by Van Reid
“Oh, Colin, thanks!” blurted Tommy. He was in tears now, and he didn’t know whether to sit or dart away.
“It’s decent of you, Mr. Kinross,” said Henry.
“But!” said the man, and he let this single syllable hover in the air before adding, “I want that hat.”
Henry reached up and touched the brim of the homburg. He took it from his head and considered it, thinking: My lucky hat, then: Of course! What better luck could it bring than this? He held the hat out over the table, but Colin Kinross did not reach for it, so that Henry was obliged to lay it upon the mound of money and chits in the center of the table.
“Don’t let me catch you gambling again, Tommy,” said Kinross, who’d returned to his cards. The smoke from his cigar greatly obscured his face. The other players returned to the game as if nothing had happened. “With anyone,” came the sharp’s voice as Henry led Tommy away from the table. The room was coming alive again. The band of men by the bar, pleased with their rendition of “Silent Night,” tucked into “Hark the Herald Angels.”
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Kinross,”said Henry over his shoulder, but he thought the good wishes were lost in the sudden noise.
64. Confession in a Christmas Kitchen
From the dark end of the wharf district to the grand houses overlooking Deering Oaks and the humbler homes of laborers and craftsmen on Munjoy Hill, the city of Portland knew how to keep Christmas. a light snow fell among the streetlamps and brightened houses, and song and celebration might be heard as a person drifted along the sidewalks.
Henry and Tommy went to Tommy’s mother’s for a cup of eggnog and a bowl of oyster stew, and Henry deliberately swung the conversation away from recent events at the Weary Sailor, reminiscing on the Christmases of their youth and marveling about his fiancee. Tommy promised to purchase his cousin a new hat.
Along the way they passed Mrs. Plaint’s boardinghouse, where Gemma Pool’s little boy, Jeremy, was sleeping peacefully. Gemma was up late; she had unraveled an old sweater and had been knitting the yarn back into a hat and scarf for Doc Brine, who she was sure had saved her son’s life. The wood and given it to her boy that evening, and the crudely fashioned beast old salt who lived across the way had carved a whale from a stray piece of was even now clutched in Jeremy’s sleeping hands.
Not far away Doc Brine was laying hands on the bay mare at Sporrin’s Livery. The animal nickered quietly in her stall, and Doc was satisfied that she was on the mend. The owner had pressed on Doc Brine a twenty-dollar gold piece that seemed to Doc all out of proportion to what he had accomplished. Doc considered a visit to the Weary Sailor or the Crooked Cat, but his second thought was that winter had just begun and Jeremy Pool and his mother would run out of oranges and good food quick enough. He pocketed the coin and went home in the snow, a little worse for wear. The shakes were visiting him again, but he whistled as he moved down the sidewalk. Pearly Sporrin called a “Happy Christmas” after him.
Just up a side street Lincoln N. Washington lay in a clean bed at a boardinghouse. He’d paid his room in advance from some of the money he’d been given by the men he’d attempted to rob. The next day he had tossed the pistol overboard and gone to the Thump and Chaine Atlantic Corridor Shipping Firm with the card that one of the men had given him. He’d been put to work in a back room immediately. That night he had a dream about his mother.
Gemma Pool looked up when she heard Doc Brine come in the front door and climb the stairs. She hoped she could finish the hat before morning.
Henry and Tommy filled up on eggnog and oyster stew and got laughing, telling stories of childhood pranks. Tommy cried he laughed so hard or perhaps simply because he wasn’t a child anymore.
Through the snow, through the music and good wishes, climbing from the wharf district to the higher elevation of Spruce Street, one would pass all manner of happiness and sorrow, but the city of Portland knew house on this avenue. The songs were loud and clear in the parlor of the how to keep Christmas, and no more so than in the brick Federal-style Walton home; Matthew Ephram, Christopher Eagleton, and Joseph Thump blended their voices as though they didn’t belong to separate churches.
Charlotte Burnbrake played the piano while her uncle Ezra and Mr. and Mrs. Baffin and Mister Walton listened with pleasure to the hearty words and bouncing melody of “Good King Wenceslas.” When the final notes died together, there was applause and delighted laughter. Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump looked everywhere but at their audience: at the ceiling, at the fir tree, at the piano legs. Their faces reddened, and their chests swelled a bit.
A sudden gust drifted snow against a window in the near silence that followed. It was like someone tapping to be let in, and though he knew it was only the storm, Mister Walton pulled the curtain aside and peered out.
He was sincerely pleased with the gathering; the season suited him, and he beamed with its spirit, though the joy of the holiday passed through him without entirely leaving a trace upon his own heart.
“I miss Sundry,” said Mrs. Baffin, who knew what was foremost into by’s mind.
“Yes,” agreed Mister Walton. “I trust he is having a nice evening with his family.” How grateful he was for these friends, and how wise he thought himself to have met such fellows-such men of simple kindness-as Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump. He missed his family, of course, all of whom were gone before, save for a sister, who (the last he knew) was in Aica with her missionary husband and who would have delighted in this company. He had never spent a Christmas within these walls without someone of the same name and blood.
He did miss Sundry too, but Sundry was coming back. There was another, of whose attention he could not be so confident. He wondered-a little hurt, and not for the first time-that Miss McCannon could not have postponed her work at her aunt’s house in Orland. Over the past weeks he had chided himself for his clumsiness, for he was sure that some blunder on his part had kept her away, and coupled with Charleston Thistlecoat’s manifest interest in Phileda, his own inexpert courtship gave him little hope of a happy outcome.
There was a renewed round of hems and haws as the members of the club deliberated with Miss Bumbrake on the next selection. “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” was decided upon, and there was some tugging at vests and straightening of collars as the three friends prepared to do justice to this enthusiastic song.
“Is that a carriage pulling up?” wondered Mister Walton. The curtain had not fallen back into place, and he caught the shadow of a cab and horse slowing before the house. The song was stalled before it began, and it was Miss Bumbrake’s turn to smile from the piano stool.
“Do you know,” Eagleton was saying to her, “that I met a gentleman last October who has nothing but piano stools about his dining room table?”
“Yes,” said Mister Walton, who had his face close to the glass. “The driver is getting down.” He was pleased with the idea of unexpected guests on Christmas Eve and recalled that the Covingtons had intimated that they might stop by.
“They may be adjusted for anybody’s height,” Eagleton explained.
Mister Walton excused himself and hurried from the parlor. In the hall he opened the great front door and peered into the night.
The storm had increased, and the trees and bushes were white; the sidewalk had accumulated a layer of frost and down. The streetlight at the nearby corner dazzled through the falling snow. Mister Walton heard her first, before his eyes adjusted to the dark. Then she was hurrying up the steps with a man behind who was loaded with packages.
“Phileda,” he said, almost in a whisper.
Her smile inhabited every corner of her face, but most especially the little lines around her eyes that Mister Walton had come to love so dearly. He half expected she might embrace him again, then startling himself with the thought and the fear of presumption, he stiffened himself and raised a hand to shake hers.
But she stepped through his guard to embrace him, and the packages she was carrying tumbled all about them. The man
behind her made a low sound and turned his back, discreetly, to consider the snowy night.
In Phileda’s purse was a letter from Sundry Moss, wishing her a Merry Christmas and hoping, just by the way, that Mister Walton wouldn’t be lonely on Christmas Eve without the normal quota of friends about him and its being his first Christmas in his family home without family.
Phileda had known of course what Sundry meant--one couldn’t even say that he had been hinting. She was frustrated withtoby’s overcautious manner of courtship, however unfairly, and a little frightened by Charleston’s lack of caution. Her instinct was to retreat, yet she was first and foremosttoby’s friend. If there were any danger of his feeling lonely on Christmas Eve, she would add whatever solace she could. Her cousin could wait for her in Orland.
Interestingly enough, Charlotte Burnbrake had in her own purse a letter with similar handwriting, wishing her and her uncle a Merry Christmas and mentioning, just by the way, that the writer was concerned for Mr.
Plainway, whose recent melancholy experiences must necessarily weigh upon him when he took leave of the O’Hearns on Christmas Day and conclusively left Eleanor Linnett’s child behind. The trip home to Hiram would perhaps be long. Charlotte had been thinking about her mother as of late.
For a man who could be so subtle, it would be said later, Sundry Moss was a master of frankness.
Christmas punch of a legal variety was raised in toasts in the parlor, which was bursting with people by now. Phileda and Miss Burnbrake played together at the piano and laughed whenever they found themselves at cross-purposes. Enchanted, Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump stood back and admired the ladies.
From his chair Mister Walton had the opportunity to watch Phileda unbeknownst, and a thrill ran through him as something very exposed and vulnerable showed upon his face. She turned unexpectedly and caught his abashed gaze, the light of her smile not subsiding. When the toast was over and she had finished her glass, she rose and advanced upon him with an expression of serious intent.
“I am pleased that you are enjoying yourself,” he said, shaken to be caught watching her with such obvious interest.
“I am pleased to be enjoying myself, myself,” she replied with all due wryness. Miss Burnbrake was just then watching them discreetly, but with a smile.
“May I get you something more to drink?” wondered Mister Walton, who felt, in Miss McCannon’s company, cast adrift from his usually adroit abilities.
“Something warm would be nice,” she said, meaning that he must go to the kitchen and heat the teapot. But when he excused himself, she took his arm and went with him.
If Mister Walton had possessed more hair upon his head, he might have felt it lifting with pleasant apprehension. The walk to the kitchen seemed to take longer than it should, and during the journey Phileda did nothing to help his state of mind, choosing only to answer his questions and remarks with wordless concurrence or disagreement.
Once in the kitchen, he found comfort in activity, busying himself with the teapot and the stove. He offered her a chair, but she chose to stand with her back to the Hoosier cabinet on the other side of the room. She looked very puckish, with her pursed lips and humor-filled eyes.
“It is an extraordinary thought I just had,” said Mister Walton as he paused over the stove with the teapot. “Save for the Baffins, there isn’t a person in the next room whom I knew before last July!” Then he turned to consider Miss McCannon. “Or even yourself, now that I consider it.”
“It just seems that we have known certain people all our lives,” she said.
“I can hardly remember a time when I didn’t know Sundry,” he answered. “Mr. Ephram, Mr. Eagleton, and Mr. Thump are like my oldest friends. And yourself…” His voice trailed off.
“A I like an old friend, Toby?” she asked mischievously.
“Yes,” he said frankly, “though I am ever conscious of all the years that I did not know you.”
“I understand you all too well,” she admitted, her humor having evolved into something less conscious, something more graceful and dreamlike. “You might not have thought much of me when I was young,” she said, the most fragile hint of near-forgotten pain coloring her voice.
“I can’t imagine it,” he said. He was thinking that he had been something of a blockhead as a young man and fell to wondering if in the intervening years he had changed all that much. “You must have always had friends,” he added.
“I have been blessed all my life with fine people,” she said, “my family included,” but there was, in her acknowledgment, the implication that this perhaps was not quite enough.
“You have your admirers, certainly,” he continued.
“Do I?” she asked, her impishness returning.
Mister Walton found his tongue advancing before thought. “Certainly Mr. Thistlecoat could be counted among them.”
The opinion sounded like the clunk of a leaden weight in the charged atmosphere, and Mister Walton perceived that a level of jealousy had both disarmed and betrayed him.
“Do you think he admires me?” she asked.
Charleston Thistlecoat was the last person Mister Walton wanted to be discussing while he and Phileda had a few minutes alone, yet he must answer. “Yes,” he said, feeling stupid and regretful. “It seemed to me.”
She didn’t know why she let herself wax indignant at this, but she said, “Perhaps it is true, for he’s asked me to marry him.”
“Oh,” was all he had the power to say in the wake of this intelligence.
Phileda in turn watched him, almost without expression; what emotion there was in her face was unreadable. Her bright eyes flashed enigmatically behind her round spectacles. Mister Walton was uncomfortably conscious of the soft place at the base of her throat. Her neck was long and lovely; her chin was up.
“Oh,” he said again. He made another, less articulate noise and looked down at the floor. He fiddled with his spectacles. With his head down, he was in the metaphorical position to bull forward, unmindful of the danger to his heart and his dignity. “I must confess,” he began, “that I had hoped for some opportunity to-to pursue”-he was attempting to find the euphemism that would sound like friendship and hint at something more“to pursue-” His voice drifted to silence. He had no words.
Then she said, “You don’t imagine that I said yes, do you?”
His head came up, his eyes wide. “You didn’t?”
She seemed to think this was a silly question.
“He is an accomplished gentleman,” said Mister Walton absently.
“Do you think so? He would be obliged to you for helping him press his suit.”
Mister Walton felt his heart lurch. “Phileda!” he said, with every suggestion in his voice that he had more to say, though with absolutely nothing in thought or voice to follow her name on his lips.
“A I very mysterious?” she asked finally. Her pique had dissipated, and she could only remember how she had missed him these past two weeks.
He was laughing softly, looking down at the floor again.
“I should like to be thought mysterious,” she said lightly.
Still, he had no voice.
“I am quite jealous of your adventures,” she continued, “and think I must be made a member of your club so that the next time you run off to rescue someone, I can come along with you.”
“Do you think?” he said. “I mean, Phileda-my thought was, I mean, my heart-” He took a breath and started again. His face was crowded, and his eyes clouded with emotion. “I hadn’t imagined that I’d-r that you’d known me long enough-” He looked across the kitchen at Phileda, and she was determined to be absolutely no help to him. He could not read her expression. “I think,” he said, “no--I do love you, Phileda.”
Neither of them moved; neither breathed, the space between them bonded by a whip of electricity. Mister Walton was astounded to see one lone tear course its way down the plane of her right cheek. “Well, Toby,” she said rather breathlessly,
“that is something that Mr. Thistlecoat did not offer.”
“I have been thinking of Miss Simpson,” said Eagleton. He was often thinking of the young woman (Ophelia was her Christian name) whom he had met only the once, the previous July.
“Have you?” said Ephram. They were admiring the fir tree in Mister Walton’s parlor. “I was thinking of Miss Riverille,” he added, “so our thoughts are not so far apart.” Sallie Riverille was a best friend to Ophelia Simpson, but Ephram had been fortunate enough to see Miss Riverille as recently as October.
“‘Think pleasant thoughts,’” said Eagleton. “I had an aunt who said that to me.”
“Very wise,” said Ephram.
“I think we are safe to say we follow her directive.”
“I think you are correct.” It was wonderful how often they were of a mind. They smiled at the room. “Thump?” said Ephram.
“Hmm?” Thump seemed to be lost in contemplation. He had someone on his mind as well but was perhaps more melancholy in the memory.
“‘Think pleasant thoughts,’ Eagleton says.”
“My aunt,” said Eagleton, giving credit where credit was due.
“Ah, yes.” He didn’t know Eagleton’s aunt, but it was Christmas, and he was sure he could think pleasantly about her.
“I believe the punch has made me thirsty,” said Thump. “Perhaps Mister Walton wouldn’t mind if I found myself some water.”
“I am sure he wouldn’t,” said Ephram. “Eagleton?”
“I believe our friend is right, Thump.”
Thump nodded; he put his head in the direction of the hall and walked to the back of the house and the kitchen. As it happened, he took a fall at the kitchen threshold, not unlike that which he had taken at the Shipswood the night the Covingtons had had dinner with them. He’d never before seen anyone kissed in a kitchen.
65. Lightly I Toss My Hat Away
As midnight neared, triumphed, and passed, the noise never diminished at the sign of the Weary Sailor. a exaordinary chorus of several carols, sung at cross-purposes, confused the ear, and the fumes of beer and rum befuddled the mind. Harvey Shorthind performed a jig on a table to the accompaniment of a fiddle and uilleannpipes, and St. Nick arrived to great cheers. Minnie caught the bearded fellow beneath the mistletoe and kissed him for good luck.
