Chapter III

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—