They are married and gone, and for two days Twickenham Town has talked
of nothing else. It made a regular soup of the marriage. The bride
and groom were the stock, the grandparent and maiden aunts were the
thickening, and I was the seasoning; but all that does not matter now.
The ancestralized person has learned that the twentieth century sees
some things clearer than the eighteenth did, but she will never admit
that she has learned it. Taylor and Amy were not unmindful of what was
due her, however. Taylor wrote her a very nice letter, asking her
permission to marry her granddaughter and take her to South America,
and her answer was low-down. He wrote as a gentleman should, and she
answered as a lady shouldn't, for her answer was insulting, and a real
lady never humiliates any one. After reading it Taylor told Amy to
meet him at seven o'clock on Wednesday morning, and they would be
married in the church with no one present but his brother (the only
relative Taylor has in town is a bachelor brother), and the sexton, the
minister, and me. She met and the marriage took place.
We didn't tell a soul about the marriage. The night before Amy spent
with me at Rose Hill, and, thinking it best Taylor should not be there,
I told him not to come, and sent the other boys home early. In my room
I packed my suitcase and put in it two dresses I had never worn, which
I was glad to do, as it would mean that much less to pack when I went
home, and also I put in some other things; and though Amy cried a good
deal and didn't think she ought to take them, she was very particular
about how they went in. She is very neat and careful, and I'm
fearfully quick, so it was well she watched me. I told her she was
doing me a favor to dispossess me of what I didn't want and what was in
my way, and as we were the same height, though Amy is a little thinner,
owing to secret love and distress of mind, I knew the things would fit
her, and I was more than glad to get rid of them. Also she didn't have
any of her own convenient, and she might as well be sensible. She was,
and put in her own tooth brush and powder and left the rest to me, and
by eleven o'clock everything was ready.
When the next day the news flew around that the marriage had taken
place and I had been the leading spirit in it, I went to bed and stayed
there until the town had finished chewing me up, and then I came out
again. It was the most sensible thing I ever did and saved a lot of
talk and argument.
Another reason I went to bed was because I was so homesick and so
lonely, and so something I had no name for, that I knew it was wiser to
be by myself. I can't be much in life, but I can keep from being a
nuisance, and when you feel you haven't a friend on earth outside of
your family, who sometimes are queer also, you're apt to be a trial to
those you come in contact with. For two whole days I stayed in my room
and thought of nothing but a big, brawny, domineering, dictating girl
from the West who was giving Billy no time to write letters; and though
I would die before I would let anybody know it, even Jess, I nearly
cried my eyes out under the bedclothes the day of the marriage.
Life is a poor thing at times. And it is never so poor as when you
think a friend has failed you. There was nothing on earth that could
have made me believe Billy would ever fail me when we had known each
other since children, and he had saved my life three or four times; but
how can I help believing it when he is letting a perfectly ordinary,
straight-haired, large-footed girl from the West make him forget that I
am living and spending the summer in Twickenham Town? If he had not
forgotten, would he not write? He would. I am miserable and I will
never be happy until I can say some things to William Spencer Sloane
that he ought to hear. But I'm trying to keep my miserableness to
myself. People aren't interested in other people's miseries. I wonder
if I will ever again get a letter from Billy!