Chapter XVII--Who Caught the Mouse-Trap?
Thenight after my birthday party, at which the hostess was clothed in pink pyjamas and a coral bath-robe and one of her guests wore a crêpe de chine nighty, I slept badly. In the first place I was bruised and sore from my fall and in the second, frankly frightened. I kept imagining that I heard things, as you do when the lights are out and the world is still outside. 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. I stirred, sighed as you do when half-awake, and turned. Then I heard footsteps near my bureau and a gently, sliding noise which was the drawer being pulled out. I stealthily reached for my night light, but it had been set off the table on the floor--put of my reach. And my flashlight was gone.
I did some quick thinking; in fact I don’t know how I got all the reasoning I did in those few minutes, but somehow it went in. I reasoned that if I called I would be hurt before anyone could reach me, and that I had no chance to get up and get out of the room--alive. And I decided that if the bracelet was the only thing wanted, I would not be hurt if I kept quiet; so I adopted the policy of possums and lots of the little grapevine insects that look so much like twigs or a bit of leaf--and lay still.
I heard the trap snap and a muttered word that is absolutely unquotable, and I had to smile, even then! And I was fearfully frightened--almost sick from fright to be truthful. Then I turned again and sighed and Iheardthe man, woman, or whatever it was, grow quiet. Absolutelyheardhe, she, or it, hold its breath, wait in suspense, and the silence of the moment was louder than lots of noises. It simply throbbed.
Then there was a soft noise and I saw a dark form in front of the window, heard a scratch of a heel going over the sill and something scratch. I coughed, there was a quick movement from the window, and I knew I was alone. It was a cloudy night, with the air still threatening snow and the court is dusky even in daytime, so I could not even get an outline of the intruder, which I wanted and so greatly needed.
I heard a scuffle outside, as if someone were sliding down against bricks, and then there was silence, throbbing silence once more, which seemed loud as it so often does at night. . . . I lay very still for several moments, perhaps it was many minutes; I don’t know, for I was sick and shaking and I imagine half-fainting, because the bed seemed to be floating. Even then, I was ashamed of myself for my lack of courage. When I at last got my nerve back, I sat up, wiped my forehead, which was wet, mopped off my cold, damp palms, and felt around for my night light. I found it, about a yard from my bed, and after I set it back I lit it and looked around. Nothing was disturbed, but I found that the trap was gone.
“Well,” I thought, “I have you now----” and I stood looking down at the empty box, and smiling--but I missed it. Something was disturbed. A piece of wood was torn from the window-sill, a great piece which had been started in a jag by the holes made that night of the rappings, and on the remaining splinters of this was a piece of cloth, quite evidently torn from clothing.
“If I were only a Sherlock!” I thought, as I held it. I didn’t dream it would ever really help, but I put great faith in the scar that a trap would leave.
After that I went over to sleep with Amy. She moved as I crawled in by her, but didn’t wake. I was glad that I didn’t disturb her, for she had been to a party the night before which lasted longer than my birthday affair.
In the morning Amy got up without waking me and at ten aunt came in to sit down on the bed.
“Didn’t sleep very well?” she asked, eyeing me quite anxiously, I thought.
I said I hadn’t, very.
“Um----” she mused, and then: “Well, we’ll have a nice breakfast in bed after you’ve been in the tub. Use those bath salts the doctor gave you, dear--very relaxing. And I’ll hunt something for you to read.” She was very nice to me and I did so appreciate it.
“Evelyn wanted you to go driving with her; she’s decided to go out to-day; but I wouldn’t let her call you. Got up and had breakfast with her father this morning for some reason. Usually we don’t see her before ten on Sundays, but the young mind is a riddle. . . . Do you think you can go to sleep again after breakfast?”
I said I’d try.
“I’ll send Jane in to get you a fresh nightdress and to help you bathe,” said aunt as she stood up, and then she patted my cheek, murmured something of an engagement, and left. When Jane came in I nearly fainted. She had her right hand done up, and she told me she had run an ice-pick into her second finger and that it “hurt something fierce.” I thought she was pretty cool about it, for at that time I was sure it was Jane.
“Didn’t know the cook let you touch the refrigerator,” I said, as I kicked off my slippers and stepped in the tub.
Jane, who was picking up my nighty, explained that the cook had been out and that she was entertaining a “gentleman friend,” who had brought a bottle of beer with him. And that sounded queer to me. It isn’t just the thing one would pick out for an offering to Love, and besides it is not as common as it once was.
“He’s lucky to have it,” I said, and then: “Do you like ice in beer? I didn’t know people usually put it in that.”
Jane grew pink and she looked at me appealingly. I couldn’t soften, for I knew I must get whatever clues I could.
“Some people likes it in,” she said lamely and then went to get me a fresh nightdress and a négligé of Amy’s that Aunt Penelope had told her to let me wear.
She brushed my hair and tied it with great bows of wide pink ribbon and then tucked me into bed.
“Jane,” I said, “haven’t I always been good to you? I’ve tried to be.”
“You always have been, miss,” she answered. “You have a pleasant way with yuh, and Ito and me is always saying how different you are from Miss Evelyn and----”
“Never mind about that,” I said. “But if you ever wanted anything very much I hope you would come to me and ask for it--or tell me about it--instead of borrowing whatever you liked for especial occasions.”
“That’s what maw always called it,” she said, “just borrowing. She took in elegant washes and we kids wore them clothes regular. We certainly missed maw when she died!”
Jane wiped her eyes, and although I felt sorry for her I did want to smile. Shemixedthings so.
“Did you like the bracelet,” I asked boldly, “and simply want to wear it occasionally--borrow it?”
“What bracelet?” she asked, but she coloured hotly. I gave up. I’d tried to give her a chance, but I saw she wasn’t ready to surrender without war. After a few more moments of puttering and making me comfortable, she left and I lay thinking how it could be solved. Then Ito came in with a wicker breakfast tray which stood on little legs, and on this was a pink china breakfast set which was cheerful and easy to eat from. Ito had put a rose between the folds of my napkin and I was pleased.
“That is so pretty, Ito!” I said. “I wasn’t very hungry, but I am now----” and then I stopped, my eyes glued to his hand, the right one, which was bandaged. I gasped.
“You’ve hurt yourself?” I asked.
Ito grinned widely. “Everybody have bandage,” he remarked pleasantly. “Jane have ice-pick in finger, I sharp knife for benefit of steak and make mistakes in direction. Everybody stabbed to bleed.”
I giggled a little, it seemed so funny. “Who else?” I asked in despair.
“Miss Evelyn shut hand in motor door, it smash open,” he went on. “Mr. Kempwood new servant hurt hand to cut on bottle that is fall to floor and break. All is hospital.”
I said I was sorry for them, but started laughing. Ito joined me, and just at that moment Evelyn appeared “Have you seen Amy?” she asked. I said I hadn’t.
“Had to go to the doctor’s the minute she got up,” Evelyn explained. “She didn’t say a word to anyone about it, but was awfully game. It seems she got up to close a window last night--the wind was frightful, you know--and she was half asleep, I imagine, and fumbled it, for the window came down on her fingers and she was really hurt. . . . What, your hand too, Ito?” And she began to laugh with us.
But no one had the full appreciation of the joke that I had. It really was funny, although it did disturb me. I began to believe it was Jane. But I looked at the sample of cloth that had caught on my window-sill and wondered why Jane would wear that sort of a suit at night, and why she would go out on the balcony when she might have left more easily by my door? For while the balcony does lead past Amy’s room to the pantry window, my door is the first on the hall which belongs to the sleeping part of the apartment, and to leave by that would mean running no risks of encountering anyone’s wakefulness on return. I remembered the scratching noise and wondered whether I had heard it--what it meant? But I wasn’t to know for some time after that.
The next week was quiet, but the week after----! Words fail! There should be one word that implies hair standing on end, cold chills, shaking knees, goose-flesh, and a heart going about twenty-seven thousand hard whacks to the minute. I could use that word. I reallycould, and--I need it!
Chapter XVIII--Heart Affairs
Aboutthat time things began to stir for Christmas. Packages came in at all hours, and it was understood that they weren’t even to be felt, and that only the person to whom they were addressed could open them. The weather man was evidently in a good humour, for he predicted “dry, fair weather with light south winds,” and, of course, almost the greatest blizzard that New York had ever known appeared to make the landscape match those snow-scene Christmas-cards with shiny silver on them that drops off. And we had a splendid time.
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 sheknewshe was going to get, having seen the long package on the hall table.
Aunt Penelope told us to make notes of what we wanted, and it was what we did the Saturday afternoon I met Mr. Apthorpe. Evelyn, who had not been awfully well since she had that bad cold, sat in the living-room with Amy and me, and we were enjoying being together.
“I am going to ask for a Russian sable coat,” said Amy, who was sucking the point of her pencil and looking down at the pad she held, “because I think it is a duty to look for the best. Some poet--I’ve forgotten who--said: ‘Hitch your waggon to a star.’ ”
Evelyn said that one would be a falling star.
“But perhaps you could persuade father that Ineedone,” 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?”
Amy’s face was a study in amazement. “But you----” she said.
“Have reformed,” said Evelyn, and then she went back to her lists. She was working hard, figuring out how little she dared give people who had entertained her. Amy looked at her, then she scribbled a note and passed it to me, pretending it was a list of girls in our school that we were going to ask to tea during the holidays.
“She is mourning for Herbert,” she had written. I nodded and felt ever so sorry for Evelyn. She had been very kind and unnatural for ever so long, and it was plain that something had made a big dent in her feelings. She was ashamed of the way she had let sharpness grow on her, you could see that, and I think she was going through a lot in realizing how unpleasant she had often been, and trying not to be so any more. In a way, any reform is an operation, for you yourself cut out something that was wrong and didn’t belong in you, and even a skilled surgeon hurts you when he cuts off anything that shouldn’t grow on you. I know, for I had a wart removed. My simile is somewhat mixed, but I still shine most brilliantly in athletics. I became right forward and captain of our basket-ball team after one game, but that is beside the point.
After we had written our lists and had had tea and discussed where the tree should be set, I said I wanted to go walking, and asked if anyone else did, and, after they refused, I started out. It was lots of fun to walk, because a little thaw had made a sheet of ice over everything, and going was a difficult matter. You had to slide on every little incline, and I stood in our apartment-house door for quite a while watching those who strolled and--slipped. They would mince along and then--zip! They’d go for perhaps five feet and end up by doing a bunny-hug to a tree that stands by the alleyway gate. And as I stepped forth, I, too, slid and--into Mr. Herbert Apthorpe. He tried to steady me, almost lost his balance, and then we laughed.
“I’m Evelyn’s cousin,” I said, as I walked by him (I made his direction mine); “I suppose you’ve forgotten me.”
He said he hadn’t, to be polite, but I knew he had.
“We were speaking of you to-day,” I went on. “Evelyn hasn’t been well, and she said she wished you would come up.” I stole a side look at him and saw that his face looked stiff and that his eyes were steadily fixed ahead. He didn’t look encouraging.
“I am flattered,” he said; and the way he said it made the snow-banks warm little nesting-places in comparison.
I knew he wasn’t at all flattered, but just said so to let me know he wasn’t. I tried a little more finesse, and it didn’t work, and then--I dropped tact, which has never done a thing for me but make me trip, and relied on crude truth.
“Didn’t you like Evelyn?” I asked. I was sure he did, or I wouldn’t have said what I then did.
“Very charming girl,” he said stiffly.
“Then why do you hurt her?” I asked. He looked at me after that.
“What?” he asked. I repeated my question. And he echoed it in a vacant way, only putting “I” in place of “you.”
“You do,” I assured him.
Then he spoke, quickly, to the point, and in a way that left no doubt as to how he felt. “She turned me off,” he said, “because I hadn’t enough money. Left me in no doubt about how she felt and how much she valued what I offered her. That didn’t seem to count. The fact that my salary is modest did.” And after that he walked so fast that I almost had to run to keep up with him.
“If she were sick,” I said, “wouldn’t you stick to her, help her--do anything you could for her?”
I think he considered me an interfering chit, as I was, and hated me; but he couldn’t very well strangle me, and I could walk quite as fast as he, so he replied, crisply, coolly, as before, but replied: “Since it interests you,” he answered, “certainly.”
Then I explained that she was sick. I said she had lived in a place where money was thought most important, and among people who attached a false value to it. And I said that that had made her sick mentally and that he should give her a chance and help her through that quite as he would through anything that made her body as miserable. He stopped and faced me.
“She is changing,” I said. “She is sorry, and she has cried before me about you.”
He caught his breath and then said: “Oh, mydear!” But he wasn’t speaking to me, I knew, but to Evelyn.
“She’s at home,” I went on, “and alone, or will be, since you can order Amy off. And she will love seeing you. She has cared so much that I think that has kept her from getting over this cold. I know it.”
He didn’t speak, but gripped my hand, and then he turned and hurried back toward the place where we had met. And I knew where he went from there, before I got home, and Amy told me about it.
I went on feeling sort of silly. The whole thing had taken lots of nerve, and if I hadn’t cared so much for Evelyn I never would have done it. I hate explaining what I think about the values of love and things. It makes me feel wishy-washy. So I was glad to be diverted by meeting S. K. He was in his car, and leaned out and told me to get off the grass!
“Can’t you see the signs?” he asked, as I turned to see where the loud order came from.
“Get in here,” he ordered next, and then his chauffeur, who grins and seems more human than other people’s chauffeurs, helped me across the snow-bank, and I was by S. K. He asked me if I’d minded the heat, and how many vanity cases I expected Santa to give me, and then he said he had got me a present and that I’d better sit tight or he’d give it to the janitor.
I looked at his chauffeur’s uniform and asked him where he got his servants’ duds.
“Rogers Peet,” he replied. “Why?”
“You are too young to know, S. K.,” I replied. “All of them--Debson’s too?”
“All of them,” he answered.
I had found out one more thing. “How did your man cut himself?” I asked next.
“On a piece of Baron Stiegel glass, worse luck,” S. K. answered. I felt sorry, for that glass was manufactured by Baron Stiegel way back, ages ago. He lived in South-Eastern Pennsylvania, and the glass is interesting from the historic as well as artistic viewpoint. S. K. has lots of things of that sort that are interesting as well as beautiful.
“If you’ll go riding, we won’t go home,” said S. K. next.
I said I would go, and we turned toward Riverside Drive, which was lovelier than ever with the snow weighting down the boughs of the trees, and the banks of the Hudson glittering like white mountains across the way. Little tots, many of whom wore red coats, made bright spots in the snow, and their nurses added the black lines that have to be to make a perfect poster. I loved it and so did S. K.
Huge motors, with beautiful women in them, rolled softly with and by us, and some of the windows of the houses and apartments were beginning to be bright with early lights. We were quiet because it made you feel that way.
“I love this,” I whispered.
“My dear,” S. K. answered, “I do too.” Then he looked down at me, and I was warmed by the feeling that he liked me a great deal. He had begun, even at that time, to be quite as much a part of my life as Uncle Frank, who, in his funny, forgetting way, has been both mother and father to me ever since I can remember.
“Next summer,” said S. K., “I am going to Southampton when your aunt does, and I shall return to town when she does.”
“Uncle Archie may be jealous,” I answered, smiling.
S. K. started to speak, then stopped, rubbed his hands together, looked away from me, and frowned. I looked at the beautiful houses, the crowds, and the passing cars. The little stretch of park, the wonderful apartments, and the well-dressed people, made a picture, a picture of happiest, smoothest-living New York. It was pleasant to look on.
“Suppose,” suggested S. K., “we go in up here and have tea? I imagine you’ve had it once, but I also suppose that hasn’t dimmed your bright young appetite.”
I giggled, for it hadn’t. And after we had driven some distance more, we turned in a big house that is set high on a lot of ground where you can get very good tea and wonderful things to eat between drinks. We had scones, and marmalade, and little cakes that were about as big as big candies and which, like those, came in cases. I ate quite a lot. S. K. telephoned aunt about where I was, and we lingered.
I grew confidential after I ate, and told S. K. about Evelyn and Mr. Apthorpe. I hoped he would think it was all right, and he did. He said he wished someone would Cook Tour his affairs like that, and something honestly hurt under my left ribs.
“Yours?” I said, before I knew that I was going to speak.
“Think I’m too old?” he asked, in a queer, tight way.
I said it wasn’t that, and then I told the truth. “I suppose,” I said, “I am a pig, but I would feel awfully if you got married. I don’t know how I could stand it, S. K. I am awfully used to you and your friendship.”
He leaned across the table, covered my hand with his, squeezed it in a way that reassured me, and said: “I promise I won’t get married until you say I can. How about that? You know I am to choose your husband, so your having a little say is only fair.”
I laughed, for I’d forgotten about that.
Then S. K. said: “I beg pardon, Nat; I seem to have borrowed your hand. Perhaps you’ll want it to-morrow.” After which he folded my fingers up and laid my hand in my lap. I love his nonsense.
We had a good time, and he told me about Madam Jumel’s marriage. The talk had run in that direction, and that, I suppose, started it. . . . It seemed that she was a great flirt, and I think M. Jumel did not think she would make a good wife, for although he made love to her, S. K. said, he did not ask her to marry him. But on one occasion, when Stephen Jumel returned to his home after a little absence, he found that Eliza Bowen was ill and, the doctor said, dying. He went to her bedside, where the lady besought him to marry her. S. K. didn’t tell me why she wanted to be married so much, but I suppose she wanted “ ‘Mrs.’ on her tombstone,” as we say in Queensburg. Anyway, M. Jumel was so touched that the priest then and there married them, and--the next day Eliza Bowen Jumel arose from her bed, and went driving in high state. She wasn’t really sick at all!
“What do you think of that, Nat?” S. K. asked.
I said I didn’t think it was entirely upright.
“Right, my dear,” said S. K., reaching for a buttered scone, and then he went on to tell me how she had robbed Stephen Jumel, who, during his absence abroad, had given her power to administer his affairs. And how, when he came back, he found himself a poor old man and a dependent. I said it was sad, and I hated Madam Jumel’s being buried by one of the most beautiful drives in all America, and having a splendid monument (we had seen it before we had tea), while her husband’s grave is in one corner of a little churchyard, neglected and worn, and so hurt by time that only “Stephen” is left to remind one of a name that once was famous. Heavy trucks lumber by that spot, and very poor people hurry past, while their children, half clothed and hungry, scream over their games, which must be played on the kerb.
“S. K.,” I said, “I wish it might have been different.”
“He bought that plot,” S. K. answered, “when he married Eliza Bowen. You would not understand, but she had done things that made good people distrust her. You know, hard as it may seem, Nat, you usually give yourself the dose that makes the pain.”
I knew that, and said so.
Then I asked why people, such great people, should have come to visit a woman who was not all that she should have been.
S. K. said they didn’t, and that the tales of her entertaining were largely fictitious--meaning made up. He said that during the time the Bonapartes were in America she was abroad, so that plainly she did not entertain them; and in other cases dates prove the same tale. Abroad, he said, it was different. That broken French from an American was quaint, while bad English from an American was common, and made the speaker so. And he said that some of her little girl phrases, which were not nice, had clung to her, and, with what people knew of her here, spoiled her chances for social success. He said her own niece, who lived with her, said she never entertained the Bonapartes, and was much alone. But--she kept a table with glass and bits of silver on it, spread, she said, as it had been for the dinner she gave to Joseph Bonaparte.
Then S. K. asked me if I’d ever read “Great Expectations,” and told me of an old woman in there whose lover had failed to appear at the wedding, and how she wore her wedding clothes for years after and let the wedding feast stay on the table untouched.
“Rodents crawled from the cake,” said S. K., “dust lay on all the china, cobwebs hung from the candlesticks, and--she waited. And I think Dickens visited America before he wrote this. Do you suppose he saw Madam Jumel’s table and got his idea there?”
I said I didn’t know, but it interested me a lot.
Then, because it was getting late, we had to start off. I didn’t want to go because I’d had a good time with S. K. and hated to end it. I always do have a good time when I’m with him, and I always hate to have to stop!
Chapter XIX--Two Surprises
Theweek before Christmas was packed tight with hurry, tired bones, fun, and, for me, a short worry and two surprises, one of which made my disquiet. And the week after held indigestion, more tired bones, more fun, and one surprise. And they each held a mysterious happening which no one could explain. The second of these being so serious that my stories of hearing things at night were at last taken seriously. Even the rappings which they had all heard had not made them see that anything out of the ordinary was really happening, until the after-Christmas affair convinced them. Feeling this, I had given up speaking of what occurred to bother me.
It was like telling of the huge fish youHONESTLYreally almost landed, and then having the listener say: “Oh yes. But I suppose he got away?” and--smile. It shut you up. It was that way with my affairs.
After Evelyn began to say, “How many brigands slept on the balcony last night, Natalie?” or, “I heard strange noises at five this morning. Itmighthave been the milkman, but Natalie seems to think it was a thug who came in to steal her flashlight!”
Perhaps I would say: “Itwasgone!” and then everyone would laugh, for of course they thought I had mislaid it; and naturally thought so, since a real thief is rarely satisfied with one flashlight costing a dollar and forty cents. Just as I decided to stop assuring them that something was happening (it seemed futile to keep up--theywouldn’tbelieve me) Evelyn stopped teasing me. I think Doctor Vance’s saying I wasn’t especially well made that. And I was glad to have it cease. It wasn’t a joke to me!
As I said, the week before Christmas was a hurried time. Aunt, Evelyn, and Amy gave lots of people presents and I helped them wrap them up. It was great fun. The red and green tissues, the beautiful ribbons and the cunning stickers made things so pretty that you never thought of the bother. But I will acknowledge that I tired of the flavour of the stickers, which was assertive and clung. I believe any stationery house would make afortuneif they manufactured Christmas seals that tasted as nice as they look.
I said so to S. K. one afternoon a few days before Christmas. He had come up and we were in the library. Amy was playing the victrola, between going to the hall to inspect the packages which kept arriving so steadily; Evelyn was writing thank you notes for things shehadn’t received! She said she always did, because it saved the bother after Christmas, when parties were scheduled for almost every minute; and that it was quite simple since all you had to do was to say: “Your beautiful gift means somuchto me, and I shall always treasure it.” But Amy told me one year Aunt Penelope mailed these before Evelyn knew it and a lot of the thanked people hadn’t come across. Naturally it was awkward and took a great deal of talented explaining.
But, to go back to that afternoon. S. K. said: “That’s one thing you haven’t tried--glue.” And I knew he meant putting it in the bracelet box. He smiled at me in a teasing way after that, for even he didn’t take me seriously then.
“No,” I answered, “but I will, or something better for leaving a trail. It’s a good idea.” I was really taken with it and decided upon red paint, as I tied up a set of bridge scores that Aunt Penelope was going to send to a cousin of hers who lives miles from nowhere on a Western farm.
Then I attacked a lot of nut bowls and crackers that Evelyn had got at a bargain from a gift shop. Amy tried to crack a peanut with the crackers, and even its fragile shell was not dented, but Evelyn explained that “It wasthe thought” that counted. Personally, I decided that the kind of thoughts one would have on using those things would count against you--if Heaven’s Gate Keeper were listening, but I didn’t say so.
“Got sixteen of those last Christmas,” said S. K.
“I had planned to give you one!” I gasped, and I really did it well.
“My dear,” he said, growing quite excited, “you know I was joking. I should love having you give me one! I’m simply a stupid fool, that’s all and----” And then I laughed, and Evelyn, who had stopped writing to listen, did too, for she had helped me get my present for S. K.
“Come here, you humbug!” he ordered. I came. He reached up and pulled me down on the lounge beside him, very hard. “What’ll I do to her, Miss Evelyn?” he asked, as he frowned down on me.
Evelyn said I was hopeless and that she thought nothing short of arsenic, and a large dose of that, would have any effect.
“Oh, well, we’ll let her live a small while longer,” he temporized, and I slipped my hand in his because I am always a little sorry when I tease him, although it is fun to do. “I’ll tell you,” he went on. “We’ll have bread and butter, and thatONLY, with tea for a month.”
“Then I won’t come down and have tea with you,” I replied, “for I can get that kind of a hand-out here.”
“So, you slangy young thing, I am loved for my food?” he asked. He looked quizzical, but I thought he wondered, and of course I told him I loved him for himself. Evelyn was amused, which was silly of her, because it was nothing to be flippant about.
“Shall I leave the room?” she asked, in an attempt to be funny. And then, for the first time, I realized that S. K. was not so much older than I, after all, and that perhaps he, as well as other people, might not understand. He had seemed like Uncle Frank, or Bradly-dear; like someone who belonged to me, and to whom I belonged. I had adopted him into the family-side of my heart because he had been so good to me, and of course for the same reason I loved him. But I wondered then, whether my saying so sounded silly, and it made me grow pink and look down.
But S. K. helped me out as he always does.
“No,” he answered, and I felt that he was looking at me and in a very kind way, “that is not the kind of love Nat means. Hers has a sort of small girl, open-air, baseball flavour that is attractive, but--not right for a flirtation. When she learns the other sort, you may leave the room--and quickly, please!”
Evelyn laughed, and went on scribbling. I could see that her remark had been idle, and that she thought S. K.’s was too, but I looked up. S. K. was looking down at me and I felt frightened and very happy, and quite hot but a little chilly; and I began, right then, to know that I did care a great, great deal for S. K. and that--he cared for me.
I didn’t need the thing he blurted out in a whisper, to be sure. For his eyes had said it. What sounded as if it were shaken from him was: “My dearest?” and it came as a question, and after it he bit his lips, grew slowly red and looked away. I knew he was sorry he had spoken, and I was sorry too, for it frightened me, and because I did not know what to do.
I got up and began to wrap up Christmas things and S. K. did not watch me as he usually does, but looked into the fire.
“Thought you were going to punish her,” said Evelyn in that level voice which people use when they’re writing hard or playing the piano softly.
“Decided it was futile,” he answered; and I saw that he was upset too, for he spoke stiffly. And then, after refusing tea and making a light mention of an engagement, he left. And I went on wrapping up packages, but my hands shook.
“Why didn’t you see him out?” Evelyn asked.
I replied that Ito was in the hall and that I didn’t see any reason for doing so.
Then Amy came in and said that Herbert was coming, and that meant that she and I had to get out. For ever since that afternoon that I bumped into him while attempting to walk, he and Evelyn have been discussing inner draperies and how to keep cooks, and the right proportion for a rent, and where to live, for they got engaged that day. Amy told me about it. She said it was dramatic and exceedingly interesting, but that they ordered her off just when she most wanted to stay.
It seemed he bolted in the room, and two feet from Evelyn paused. Amy said he was absolutely white and spoke in a deep, shaken voice. She really described it beautifully. He said: “You have been ill!”
And she said: “Oh,Herbert,” and began to cry. Then she stretched a hand out to him, and he put his arms around her and said: “Mydarling!” Amy, who had been sitting in a high-backed Italian chair, naturally got up to look over it, and then Evelyn ordered her off. She whispered: “Please, Amy--go----” and Amy felt that she had to. But she was annoyed at Evelyn, for she wasn’t bothering anyone, and she said it was better than movies or the theatre, for she knew the principal characters, and she said that they were acting wonderfully.
But, to go back; after I left them that afternoon I went to my room. Amy had to do some telephoning and stopped outside of the library door to do it. She said she liked that telephone better, but I think she did it because it annoys Evelyn. Of course the most loving sisters occasionally positively work to think up ways of annoying one another; it belongs to them just as much as does taking each other’s clothes, or borrowing hats.
In my room I sat down by the window and I did not light the lights. . . . I wanted to think and in the half-light it seemed easier for the sort of reverie in which I was going to indulge. For, if you can understand it, I was frightened. I loved S. K., I knew that; but I didn’t want to plan a house as Evelyn and Herbert were and to have people go off to leave us alone to do it. Sometimes Herbert kisses Evelyn when they are alone, I am quite sure of it, for I heard Evelyn say: “Don’t, dear--someone is coming,” as I came in one day. And Amy assured me that that was a part of being engaged. I can’t quite explain, because I am stupid about making words carry my thoughts, but at that moment I very much wanted to be back in Queensburg, playing ball, walking, or riding. I wanted Willy to say, “Come out and play catch, Nat!” and not to be worried about things that loomed ahead, things that I was afraid must come before I was ready for them. . . . But--curiously, with all that fear, I had that happy but sad, and lovely but hurting sensation that neither Bradly-dear nor Uncle Frank had ever had. I think my mother would have understood it, and I know she could have helped me. I tried to shut my eyes and pretend she could talk to me, but it only left me a little choked and wanting her fearfully. I think, perhaps, if she had been there, that I would have put my head down on her shoulder and cried--although I never do cry--and that she would have said, “My dear little girl! My baby!” which is strange, since I cannot remember a word of hers and possibly she never did call me “My dear little girl,” or “My baby.”
After a while Amy came rustling in to show me a new frock, and made a good deal of noise and turned on all the lights, which helped me. And then I got dressed for the evening, and we heard Uncle Archie come in.
“I am going to take Evelyn’s place with him,” Amy said piously as she looked at her back in a cheval glass. “Evelyn has absorbedallhis attention recently, but I’m going to cut her out. I think he’s a dear.”
I agreed with her.
“And I think it looks so sweet to see a father and daughter devotedly attached,” said Amy. Again I agreed and loudly, for I thought Uncle Archie would be pleased by her paying him attention, as he was by Evelyn’s doing so, and I knew that Amy had to limelight herself before she enjoyed doing anything kind. She had to occupy the centre of the stage. She’s built that way. That is really the reason she confessed about the violets, but that comes later.
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. The person I wanted to ask help from was S. K., but doing so seemed odd under the circumstances.
At nine I heard a noise, a funny noise. I got up and turned off my light and waited. After a few moments I heard a scrape on the side of the building and I turned on the electrics suddenly. At that, something slid down against the outside wall. I heard it. Whatever it was had slipped down the side of the house, scraping all the way. I again turned out the lights and going to the window peered out. In the dim light of the court seeing was difficult, but I did manage to make out a black mass on S. K.’s balcony and then I heard a window slide up and this disappeared. And, without picking up a scarf or a wrap, I hurried out, ran down the balcony until I reached the fire-escapes, which are in front of the main hall windows and are always well illuminated by them. I ran down these, and it seemed like old times, for the going was not steady. Of course, the rail was just a rod, the building was high and the steps steep. I realized that New York had tamed me, for by the time I reached S. K.’s window I was glad to stop.
Here I kicked a hole through the window-pane, knocked out the glass and entered. S. K.’s man was evidently washing up things, for he came toward me with a towel and a glass in one hand.
Panting a little, I told him I’d seen a man go in the office window. S. K. has a sort of office in the room that corresponds to mine in his apartment. Debson immediately put down the glass, told me to be quiet, settled his shoulders, and began the hunt. He was brave, but I could see that he was frightened, for he was white.
He whispered a direction for me to the library, and there I went. I tiptoed, quite naturally, and S. K. was surprised to see me.
“Nat!” he gasped, and then he stopped, for I gestured for silence, just as hard as I could. . . . To make a long story short, there was no one, and I suppose both those men thought I was crazy, and S. K. had to get a new glass for that window I kicked in. But he was nice about that.
“I did see someone come in here,” I said lamely.
“Did you hear anything, Debson?” S. K. asked. Debson shook his head.
“Not since Maggie left, at least, sir,” he qualified. “She went to the balcony to shake a duster, I think, sir, although I am not sure.”
“That was probably it,” said S. K. He dismissed Debson and then said: “Sit down, Nat.” And I did. Then he told me that he thought it was fine and brave of me, and that he appreciated it, although my going without a wrap worried him, and my Paul Revereing it down a fire-escape was a dangerous practice for night--or any other time, for that matter. And I promised him I wouldn’t do it again, unless there was a fire.
Then S. K. said: “Nat, can you stay a little while? I want to talk to you.”
I said I could, and he asked me to come over and sit by him on a wide davenport which stands before his big fireplace.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “that you know it, because I didn’t mean to tell you.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” I answered, although it wasn’t; I was frightened and unhappy all over again, and my heart was pumping fearfully.
“No,” he answered, “it is not all right. It is all wrong. You are seventeen, and two or three good-time, free years are ahead of you--must be ahead of you. I wouldn’t for the world disturb your peace, make you think of anything that would turn you older. I love having you frankly friendly, treating me as a chum. I am afraid I have spoiled things.”
I said he hadn’t, although he really had.
“But you were disturbed by the way I looked at you,” he went on; “what I said. I didn’t mean to, Nat. It shot out. . . . I was weak at that moment, but I promise I won’t be again. I assure you, you needn’t be worried about it,” he ended stiffly. “I will never bother you with it. In fact, now it would be as unsatisfactory to me as it would be to you.”
That was a very cool statement for S. K. I didn’t understand it, and it hurt. And that and the feeling that perhaps our tight friendship was gone made me ache. Then I looked at him and saw that he felt badly too. He smiled as our eyes met, but not happily.
“I had planned this very differently,” he said. “We were going to be better friends all the time, you know, and then one day, when you were several years older and a little tired of a world that held only parties and fluffy frocks, I would tell you that I had liked you ever since you were a school-going youngster, and I liked to dream that you would find that I had come to mean something in your heart and that----” And then S. K. stopped abruptly and said: “Nat, I shouldn’t be allowed loose.”
I said: “Oh yes you should, S. K.!” And I found the greatest cure for a heartache, and that is finding someone you love suffering from the same thing. I immediately quite forgot mine and thought of S. K.’s. And I did something then that sounds silly, but which wasn’t, and didn’t seem so at the time. I moved closer to S. K. and rested my cheek against his coat-sleeve. He fumbled for my hand, and when he found it I squeezed his hard.
He said I was a “ripping little pal,” and his voice was not awfully steady, and so I think he really thought so. And in that position, where I did not have to meet his eyes, and yet where I was strengthened by his touch--for it did strengthen me--I told him how I felt.
“S. K. dear,” I whispered, “I want some more baseball, and not tohaveto think of love and such stuff.”
“I know, dear,” he answered.
And then I said: “This afternoon I felt as I did before I did my first really high dive. Wasn’t that silly? For there’s nothing to be frightened about.”
“Not a thing, dear,” he replied.
And then I told him about wanting my mother, and the garden, and how it made me feel, and that I had felt that way when I began to realize that afternoon how much I cared for him. And then he sat up suddenly, and I did too.
“Care?” he echoed. “Oh, my dear child!”
I said: “Of course.” A clock somewhere struck ten, and I stood up.
“You’re only seventeen,” said S. K., and somewhat wistfully. I knew why he said it; he was afraid my feeling for him was what Amy would call a “case,” but it wasn’t. I knew that even then.
“True,” I agreed, and smiled up at him. He drew a long breath, started to speak, stopped quickly, and went to hunt a mandarin coat for me to wear going upstairs, since the halls were draughty. He helped me into it, made me go over and look at myself in a long glass, called me Miss Tsing, and then said the last word about what had happened--that is, the last word about it for a good while.
“Pals again?” he asked.
I put out my hand, and we shook hard. “Truly,” I answered, and then we went upward.
“Why couldn’t we drive down Fifth Avenue to-morrow afternoon?” he asked, as we paused in our outer hall. “The excitement would be interesting to look at, with everything at its height.”
I said I thought it would be fine.
“We might go in to Mary Elizabeth’s,” he went on. “I’ll telephone her to beat up some extra waffle batter; that is, if you think you can go.” He was teasing me, and it was just like old times. I didn’t feel at all as I had before I went down. And it was silly of me to feel that way, anyway; for he is S. K., and I should have known that he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, hurt me. I went to sleep, slept well, and was untroubled by noises.
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 knowwhereto 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.
“Ho hum----” he said. “Couldn’t keep away! Couldn’t keep away! Ho hum----” I didn’t speak. I only hugged him.