Teddie smiled. It was a languid smile and a superior one.
“Uncle Chandler,” she remarked, “you really don’t know what you’re talking about. In the first place, I’ve decided that in one day you can see more life, real life, out of that crooked old window there than you could discern in Tuxedo Park in a century.” She ushered him toward the casement in question. “Look at that Italian woman with the bundle of clothes on her head. And those kids crowding about the hokey-pokey man. And that gray-headed old candy-seller with the feather-duster in his hand. And that white hearse with the white angel kneeling on the top and that line of bareheaded Dago mourners marching along just as you’d see them in Naples or Ancona. And look at that wagon-load of crated geese that have just come from the Gansevoort Market, with their necks craned out between the slats. Why, those poor things are fighting for liberty just about the same as I’ve been fighting for it!”
“And about as effectively,” remarked Uncle Chandler.
“Well, whose funeral is it, anyway?” demanded Teddie, with her first touch of impatience. “This happens to be my show, and I happen to be running it in my own way. I know what’s ahead of me, and I’m going straight for it.”
Teddie’s uncle was able to smile at the uncompromising ardor of youth. But there was a touch of impatience in his movements as he crossed over to what he hoped might prove a more comfortable chair. He had no intention of letting a snip of a girl Cook’s-guide him about his own city, the city he’d lived in for some sixty-odd years. And he wasn’t such a stranger to Greenwich Village as she imagined, for through the mists of time he could still remember Ned Harrigan and Perry Street, and Sim Sharp and certain Tough Club chowders of the olden and golden days.
“So you’re going straight, are you?” he snapped out, with only the light in his kindly old eyes to contradict the bruskness of his speech. “Well, all I have to say is that you’re a wonder if you can go straight in a district like this. Good gad, ma’am, even the streets don’t go straight down here. They’re as deluded as the benzine-daubers who tramp them. And it may be none of my business, but I’ve an itch to know what’s going to happen to a high-spirited girl who’s veering dead south when she dreams she’s heading due west.”
“And that means,” suggested Teddie, “that you propose to hang around to see what’s going to happen?”
“On the contrary, young lady, I’m going down to Hot Springs to-morrow morning to get some of the acid steamed out of my knee-joints. You’re old enough to do as you like. I’ve always admitted that. And I’ve talked to Trummie about it, before he got away. I’ve talked to your dad. And he remarked that it wasn’t a matter of such tremendous importance, after all, since he has just figured out that the planet on which we at present subsist will be completely obliterated in some six million years. And he seems to be more interested in Betelgeuse, at the moment, than he is in Greenwich Village. But I repeat that you’ve come into a crooked part of this old Island for any straight-cuts to freedom. You’ll do just what the streets do down here: you’ll get all twisted up. Just look at ’em! Look at ’em, I say. You’ve got Tenth Street doubling round and running into Fourth Street, and Waverley Place going in four directions at once—the same as the folks who live in it! They don’t know where they’re at, none of ’em. And even the upper side of your Square here is not only Washington Square North, but also Sixth Street, and at the same time also Waverley Place again. And the east side of your same old Square is University Place down as far as Fourth Street, and then without rhyme or reason it calls itself Wooster Street. And your south side is really Fourth Street, but on Fourth Street proper the numbers increase from east to west, but on what is really the same street called Washington Square South your numbers increase from west to east. And your Square isn’t even a square, but a rectangle. And if you can straighten all that out in your beautiful little bean you know your old New York a trifle better than I do—and that, I acknowledge, would be going some.”
“But I’m not interested in the streets and the mail-directory numbers,” Teddie patiently explained. “What I’ve been talking about is the spirit of the place, its aura.”
“Yes, I got a sniff of it as I came through that Italian settlement,” acknowledged Uncle Chandler. “And it was quite a penetrating aura.”