THE BIRTHDAY
Elizabeth sat in her little blue room, and shivered.
It was the afternoon of her birthday, and although she hadn't mentioned
the fact to any one, she had dressed herself to do honour to the
occasion. Every undergarment, chemise, camisole, and petticoat, was of a
soft, flesh-tinted silk. Her dress was of the finest white muslin
trimmed only with infinitesimal tucks and Valenciennes beading, and she
was wearing a blue ribbon sash with a big butterfly bow at the back.
"My pride ought to keep me warm," she thought, "what a pity it doesn't."
Before she bought her silken lingerie she had deliberated a long time
between that magnificence and a light blue wool sweater and had finally
succumbed to the lure of the lacy garments which had taken every penny
of her month's allowance and all that she was allowed to borrow on her
next.
She looked around her room with a glow of satisfaction, having only that
morning put the finishing touches on it. She had draped the windows with
an old-fashioned print, a blue groundwork with tiny pink roses wandering
over it, that her grandmother had produced from an ancient chest stored
with remnants of the popular fabrics of an older generation. The
furniture she had chosen was mostly painted black, or a very dark stain.
She had found another flag-bottomed chair, a twin to the first, and a
wonderful old settee on rockers, which had a deep seat with an
adjustable rack running along the outside of it, as if to prevent its
being used except for the one person who chose to sit in the space that
was clear at the end. This she had piled with cushions made from little
square pillows that her grandmother kept for "children who came
a-visiting." Her desk and her spinning wheel were in opposite comers,
and a miniature organ, the keyboard of which comprised two octaves
exactly, occupied a position under the eaves between the two farther
windows.
The morning mail had brought her a writing-case from her mother, a check
for five dollars from her father, and a letter, her first, from her
Buddy. She had taken a high resolution not to shed one tear on her
birthday, and the mild faces of Faith and Charity smiled down on her as
if to strengthen her will.
"Hope looks a little teary, herself," she said.
There was a sound of altercation on the stairway that led directly out
of the passage from the dining room of her new suite.
"You _shall_ come upstairs, Grandmummy, and give it to her yourself. She
doesn't want your present by way of me. She wants it handed out, with
your own personal and private blessing. Besides, I've got a present for
her myself. I can't give her two presents."
Peggy Farraday, with her hands sternly set on Grandmother Swift's
shoulders, marched her firmly into Elizabeth's chamber.
"Here's Grandmummy with a beautiful present for your birthday. She was
going to send it upstairs by me, but I declined the honour."
"Young folks like to open packages by themselves, without anybody
standing around counting the Ohs and Ahs, and waiting to be thanked for
something that may not exactly suit. If Elizabeth likes what I've made
her, I guess she can make out to tell me so." Grandmother, entirely
unruffled by the recent coercion to which she had been submitted, put
down a bulky tissue-wrapped package and departed.
"Isn't she funny?" Peggy said. "But do open it. I can hardly wait to see
what you think of it. It's copied from one of mine, the only sweater
I've ever really loved. And it's in your colour, and everything."
[Illustration: "'Do open it. I can hardly wait to see what you think of
it.'"]
Elizabeth, scarcely crediting her senses, shook out from the folds of
tissue the lovely, fleecy garment of her dreams, a wool sweater in her
own colour of "Heaven's blue." She gave it one comprehensive glance,
then she slipped after her grandmother, caught up with her halfway down
the stairs, and kissed her on the nape of an astonished neck.
"You're not a grandmother, you're an angel," she said, and flew back, in
a panic, to Peggy.
"Here's my present," that young lady informed her. "It's something very
practical, but I made it myself. I thought you might like it. I always
give away the kind of thing I adore, don't you? That's doing the very
best you can to show love--and one person's sure to be suited."
"It's a laundry bag," Elizabeth said, "and I haven't got one. You dear."
She put out her hand toward Peggy, and missed her. Then they both put
out their hands together, and kissed.
"The beauty of this creation is that you don't have to fish down into
it," Peggy explained. "It buttons all the way across the bottom, and can
be dumped that way. I made the buttonholes myself."
"And it's my colour, too. Have you made this since you were here last
week?"
"No, I made it the first week I came down, to be sure to have it ready."
"Before you even saw me. How did you know you'd like me well enough to
give it to me when it was done?"
"I was willing to take my chances. When I heard about your brother being
sick, and your disappointment about the cottage, I thought you might be
feeling kind of low when you first got here. So I prepared for it."
"How kind you are! How kind everybody is."
"Well, don't get the weeps. See here, do you know what this bar on this
settee was put on for? It's a kind of a cradle arrangement. Mother makes
up baby's bed on the lower end, puts up the bar, sits herself up at the
head, and rocks and knits. Grandmother told me. She was rocked there
herself when she was a baby. She remembers having scarlet fever on it.
Aren't these old things fascinating? You're an awfully lucky girl to
have grandparents like this. Mine live in a Back Bay apartment, and are
just like everybody else, only a lot more so."
"You're a lot nicer than I am," Elizabeth said, suddenly.
"Well, I don't have such nice clothes. I thought you might like this
clo', though." Peggy stood up to be admired. "It's my best bib and
tucker. See, this is the bib," she indicated the square of cobwebby lace
and lawn under her bronze chin, "and this is the tucker." She turned
around, to show its counterpart in the back. "That's really what I
bought it for, I couldn't decide between this pink linen and a gray
dotted swiss until I realized that this was a bib and tucker. Which of
course settled it at once. By the way, I know something very funny."
Peggy barely took a breath between sentences. "I wonder if you know it,
too. My sister Ruth knows your brother John quite well. They wrote to
each other all the time that he was abroad. I just found out that he was
your brother by the merest accident."
"You don't mean that Ruth Farraday is your sister! Why, Buddy's known
her for years."
"Can't he have known my sister for years?"
"Yes, I suppose so, but it doesn't seem possible. I thought he met that
girl in Boston."
"I live in Boston. If you've got a sample of your brother's handwriting,
I can prove to you that my Ruth is the girl. I've taken in his letters
for years."
Elizabeth produced the precious morning missive by the simple process of
diving into the neck of her blouse. Peggy bent over the letter.
"It's the same," she said. "Oh, is he going to be an awful lot better
soon? Ruthie has been dreadfully worried, I know, though she hasn't said
much about it. She's the still member of the family, you see."
"What does she look like?"
"Oh, she's darlingly pretty, with great blue eyes and long golden
lashes, and lovely colour that comes and goes, and she dresses sort of
quaintly. She looks well in fringes and sashes and droopy things. I have
to wear boys' clothes, almost, to set off my peculiar style of beauty,
but you mustn't judge Ruthie by me. She's really a star."
"I think I'd like you best."
"Oh, you wouldn't if you could see Ruth. You'd just call for the incense
and get busy worshipping. Everybody does."
"Has she many suitors?"
"Flocks and herds of them, but she doesn't care. She's kind of booky and
dreamy. I don't mean she doesn't play a stunning game of tennis, and
drive a car, and all that. She was motor corps for a while, and just
crazy to get over, but Dad wouldn't hear of it. She'll be on the Cape
bye and bye, and you can judge for yourself--I'm going to stay to
supper, did you know it? Your grandmother sent over and invited me
yesterday."
"I didn't know she even remembered my birthday, and now--only think!"
"She said to me that you were as blue as indigo, and putting up a good
old struggle not to be, and she wanted you to have something pleasant to
remember. That festive sound from below stairs is Judidy taking her turn
at the handle of the ice-cream freezer. Do you know what they make the
ice-cream of here? Just pure Jersey cream and fruit juice. I never
tasted anything like it in my life."
"Didn't I hear something outside the door? It sounded just as if
somebody had crept up and then crept away again."
"I didn't hear anything." Peggy threw open the door like a flash. "It
_was_ someone. More birthday surprises." She held up the package that an
unseen hand had deposited on the threshold. "Open it quick, Elizabeth."
"Why, it's the Kipling 'Birthday Book,'" Elizabeth said, "that
red-leather edition that I've been crazy for. Who do you suppose could
have got it for me?"
"Who is there left to give you a present?"
"Nobody."
"Grandpa hasn't been heard from."
"Grandpa?"
"He's capable of anything. You don't half appreciate him, Elizabeth."
"I know I don't, Peggy, but I think I'm beginning to."
At the supper table they cornered him.
"Well," he admitted to Peggy, "I didn't know as you was upstairs, and I
calculated to have Elizabeth blame it on you, but seeing as I'm caught,
I'll own up to what I can't hide. I asked that girl in the apothecary
shop in Hyannis what was the best kind of a birthday present, and she
said a birthday book. I thought that was likely, so I asked to see one.
She fetched out a Longfeller book and a Emerson book, and then I see
this one standing all alone in a corner, and I took to it right away.
Kipling, he writes about things I know something about. So I took him."
"And you are going to put your name in the book the first thing--before
any one," Elizabeth declared: "What's your birthday?"
"What day is to-day?"
"The thirtieth of June."
"That's it."
"You don't mean that you were born on my birthday?"
"I always kind o' calculated you were born on mine."
When Judidy, attired in a purple and yellow silk gown over which
she wore a black silk apron embroidered in blue forget-me-nots,
rose to change the plates, with an expression of the most intense
self-consciousness, Grandmother rose also, and the two exchanged
signals.
"If I understood dumb show a little better," Grandfather said, slyly, "I
might be inclined to think that Mother had something hid out in the
kitchen, and Judidy had an errand in the pantry, but o' course I
probably got it all mixed up."
"Well," Grandmother smiled, "seeing as the same thing has come o' the
pantry every June thirtieth for forty-five years, it ain't anyways
likely that you know anything about it." She bustled off to the kitchen,
to reappear with a mound of ice-cream in which the strawberries were
embedded, like so many perfect emeries.
"I like ice-cream better than anything in the world," Elizabeth said.
"I like it better than fathers and mothers and sisters and intimate
friends, but not better than grandparents, especially not grandparents
when one of them is celebrating its birthday," Peggy declared, "Now, I'm
getting silly. Will somebody stop me, please? Oh, look! Look at Judidy!"
That flushed and excited young woman was approaching the table with the
air of a standard bearer. In her arms she carried a big tray lined with
white paper lace, and on it was set a marvellous erection of cake--a big
round of chocolate confection lettered in pink, and further adorned by
blazing pink candles. She placed it in front of Elizabeth.
"Time was when I had a cake to myself on my birthday," Grandfather
grumbled.
"The time ain't so fur off." Grandmother appeared, with a round loaf of
fruit cake on which one candle burned brightly. "You can take the candle
right off if you want to. I only put it on for a joke. The cake is just
what I always bake for you."
"Elizabeth can eat all the candle grease." Grandfather made an effort to
frown, in which he succeeded only indifferently.
"I made it myself," Judidy cried, as Elizabeth counted her candles,
"fourteen, and one to grow on."
"And did you make all the letters--'Elizabeth With Love?'--I think
that's the nicest thing any birthday cake ever said on it."
"I was going to put on 'Elizabeth-aged-fourteen,' and then I thought
that the candles would tell how old you were," the blushing Judidy
hovered over her masterpiece, "and then I thought it was better to put
on a kind of a message. I couldn't write a very long one, but I guess
that says just as much as a whole sheet of paper."
"How did you make the letters so clear?"
"With a cornycopia. You colour your white frosting with strawberry
juice, and then you make this here cornycopia out of letter paper, and
then you sort of dribble it along and write with it."
"It looks lovely," Elizabeth said. "Thank you. Thank you, Judidy."
"Don't let your ice-cream melt," Peggy warned.
"You haven't let yours melt," Grandmother said, putting out her hand for
the empty dish Peggy was waving.
"I never had all the ice-cream I wanted," Peggy acknowledged, sadly. "I
never shall have, I know I shan't, because I can't hold it."
When Elizabeth made her wish, and blew out her candles, tears of pure
delight stood in Judidy's eyes.
"I've give you luck," she said. "Oh, I hope it was a good wish!"
"It was the best wish anybody could wish," Elizabeth smiled. "I shall
never forget this birthday, and this cake, Judidy, nor any of the dear
things that have been done for me."
* * * * *
That night, as her grandmother tucked her into bed, she caught one of
the kindly hands and clung to it.
"That was the most beautiful sweater in all the world," she said. "Do
you think I could go down and kiss Grandfather good-night, too?" she
asked, shyly.
"I guess it could be managed. I'll go downstairs with you, and see."
And presently Grandfather, with his glasses sitting low on his nose, and
his nose in the morning paper, was attacked from behind and kissed
breathlessly; but when Elizabeth tried to escape, she found herself
caught by a blue dimity sleeve, and drawn into an energetic embrace.
"No, you don't," he said, placing her on his knee. "You're going to set
here a while, and talk to Grandpa."
But the eminence of his knee proved such an embarrassing vantage ground
that he soon let her go.
"Good-night," she said, slipping her hand into his. "Good-night,
Granddaddy, dear," and she kissed him again, a real kiss this time, as
if he were her father, or Buddy.
"Well, well," he said, "well, well!" and sat holding her by the
shoulders so long that he almost seemed to have forgotten she was there.
Then he picked her up in his arms and carried her up the stairs again,
tucking her into bed with a hand as accustomed as Grandma's.
"Fourteen years old and letting her grandfather put her to bed the way
he did when she was a baby. Ain't you ashamed?" he asked, playfully, in
a tone she had never heard him use before.
"No, I'm proud," Elizabeth said, and she meant it.
Under her pillow was her brother's letter, and she lit a flickering
bedside lamp to read it by before she went finally to sleep. It was a
short letter, slanting down the paper, as he was not yet able to sit up
in his bed long enough to write properly. He said:
DEAR SISTER-ON-HER-BIRTHDAY:
I'd be willing to eat a German helmet to be able to spend this
day with you. But the U. S. base hospital--base is the word--has
got me for the present. I send you my respects, and fourteen and
one half kisses to grow on.
For the love of Michael, don't get priggish in your old age.
Some of your letters have made me wonder if there was nobody
home where my sister lived, but lately they've seemed more
the real thing. Get acquainted with your grandfather and
grandmother. Grandfather once told me that he had come to the
conclusion there was only one person in the world he had to keep
an eye on, and that was himself. Good talk, Sis.
Which endeth the lesson.
BUDDY.
As she tucked the letter back in its envelope, she realized that the
sheet which had been wrapped around it to prevent its scrawly surface
from showing through the transparent envelope was not blank as she
had at first supposed; she spread it out before her, thinking to
find a postscript to her own letter, but it was not that. It was
evidently a sheet of a letter begun and discarded. Elizabeth had read
it before she realized that it was not meant for her eyes to see.
"Sweetheart--Sweetheart--Sweetheart--" it ran, "I have never called you
this, and I have no right to call you so now, or any other name. At
least, not for many years to come. I'm done for. I love you, and I can't
try for you. That's something the war has done for a lot--more----" Here
it broke off, abruptly.
"Oh, Buddy, Buddy," Elizabeth cried, "I didn't mean to snoop. How
perfectly, perfectly terrible!"
It was two in the morning before she slept. She lay wide eyed in the
darkness, thinking of her brother and Peggy Farraday's sister. It
couldn't be anybody else--she knew that much about Buddy. For the first
time in her life she was feeling the weight of a trouble that did not
make her want to cry.
"I guess that's what it means to be fourteen and grown up," she said.