for a while (that
is, my door, for she is sleeping in my room during the August rush) and
cried all night long. I had to pretend I didn't know, for she didn't
want me to know how hurt and distressed she was that Elizabeth should
have so treated her, and as I didn't sleep any more than she did,
though, owing to very different feelings about Elizabeth, I made up my
mind as to some things I would say to her when she got back. And if
she has never read "King Lear" I will see that she hears it read before
very long with a glossary, and comments of my own on ingratitude and
things of that sort. Also she may hear some other things.
I have been perfectly furious with Elizabeth for the way she has
treated the aunt who has been mother and father and all things else to
her, but I can't help laughing at the way Twickenham Town has taken the
engagement.
As for Whythe--I have wished for Billy a dozen times of late, for only
Billy could see what a scream it is, the shock to Whythe's vanity that
Elizabeth's beau is proving. I can't speak of it to any one else, and
keeping it to myself is a great strain. At first he seemed dazed with
unbelief, and then he became scorny and sniffy and shruggy and smiley,
and though he says little about his successor, whom he hasn't seen yet,
his manner indicates that as a substitute for himself he considers him
an insult.
Last night at the gate he talked to me about it for a while, and then
he asked me when I was going to tell him I would marry him, and why was
it I would not engage myself to him and take him out of his miserable
state of uncertainty and make him the happiest man in the world, and
why-- Oh, my granny! he spieled it off so beautifully and his eyes
helped so wonderfully, also the moon, which was half out and half in,
that I stayed a little longer at the gate than I should, perhaps, and
let him say things he shouldn't, but his fluency was so enjoyable I
couldn't get away. After a while, however, when he had run down a
little, I told him I didn't think it would be respectful to what might
have been if I engaged myself to him, and that sixteen was too young to
be engaged, and then, too, it wasn't positively certain that a certain
young person was going to marry another young person just because she
was at present engaged to him. At which he got perfectly furious and
said he would not marry that certain person if she was the only woman
left on earth; that she had treated him as no lady should treat a
gentleman, and that she was vain and mercenary and ambitious, and he
was mortified to think he had ever imagined he had loved so shallow and
weak and changeable a girl, and--
"But you did love her, didn't you?" I got up on the gate-post, swung
my feet down, and put my hands in my lap and out of reach, the post not
being big enough for two. "Everybody says you were frightfully in love
with her and you didn't think she was shallow and weak and mercenary
until you had the break, and maybe you may change your mind back again
about her some day, and then where would I be?" I put my chin in my
hands and my elbows in my lap and looked down at him, and he looked so
hurt and surprised that I saw he had not thought of his own real gift
for changing, and I realized that his attention ought to be drawn to
some things he was apt to forget. Quick as a flash, though, he said I
had opened new worlds to him; that I stimulated and inspired him as no
one had ever done, and that he would never love any one as he loved me,
and that he would wait forever if necessary for me. Also he said he
would never change back again to a certain person, as she had killed
his love, and would I not promise to be just his? And I had to sit
tight on my hands, his manner was so very imploring; and then, before I
could say anything, I heard Mr. Willie Prince, who was sitting on the
front porch, fanning, cough rather loud and come down the steps and
call Ben, who was barking, and I knew Mr. Willie was doing what he
thought was his duty, and I got down from the post and told Whythe good
night. He went away like the young man in the Bible, very sorrowful,
and I went in.
It wasn't late, but everybody had gone in except Miss Susanna and Mr.
Willie, and when I sat down in a rocking-chair Miss Susanna looked at
me as if she didn't know whether to say anything or not, and I saw she
was worried. But before I could ask what was the matter she got up and
kissed me good night and went in, so I asked Mr. Willie.
He wouldn't tell me at first, though I could see he was dying to do it,
but after a while he said Miss Susanna was the sort that found life of
the present day a hard thing to accept, and, fanning himself with his
palm leaf, he looked at me as if I were one of the reasons she found
life hard. "Miss Susanna," he said, "is a lady of the old school where
love and honor were placed above riches and mere material things, and
it was a blow to her to find how readily young people could change
their affections and break their plighted vows and be blind to their
best interests, which was to keep along the same path and not be
tempted out of it by passing people and worldly ambitions." And as he
talked in his fine little cambric-needle voice that sounded as if it
came out of a squeaky cabinet, I knew he was meaning more than he was
saying, and I sat up and listened until he stopped for breath.
"Is that all?" I asked, and got up to go in, "for if it is I don't
think Miss Susanna need worry herself. People in one generation aren't
very different from people in another where self-interest is concerned.
Everybody knows Mrs. Loraine married her husband for his money, though
loving Mr. Spence, and Miss Susanna was one of her bridesmaids; and if
Elizabeth prefers to marry a rich man to a poor one, I don't see
anything new about that." And also I said it wasn't likely that love
and honor were ever going to die out, and a few other things would live
a long time yet, and he need not bother any more than Miss Susanna
concerning present-day young people; and then to my surprise he asked
me to sit down and told me what he enjoyed telling very much.