Amy went with her father and mother and Clarence on a trip to Niagara
Falls, Buffalo and New York City. She pretended a great wonder over the
falls, but in reality she did not care for the scenery.
In New York she felt something of the same emotion she had felt when,
at the University, she had taken long walks by herself. She wanted to
thrust herself into the city, yet, she remained apart, aloof, watching
it. Her father, who had been to New York before, took the family on
tours of inspection, pointing with his cane—to Amy’s embarrassment—the
things of interest. Amy saw the tallest buildings, rode in the subway
and busses and taxicabs, visited the museums and Chinatown. In Fifth
Avenue she bought some frocks and hats for twice as much as she had
ever paid in Belleville. In the lobby of their hotel, a commercial
hotel of tremendous size, Amy glanced eagerly at the men who stood
there, and thought she recognized famous faces, actors or writers
or politicians. Once she even smiled at a man who seemed unusually
handsome. He started to walk toward her and she became frightened and
took the elevator to her room. On the street she wanted to know people,
any of the busy, well-dressed crowd. There were men who looked as if
they might be just the sort she liked to read about, clever, cultured.
She did not meet any of them.
Back in Belleville, she took up her usual activities, telling of the
theatres and show places she had seen in New York. Things seemed duller
than ever. Men in Belleville were so definitely unattractive. She
wished she lived in New York. But, even as she wished it, a fear of the
city came over her. She realized how dreadfully lonely she would feel
if she were there alone, how inadequate she was to fit into any of the
groups she had seen.
That winter, by putting her mind to it, she became rather a good bridge
player. She was made a member of the Hospital Board League and spent
afternoons planning how to raise money for various hospital needs.
Lulu Brown married a man whom she had “picked up” in front of the
Belleville House. It happened that he was a New York business man, in
Belleville about the new cracker factory, and quite wealthy.
Amy went to the wedding in the small Brown cottage. She gave Lulu a
small travelling set of imitation ivory. She envied Lulu in her blue
going-away suit more than she had ever envied her before. The man
Lulu married was named Fredericks and was a striking-looking fellow.
Fredericks told about a New York apartment that he had taken for the
winter. Lulu was married and going to live in New York. She—why she was
richer and better-bred than Lulu and she had to stay in Belleville, and
nothing happened to her.
Two months later Amy went to another wedding. Reed Maddon married
Claudine Harper. Amy went with the crowd to the station to see them
leave for Chicago on a wedding trip. She was surprised to find how
little she cared. Outside of a breathless moment of jealousy she didn’t
really feel it at all. Yet Reed was the only man she had ever cared
about. But, of course, that had been when she was a little girl. She
would fall in love soon and life would begin.
Amy spent the next two winters in Belleville. She and her mother went
to Benton Springs for the summers, and her father and Clarence, who
was now a partner with his father, came up for alternate week-ends.
Her father was more condescending than ever now, because she had not
married. He was fatter than ever, and Amy did not like to look at his
profile.
At Benton Springs Amy flirted with the men at the hotel, colourless,
small-town men who were trying hard to get pleasure out of an
inexpensive holiday. She did not find them very entertaining. She
attended the hotel dances on Saturday nights and went to another hotel
for Wednesday evening festivities. She played tennis and golf.
She had a mild love affair with a young lawyer from Texas, and he
kissed her one night as they were walking toward the hotel.
After she had gone to bed she thought about him. He was not the sort
of man she had planned to marry at all. He did not attract her, but
the masculine smell of his coat had been pleasant and he was not
bad-looking. Amy decided that, if he asked her to marry him, she would
accept him. He did not propose. He left the hotel three days later.
With the exception of a picture post-card, she never heard from him
again.
Something like a panic seized Amy the next winter. The girls in her
set were getting married one after another and new débutantes were
appearing each season. Great adventures did not come to her. Even
little things did not happen. She felt almost trapped. What if she were
wrong about life, about the story?
She visited, with new clothes as aids, her mother’s cousin in Harperton
and her Aunt Ella in Demont. She had good times. Girls gave bridge
parties for her. Men took her to parties. She did not have a love
affair nor any other adventures. She felt she was just as attractive
as other girls. They found beaux. Still, to others, she might seem
popular, too. She got candy and flowers and invitations. It was just
that nothing really came close enough, love or marriage or any sort of
happening. She still felt as if she were not really living, as if life
were waiting for her, outside of some gate. She was bound to find it,
if she waited.
She returned to Belleville in January, and the next month Millard
Kenton came to Belleville on business. His cousins lived there, so he
was included in the town’s social affairs. Amy met him, as she always
met visitors.
Kenton was attentive to her immediately. She disliked him at first. He
was small and had brown hair which was getting thin at twenty-eight.
There was nothing forceful or vital about him. His strongest opinions
seemed to have no importance. Nothing he could do ever could have any
significance, Amy felt.
Yet, because he liked her, Amy ignored Kenton’s colourlessness and made
herself as attractive as she could. She was slender and had nice eyes
and hair and wore pretty, small-town, fluffy dresses.
When Kenton called, they sat in the living-room and talked or played
bridge with other couples or went to the theatre.
Sometimes, when she was alone with Kenton, Amy looked at his
indefinite, uninteresting face and wondered how she could keep on
talking with him. What a bore he was! She liked him a little better,
but felt that he was more insignificant than a man ought to be.
Kenton’s home was in Minota, Oklahoma, where he was with an oil
company. He went back to Minota and wrote to Amy on his business
stationery in a small, slanting handwriting. His letters were
colourless, too.
Kenton came back to Belleville in April and asked Amy to marry him.
She had encouraged him in little ways, listening with flattering
attention to his opinions, answering his letters with half-finished
sentences that were meant to show that she liked him.
Amy had never had a real proposal of marriage. She felt that the great
romance, as she had dreamed it, would never come to her. But all the
other girls were marrying. Being married would open new avenues. Maybe,
after marriage, she would have adventures. If things did happen—she
could leave Kenton any time she wanted to—