"Everybody has been talking about the way Whythe Eppes has been rushing
you," he began, fanning as hard as he could fan, "and several people
have been to see Miss Susanna and told her they thought your parents
ought to know--"
He didn't get any further. I stopped him. It was silly in me to get
hot, but I got hot all right, and in all my life I never wanted anybody
as I wanted Billy right then at my side. He doesn't get mad the way I
do. He would see that talk he did not like was stopped in two minutes,
but I was too fighting angry to stop my own tongue, and I said things
to fat Miss Nancy Willie Prince I oughtn't to have said. Among them
that my parents would not have permitted me to come to this town or any
other if not perfectly certain I knew how to behave myself wherever I
went, and that whatever was advisable for them to know concerning me
they would know without the assistance of Miss Bettie Simcoe or Mrs.
Caperton (she is a frisky little widow who has no use for young girls)
or any other Twickenham-Towner. And then, perhaps because he was so
flustered he didn't know what he was saying, he told me riches were a
great temptation to any young man, and everybody, of course, knew my
father was wealthy, though he must say it had not been learned from the
family. And that Whythe, being poor from a money standpoint, had
naturally been tempted, especially as his engagement had been so
recently broken with a girl he had been in love with since childhood,
and I, being young, didn't understand and was under the impression that
young men meant all they said, and--
He would be talking now if I had not stamped my foot and stopped his
rambling. His insinuations sounded as if I were a feeble-minded
creature and couldn't tell truth from untruth, or know when a man meant
or didn't mean what he said, and had never heard things of the same
sort before. I've heard them before, and in several different places.
I am a good many things I ought not to be, but I am not feeble-minded.
I told him-- It does not matter what I told him, but I made him
understand I could take care of myself without the help of the town,
and, while I appreciated his effort to keep me from thinking the men in
Twickenham did not mean what they said, and were not to be relied on,
and not to be trusted, and that honor was not held very high by them
where young girls were concerned, it was difficult to believe it, for I
had been made to understand by others that certain old-fashioned things
were still held sacred there, and the dangers and temptations of the
city were absent. When I saw how red his fat, round face got and how
squirmy his legs and how hard he fanned I knew I had better go in. I
went, but I didn't say good night.
Mad! Was I mad? I was. For a long time I sat by the window and
talked to Billy in my mind and told him what I thought of men old-maids
and prissy places and gossipy spinsters and flirtatious widows, and of
people who didn't have anything to talk of but one another; and then,
as the moon came out clearer, I seemed to see myself clearer also, and
after a while it came over me that maybe I had been a little nicer to
Whythe than was necessary just to see if a man couldn't get comforted
sooner than he thought. I had been doing a little scientific
experimenting along a different way from Jess's way; and then my eyes
got open wide and I saw what Mr. Willie had been trying to tell me,
which was that Whythe was probably taking practical consolation and was
not ignorant of the fact that my Father was not a poor man.
At the thought something got into my backbone and I sat up. I had been
fooling myself and didn't know it. I don't mean I had believed all the
thrilly love things Whythe had been saying. They came natural to him
and he might have said them to some other girl if not to me, but I had
not dreamed he had any thought of an advantageous alliance, as Billy
calls the thing his mother is hoping his sister will make, or that any
one could associate such a thought with me. It didn't seem possible,
and I don't believe Whythe is that sort. Still, men are queer ducks,
Jess says, and one never can tell what is in the back of their brain
from the words of their mouth, and if Whythe was imagining I had any
value outside of my own self I would like to find it out. How I was
going to find out I did not know, and when I said my prayers I started
to pray that a rattling good way would turn up, but I remembered it
wasn't exactly a thing to pray about and that watching might be better.
I had had a grand time being in love. Every day there was some new
evidence of how nice a beau is, and though the other boys didn't let
Whythe have it all his own way, as they called it, and we had a jolly
time together and I danced and rode and picnicked and pleasured with
all of them, still, it was understood that Whythe was my steady and
they gave him right much chance. It had been loads of fun having a
steady, and I knew now how excited Mazie, one of our maids at home,
must have felt the day she became engaged to hers, who was the milkman.
But I had somehow thought that nobody but girls of Mazie's sort had
steadies, and I had wished I could be a maid for a few weeks just to
find out how it would feel to possess some one and be possessed by him.
I guess it amounts to about the same thing, though, love does, no
matter in what way it comes to one or by what name we call it, if it is
the genuine thing. I have certainly never felt about Whythe in the way
Mazie must have felt about her milkman, judging by her face, but I had
been enjoying myself and I didn't intend to stop with too much
suddenness. Mr. Willie had warned me and I would remember, but it is
against the law to condemn a man unheard. The Bible says so. I would
go slowly for once in my life and give Whythe a chance to conduct his
own defense. It wouldn't be necessary to mention that a case was being
tried or that I would be both judge and jury. There are times in life
when it is well to keep some things to oneself.