Propriety & Pretense

By Nita Meakes

Henry Palmer has spent the last two years working in an office in Chicago, having moved down from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, to meet the father he’d never known. Henry, raised in the spectacular northern mountains, hated the city. He knew his life had gotten stale. He longed for the freedom of the forest and daydreamed of returning. Aggie Kincaid, an orphan living on the streets of town with her older cousin, seemed to exist from one disaster to another. They lived hand-to-mouth as pickpockets and Aggie knew her life had gotten out of control. When at Christmas in 1903 Henry and Aggie collided on the street, the incident set into motion a series of precarious clandestine escapades in their lives, bonding them in unexpected friendship. Henry decides to go back north and invites Aggie to go with him, but she elects to remain. Then the very day he is due to sail Aggie is plunged into real catastrophe and Henry becomes her only hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nita Meakes
• Release date: Jun 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386269144

Nita Meakes

Hi, Everyone!  I've been a small town Southern transplant from the hectic northeast for 40 years and love it.  I wrote my first book at 13 and have several others, as well as dozens of stories.  Some are historical romance and some are quirky romance.  Each story has its own voice and I hope you have as much fun as I do getting to know my characters.  As I look into other genres keep an eye out for something different than my usual.  Happy reading!

Book preview

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

- A -

Henry Palmer, who hated Chicago and his job about equally, closed his eyes, rubbed them and then twisted from his desk to look out the window behind his right shoulder.  The window gave onto a minor dock at this edge of Lake Michigan where a three-masted schooner moored, unloading cargo.  A few idle men and boys stood on the worn pier watching.  Beyond the ship the usual small vessels drifted about the bay like solid clouds.  Stare at them and they seemed barely to move; look away and back in a minute, and the scene had changed completely.

The sky hung lower and whiter than it had at lunchtime.  Even as Henry watched, fat flakes began floating down, blurring the monotone gray of warehouses and shipping offices jutting into the water a few hundred feet away beyond the ships.

Henry had worked at Fredricksen & Drake for this, the third Christmas he’d been in town, and had observed this same ship every winter.  She brought down pine trees from far up the lake to be sold as Christmas trees here in town.  In fact, he could almost smell the oily resin sent of the distant north woods enveloping the trees, and the remembrance filled him with nostalgia, for he called home the same breathtaking natural land of the Peninsula. 

He sighed and bent over his desk again.

At six o’clock the office closed and he and Tom, the other clerk, left.  The dusk outside breathed bitter cold down their necks, the air heavy with the penetrating dampness of harbor waters.  Petals of snow still drifted down lazily, sparkling in the lights from surrounding buildings.  Henry tugged his cap further over his ears.  The Christmas ship shifted to and fro sluggishly.  The water slapping against the seawall, this afternoon the rippling green of a glass bottle, now lay like a pool of spilled ink.

The stevedores, their weather toughened faces aged with fatigue and cold, tossed trees onto the last cart.  The ship’s rails lay half a dozen feet over Henry’s head.  The deck’s lamps dipped and swung, one moment casting a beacon of stark radiance, the next plunging the scene sharply into invisibility.  The crew boss spotted Henry watching.

Say, there, he called, want a tree?

Oh, no, Henry said, taken aback.

The sailor turned away again carelessly.

Still, Henry hesitated, until the pungent fragrance of the pines isolated itself from the mingling marine and oil odors of the wharf, and he knew why he lingered.  How foolish.  He’d no need of a Christmas tree in his room.  How impractical.

He walked to ship side and called up, How much?

A dollar.

Henry tossed him the coin and in turn caught the thrown tree. It landed with professional expertise sideways in his arms.  He ducked his head into the breeze and started home.

The back streets of Chicago in the early evening remained busy.  Automobiles, growing more numerous by the month, competed with carriages and freight wagons rattling noisily in the streets.  Messengers delivering last-minute communications ran or cycled in patterns through workmen, clerks and shoppers on their own way home.  The street girls who appeared only at night stamped their cold feet in their patent pumps and tossed their uncovered hair same as they did in summer.  They waited beneath the electric street lights for the lusty dandies and toffs soon to be prowling the waterfront streets for cheap pleasures. One unnatural blonde flicked Henry a dismissing glance.  Henry ignored her and hastened onward, wanting only to reach his room and disencumber himself of this burden making him so conspicuous.

He turned the corner at the hotel and promptly cannoned into someone coming around the other side.  He rebounded and staggered, slashing his face with pine boughs, managing to keep his feet by a miracle but dropping the tree.  For an eye’s blink he saw the shock in the cornflower blue eyes of the slim young woman he’d collided with.  Then a darting figure whipped past them both and leaped over the tree.  The young lady’s face widened further with this second astonishment and she cried,

My purse!  Her arm flung out, pointing after the fleeing boy.

Henry whirled but the street urchin, infinitely more agile and fleet of foot, had gotten out of reach.  At her cry though a man leaning against the stone corner of the hotel just a few feet away leaped forward and took off in pursuit.

Henry faced the girl again, stammering, I’m so sorry.

Never mind, said she, her chagrin vanishing so quickly Henry blinked as if he’d missed something.  She appeared suddenly animated and her summary dismissal of the theft left him confused.

But, I say, are you all right?

I’m fine, she said impatiently, now trying to step over the clumsy obstacle of the tree, adding, thank you in a tone so absent as to make the words automatic rather than sincere.

Shall I wait with you until that fellow comes back?

No, thanks.  She tried to get around him in a peculiar urgency.

Henry however felt quite bewildered and still determined to rectify his blunder. I don’t mind, he said.

She turned to him with a quick frown and he had the sense she actually saw him for the first time.

Look, you’re very nice but it isn’t necessary.  I’ll just step inside the doorway of the hotel here and watch.  I’ll be fine.

He picked up the tree uncertainly.  After all, he told himself, he really couldn’t do much else.  He said, Well, then.

Run along, she urged, actually brushing him away with waggling hands.

Very definitely and unmistakably sent packing Henry said stiffly, Very well.  However, if you need assistance I live at 10 Schumacher Street.  I shall be there all evening.

Fine, glad to hear it.  The girl then stepped into the foyer of the hotel and stationed herself at the glass door.

Henry shifted the tree, straightened his hat, and went on. 

- B -

She watched to be sure he finally got under way, but before he’d even gone out of sight she pushed the door open and stepped out again.  Heedless of disapproving stares from other passers-by, she held up the skirts of her coat and dress, and frankly ran down the road.  The aquamarine dress surged like waves, ruffled hem of her petticoat flashing like whitecaps.

Man alive, what an opportunity!  She wanted to whoop out loud and threw her woolen pantaletted legs into an extra joyous bound.  She blessed out the little apache who’d snatched her purse and wished him all the luck in the world escaping Griff’s long arm.  She herself did her very best to make tracks in the opposite direction, as fast as her nimble legs could do it.

Down one side street after another, dodging horses, hacks and automobiles in the road, weaving through people, scooting around dark corners of the neighborhood even the city builders had forgotten about, the lithe figure ran.  At last she came upon a basement well and sped down the steps to pound on the door.

Nance, she yelled, it’s me, Aggie, let me in quick!

She battered on the scarred old portal until it opened, then fell in and locked it behind her, only then dragging in air to fill spent lungs.  A scant moment later she seized the other girl’s hand and spun her into a whirling jig. 

Whoa! Nancy gasped, tugging her hands free and retying the loosened cloth belt of her robe.  The ringletted hairpiece slid sideways and she pushed it back up.  What’s bit you?  Where’s Griff? 

Aggie laughed in sheer joy.  Oh, you should have been there.  It was too wonderful for words.  I’ve got away from him.  After three solid months of living in his pocket night and day, never out of sight or reach, I’ve given him the slip.

Nancy raised a single eyebrow, a trick the jealous Aggie had not yet mastered.  Do tell?  Take your things off.  Want some tea?  Nancy, tall for a woman, with squarely defined cheek and jaw, might be described as rangy rather than statuesque.  She had a musical versatile tenor voice, as much a tool of her trade as the clothing and wigs she used.  She could think quickly in a corner, but had nothing like her cousin Aggie’s gift of spur-of-the-moment invention. 

Haven’t time.  Unable to be still, Aggie went to the low slung rope bed and dragged the worn suitcase from beneath it.

Where are you going?

Not me, you.  Listen, I’m telling you.  Aggie’s pretty little face lit in a grin.  We were working down on Wessinger Street, on the hotel corner.  We hadn’t been there long.  Griff was holding up the wall of the hotel watching me and giving me cues in the crowd.  You won’t guess what happened in a million years.

Nancy retorted dryly, Griff saw the error of his ways and let you go.

Not a chance, you idiot.  I’d just nipped some leather off a fat man, slick and smooth if I say so myself, when along comes a feller toting a tree.

A tree?

A Christmas tree.  He ran right into me and it’s a wonder I didn’t go down, but and here Aggie’s blue eyes twinkled even more, some little road rat comes along just then and snatches my take!  I’d just dropped it into my hand bag and he grabbed it and ran.  All in an instant I saw my way clear and I hollered stop, thief or something like that.  Without even thinking Griff took off after him, since I’d given him the high sign I’d done a play.  Which now, here Aggie’s voice conveyed urgency, you’ve got to get out of here.  He’ll be here looking for us both, this’ll be the first place he comes.  She threw back the lid of the suitcase and began throwing items at random into it.

I reckon I got a minute to get dressed, don’t I?

Maybe a minute.  The toff with the tree wanted to stick around and wait with me.  It slowed me up but then I ran as fast as I could.  She dropped in an armful of cosmetics, fancy hair combs and brushes.  She reached for a hairpiece on a leather head and Nancy grabbed her arm.

Here, leave that.  I just have fixed it.

Aggie, a sense of agitation now crowding out her exhilaration, began to look worried.  Say, Nance, what are you going to do?  If Griff finds you he’ll turn you in.

He won’t get the pleasure.  Looks like Nancy Goodlett will have to disappear for a while.  She handed Aggie the dressing gown and reached for a plain tan dress.

You can’t go like that.  It’s freezing.

It’ll do me for now.  She did the side buttons while Aggie continued packing.

What about you? Nancy asked.  It’s not as if everyone around here don’t know Aggie Kindall.  You’ll stick out.

Aggie chewed her lip.  She brightened.  I know, I’ll borrow the toff.  The one with the tree.  He lives over on Schumacher Street.  I’ll be Melodia Hudson and spin him a yarn and lay low for a day or two until you can find us a new place.  Then come and get me.

They talked about it as they packed, Aggie’s exigency at last reaching Nan. A few minutes later the two slipped from the cellar’s single room flat and whisked away into the night.

- C -

Five minutes after leaving the scene he’d created Henry turned onto Schumacher Street and evaded children making snowballs of the meager snow already collecting in the gutter.  Here the tree became a shield, a perfect armor against the childish game of knocking man’s hat off.  The children shrieked and fell on the slippery ground.  A pushcart vendor passed crying, Hot corn, fresh hot corn, git yer hot buttered corn!  Overhead a tenement window opened and a woman bellowed for one of the children, a boy with a perceptibly dirty face even in the twilight.

Henry dashed up the steps of his boarding house and scrubbed his boots on the mat at the door.  The landlady took her clean floors seriously.  Inside he propped the tree in the umbrella stand so he could hang his outdoor things on the rack.  By habit he used the mirror to smooth down an unruly cowlick at his crown, automatically scenting the air.  Corned beef tonight.

The coat rack served also as a mail repository and Henry glanced down, though the occasions of his receiving mail had been rare.  He had once or twice responded to advertisements.  No personal correspondence had fluttered the imagination of Mrs. Shea in the past two years.  Mr. Jones, a fellow boarder, apparently had not yet come home for an article or two still awaited his retrieval. 

Henry hurried upstairs (third floor front) where he placed the tree into one of his rubber boots and leaned it in a far corner behind the chest of drawers.  He’d have to find a pail somewhere.  The tree relaxed like a happy drunk, its trunk oozing gently to an angle somewhat past the vertical, and continued to slide along the wall, threatening to tip over.  Henry managed to twist it around until it balanced and stood still.  A quick straightening of his tie and cuffs accomplished, Henry returned to the main floor.

He stepped into the front room where twin oil lamps with red glass globes glowed pinkly on the table at the window, curtains now drawn against the night.  Christmas Day awaited but a week to celebration, and the decorative constituents attendant upon the holiday cluttered most of the room’s surfaces, though no tree had been included for lack of space.  There sparkled a number of candles representing subtleties of the rainbow all but invisible to the human eye.  These illuminated a Nativity scene on the mantel and reflected back in the stilted and corporeally unreal faces of angels suspended, wedged, propped and otherwise displayed about the front parlor.

The Tribune waited unopened on a worn horsehair armchair situated between the lamp table and the blazing hearth, in a position where light and warmth combined to create the most comfortable reading environment.  He bent for the newspaper but his hand stopped just above it.  His landlady, who stood four feet eleven inches tall but lied herself