Kitty Canary: A Novel

by Kate Langley Bosher

CHAPTER XXV

This is the last day of August, and it is a day Twickenham Town is going to remember for a long time. I have done again that which I should not have done, and I guess I had better go home. I had expected to stay until the twenty-seventh of September and return with Father, who was to spend a week here with me, but he can't come.

I suppose it was the awful disappointment of knowing Father couldn't come, and being so miserable myself (not one line yet from that person named William Spencer Sloane, who is probably married to an elderly woman by this time), and because of my sureness that no human being could be depended on in time of temptation, especially vigorous, aggressive temptations that come out of the West, that I gave help where help seemed to be needed, and now again I am in everybody's mouth. Also my ankles are still a little sore from the weight of the window being on them as I hung out, but they are nearly well, and even if they were not it would not matter. Two young hearts are happy and a proud person is not, and the blame is on me. That also doesn't matter. I am soon going away.

The thing I did, which maybe I shouldn't have done, was to help little Amy Frances Winston get married. She is the property of her grandmother, who is a very important part of Twickenham Town. Having no parents or sisters or brothers, and only enough money of her own for her keep, and no spunk or spirit, she has gone on for years loving an awfully nice chap named Taylor French, with little chance of ever marrying him, and then in hops this Miss Frisk, who asks her why she doesn't quit fumbling and stop fearing, and the thing is done.

There is nothing the matter with Taylor French except he is not Ancestral. Mrs. Brandon, Amy's grandmother, is diseased on the subject of ancestry, and the first thing she asks about a man is who is he. Knowing she would want to know who I was, I mentioned to her one day that I had never had any grandparents on either side (living ones I meant), and that we were not historic, and no member of our family had ever been distinguished (for righteousness, though I didn't use the word), and that we had made our own way in life, which was true, for Father didn't have a thing but what he was making when he married Mother. I also told her I did not mind in the least, and if I did I would try to remember that Christ was a carpenter and St. Paul a sail-maker, though I'd never care to be intimate with St. Paul. And I told her I thought it was yourself that counted most, after all, and not dead people, though it must be nice to know somebody in your family had been something if you were not. All she said was, "Are you a suffragist?" When I said I was and I hoped I didn't look as if I were not, for I wouldn't like anybody to be mistaken about it, she gave me a long look and left the room.

She did not exactly draw her skirts aside with her hand as she passed me, but she did it inwardly; that is, I imagined she did from the expression of her face, and the next day she must have fumigated the house, for when I went by an awful smell of sulphur was coming from it. She is a low bender and bower in church at the mention of a name belonging to one she believes a Prince in disguise, who in another life will receive her into His kingdom, and whom she professes to follow in the expectation of being rewarded for so doing, but her head is held high when she doesn't care to see the lowly ones He came to give light and life to. I don't mean she doesn't give old clothes and food and sometimes a little wood to old Mrs. Snicker, who can't move, from rheumatism, but she would no more speak other than stiffly to some of the people I know here than she would go in for suffrage. She doesn't realize she is a living woman. She thinks she is an Ancestor. For years she has forbidden Taylor French to come to her house, and Amy has to see him elsewhere.

She has seen a good deal of him lately, Amy has. Taylor doesn't live in Twickenham Town now. He is living in North Carolina and has a good position, and is able to get married (I know because I asked him), and any minute day or night in the past eighteen months in which Amy would have agreed he would have married her and taken her away, but Amy wouldn't agree. Things have been dragging along this way so long that the nerves of both are frazzled out, and there's nothing to hope for but death, and, of course, it isn't respectful to think too hopefully of death and a grandmother. And then I popped in and gave things a little push and the curtain dropped.

The way it dropped was this. I mean the way they got married. Taylor was in town the last two weeks in August, and, as everybody invited him to their parties, he and Amy managed to see a good deal of each other (also the seeing wasn't altogether at places where other people were around). But she wasn't allowed to meet him on the square or to receive letters from him straight. And sometimes, if he wanted to say something in a hurry, or send her candy or a new book, or any of the usuals, he had to give a signal by throwing pebbles on her window at night, and then she would throw out a string and he would tie the thing to it and she would haul up, and the Personage, who was usually asleep, would be none the wiser. The Personage is deaf, which is a great help.

Well, one night three of the town girls and myself, with a boy apiece, had been to see Amy, and when we went up-stairs (just the girls) to see a new hat a city cousin had sent her, we heard a little tap at the west window. It had been raining, which accounted for our being indoors with the windows lowered, and when we heard the tapping we were so excited we could hardly breathe. It was fearfully thrilly, just like things one reads about in books, and I told the girls to put out the light quick, and when it was out I went to the window and saw Taylor standing in the shadow of a big tree. He signaled me to drop the line, but when I threw the piece of twine Amy gave me I threw it wrong and it got caught in a broken piece of shingle on the edge of the porch and hung there. I couldn't get it back and Taylor couldn't get it down, and, seeing it was necessary for something to be done, I pushed aside the curtains (they were made of striped calico, blue and white) and told the girls I was going to lean out of the window on the roof of the porch to get the string loose, and they must hold on to my feet, for the roof sloped and I might slip if they didn't. They tried to stop me, and Amy wrung her hands, being very nervous from living on a strain and loving in secret, but I was out head foremost in a jiffy, and all four made a grab for my feet and legs. Being flat on my stomach, and having long arms, I got the string off from the piece of shingle, and just as I did it and threw it to Taylor I heard a noise and a little cry from the girls, something about, "Oh, my goodness! here she comes!" and I knew what had happened.