The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 9 December 1915, Page 3

The Storyteller

MISS ANNE’S THINGS’ Everyone in Edgewood knew that Miss Anne Humphreys didn’t have any moneyjust things. And everyone in Edgewood knew she didn’t have any relatives—only friends. However, without money, except a thousand dollar annuity to keep up her place, and notwithstanding her friends, she lived in a colonial house on Maple street in a riot of luxury. All of Miss Anne’s history was common property in Edgewood. We knew the hour when she cut off her coupons and the days when Bridget made her a blueberry pie, and'when' she made doughnuts. And it was this familiarity with her habits of life, and incidentally her family —the fact that it was merely one straight —that explains the attitude taken by all of us, her friends. She was an only child of an only child. All her grandaunts and uncles died the second hard winter after the Pilgrims landed. Her parents in direct -line had been wealthy in their day, and it was their things that she had in her house. She slept every night in a mahogany four-post, carriage-top bed that was draped in white linen that came from India and had been embroidered in English daisies and forget-me-nots all around the edge by her great-grandmother. They say that one square, four inches by four, cut from the valance and applied to a handkerchief would sell for 25s at any antique store, and anybody having the least sense of measurement could tell at a glance that there could be not an inch less than 30 yards of it fluted around the edges of that bed, without a sign of a break in it anywhere. Well, all of Miss Anne’s things matched the bed. It was impossible to sit and visit, with Miss Anne without noticing her furniture. Artd most unfortunately, Miss Anne had a great peculiarity. She couldn’t bear to have you mention a thing in the house. Why she felt so about it I never could make out. Perhaps she thought that as long as we all knew she hadn’t any relatives we, as her nearest friends, expected to be willed some of the old things, and she took any reference to anything special as a real bid for it after she’d died. For instance, if a caller said, ‘O, Miss Humphreys, what a dear old brass candlestick ! ’ she’d call that equivalent to a caller sitting in my parlor and sniffing and sniffing and finally saying, ‘ O, Miss Harrington, do I smell new buns? And aren’t they too fragrant and tantalising?’ Of course I’d give her a bun and be glad to, but Miss Anne didn’t want to will away some article every time she had visitors, and that does seem sensible reasoning to me. She wanted folks to come and see her, not her things. It seems easy to visit a pretty old lady' with hair that curled naturally and cheeks that reddened with a soft rose color when she got interested, and who had a good straight spine and wore black silk afternoon dresses, draped and fringed and pleated, whatever the styles happened to be— and not think anything about the furniture. But we couldn’t seem to compass it in Edgewood.

First thing we knew, we’d be stroking the carved open hand (all four fingers and a thumb) on the arm of our chair and be gazing right at the davenport in the corner (1798), and then we’d blush and look straight at Miss Anne, and we’d seem to look clear through her at the blue and white landscape wallpaper that was put on in 1776 and hadn’t been touched since, except that an artist had retouched some of the soiled parts and restored a place that a door knob had bumped in. And you’d think that if we couldn’t stand the parlor furniture, we could keep pur minds on our own business in the kitchen, but no woman who knew values and had the craze we had, could sit still in a handmade Windsor chair and look dumbly at the ten rows of pewter cooking dishes with bullet holes through two of the platters, and on© spoon a little jammed in the bowl where Benedict Arnold dropped it and stepped on it with a spurred boot. No, sir, the" parlor was the best

place for -.us when it came to that. We simply couldn’t help it, being ■ modern ' enough to know the value of everything and it made us uneasy for fear we’d say something that would - make her angry ; when she resented anything she showed it very plainly— so we’d get real heated inside before the visit was over and I felt like saying when I went, ‘ I wouldn’t eat your old buns, if you were to hand me one, fresh from the oven.' • • Hie upshot of it was that we didn’t go there very often, for Edgewood folk don’t like to be on tenterhooks all the time. They like to feel free to say, ‘ Isn’t your Dutch marquetry chest a beauty ? And I wish I had one like it.’ Sally Bird even went so far as to say, ‘ I shan’t go near Miss Anne at all, except once a year when she gives her tea and everybody’ll be there to bear the brunt of it equally, even if I am her next door neighbor and ought to be able to go right in and ait before her fireplace and admire her fire dogs if I want to.’

But with the dropping off of her callers, Miss Anne failed to see the foolishness of her peculiarity. Folks seldom do see the foolishness of their own faults. And 'twas about this time—when ,we neighbors had realty just held a council of war, blowing off steam to each other, and had divided off the year between us, some of us promising to call each Wednesday, for it did seem a shame to neglect her entirely, she was so delightful when you did lead her off the scent of mercenary topics —that Harriet Lawrence commenced going there. Harriet Was- 18, pretty as a picture and sweet as a peach, and had been one year at college and was going through if the funds held out. How I happen to know this story about Harriet is because she told it all over town as soon as it happened— the. nicest sort of way, just as if it were a common, everyday occurrence—and it certainly was a wise thing to do, for it stopped folks’ talking. The best kind of neighbors will talk, you know. . Miss Anne liked Harriet’s coming from the first, and-she even let Harriet exclaim over her furniture and ask for its story 7. One day Harriet was sitting on a footstool at Miss Anne’s feet (a little bandy-legged footstool made of satinwood covered with Dutch embroidery — 1677), and Harriet put her head down on Miss Anne’s knee and said real wistful and earnest (Harriet meant it, she’s no sham), ‘ Miss Anne, I wish you’d put it in writing that you know I come to see you and not your furniture. I’m afraid folks are thinking that I’m trying to get you to will me your things, and if they say much more I can’t come to see you.’ Miss Anne sits up straighten than ever for a minute, and then she bends over and strokes Harriet’s hair and says, I’ll write out a paper that promises you sha’n’t ever have a single thing, and put it in the paper if you like.’ But I shouldn’t like that,’ says Harriet, sitting up and catching hold of Miss Anne’s hand (Harriet is honest). ‘ I want some one thing to keep for your sake and show it to my children and tell them about.’ (Harriet made a mistake in my opinion not to say two or three things while she was about it, but as long as it worked out the way it did, it was all right.’ I’d have been scared, then,- if I’d been Harriet, but Miss Anne was real pleased and she said, * All right, choose anything in the house, dear, and you shall have it, if it’s the blue and white wallpaper.’ ‘And then you’ll truly write a paper saying I’ve had what I want and I sha’n’t ever get anything more '

‘ Yes, dear, you shall write whatever you wish and I will sign it. And now let’s choose!’ And Miss Anne, 85 years of age, actually takes Harriet’s hand and they go skipping upstairs and up to the —first person in Edgewood to see that attic, Harriet was—and down to the kitchen and back to the parlor again. Well, I can only draw a long breath and say real wildly that I shouldn’t have chosen what Harriet chose. To think (well, never mind —but what I was going to say was, when she had the chance to get a cherry four-

post bed without a scratch, or a Hepplewhite,desk with an inlaid mosaic lid and brass hand-wrought handles, and just riddled with secret drawers and receptacles) she chose - a large, blue and white tea tray that would hold a whole afternoon tea-service', only it didn’t, nothing but the tray, just like a large platter. I will-say for Harriet that she made quite a stir with it,..though— served tea to some college . girls from it, and one -of them had a friend whose mother lived in tVashington, and she came away up to New England in a long black motor car to see it and offered Harriet a hundred dollar bill. And Harriet actually dared to laugh about it to Miss An and Miss Anne thought it was a good joke. This arrangement stopped folks’ talking,, though Sally Bird thought Harriet was real foolish. She said if Harriet could only have stood a little false, gossip for a few more years she’d have got something more than a te’a-tray. Sally really feels mercenary about Miss Anne— calls her Miss Humphreys now, always. Well, one afternoon Miss Anne sees Harriet go by the house with a young man,- and she actually goes to the bay window to see who it is, but she can’t make out. In the evening Harriet runs down and wipes the last of Bridget’s dishes before she goes in to see Miss Anne, and then it’s real dusk. They -both like to sit in the dark. (I can understand that; when it’s daytime I like to run up all the shades on the rollers and let in all the sun there is, but when my work’s done I like to sit around with the folks and get behind a post-so the street light doesn’t shine in my eyes and listen between narratives to the whippoor-wills out by -the river.) Well, they sat in the dusk and Harriet didn’t say much at first; Miss Anne went right along talking just as usual and finally she said,' 4 Let’s sit ojj the davenport—and who was the man you were with this afternoon V Just like that. 1 Let’s sit on the davenport—and who-was-the-man, etc.’ Nobody in Edgewood would have asked that of anybody. ‘lt was Dr Avery,’ replied Harriet, and as ’twas dusk you couldn’t tell whether she blushed or" not, but she put her head down on Miss Anne’s shoulder, anyway.

Dr. Avery,’ exploded Miss Anne. That young boy a doctor!’ ‘ He’s twenty-eight, Miss Anne, dear, and he’s a Doctor of Law.’

This was the first time Miss Anne had ever heard of a young LL.D. She was very quiet for' a minute and then she said, ‘What’s his first name?’ (She certainly asked queer questions.) ‘ John,’ said Harriet simply. Why that name should have been the key to unrestrained conversation I don’t know, but they both felt easy again. John, John! perhaps Miss Anne felt that anyone would be safe with a John and an Avery, and that broad pair of shoulders that had swung up the street beside Harriet. Anyway the name was a password to Miss Anne’s heart, and she was crying, and Harriet wasn’t exactly crying but she was teary and smiling, and she said, ‘ Miss Anne, dear, this is an announcement party, but not yet to be announced !’ After that evening, Miss Anne felt terribly. Not because Harriet was going away, for she had three more years of college anyway, and not because ...she didn’t want Harriet to be married; but just because she -wanted Harriet to go to housekeeping with her things and she had given her word never to give them to her! Day after day went by, and Miss Anne grew more and more sorry that she had ever promised ; and she’d invite Harriet and John to supper and insist upon Harriet’s touring the tea, and then watch her pass a cup across to John in an unaccustomed way and then pass him the cream to cover her shyness when she knew he never took cream. And after tea Miss Anne usually was fearfully busy upstairs, and after- a half-hour’s general talk, she’d leave Harriet and John in the din-ing-room with the old spinet and the yellow music fingered out with x’s and old script directions. But Miss Anne’s business upstairs was to sit down in the

five-back chair and gaze out at the evening star a/>d try to devise a way to will and bequeath her things to Harriet when she’d promised not to. Harriet had worded the promise so that it could not be ‘ equeakcd out of,’ to use her own expression. The things could have been given to John, only the promise read ‘directly or indirectly.’ Miss Anne one day mailed the following note: ‘ Dear Dr. Lorry, If you. can keep as mum as they say you can, come and see my garden Tuesday night at 9 o’clock. Come in by way of the back garden gate. ‘ Yours sincerely, ‘ Anne Humphreys.’ Now if that letter had been sent to me, it would have been a physical impossibility for me to have gone and not let anybody find it out. I should have slipped on a rotten pear by the back garden gate and broken ray hip and it would have been in our paper, ‘ Miss Harrington slipped and fell last night at 9 o’clock, at Miss Anne Humphrey's back garden gate, and her hip was broken,’ Then Edgewood would have said: ‘Nine o’clock; of all hours!’ And ' Why back garden gate?’ And there would have been a special meeting called to discuss it. But Dr. Lorry slipped in just as easy as a fly, and quite as unsuspecting, and actually got into Miss Anne’s parlor without Sally Bird waking up, and it’s not forty rods to her chamber window. ‘ Do .you like silting in the dark ?’ inquires Miss Anne.

‘ Above all things,’ says Dr. Lorry. ‘Very good,’ says Miss Anne. ‘This is a business call, Dr Lorry, and the sooner over, the better. You know exactly what 1 wrote in the paper about Harriet Lawrence in regard to my things?’ ‘ Everyone in Edgewood is familiar with the wording of that document, I believe,’ replied Dr. Lorry with a slight smile. ‘ Then,’ said Miss Anne with a sigh of utter despair, ‘ what can Ido to get around it? I thought I’d like some other head to puzzle on it. It seems as if I couldn’t bear to have Harriet and John ’ (the engagement had been announced before this) ‘ go to housekeeping with any things but mine. They’re the only folks, so far as 1 know, that can look across my diningroom table at each other, without thinking of the Sheraton mahogany under the tablecloth. I want them to use my pewter candlesticks and sleep in ray four-post bed and rock their babies in my rosewood cradle !’ Miss Anne was out of breath and Dr. Lorry absently fingered the open hand on his chair arm.

‘ It’s very simple,’ he says at last, quietly. ‘You mean vou know a wav?’ savs Miss Anne

eagerly, turning pink. ‘ Perhaps you won’t understand just at first/ says Dr. Lorry nervously. ‘Tell me in a sentence!’ gasps Miss Anne. ‘ Break your word !’ says the doctor. There as a silence for a few minutes in the darkness, for both the conspirators were out of breath. They were panting with the unusual excitement and late hour and the shocking suggestion. . ‘ I thought you’d misunderstand, at first/ began Dr. Lorry at length, wiping his brow. ‘ Please explain/ said Miss Anne calmly. ‘ Let me take ple’n-ty of time, dear Miss Humphreys/ begged the doctor in a soothing tone, intended fully as much for himself as for Miss Anne, for she was mild enough now. ‘ You see, you made this promise to make yourself and Harriet happier during your life. Now, knowing of this promise, if Harriet can take solid comfort during your life, the promise has fulfilled its mission.’

‘ It can then be broken, I suppose/ said Miss Anne grimly, ‘ at the very time when it should be in effect. * Certainly,’ said Dr. Lorry. Miss Anne-gasped again. ‘ Certainly,’ worked with her like a cold plunge. ‘ Put it in writing/ explained Dr. Lorry., Tell the whole story if you like. Explan that your .proT . . -/* ■ ■'!>, ST- */ V-

raise affects only yourself and herself ’ Then Dr. Lorry stopped' in confusion, for lie remembered with startling distinctness how Mrs. Lorry had said, ‘ If the things can’t be lumped 'for Harriet, all the town stands a chance!’ *

'That’s all right,’ said Miss Anne with uncanny intuition. ‘ There’s enough stuff so Harriet could manage to eat a meal, if every last person in Edgewood got a Spode plate.’ And as Dr. Lorry’s self-possession decreased, the sport in Miss Anne grew. ‘ I’ll break my word ! I’ll break my word !’ she said over and over, A Humphreys ! ’ And she and Dr. Lorry arranged the table in a shaft of moonlight and wrote out a paper, a will, if you please, breaking her promise !'. She made out a list of every person in town that had ever called there, and willed to each one a plate or a teapot or a blue glass bowl Sally Bird got the firedogs, and Harriet and Johu had to get some wrought iron ones down from the attic to build their first fire on, and I got a tin baker that came over in 1625, only five years too late—l suppose to make buns in, although she never heard what I said that 1 know of.

‘ There! Dr. Arnold A. Lorry!’ cried Miss Anne, ‘ that’s the only funny thing I ever did in my life. Do you consider me sane?’

‘ I consider you a true sport,’ said Dr. Lorry warmly, and they shook hands and laughed so that they had to sit down again. . She got him out the back gate without a sound, and he got into his own house and Mrs. Lorry, never knew a blessed thing -about it. Three of our ladies called next day, and Miss Anne said Idly, when they started to go, ‘I wish you’d just witness my will.’ And they did, each nearly straining their eye muscles for good to keep them from straying up the page. And then there came a day when Miss Anne really did die. She was 88. Harriet came home for a week at Easter and Miss Anne was apparently just waiting to see her before she went.

“I'm sorry, dear, that you have to see any one die,’ she said to Harriet when she saw her. An hour later she said, ‘lm going where there ain’t any Things!’ and she looked at Harriet whimsically 'and just drifted away. If Harriet had to see it, it was the easiest thing to see that could be possible. I suppose Edgewood is, mercenary, but two weeks after Miss Anne was laid away in the cemetery, somebody went to Bridget and asked if the will had been found. ‘ Yes, inarm/ said Bridget, ‘ I know all about it,’ and they expressed their friendly interest and went back home. In three weeks, when nothing was said, Sally Bird went and asked indirectly about the will. ‘ Yes, inarm,’ said Bridget, ‘ I know all about it.’

Evidently she wasn’t going to tell all about it, either, and I was glad afterward I hadn’t been Sally Bird. Four weeks after Miss Anne’s death, the will was probated, and not only probated, but printed in our paper and headlined in a Boston paper. And Dr. Lorry came out with his remarkable story and Sally Bird had nothing to say —she’d slept through it all. ‘ The last thing Miss Humphreys ever said to me/ said Dr. Lorry, h was this; When the will’s probated, tell the whole story just as quickly , and just as accurately as you can.’ I consider my duty done.’ It was all there in the will, even that Harriet and John could look at each other in the mirror without thinking of its mahogany frame, etc.

The story goes— is long years ago, —the story goes that the first evening Harriet and John were alone in the house, Harriet laughed a long,-happy rippling laugh and said, ‘John, dear, do you know that you’re sitting in a wing chair that the antique lady said she’d give us £25 for?’ And John is said to have replied, ‘ I only know, my dear, where you are !’ and if John really was sitting at the time in the wing chair that I know of, Harriet could have been in only one place, for the story has it that her, hands were clasped behind his neck.—Mcßride’s Magazine.