Katharine Haviland-Taylor

“ Evelyn didn’t even stop to wipe her feet. . . . And we saw that the window-sill was splintered and that there were deep dents in it, as if someone had pounded in a huge nail and then pulled it out.
“More thieving,” said aunt. “We must be calm. . . . I am going to faint, I know I am. Evelyn, get your bedroom slippers. There seems to be no safety, no calm. But if you will just try to hold on to control----” And then somehow Amy got tangled up in the telephone cord and pulled the telephone from the table, and the table over with it, and aunt simply screamed.
Uncle Archie was tired. ”

“ When I got up the next morning Aunt Penelope said, “Thank Heaven you look as if you felt well. I’ll need your help. This will be an awful day; it always is. . . . There are so many things to do that I don’t know where to start. . . . Ito, was that the bell? Yes, it was--what was it?” and then she stopped, and I looked up and gave a little cry, for Uncle Frank stood in the doorway, peering over his glasses at me and blinking. ”

“ It didn’t sound like Evelyn. She seems too hard for anything romantic.
“Honestly,” Amy assured me. “She doesn’t think anyone will notice the wire, and the basket is hidden under her window-box.”
“I see,” I said, and I did. There are flower-boxes on the outsides of a good many of the windows. It would be easy enough to manage to make one a garage for her basket mail-carrier, if she wanted to.
“She’d die if anyone knew it,” Amy confided. “It would fuss her. . . . I just can’t imagine Evelyn mooning around in the dark, waiting for that basket to slide across. ”

“ Kempwood’s being hurt had almost made me sick.
“Look here, Nat,” he said, turning over very carefully so that he faced me, “we’re friends, aren’t we?”
I nodded, just as hard as I could, for emphasis. For various reasons, I decided I would not speak just then. I was afraid my voice would behave as Willy Jepson’s used to when he was fourteen. He himself never knew whether it was going to sound like Hamlet, in the soliloquy, or Miss Hooker when she saw a fuzzy caterpillar; and those ranges differ widely.
“Well, if we’re friends,” went on Mr. Kempwood, “whatever bothers you must bother me. ”

“ My furniture creaked as the damp, night air crept in. A board snapped, then my radiator clanked. I used my flashlight about two hundred and eight times and then, ashamed of myself, lay back and decided I would go to sleep and not be silly. And I did go to sleep.
When I awoke it was quieter than ever and very still, but I knew by the goose-flesh, hot-and-cold, choked sensation I had, that I had been awakened by something foreign, perhaps a noise that should not have been, and that I was not alone. I lay shaking, but with my eyes closed, and then I felt a light flash across my face. ”

“ What was that?”
“My darning-egg,” responded Evelyn with a glare toward Amy, “and if you can tell me why you have to shout and scare everyone out of their senses when anything drops---- Mother, do you realize that you are putting ‘The New Republic’ among the Galli Curci records? . . . I see you have it neatly numbered.”
“So I have,” said Aunt Penelope, “but be calm, Evelyn, be calm. We must all be calm! Here, dear,” and she handed Evelyn an incense-burner, under the impression that it was her darning-egg. They were excited. ”

“ Evelyn said that one would be a falling star.
“But perhaps you could persuade father that I need one,” Amy went on. “You have a tactful way and seem to be very chummy with him lately.”
“Oh, Baby!” said Evelyn (Baby is the family pet name for Amy) , “you should be ashamed of yourself! Why don’t you give father a Christmas present of not asking for the impossible and not whining for what he can’t give you?” ”

“ I heard Aunt Penelope say. “And Heaven only knows what may happen next, with all the Bolsheviki around--can’t you do something (Amy, put down that revolver, you are driving me crazy!) --and Evelyn, right in the next room, hearing nothing. . . . And said she wasn’t asleep. . . . Amy, if you don’t sit down I will scream! And Ito, right in the pantry, by the fire-escape, on which he must have climbed (if it was a he) , and how he got up I don’t know. . . . And you say there’s no danger, doctor? . . . The only child of my dear dead sister, and what will happen next? . . . ”

“ I am in no mood to--bear it--oh, the feeling!”
“Huh!” grunted Uncle Archie, and paddled off to bed.
Then aunt told us to stay with Evelyn while she hunted the aromatic spirits of ammonia, and we settled down to listen to her gasp. We felt sorry, but it was sort of funny, and especially when she said: “Is nothing true, is nothing sacred?” And I suppose she meant that that basket should have been too hallowed to him to fill with flour paste. Amy giggled, and then said she felt nervous and that made it. ”

“ Everyone called on me, and everyone gave me advice. The calls, the advice, the shrill of the locusts, the way the sunlight looked in the garden, and the braid which Mrs. Bradly insisted must be put on my new dresses, all tangled. I can’t think of one thing without having something else, that came in that time, creep in. I suppose it was because I was so hurried that nothing was sorted. It all simply sunk in my mind together as I rushed; and, of course, there was no calm between, in which one’s consciousness builds fences, or tethers a thought in its proper pasture. ”

“ To go home way after supper-time, so hungry that I ached under my belt, and to find that Bradly-dear had made fresh doughnuts, and that Uncle Frank had all three pairs of glasses on his forehead--and was hunting them all so that he could look more closely at a cocoon he had just found. . . . Oh, I wanted it! I think I would have been utterly miserable, but Amy diverted me.
“Going to take them,” she said, standing up. “Evelyn will never know, and he won’t go rooting around in a returned box. If he has any sense of fitness, he will fling it from him with a curse and bury his head in his arms!” ”

“ At that moment Jane summoned Aunt Penelope to the telephone, and Amy, quite naturally, disappeared. I went down to see Mr. Kempwood, for I was going to borrow the fares to go home. But he persuaded me not to go, and in this way, after I had told him as much as I dared, without squealing on Amy.
“My dear,” he said, “if Washington had not fought out the battle of Harlem Heights, New York might be a British Possession to-day. But courage and staying there saved the country and won a battle. Just in that way a man has to fight his battles through; he owes that to his soul. ”

“ There were guests at dinner, and Ito spilled soup, but otherwise it was uneventful. And afterward Amy went out to a little party to which I had not been asked, Evelyn went out with Mr. Apthorpe, aunt and her guests played cards in the living-room and I went to mine again--to write letters.
I thought writing to Uncle Frank would help me, but it didn’t. I knew that if I had wanted advice, he probably would tell me how long a grasshopper woos its mate before marriage, instead of talking to me about mine. I love him, but his soul is steeped in bugs. ”

“ As we turned in the apartment-house I saw the blind man going along the other side of the street, his cane doing the feeling for him, and his movements awkward and stiff. There are a great many things that are sad in New York, which seems strange, for so many people are so wealthy. Now, in Queensburg no one has much money, but no one could go in want, for the people who have just a little more than they have wouldn’t let them.
I told Mr. Kempwood a little about Queensburg too, and he was really interested. And that helped me, for not even Amy will listen to that. ”

“ For all you really take is love, and the whitest part of your soul. I am sure all jealousies, and hurts and little things stay here, and I like to believe so. . . . But to get on, old Chloe told my grandfather, and he, a broken-hearted old man, took it off. And then he kissed my mother’s arm, at the spot where the bracelet had made a mark, and he said: “It’s all right now, my little girl, isn’t it? It’s all right now!” For he hoped she was very happy. And then he went off and sat down on the porch, his head sagging down on his chest and in his hands the Jumel bracelet. ”

“ Kempwood says was a famed beauty and a toast of that day (for men drank toasts to women then, if they liked them) , must have been kind as well as pretty. For a man may love a woman first for the loveliness of her skin or her eyes or her hair, but he loves her long for only one thing, and that is the beauty of her spirit. ”

“ Everyone simply flew, and almost every six seconds Amy would come in to tell of someone she’d forgotten to remember, Ito would appear to say that someone was wanted by someone at the telephone, and Evelyn would say: “Another pot of poinsettias and ferns. Where shall I tell Jane to put it?” There were lots of roses too, and they made the whole place fragrant and beautiful.
In the hall there were millions of packages, unopened cards on a tray, and messenger boys waiting for someone to sign their books. I loved it all, and having Uncle Frank there made it perfect. ”

“ I paused for a moment, and then went on, “Amy adores you, she patterns herself over you; therefore she is beginning to be cross to aunt and never to say a decent thing at home and to complain all the time. That’s what she sees in you----”
Evelyn stood up.
“And,” I hurried on before she could break in, “she will miss real love, as you will, because real love hasn’t enough money for motors and frocks and all she wants. And I think real love is lucky, for all he would get would be a request for more money, complaints and no consideration. ”

“ I told him a lot about Uncle Frank and Bradly-dear and even about Willy Jepson. And he asked me whether I thought I would marry Willy, and I said not if anyone else asked me. And then I had some more tea.
He asked me how old I was, at that point, and when I said sixteen, he was surprised. I don’t seem it. I know that. . . . That is one reason Amy never has room in the motor for me. I know I humiliate her by my lack of polish. Baseball doesn’t develop much beside muscle and quickness and a certain sort of flash judgment, I have realized lately. ”

“ I’m very fond of Willy!” And for two blocks we didn’t say a word.
“Can’t you see,” he explained after that long silence, “that no man has any right to bother a youngster, or ask her to marry him, no matter how much he wants to, until she’s past the doll’s stage? . . . Here you are, having tea in the nursery, and he butts in where angels would bare their heads, and says you can ‘have him,’ if I recollect correctly. ‘Have him!’ My heavens!”
I was mad. I have not played dolls for years, and I never had tea in the nursery, because we hadn’t any; I always ate with Uncle Frank. ”

“ Everyone gave Uncle Frank worsted spiders, papier-mâché bugs, or crêpe paper butterflies. Evelyn had got a doll’s coat for Amy made of fur, and they gave me a toy pistol and a trap. Uncle Archie’s joke was a bottle of “Seven Sutherland Sisters” hair tonic and a switch, because he has hardly any hair. There were lots of others too, and a great many beautiful things. Quite everyone talked at once, paper rustled and grew to great heaps on the floor, ribbons tangled around your ankles as you stepped, and it was--just the way Christmas always is. ”

“ I decided I would wear my jewellery, which consists of the Jumel bracelet and a ring with a silver skull on it which Willy Jepson gave me.
I thought my tam would be best for motoring, because it sticks on and Mr. Kempwood likes it. And I meant to accept that part of the invitation very hard, because I love it, and there never seems to be enough room in aunt’s motor. Everyone is always sorry, but someone else always has to go. Amy has so many friends that it is difficult to pay them all sufficient attention. ”

“ Chase goes on pounding as a smile gradually widens on his face; someone above speaks, the Chase individual can hear the voice since the doors are open, and, although it was a mansion for that day, it is not a great house for to-day. The sounds easily carry, and especially since it is night and a ‘calm September one, in which hardly a leaf stirred.’ He pounds three times, and up above three quaking people think a question is answered and that a ghost walks and thumps. ”

“ Bradly made me put yards on everything. She said: “Yuh gotta look swell in New York. Take this here and put three rows above the hem.” And--for the first time in my life, I sewed. We put narrow ribbon velvet on my thin things, and lace wherever it could be attached. When I had to rip it off, I did almost cry; and not because of the work, but because dear Bradly thought it was so fine. I can’t quite explain, and I haven’t time here. But when people whom you love think things are beautiful, you don’t like to destroy them.
“Whatcha doing that for?” Willy asked one afternoon. ”

“ Samuel Kempwood,” said Evelyn, as we went on (she said this in a low tone so that the elevator man shouldn’t hear) , “has the apartment on the third floor. Wonderful collection of ivories, and is the most thrillingly romantic person. . . . Ah, here we are!” And then we stepped out.
Well, I don’t know what I had expected, but I know I had not expected a flat, I mean apartment, like this. It is wonderful. In the first place, it takes up the whole floor of that great big building, and doesn’t seem at all crowded. ”

“ The shops were simply gorgeous with their red and green decorations, and people carried packages, looked tired, but smiled. It was the greatest fun in the world to go out on Saturday mornings and scrunch through the snow to the subway, and then delve into the crowds, who laughed and pushed and hurried with such good nature. Amy and I could hardly wait for school to close. And in school notes simply flew, all of them containing confidences about the furs the writer hoped to get, or the ostrich-feather fan she knew she was going to get, having seen the long package on the hall table. ”