In a Little Town Part 48

They inflicted on her the impossible habit of consistency. She was reported as calling a hat a "hot," a rat a "rot," of teaching her little sister to read from the primer, "Is the cot on the mot?" p.r.o.nunciation became a test of character. The soft "r" and the hard "a" were taken as proofs of effeminate hypocrisy.

Carthage differed only in degree, not in kind, from old Italy at the time of the "Sicilian Vespers," when they called upon everybody to p.r.o.nounce the word "ciceri." The natives who could say "chee-cheree"

escaped, but the poor French who could come no nearer than "seeseree"

were butchered. Gradually now in Carthage the foreigners from Ma.s.sachusetts, Georgia, England, and elsewhere ceased to be regarded with tolerance. Their accents no longer amused. They gave offense.

In the railroad office there were six or seven of these new-comers. They were driven together by indignation. They took up Amelie's cause; made her their queen; declined invitations in which she was not included; gave parties in her honor: took her buggy-riding. Each had his day.

A few girls could not endure her triumph. They broke away from the fold and became renegades, timidly softening their speech. This infuriated the others, and the town was split into Guelph and Ghibelline.

Amelie enjoyed the notoriety immensely. She flaunted her success. She ridiculed the Carthage people as yokels. She burlesqued their jargon as outrageously as they hers.

The soda-water fountains became battle-fields of backbiting and mockery.

The feuds were as bitter, if not as deadly, as those that flourished around the fountains in medieval Italian towns. Two girls would perch on the drug-store stools back to back, and bicker in pretended ignorance of each other's presence. Tudie Litton would order "sahsahpahrillah,"

which she hated, just to mock Amelie's manner; and Amelie, a.s.suming to be ignorant of Tudie's existence, would retort by ordering "a strorrburry sody wattur." Then each would laugh recklessly but miserably.

The church at which the Terriberrys worshiped was almost torn apart by the matter. The more ardent partisans felt that Amelie's unrepentant soul had no right in the sacred edifice. Others urged that there should be a truce to factions there, as in heaven. One Sunday dear old Dr.

Brearley, oblivious of the whole war, as of nearly everything else less than a hundred years away, chose as his text Judges xii: 6:

"Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to p.r.o.nounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the pa.s.sages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand."

If the anti-Amelites had needed any increase of enthusiasm they got it now. They had Scripture on their side. If it were proper for the men of Gilead, where the well-known balm came from, to slay forty-two thousand people for a misp.r.o.nunciation, surely the Carthaginians had authority to stand by their "alturrs" and their "fi-urs" and protect them from those who called them "altahs" and "fiahs."

No country except ours could foster such a feud. No language except the chaos we fumble with could make it possible. By and by the war wore out of its own violence. People ceased to care how a thing was said, and began to take interest again in what was said. Those who had mimicked Amelie had grown into the habit of mimicry until they half forgot their scorn. The old-time flatness and burr began to soften from attrition, to be modified because they were conspicuous. You would have heard Arthur subduing his tw.a.n.g and unburring the "r." If you had asked him he would have told you his name was either "Arthuh" or "Ahthur."

Amelie and her little bodyguard, on the other hand, grew so nervous of the sacred emblems that they avoided their use. When they came to a word containing an "a" or a final "r" they hesitated or sidestepped and let it pa.s.s. Amelie fell into the habit of saying "couldn't" for "cahn't,"

and "A. M." for "mawning."

People began to smile when they met her, and she smiled back. Slowly everybody that had "not been speaking" began speaking, bowing, chatting.

Now, when one of the disputed words drifted into the talk, each tried to concede a little to the other's belief, as soldiers of the blue and the gray trod delicately on one another's toes after peace was decreed.

Everybody was now half and half, or, as Tudie vividly spoke it, "haff and hahf." You would hear the same person say "haff-pahst ten,"

"hahf-pa.s.st eleven," and "hahf-pahst twelve."

Carthage became as confused in its language as Alsace-Lorraine.

V

All through this tremendous feud Orson Carver had been faithful to Amelie. Whether he had given Tudie the sack or she him was never decided. But she was loyal to her dialect. He ceased to call; Tudie ceased to invite him. They smiled coldly and still more coldly, and then she ceased to see him when they met. He was simply transparent.

Orson was Amelie's first cavalier in Carthage. He found her mightily attractive. She was brisk of wit and she adored his Boston and his ways.

She was sufficiently languorous and meek in the moonlight, too--an excellent hammock-half.

But when the other Outlanders had begun to gather to her standard it crowded the porch uncomfortably.

Dissension rose within the citadel. Orson's father had fought Jefferson's father in 1861-65. The great-grandfathers of both of them had fought Anthony Hopper's forefathers in '76-83. The p.r.o.nunciations of the three grew mutually distasteful, and dreadful triangular rows took place on matters of speech.

Amelie sat in silence while they wrangled, and her thoughts reverted to Arthur Litton. He had loved her well enough to be ashamed of her and rebuke her. She was afraid that she had been a bit of a sn.o.b, a trifle caddish. She had aired her new accent and her new clothes a trifle too insolently. Old customs grew dear to her like old slippers. She remembered the Littons' shabby buggy and the fuzzy horse, and the drives Arthur and she had taken under the former moons.

Her father and mother had shocked her with their modes of speech when she came home, and she had ventured to rebuke them. She felt now that they ought to have spanked her. A great tenderness welled up in her heart for them and their homely ways. She wanted to be like them.

The village was taking her back into its slumberous comfortableness.

She would waken from her reveries to hear the aliens arguing their alien rules of speech. It suddenly struck her that they were all wrong, anyway. She felt an impulse to run for a broom and sweep them off into s.p.a.ce. She grew curt with them. They felt the chill and dropped away, all but Orson. At last his lonely mother bullied his father into recalling him from the Western wilds.

He called on Amelie to bid a heartbreaking good-by. He was disconsolate.

He asked her to write to him. She promised she would. He was excited to the point of proposing. She declined him plaintively. She could never leave the old folks. "My place is here," she said.

He left her and walked down the street like a moving elegy.

He suffered agonies of regret till he met a girl on the East-bound train. She was exceedingly pretty and he made a thrilling adventure of sc.r.a.ping acquaintance with her mother first, and thus with her. They were returning to Boston, too. They were his home folks.

When at last the train hurtled him back into Ma.s.sachusetts he had almost forgotten that he had ever been in Carthage. He had a sharp awakening.

When he flung his arms about his mother and told her how glad he was to see her, her second exclamation was: "But how on uth did you acquiah that ghahstly Weste'n accent?"

One evening in the far-off Middle West the lonely Amelie was sitting in her creaking hammock, wondering how she could endure her loneliness, plotting how she could regain her old lover. She was desperately considering a call upon his sister. She would implore forgiveness for her sin of vanity and beg Tudie's intercession with Arthur. She had nearly steeled herself to this glorious contrition when she heard a warning squeal from the front gate, a slow step on the front walk, and hesitant feet on the porch steps.

And there he stood, a shadow against the shadow. In a sorrowful voice he mumbled, "Is anybody home?"

"I am!" she cried. "I was hoping you would come."

"No!"

"Yes. I was just about ready to telephone you."

There was so much more than hospitality in her voice that he stumbled forward. Their shadows collided and merged in one embrace.

"Oh, Amelie!" he sighed in her neck.

And she answered behind his left ear: "Don't call me Amelie any more. I like Em betterr from you! It's so shorrt and sweet--as you say it. We'll forget the pa.s.st forreverr."

"Am! my dolling!"

"Oh, Arrthurr!"

THE END

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