The party is over. Everybody who is anybody was at it and we had a
perfectly scrumptious time. I never saw so many good things to eat on
a hot summer night in all my life, but the heat didn't affect
appetites, and Miss Kate Norris, who lives in the Wellington Home
(memorial for a dead wife or a live conscience, I don't remember
which), ate three platefuls of supper and three helpings of ice-cream.
She is fearfully ancestral and an awful eater, and also a sour
remarker, and I stay out of her way, but that night I couldn't help
seeing the way she made food disappear. No low-born person could have
done it quicker.
It was a perfectly beautiful party. The two married daughters of Judge
and Mrs. MacLean, who live in the city and always come home for August,
were as dear and lovely as if they had never left old Twickenham Town,
and their clothes were a liberal education to the stay-at-homers. They
were well taken in by the latter, but the sensation of the evening was
the arrival and appearance of My Girls, and--oh, my granny!--I was so
excited I couldn't stand on both feet at once, and I had to get in a
corner and put my back against the wall to keep from making movement.
When they came in the room there was a little hush, and then there were
so many exclamations of surprise and admiration that I had to fan as
hard as Mr. Willie Prince to keep down the blazing red in my face which
was there from pride in the dear old darlings and not from heat. And I
saw clearer than I had ever seen before that fine things behind one
count a good deal, and ancestors of the right kind leave something to
their descendants that comes out when needed, and at that party the
desirable things came out.
They looked like pictures--Miss Susanna and Miss Araminta--for the
prevailing modes, as Miss Araminta calls them, and which she loves so
dearly and hits at but never touches, had not been paid very particular
attention to, and the thing that suited each had been made for them.
They were as becoming to the dresses as the dresses to them.
Twickenham nearly lost its breath as they came into the long
drawing-room of the MacLean house and walked through it after speaking
to the receiving party, and I know now how a mother feels when her
debutante daughters are a success. I will have more sympathy with
Mother than I used to have, and I will try to behave myself and do the
stunts all right for the first year. But she already knows I do not
expect to keep on doing them. I have told her.
Nobody can say again that women can't keep a secret, for not even Miss
Bettie Simcoe, who knows what the Lord is going to do before He does
it, had any idea of the dresses; and though I don't think she or Mrs.
General Gaines liked not being told, they were very nice about it and
said much kinder things than I thought they were capable of saying.
And I really think Elizabeth was pleased also. She actually smiled
when she saw her aunt come in with Miss Araminta. Smiles of late have
been faint and feeble on the face of the affianced young lady, who
isn't playing her part as a person with ancestors ought to play it.
She bounced her old beau and took unto herself a new one, and what I
can't understand is, having done it, why she doesn't carry it off with
a rip-roaring bluff that might fool even herself for a while. But
Elizabeth isn't that sort. Everybody is talking about how miserable
she looks. I'm afraid I put the beau idea in her head, and the idea
has got her in a hole and she doesn't know how to get out of it. I
wish Billy was here. He can get a person out of any sort of hole.
I went to the party with Whythe. He has been away for a week, and
while away got a new dress suit, which, of course, he wore to the party
and looked perfectly grand in it. I think his mother gave the suit to
him, though he didn't say, but he was off attending to some business
for her, and I'm sure he took it out in the new clothes. It would have
been more sensible to have had his teeth fixed, or gotten three new
ones, the rest being all right, but it was natural to prefer the suit,
and much less painful. Whythe is never going to do anything
disagreeable that he can keep from doing.
He was so nice the night of the party that I hadn't the courage to
begin finding out the truth or untruth of what Mr. Willie Prince had
mentioned as the reason of the rush he had been giving me, and as I
don't believe Whythe has ever thought of Father's money, there was no
need to be in a hurry to learn whether he had or not. I've had a jolly
good time being in love with him, and being made love to, and as an
experience it may come in when I begin to write my book. I always did
want to know how many ways love can be made in, which, of course, I can
never know, for there are as many ways, I guess, as there are men to
make it, and the variations on the main theme are as infinitesimal as
the tongues that tell the story. It is truly wonderful how differently
the same words can be trimmed up and handed out, and I like the
crescendoes and diminuendoes and shades of feeling which give emphasis
and expression, as my music teacher says I must be careful of when
playing. There is never going to be any crescendo or diminuendo
business about Billy's love-making, and I might as well make up my mind
to that in the beginning. It's going to be pure staccato with
him--short and quick and soon over. But it will last forever, Billy's
will. He isn't going to stand for foolishness about it when he starts,
either. He has two more years at college and then he is going in his
father's office.
I don't know what's the matter with Billy. I haven't had a letter from
him for a week, or a single card. He must be crazy. I've been so busy
I have not written for ten days, and if I don't get a letter soon he
won't get one from me for another ten. He can't expect me to do what
he doesn't do, and besides, a man doesn't want what he gets too easy,
even letters. I don't suppose he could be sick. If he was-- I am not
going to let myself think sickness or automobile accidents or sliding
off mountain peaks (they are in Switzerland now and Billy would get to
the top of anything he started for or die trying). And though I say to
myself forty times a day he is all right, I wake up at night and wonder
if anything could be the matter. I am wondering all the time.
Maybe that is why I was a little nicer to Whythe at the party than I
need to have been, because I wanted to forget something it was not well
to remember if I was out to enjoy myself. After I had danced with half
a dozen boys and spoken to everybody on the place, we went out on the
lawn, Whythe and I, and sat on a rustic seat under a great maple-tree
to cool off and rest awhile; and though everybody could see us and
several couples were under several other trees (a number of cases being
on hand and apt to culminate in August), Miss Bettie Simcoe had remarks
to make, of course. She made them the next day at breakfast.
I wish I could buy a beau for Miss Bettie and make a present of him to
her, but, being a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals, I couldn't very well do it. I never yet have seen a man I
would be that hard on. But it would be the only way she could be made
to see some things, and maybe it might make her feel young again. Jess
says there's nothing so kittenish as a spinster who's caught an
unexpected beau. He is the most rejuvenating thing on earth to a woman
who wants one. All don't want them. There are a great many more
sensible women in this world than people realize, but in certain small
places matrimony is still the chief pursuit in which women can engage
without being thought unwomanly. Miss Bettie doesn't pursue, and men
are good dodgers in this part of the world, but if one of them would
say a few things to her of the sort that Whythe knows how to say so
well, her sniffing and snorting and seeing might grow less.
I don't like her, but I feel sorry for her, for nobody really loves
her, and it must be awful to have nobody to love you best of all on
earth. I couldn't live if nobody loved me. I could not. I might live
without food and live without drink, and do without clothes and do
without air--the right kinds of those things, I mean--but I couldn't
and I wouldn't live without loving. As long as I am on this little
planet I expect to love a lot of people and I hope they will love me in
return. When Miss Bettie makes me so mad I have to go out of the room
to keep from saying things I shouldn't, and Miss Araminta simpers so
when any one mentions Mr. Sparks's name (he's the new widower minister
of the Presbyterian church, with no chance of escape), and Elizabeth
Hamilton Carter makes me ashamed of my sex, and I feel like I have
swallowed concentrated extract of Human Peculiarities, I remember that
not one of them has a father of any sort, much less my sort, or a
precious mother and two dandy sisters and a good many nice relations
and some bully friends--when I remember all that, remember how many I
have to love me, I spit out the peculiarities and try not to mind them,
try to see how funny they are. But sometimes the taste sticks right
long. I don't suppose I spit right. What I can't understand is that
if people want to be loved--and everybody does--why in the name of
goodness don't they do a little loving on their own account? You
needn't expect to get what you don't give. I'm glad I was born with a
taste for liking, though I don't like every one, by a jugful. When I
come across a righteous hypocrite I get out of the way, if it isn't
convenient to make the hypocrite get out of mine. There are some
people I could never congeal with and I am never even going to try.