There are some things not required of human nature to stand. Elizabeth
Hamilton Carter is one of them. I was glad to give her back her beau.
I felt truly Virginian in doing it, for Virginians always say, when
giving you something, that they don't want it; I certainly didn't want
Whythe. I wouldn't have known what to do with him after the summer was
over, and I was conscious of great relief in getting him off my hands
without further loss or trouble. I couldn't tell Elizabeth this, of
course, though there were times when it took a good deal of something I
did not know I had to keep from doing so. Also, it took more strength
to keep several other things to myself than I knew I possessed. It
took praying and the end of the sheet to do it, but I did it, and I'm
getting encouraged about K. C.
What encourages me is this: Two nights after the picnic Elizabeth came
to my room and asked if she might have a little talk with me, as she
felt she ought to. I told her she could, and she sat down and began.
Miss Susanna was back in her own quarters, the people from Florida
having gone, and I had just finished saying my prayers and was ready to
hop into bed when Elizabeth knocked at my door. I knew what was coming
from the look on her face and her manner of walking, and the way she
held her head.
If ever I write that book I am always thinking about I am going to put
Elizabeth in it as well as Miss Araminta Armstrong, and if I could get
some men to match them I would have some corking characters to begin
with. But no kind of pen-and-ink picture of Elizabeth would do her
justice. Her sweetness of speech when she is particularly nasty is
beyond the power of human portrayal. I got in bed quick when she said
she wanted to talk, because I was afraid I might have to hit something,
and the pillow was the only thing I could manage without sound. I put
it where I could give it a dig when politeness required control, and
told her to go ahead.
In her last sleep Elizabeth will pose. She took her seat near the
window where the moonlight could shine on her (she looked very pretty
in her pink-silk kimono, a hand-over from her rich aunt, and shabby but
becoming in color), and for a moment she didn't say anything, just
fooled with the pink ribbon on her hair. And then she said she had a
secret to tell me; said it so soft, with her head on the side, that I
had to ask her to speak louder please, and I got nearer the edge of the
bed. Elbow on it and chin in the palm of one hand, I prayed hard to be
polite in my own room, and reached out for an end of the sheet with the
other. Again I told her to go ahead. After a minute she went.
"You and Whythe have been such friends that I think you should be the
first to know that--"
"Have you and Whythe made up?" I stuck my bare foot over the edge of
the bed and wriggled it. "If you have you had better be married quick
and not take any more chances. I'm awfully glad if things are settled.
Have you bounced the other fellow yet?"
It was cruel in me to take out of her mouth what she was moistening her
lips to say, but I was sleepy and I didn't want details. She had no
idea of being cut out of saying what it was her determination to say,
however, considering I had been responsible for some unhappy days
during the past two months, and before she got through she had said all
she wanted me to hear. If it hadn't been for the pillow I would have
rolled out of bed. The nerve of her! The belief of her! And, oh, my
granny! the punishment, as she imagined, of me!
Before she left the room she told me she could no longer hold out
against Whythe's pleadings. Told me he had suffered so during the
summer she was uneasy about him, and, though he had tried to forget, it
had been useless, and, unable to endure it any longer, he had come to
her and told her he could stand no more, and if she did not promise to
marry him at once he would--he would-- Her voice trailed, but I said
nothing, the end of the sheet being stuffed into my mouth for
politeness' sake, and when her tears had been wiped away she began
again.
"It is hard to forgive Whythe, because you are so young, and he knows
how fascinating he is and how little experience you have had with young
men, but his father was a flirt before him" (poor Father! I thought of
the retribution that had come to him in Mother, and I pushed in more
sheet), "and it is natural in a man to seek amusement and entertainment
when he is suffering as Whythe was. I hope you will forgive him. It
is because he may have made you imagine things that were not so, and
because you have been so nice to him, that I thought you should be the
first to know."
I rolled back to the side of the bed facing her, from which I had
rolled the other way for safety, and took the end of the sheet out of
my mouth. "Have you told IT?" I asked. "It doesn't make any
difference about my knowing as I knew before you did, but something is
due that which you brought back with you. Have you told IT, Elizabeth?"
"Told who? I don't understand." She sat up. "I don't know who you
are talking about."
"Don't you?" I too sat up and swung my bare feet over the side of the
bed. "I am talking about the person to whom I read in the Twickenham
Town Sentinel that you were engaged. He dresses like a man, and he may
be one, but even if he isn't he deserves to be treated decently by the
lady who had promised to marry him. I suppose he knows." I nodded to
her hand, on which was the ring he had given her and which she had been
twirling as she talked. "That is, if you have had time to tell him."
"That is entirely my affair!" When not hurt or injured Elizabeth is
superior, and she added scorn to the tone of her voice, but stopped
fooling with the ring, which I know she hated to send back. "I see you
do not appreciate the confidence I am putting in you or the compliment
I am paying you by telling you first, and if that is the case I will
go." She made movement as if to get up, but she had no idea of going,
so I didn't notice it, but kept on swinging my feet, and then I asked
her if she had told Miss Susanna, and if she hadn't she ought to at
once, Miss Susanna being closely related and I nothing but a summer
boarder. And I said I hoped she would be married right away, as I
would love to be at the wedding, and if she would ask me to be one of
the bridesmaids I would be one with pleasure. But she wouldn't answer
me. Seeing she still had something to say, and wouldn't leave until
she said it, I put my feet back in bed and lay flat with my hands under
my head and my eyes shut, and when at last I was fixed and quiet she
began for a third time.
I don't remember a thing after that except a sort of monotone voice and
something about people talking about me because I had accepted Whythe's
attentions when everybody knew--I didn't hear what everybody knew, and
not until I did hear a sound at the door did I wake up good, and then I
jumped as if shot and asked her, half-asleep, if she were going to live
with Mother and Sister and Sister Edwina and Miss Lily Lou when she was
married, but she answered not. And since her midnight confession she
hath not opened her mouth unto me and her little lips get together when
she sees me coming, and from her friends I have learned that she is
deeply distressed at my treatment of her. And to her friends I have
said Rats! and so endeth the efforts at friendship which she imagined
she had made. I am never going to pretend to be friends with a person
who is not truthful, and whom I understand as I understand Elizabeth
Hamilton Carter. I don't like her, and though it is not necessary to
say so unless occasion requires, neither is it necessary to appear to
be what I am not. I like Whythe, and when I saw him a few days after
Elizabeth gave herself the satisfaction of communicating to me the
return of his tempted affections, I shook hands with him good and hard
and wished him all the happiness I knew there was little chance of his
getting. If I were a man and had to live in the house with a female
who shut her mouth tight every time she got mad and was continually
hurt and always sensitive, there would likely be in that house battle,
murder, or sudden death. Any kind of outspokenness is better to be
endured than silent offense.