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diff --git a/78711-0.txt b/78711-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3e31493 --- /dev/null +++ b/78711-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4222 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78711 *** + + + + + WHERE THE YOUNG CHILD WAS + AND OTHER CHRISTMAS STORIES + + +[Illustration: “Don’t you remember that this is Christmas Eve?”] + + + + + WHERE THE + YOUNG CHILD WAS + + AND ALSO + THE SPIRIT OF THE HOUSE, THE YOUNGEST + OFFICER, LINDEN GOES HOME, THE LITTLE + BROWN HOUSE, THAT MAKES + THE WORLD GO ROUND + + BY + MARIE CONWAY OEMLER + Author of “Slippy McGee,” “A Woman Named + Smith,” “The Purple Heights,” etc. + + ILLUSTRATED BY + GEORGE AVISON + + [Illustration] + + NEW YORK + THE CENTURY CO. + 1921 + + + + + Copyright, 1921, by + + THE CENTURY CO. + + Copyright, 1912, 1916, by Curtis Publishing Company + Copyright, 1912, 1914, by Crowell Publishing Company + Copyright, 1910, by Street & Smith Corporation + Copyright, 1915, by International Magazine Company + + PRINTED IN U. S. A. + + + + + WITH BEST WISHES + FROM THE WRITER TO THE READER + + + + +ACKNOWLEDGMENT + +For permission to reprint the stories comprising this volume thanks are +due to the following: + + + “The Ladies Home Journal,” for “Where the Young Child Was,” and “The + Youngest Officer.” + + “Harper’s Bazar,” for “The Spirit of the House.” + + “Ainslie’s Magazine,” for “Linden Goes Home.” + + “Woman’s Home Companion,” for “The Little Brown House,” and “That + Makes the World Go Round.” + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + + “WHERE THE YOUNG CHILD WAS” 3 + + THE SPIRIT OF THE HOUSE 45 + + THE YOUNGEST OFFICER 75 + + LINDEN GOES HOME 123 + + THE LITTLE BROWN HOUSE 171 + + “THAT MAKES THE WORLD GO ’ROUND” 209 + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + + “Don’t you remember that this is Christmas + Eve?” _Frontispiece_ + + FACING + PAGE + + “What are you doing out here? Trying to freeze?” 30 + + “I think it must have been just here that Anthony + Trescott kissed Lydia King” 70 + + He tried to hold on 106 + + The bundle of rags on the threshold waited no + further invitation 150 + + Why, it was just such a little house as she had + dreamed of 174 + + “Such scenes shall not be repeated” 230 + + + + +“WHERE THE YOUNG CHILD WAS” + + +“Ain’t some folks lucky?” Mahany spoke to Captain Austin Hoban, +tramping up and down the desolate junction platform, and waved a huge +mittened paw toward the private car glowing with warm light through +the snowy dusk. “Look at them! Nothin’ on earth to trouble ’em. _They_ +ain’t jackrabbited from pillar to Post for heaven knows why,” grumbled +the grizzled old sergeant bitterly. “_They_ ain’t got to dry-nurse a +lot of kid rookies that ought to be home hangin’ up stockin’s for their +poppas an’ mommas to fill on the sly, ’stead of bein’ took out on a +Christmas Eve for to be makin’ soldiers of, which I misdoubt heaven +ever meant the likes of such _for_.” + +He was taking an offensively raw and youthful draft out to a Northwest +Post; Hoban, returning to that same Post after leave of absence, had +fallen in with him at this transfer point. They were waiting with such +patience as they possessed for the made-up train--engine, box-car, +coach of foreign miners, extra car for the soldiers, and now this +superfine private car, “Andrassah”--to start. Still grumbling, for it +was piercingly cold, Mahany went back to his charges. + +Two furry shapes came out of the private car. Hoban paused idly, +and the arc-light shone full upon him. Whereupon one of the shapes, +bounding upon the platform, hurled himself into the captain’s arms. + +“Hoban! What a bully surprise! What are you doing here--coming or +going? Come over and see Sally; we’re going to spend Christmas with +Buckleigh at the Two Bar B,” shouted Lieutenant Darrell Compton; and, +laying forcible hands upon his old friend, he dragged him forward. + +Hoban, who would have fled from such a meeting as from the wrath to +come, found himself being presented to Buckleigh, who, for reasons of +his own, most greatly desired to find favor in the eyes of Lieutenant +Compton just then. A few questions, and he took the situation in hand; +hardly knowing whether to shrug or to swear, Hoban found himself, +despite protests, literally captured bag and baggage. + +Five minutes later Buckleigh was presenting his chance guest to the +other members of his party--Trenton, the Pittsburgh man, he who makes +money ruthlessly and builds great hospitals; McLachlin, the New York +magnate; Dr. Edgar Bristow, the specialist, and his wife, a woman as +beautiful as an idol and, one suspected, costing quite as much to keep +properly panoplied; and Sally Compton, for whom alone Hoban really had +eyes and ears. She had been the toast of every post since she wore +pigtails and a sunbonnet and raced around the compound on her own +calico pony. It is a favorite army tradition that she winked at the +doctor when she was one hour old; and that, ere she had reached the +riper age of two years, the chaplain, the surgeon, two fat majors, and +a bald-headed general had proposed to her. For Sally Compton is, of all +heart-snatchers, the most alluringly, adorably, distractingly pretty. + +Inwardly disturbed and raging, outwardly starry-eyed and sparkling, +Sally gave him her hand coolly enough; but the irony of the situation +was not lost upon her; the color deepened vividly in her cheeks. Fate, +she thought wrathfully, was certainly playing her a scurvy trick! + +Sally knew only too well that this trip in the gorgeous “Andrassah” +to the Two Bar B Ranch, that most bepraised and advertised of all big +money-making places, was really only the last of the calculated moves +of Buckleigh’s game: a game by which, mesh after mesh, his net had been +closing upon her. Consummately had Buckleigh played it--with lavish +attentions, motors, yacht, private car, great ranch, casual-deliberate +hints betraying his ownership of this railroad, that mine, a bank +or so; ever impressing upon the army girl’s consciousness the sheer +enormous power of money--his money. Even the guests here to-night were +part of that scheme--millionaire, magnate, great specialist, famous +beauty, all summoned before her by a wave of Buckleigh’s magic hand. + +Stout, baldish, suave, a hint of tigerishness underlying his slow smile +and lurking in his heavy-lidded eyes, Buckleigh bargained for youth and +beauty and charm. A man who left nothing to chance, she surmised that +he had planned even to the last detail just when and where and how the +final scene in this pleasant comedy should be staged; she meant to say +“Yes.” + +And now, just when she was beginning to think she might school a +rebellious heart into a sensible mind’s acceptance of a thing so +altogether desirable as this great match, here had fate thrust upon +her the one man in all the world who made that decision taste of the +bitterness of death; dragged him in whom of all men she wished not to +see just then. + +The car wheels presently began to grind out a diabolical rhythm: +“_Buckleigh’s buying Sally Compton! Buckleigh’s buying Sally Compton!_” + +Out of the corner of her eye she glanced at Hoban’s handsome profile, +bent toward Adele Bristow. No, she reflected drearily, he had never +cared; that had been left for her. Darrell was lamenting that he must +part from Hoban in the morning, when Buckleigh’s car was to be picked +up by the regular express at a station farther on. Buckleigh, too, +was suavely sorry Captain Hoban couldn’t stop over at the ranch for +Christmas: he had planned a few festivities, he added. + +Glancing at the over-magnificence of his car, Hoban had a pretty +accurate idea of what Buckleigh would make that Christmas at the Two +Bar B. “He’ll jolly well cram the earth into a gilt-paper cornucopia +and hand it over to Sally, with a sprig of holly and a fat smile,” +thought the soldier, who hadn’t anything but his name, his sword, and +his heart to offer her. “She’ll take it, of course. Who wouldn’t? It’s +too big a temptation for any mortal woman to withstand, I suppose.” +He knew that Buckleigh was “the millionaire Sally Compton’s dangling +around these days,” as a too-faithful friend had written. He wished +that he could honestly find it in his heart to like the man; but he +couldn’t. + +Then the car wheels began to grind out a soothing tune for Hoban, too, +car wheels being the most totally depraved of all inanimate objects +when given half a chance to show what they can do: “_Sally’s going to +marry Buckleigh! Sally’s going to marry Buckleigh!_” + +And all the while the night lowered and lowered, and the storm outside +gathered and gathered. All day it had been snowing--more heavily when +they had left the junction and plunged into the Wyoming hills; now the +storehouse of the snows opened doors and windows, and poured out its +garnered hoards. + +In the rattling day-coach a Slovak miner was singing an endless +melancholy song, which rose and fell with the monotony of gray waves on +a desert shore. In the other coach the soldiers amused themselves as +best they might. But in the “Andrassah,” having concluded a veritable +triumph of a Christmas Eve dinner, they were somnolently content. +Better the stalled ox than the dinner of herbs; if you doubt it, ask +the ox. + +“I remember,” said McLachlin, stretching himself lazily, +“somebody--seems to me it was Pliny, but I wouldn’t swear to it--saying +something about being able to enjoy a tempest on the sea more when +one happened to be on land. I’ve muddled it of course,” he added +good-humoredly; “but if you’ll look at that snow against those windows +you’ll gather my meaning.” For some time the train had been moving +more and more slowly; now, with a long scrunching of brakes, it stopped. + +A worried conductor appeared. “Stalled freight ahead. Snow. Wired for +help. Have to wait a bit, gentlemen.” + +“How long?” A frown darkened on Buckleigh’s forehead. + +“Depends on how soon the plow gets here,” said the conductor. + +“Do you mean to say,” exploded Buckleigh, “that _I’m_ to be held up +indefinitely for a dashed freight?” + +“We can wire for a plow and have the freight pulled out, Mr. +Buckleigh,” said the conductor, dryly; “but even _you_ can’t give +orders to the Almighty to quit snowin’ when He feels like snowin’, and +have your orders obeyed.” He went out, grimly smiling. + +“Quite so, Buckleigh, quite so!” said the Pittsburgh man, briskly. +“Job, thirty-eight, verse twenty-two.” He was a religious man, and +outside of business hours greatly respected the power of Providence. + +“I do not seem, at any rate,” said Buckleigh, “to lack Job’s +comforters.” One might have thought he snarled. + +Sally Compton laughed in his face. “Why, I thought you were too wise,” +she mocked him gently, “to kick against the pricks of the inevitable, +Mr. Buckleigh. Besides, we’re deliciously ‘comfy,’ and there’s no +immediate danger of our starving or freezing, is there?” + +She felt that she had been given a respite, and that the inevitable +had been, at least for a little while, deferred. Her spirits rose +soaringly. But Buckleigh was displeased. He hated to have his plans +upset, and every detail of to-morrow had been prearranged, even as +scenes in a well-set play. Now, as things were, he doubted if they +reached the ranch before to-morrow night, even if then. + +They were preparing to retire when the conductor came in hurriedly. +“Say, ain’t one of you gentlemen a doctor?” + +“I am a physician,” said Bristow, suddenly alert. + +The conductor whispered into the doctor’s ear. Bristow started, +whistled, scrambled into his fur coat, jammed his cap down over his +eyes, and the two hurried out. + +Ten minutes later Bristow was back. Big, commanding, forceful, to the +finger-tips the able physician at work, he gave crisp orders. “Hot +water,” he directed Buckleigh; “gallons of hot water. Get busy, please. +Blankets, and two or three pillows. Adele, I shall need you. There’s a +girl out in that box-car--and her hour is upon her.” + +Adele stared. “Why, Edgar, you know very well I’m without my maid; she +_would_ go home--just as we were starting, too. Horribly provoking, and +I’m what you might call helpless. If she were here you’d be welcome to +her services, of course.” + +“I said I needed you,” said Bristow, curtly. + +“Edgar! Good heavens, you must be mad! In a box-car? A strange woman? +No! I won’t! I can’t.” + +“You will. You can. You’ve got to,” said he. “You’ll be useful for +once, whether you like it or not. I need you; and you’ll do what +I say this night, or I’ll know why.” He towered above her, eyes +gleaming, jaws set; almost his streaked gray mane bristled. He looked +magnificent; like, say, a thoroughly roused old lion. + +His wife stared, and a most curious light flickered into her astonished +eyes. She rose, gracefully ignoring the shocked and startled faces. +“I’ll save you the trouble of taking me by the hair, Edgar,” she said +lightly. “You look quite capable of it. Just tell me what I’m to do.” + +“Exactly what I tell you. Remember: If you scream I’ll box your ears, +and if you faint I’ll chuck you neck and crop into the snow. Get your +wraps. Where’s my black case, you, Jim, or whatever your name is? A +bundle of towels, Miss Compton, please. Buckleigh, look after that hot +water. Captain Hoban, you and Mr. Compton get those fellows in the cars +ahead quiet, and keep ’em quiet. That girl’s in a bad way.” + +Sally helped Mrs. Bristow on with cloak and hood. Porters, loaded with +blankets and pillows, followed them. Hoban and Compton had already gone +through the cars ahead and the shouts and singing had suddenly ceased. + +Trenton, with a very sober face, came over and sat down by Sally. “Oh, +my, my, my!” said he, nervously. “Poor thing, poor thing! Natural of +course; but--in a box-car--dreadful, dreadful!” + +“All by herself!” Sally added. + +Trenton drew a little closer. + +“It--sort of comes upon me--unaware,” he whispered. “My wife died--like +that. Very young, poor thing! I was too. Not rich then. Poor--very; +but, my heaven, how happy! She was so pretty, my wife!” he added +wistfully. “I loved her a great deal, Miss Compton. But--she died, +and the baby with her. And that’s why,” he finished mildly, “I--build +hospitals.” + +The little, cold, dry, moneyed man took on a new aspect. The girl +reached over impulsively and squeezed his bony hand, a swift, warm, +reassuring human pressure. “To thank you,” she whispered, “for the +women and the children your hospitals have helped and saved, because of +one sweet woman, Mr. Trenton.” + +“I--loved her,” said he, simply. “And when all’s said and done, my +dear, that’s the biggest, greatest, most glorious thing in the world!” +A musing and remembering smile crept into his tired old eyes. + +“From what I gathered from our sententious friend, the conductor,” +McLachlin was saying a little later, “the girl’s the wife of one of +your foreign miners, Buckleigh, going out to the Big Bend. He had to +come for a job, poor chap! and he couldn’t leave her behind; she has +no people in this country at all. So the railroad men, seeing how +things were with her, made her as comfortable as they could in the +box-car--and dashed decent of them, too, say I! They thought she’d be +able to reach the mine safely. The thing worries me; upon my word it +does! I can’t help thinking of the night my daughter’s little girl was +born, and how I sat in the library and hung on to my wife like a scared +kid. I got ten years older in that one night.” He got up abruptly and +began to tramp up and down, his hands under his coat tails. “I wish she +were over it!” he muttered. + +Buckleigh watched him with cold scorn. He was disgusted and furiously +angry. It was bad enough, he considered, to be stalled here on the edge +of nowhere, with all his prearranged plans going awry. But that an +unknown and poverty-stricken woman should actually disrupt his party, +render distracted his exclusive guests, making them forget their own +exalted station, and behave as if they were of her common clay, struck +him as savoring of stark anarchy. Bristow, whose fees were enormous, +who was consulted by foreign royalty, had rushed out into the night +like the veriest country doctor, dragging, too, his wife with him; +Buckleigh hoped Adele would divorce him for it. Moreover, Bristow had, +without so much as a by-your-leave, coolly confiscated especially woven +blankets, down pillows, monogrammed linen, as if the woman’s need +had made them hers by simple right! He, Buckleigh himself, had been +suddenly pushed aside as one of no consequence, merely because the most +ordinary of human events was occurring to the most ordinary of human +beings. + +Porters, bearing buckets of boiling water swathed in blankets to +preserve the heat, came and went. Sally Compton refused either to +entertain or be entertained; she sat silent; at times a slight tremor +passed over her; for Sally felt that the angels of life and death +walked abroad almost visibly that night. + +Later Hoban came in, his shoulders thickly powdered. “Bristow says +she’s doing as well as can be expected,” he told them. “But--she’s +nothing but a slip of a girl, I understand. I was helping one of the +porters up with a bucket of hot water--and I heard--” He shook his head. + +McLachlin nodded sympathetically. “I know. I remember when--my girl--” +He blew his nose violently. + +Buckleigh grunted. + +“My wife,” said Trenton, wistfully, “was a slip of a girl, too, and--so +pretty! Poor thing, poor thing!” + +Buckleigh stared coldly. + +Sally looked from one man to the other curiously. It struck her that, +stripped of a sudden of convention, each appeared as he was, with a +sort of elemental clarity and simplicity. + +“You’ve no idea,” said Hoban, “the effect on those foreigners in the +front car. One of the Italians that can speak a little English told me +it was ‘like the Holy Night.’ Do you know what those chaps are doing? +They’re praying!” + +McLachlin nodded; Trenton smiled understandingly; Buckleigh sneered. + +Hoban’s face twisted oddly; he grinned and his eyes twinkled. “And the +sergeant,” he said, “has sent every man jack of his boys to bed without +undressing, and is sitting there with a pistol in each hand to make +sure they keep quiet.” + +The hours crawled. An immense and waiting silence hung, it seemed to +Sally, over the whole snow-wrapped universe, knowing that something +very wonderful was about to occur. Buckleigh alone sat cold, impassive, +unmoved; so far as she could see he had not shown one slightest touch +of human sympathy. She watched him stealthily, with a growing fear. She +meant to marry Buckleigh of course; and one couldn’t expect everything; +but-- + +Released, at Hoban’s request, from the sergeant’s too-strict +surveillance, the soldiers had cleared a space under the trees outside +and, utilizing what they could find of dead timber, had built a fire, +which sputtered and hissed as the snow from the branches above melted +and ran down into it. Weirdly the flames lit up the towering hillsides, +the trees bent under their weight of snow, the half-buried trains and +the little frozen river beside which the track ran. + +Sally, gazing out at the window, could distinguish Darrell, and +then Hoban’s taller figure. The very sight of Hoban gave her an odd +sensation of strength and comfort. + +A cold gray light was beginning to grow when Bristow appeared in the +box-car door, collarless and with bared arms. He put up a great +forearm and rubbed it across his forehead. “As fine a little rascal,” +said he, “as I’ve ever seen.” + +“Boy?” asked Hoban. + +“Sure. Ten pounds. Lungs like a blacksmith’s bellows; ribs like a dray, +and a fist like a prizefighter’s! Some boy, believe me!” He sighed with +relief. “I had to haul his fool father away by the scruff or he’d be +crying over the girl’s feet yet. What!” he said, abruptly, to the pale, +boyish husband who approached him supplicatingly, “are you here again? +No, you can_not_ come blubbering over that girl just now! She’s all +right, I tell you, but I can’t have you disturbing her. Go away! Well, +you can come back in half an hour, then. Take him away, somebody.” He +looked after the handsome fellow, whom the sergeant dutifully led away +as one under tentative arrest, and his eyes twinkled; but his smile was +kind. + +Later Sally begged, and was allowed, to visit the new arrival. In a +cleared space at one end of the car, lighted by an oil lamp and warmed +by a bucket brazier, on a cot covered with straw which showed under the +blankets and pillows, lay a Madonna-like Italian girl. Her beautiful +black hair, meekly parted on a pale brow, fell in two long braids over +her shoulders. She was pearly white, and her childish mouth sagged +somewhat. But out of the pale and weary face shone a pair of eyes so +sweet, so pure, so starlike, that Sally’s heart gave an upward bound at +sight of them. + +The girl made a little, fluttering, welcoming motion of the hands, +smiling ever so faintly. They looked at each other steadily, the girl +who was going to marry Buckleigh, and the girl who was the wife of +one of Buckleigh’s miners. The sweet, shining eyes were telling Sally +something--that same something Trenton had told her while they waited: +that love is, after all, the greatest thing in the world. The girl +turned her head and spoke in a soft whisper. “She wants you to hold +the baby,” said Adele Bristow. + +Mrs. Bristow’s Parisian gown, which she hadn’t had time to change, was +rumpled, and her magnificent red hair hung heavily down. There were +dark circles under her eyes, and she, too, was very pale. But, as one +who holds a hard-won treasure, she clasped the newly born against the +laces at her breast, smiling upon the downy black head. Even as she +smiled the baby nuzzled and whimpered. Bristow, over her shoulder, +laughed. + +His wife, thrusting the baby hurriedly into Sally’s arms, turned upon +him like one at bay. A fiery color leaped into her cheeks, then faded, +leaving her paler than before. “Oh! You--you big, blind, blundering +brute!” she gasped. And she began to weep uncontrollably. + +Sally thrust the baby into his mother’s waiting arms and stared at the +scene before her. + +Adele had sunk to the floor, but Bristow, despite her struggles, had +lifted her and was holding her in his mighty grip. “There, there, +honey!” He tried to soothe her. “I guess I was pretty awful to you at +first, wasn’t I? But you stood by me like a brick, Adele, and I’m proud +of you. You’ll get your new limousine for last night’s work, my girl. I +tell you, I’m proud of you; you can be a real woman--when you like.” + +“If you had ever really loved me,” she said stormily, “you’d know I +always wanted to be real.” + +He looked down at her, his brows wrinkling in pained astonishment. +“Ever really loved you? Woman, I’m crazy over you!” he said fiercely. +“Haven’t I shown it plainly enough? Love you? Adele, I have loved you +so greatly that I haven’t even asked or expected you to love me in +return.” + +“But that’s just the trouble!” she wailed. “For I do! You think I +care only for other things; and I have let you think so. But when the +child--turned to me--like that--and you--and you--oh, Edgar, Edgar!” + +“I am twenty years older than you,” he reminded her. “I look like a +bear and--act like one sometimes, I’m afraid, Adele.” + +His voice was so humble that Adele laughed and cried together. “All +that,” she agreed, “is quite true. Those are some of the reasons why +I--why I--fell in love with you; why I’m--why I’m--still in love with +you--Edgar--” for at that the big man had swung her clear off her feet. +“N-no, I don’t think you’re a bit too rough.--All right, you can buy me +another frock if you want to.--N-no, it’s not; your beard’s perfectly +beautiful, Edgar!” + +The door slid open noiselessly and a black curly head looked in. Seeing +the coast clear, a lithe body followed; then the boyish husband was on +his knees beside the cot. Such a look as passed between the two young +creatures over their baby’s fuzzy poll! + +Sally’s eyes stung with sudden uncontrollable tears. Love was, indeed, +the greatest thing in the world, only--she hadn’t got it. She was to +have, instead, all that the terrible power of money can summon up for +such as have the key of gold--splendid things, perfectly palpable +things, such as one can put one’s hands on. As if she had weighed and +tasted them, and found them wanting--dust and ashes--her living spirit +rose up within her at that moment and rejected them, crying aloud for +its larger and diviner heritage. She knew that Buckleigh had no part in +that heritage; the thought of him affected her like a nightmare; sheer +panic terror came upon her. + +“No! I can’t! I can’t! Not for the whole world!” she thought. “Oh, +what’s happening to me, what’s the matter with me? I’m--I’m being +pushed outside of everything. I can’t take the money--and I can’t get +the love!” + +For the first time in her pleasant life there had come to her a moment +wherein the spirit experienced its aloneness in the universe--saw all +the petty barriers it had built against that solitude crumble, because +they had not been fashioned of the one imperishable stuff. + +Bristow and his wife had forgotten her presence, forgotten everything +save that they had found each other. The young Italian had eyes only +for his own; the little mother thought only of the sweet miracle which +exalted her above the earth. No, there was no place here for Sally. She +crept away. + +The thought of meeting Buckleigh’s eyes just then was unbearable. She +couldn’t go back to the car. Everybody seemed to have retired. It was +very still. Down the track she could see the flare of the deserted +fire, and to this she made her way, grateful for the warmth and +solitude. + +Over in the east the cold, gray light grew slowly. Indescribable +desolation weighed upon her. Oh, where was that Sally Compton who had +found life so pleasant such a little while ago, a girl whom every +one had seemed to care for? Gone, and all her gay careless surface +brightness gone with her! She huddled down on a log dragged into the +radius of the fire, pulled her furs farther up about her face, and wept +heartbrokenly. + +“Sally Compton!” exclaimed a horrified voice. “What are you doing out +here? Trying to freeze? Who’s looking after you anyhow?” Hoban glared +at her indignantly. + +“Nin-nobody,” gulped Sally, summoning her pride to her rescue and +trying not to sniff too audibly. “I’m qui-quite capable of ta-taking +care of myself, thank you!” + +“You look like it!” said he scornfully. “Darrell’s just turned +in--thought you were in bed of course. Where’s Buckleigh? Why isn’t +_he_ looking after you, I’d like to know?” Jealousy lent his pleasant +voice an acrid note new to it. + +Sally looked up at him listlessly. “If you’re going to be +disagreeable,” she suggested, “you can go away.” + +Hoban hesitated. “Look here!” said he painfully, “I’d like you to +understand that my being here isn’t exactly my own fault. Darrell +didn’t know you’d be annoyed--and I couldn’t tell him, could I? And +then again, I couldn’t very well refuse to come without appearing +churlish and running the risk of hurting his feelings.” + +“No,” agreed Sally lifelessly, “I don’t suppose you could.” + +[Illustration: “What are you doing out here? Trying to freeze?”] + +“Sally,” said he, flushing, “you have never given me a chance to ask +you why you seemed to suddenly dislike me--after we’d been--well, say, +friends. But I’ve wondered at times if you might have thought I was +chump enough to think you cared for me, when you didn’t. I never blamed +you for not caring; how could I? But what hurt was that you should +use such methods to prove it to me. I do not believe you ever acted +like that to any human being save only myself; why? For I am sure that +a sincere and honest affection, such as mine has always been for you, +could never be considered an insult. Yet you seemed to think so.” He +looked at her steadily, and there was that in his fine face which +carried conviction of truth. “I did believe for a time that you might +care. I hoped it with all my heart, because I cared so much myself. +I do not think that belief and that hope dishonored either you or +myself,” he ended with simple and manly dignity. + +Something of her dumb and stricken misery came to him. His eyes grew +troubled. He drew a little nearer. + +“Sally,” said he earnestly, “my love for you gives me the right to say +what I’m going to say: If you aren’t quite sure of the step before you, +hold back. Don’t imperil your happiness. I don’t say this because I +have any hope for myself, for I haven’t. But because I want more than +anything on earth to see you happy. And you needn’t be sorry for me, +when you come to think of it, Sally. I’m proud of loving you. I shall +be the better man for it.” + +Sally sat bolt upright. His words went whirling through her head. +Because of idle rumors to which her own jealous fancy lent weight, she +had let him go. She had misjudged and misunderstood. He a flirt with +a waiting list! He vain and light! He sure that every girl he chose +to beckon to would come at his nod! Terrified that she might be only +one of many, she had indeed spared no pains to make him understand she +wished none of him; that had been the only solace to a smarting pride, +a wounded love. Hurt and indignant, he had gone.... And then Buckleigh +had come. She remembered Buckleigh’s cold, hard face, his eyes of +granite, when all others had been touched to a tender and human emotion. + +Far, far away, from over the intervening hills, came a long faint +screech. The relief was coming. In a few hours, parting company at the +station farther on, Buckleigh’s car would be flying farther and farther +from Hoban, and nearer and inevitably nearer to the Two Bar B ranch and +those Christmas festivities so cleverly arranged for her benefit. The +two stared at each other. + +“I hate to go away, never expecting to see you again, and not part +friends, Sally. It’s just a little hard on me, isn’t it? Won’t you be +friends at least?” pleaded the soldier. + +Then Sally Compton spoke: “What I most wonder at,” said she severely, +“is the vast, immeasurable, terrifying, monumental stupidity of men!” + +Hoban stared, as well as he might. + +“The sheer, unbelievable, incredible stupidity,” Sally repeated firmly, +“of men. They just take things for granted--and they go away--and leave +things like that--and they haven’t even sense enough to come back and +find out if there isn’t some mistake--on their own part of course. +Under such circumstances and in the face of such stupidity,” she +demanded tragically, “what is a poor, bewildered girl to do?” + +“Huh! I shouldn’t waste my good sympathy,” said Hoban dryly, “on the +poor, bewildered girl, if I were you. The poor, bewildered girl, as you +call her--” he fixed her with a stern, accusing eye--“usually sends the +man to Coventry--she and heaven alone know why; and when she’s got him +there safe and fast, why, she--marries a millionaire! Sensible, isn’t +she?” + +“Oh! Does she though? _Only_ when she’s perfectly sure and certain that +the right man--I mean the other man--went to Coventry on his own hook, +Captain Austin Hoban, and stays there because he chooses to stay there. +Because he never cared. Sensible, wasn’t he?” + +“A fat lot she knows about it,” said he derisively, “if _that’s_ +all she knows! I hate to think any girl could be so downright +dyed-in-the-wool silly.” + +“Do you?” said she tartly. “Well, she’s dyed-in-the-wool silly--to +match him, if you like!” Her temper was rising. + +“Oh, what’s the difference, if only they’re happy fools together?” said +he wearily. “Sally,” his eyes pleaded for him, “I haven’t the ghost of +a right to ask you, of course, but--are you really going to marry that +fellow Buckleigh?” He couldn’t keep some of his pain from creeping into +his voice. + +“You have no right in this world to ask me, of course,” she said with +asperity; “but, as you have asked me, why--I don’t mind telling you +that I haven’t been asked--yet.” + +He considered that soothing “yet.” “Are you going to marry him?” he +demanded bluntly. + +Sally’s temper flared. “I wonder,” said she spiritedly, “how you’d like +a little gentle cross-examination yourself? Let’s see: Are you going +to marry Colonel Arkwright’s daughter, Captain Hoban, or are you only +flirting? Aren’t you generally--flirting? People have told me so. And +you did flirt with me, you know!” + +“Whoever told you that,” said he hotly, “told you a thumping lie! And +I was not flirting with you! You’ve had experience enough, I should +think, to be able to tell the false from the real. But that’s neither +here nor there. You haven’t answered my question: Are you going to +marry Buckleigh?” + +“I told you he hadn’t asked me.” + +“Are you going to marry Buckleigh?” + +“How can I unless--” + +“Are you going to marry Buckleigh?” inexorably. + +“Well, then, _no_, if you will know!” + +“Are you sure?” + +“_Yes!_ There!” furiously. + +“Well, then, are you going to marry me?” + +“Why,” said she, scandalized, “you haven’t asked me.” + +“If I do ask you, will you?” + +“But you _haven’t_ asked me!” + +“Well, I do now,” said he with vast patience. “Sally, I have always +loved you; I shall always love you. I thought once--and now something +bids me hope again--that you might care for me. Sally, if that hope is +true, will you marry me?” + +“This,” murmured Sally wickedly, “is so sudden!” She glanced up at him +ensnaringly. “You must give me time to--” + +“--waste on some other old bald-headed duffer of a millionaire while +I’m on tenterhooks?” said he grimly. “Nothing doing! Guess again!” + +“I reckon,” said Sally meditatively, “that I’d better guess of course, +hadn’t I?” + +“You mean you will?” His tone was incredulous. + +“I mean,” said Sally bravely, “that I’d never, never be happy in this +world, or maybe in the next one either--if I couldn’t!” And then: +“Austin! For heaven’s sake, Austin! Somebody’ll see!” + +“Let ’em!” + +“Austin,” said she, against his cheek--“Austin, you mustn’t think too +much of me, really. I did believe all sorts of things against you; +I did behave abominably to you; I did intend to--to take what Mr. +Buckleigh offered. I thought you didn’t care and that I might as well +take all I could get--for myself. But--I heard Adele Bristow--say some +things to the doctor a while ago, and I saw that dear little Italian +girl looking at her husband over the baby’s head, and--I knew right +then I couldn’t. No, I just couldn’t. You understand?” + +He held her closer. “We’ll have a Christmas party for that blessed baby +after a while, but just at present you’re going to be sent to bed.” +Then he bundled her up and carried her back to the car; and in the +shadow of the platform he kissed her again. + +The porter, knocking at her door, awoke her some hours later. She +found everybody finishing a very late breakfast. A subdued joyousness +radiated from every face except Buckleigh’s. + +“Everybody visits the Christmas baby!” said the doctor, buttoning his +greatcoat. “My wife’s already christened him ‘Noel,’ and his mother’s +made it ‘Noello.’ And, say, every man jack on the trams has chipped +in on his Christmas present. You three wise men from the east United +States want to chip in too?” + +Buckleigh wrote a check perfunctorily. “To be saved up against the time +they’ll be striking in the mine,” said he cynically. + +“The hair of the dog,” Bristow minded him, “is good for the bite. You +other Magi in on this?” + +They were--so boyishly, so whole-heartedly that Sally’s heart was +lifted. After all, she reflected happily, it’s a good place, this +world, and people, when they forget things and remember they’re all +just folks together, come near being what God wants them to be. + +“I owe that baby a good-sized bill, myself,” said the doctor, smiling +at his wife, who smiled back and slipped her hand in the crook of his +big arm. + +Miners, soldiers, railroad men, fell into line behind the doctor and +his party. They massed around the sliding-doors, which the doctor +pushed aside. + + And when they were come ... they saw the young child with Mary + his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had + opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and + frankincense, and myrrh. + +One saw in the lamplighted interior, as in a cave’s mouth, outlined +by the glittering whiteness without, the straw-covered cot; beside it +a handsome, foreign, shepherd-looking man; on it a pale, pretty girl, +holding to her bosom a baby. At sight of all those eyes she flinched a +little, but, seeing them all so good and friendly and reverent, she +smiled, Madonna-wise, and spoke to her man. + +Awkwardly, but with tender carefulness, he lifted the rosy child. +“Noel!” said the Italian softly, and held him high for all to see. + +“Noel! Noel! Noel!” echoed the men outside, uncovered in the snow. + +Bristow, blinking suspiciously, gave the Christmas offering, to which +all had contributed; and the little mother, with sweet wisdom, took +again her baby and laid his small hand upon the gift; then she held +up the wee fist, and the tiny fingers of a sudden outspread wide; one +might think they blessed. At that, in spite of the doctor, they cheered +him heartily. + +Pushed forward by his mates, an Italian with a sweet and ringing +barytone began to sing for him the old, old, lovely Christmas hymn: + + “_Adeste, Fideles, + Laeti, triumphantes! + Venite, venite_, in Bethlehem!” + +Adele crept closer to the big doctor’s side, to be encircled in his +arm. McLachlin, beaming, patted a soldier on the shoulder brotherly. +The Pittsburgh millionaire, with uplifted head, smiled dreamily, being +for a happy moment back again with the little lost wife of his youth. +And Sally Compton, her eyes full of exquisitely happy tears, put her +hand openly into Hoban’s, careless of who saw. How had she ever, ever +thought she could so trust it to any other? + +“You see?” she whispered, looking up at him adoringly. + +“I see,” he whispered back, and closed his hand upon her fingers +loverlike. + + * * * * * + +Up and up and up, cleaving the dark skies, soaring, like the lark at +heaven’s gate: + + _Gloria! Gloria! In excelsis Deo! + Venite, adoremus! Venite, adoremus! Venite, adoremus, + Dominum!_ + + + + +THE SPIRIT OF THE HOUSE + + + + +THE SPIRIT OF THE HOUSE + + +Trescott had planned a Christmas in Munich, an Easter in Rome. The war +changed that. Europe gone back to barbarism filled him with a horror +bordering upon physical nausea; he felt that he never wanted to see +Europe again. + +He decided, instead, to go South. The Trescotts sprang from Carolina +stock, and there were certain old records, family traditions, which he +had long desired to trace to their fountainhead. + +Famous at thirty-five, Trescott had yet remained a curiously aloof +and rather austere figure. Some far-off Irish foremother had lent his +dark face its delicate imprint of expectancy and dowered him with that +strain which gave to all his work, along with a dewy and delightful +freshness, a flavor of rose-scented and unforgotten yesterdays. + +To this undercurrent of melancholy the Carolina landscape powerfully +appealed. This land of lonesome wide marsh margins, of dim desolate +forsaken fields, of broodings and moss-hung woods, appeared to him as +might a half-hidden face which has haunted one’s dreams. He wandered +over the coast country with an ever increasing delight. + +The day before Christmas caught him upon one of these solitary and +endless tramps, glad enough to escape what he considered wearisome +festivities. It was past noon when he reached his destination--one +of those deserted old Carolina churches in whose grass-grown yards +the proudly named dead sleep forgotten. In a far corner he had paused +before a name which struck his keen eye pleasantly--_Lydia King_. For +this, he realized at once, was the very name the girl in his next book +must bear! + +Even while he pictured what she should be, brown-haired, brown-eyed, +slim and gracious, the creative power came upon him. Furiously, working +at frenzied pressure, he got such as he could into his note-book, +dreading to lose the thread and praying for the failing light to hold. + +The still gray afternoon rushed suddenly into dusk, as happens in +that land of little twilight, and with the dusk began a disconsolate +drizzle. Before him stretched strange roads, bordered by abandoned +rice-fields, eerily empty in the deepening dark. Where two weedy +by-paths crossed he stopped perforce; and as he hesitated, a little +faint light twinkled at the far end of the expanse upon his right. + +Trescott sighed with relief; in Carolina one has only to stop at the +first house, generally, to be sure of a shelter for the night. For +what seemed an interminable distance the little byway led him, to stop +abruptly at a pair of iron gates, wide open between tall brick pillars. +A thick belt of cedars, swaying somberly in a rising wind, lay between +him and the great black bulk of the house beyond. Like the garden gate, +the house door stood open. The light which had led him came from a room +to the right of an enormous hall. + +His hand was upon the iron knocker when a girl came out of the lighted +room, her trailing dress undulating about her slim body. As she neared +him her face grew out of the dark, oval-shaped, cream-colored as a +magnolia. With a gracious and welcoming gesture she beckoned him inside. + +The great room, lighted only by unshaded wax candles in tall silver +sticks upon the high mantel, had the shadow as of a Rembrandt, +suggestive of rich depths. Out of it flickered the red glow of copper, +the brighter gleam of brass, a hint of the deep blue of old Delft; +outlines of old portraits appeared on the paneled walls; one divined +the satiny sheen, the majestic mahogany of old carved furniture. + +Ruefully aware of his muddy shoes, his stained garments, so out of +keeping with this stately orderliness, he wished to explain, to +apologize, and looked up to meet glance to glance her intense and +luminous regard. All in brown she was, save for a lace-edged scarf, +and a white flower at her throat. The deep wilful dimple which marked +her chin matched her child’s mouth, rosy, arch, and virginal; but in +the shining eyes under the fine brow one glimpsed the spirit, proud, +flame-pure, indomitable. + +She leaned toward him: “It took you such a long, long time to come!” +she sighed, and her clear eyes reproached him. Bewildered, stung with a +swift inexplicable pain, yet conscious of a mounting exaltation, sweet +and heady, he stammered: + +“But I didn’t know you were here! Don’t you see? I couldn’t know?” + +“Ah, but you did!” she insisted, with soft triumph. “That is why you +are here! I remembered--and you saw the light!” With a slim finger +against her lip, she looked up at him with smiling and mischievous eyes. + +Gesture and glance stirred Trescott curiously; his mind went groping +after remembrance of both. Then, as in a lightning flash, he knew. +She who was the true spirit of all his effort, that Somebody who had +so long eluded him, was face to face with him at last! He knew, and, +meeting her steady and waiting glance he realized, with a great upward +surge of heart, that she also knew. + +Full of a joyous wonder, he stammered: + +“It is you! Why--why--it is you!” Then panic seized him and he trembled: + +“And I might have missed that light!” he gasped. “Why--I saw it by the +merest accident!” + +She shook her head. “No, you couldn’t. Don’t you remember, Anthony, +that this is Christmas Eve? Beautiful things happen at Christmas-time, +Anthony!” + +Uplifted above wonder, that she should know and call him by name did +not in the very least surprise him; beautiful things, of course, have +to happen at Christmas-time! + +“I knew,” said he, rapt and elate, “that you simply had to be +somewhere, Heart’s Delight! I knew that when my great hour struck, I +should find you. And oh, I have found you! I have found you!” + +“The wonder of it!” Her voice was flute-like. “Oh, the great, beautiful +wonder of it, Anthony! How was it I ever, ever doubted? I shall never, +never doubt again!” + +“I am not dreaming,” whispered Trescott, pale with emotion. “No, +nothing else ever has been, ever could be real for me save this, that +you are you. I have been looking for you, I have been loving you, all +my life. For you know, of course, that I must love you?” + +“I knew it this long time since--while poor you went a-hunting it,” +said she, airily. “But say it again, Anthony; say, ‘Lydia, I love you!’” + +He laughed whole-heartedly. “You Christmas miracle! What need to tell +you, when you know?” said he, fervently. “Lydia, Lydia, indeed I love +you!” + +“If I had even for one moment doubted that,” she said gravely, “I +should not be listening to you to-night; perhaps you might not know +yourself!” Her eyes, shadowed, grew very old and wise. “But there have +been times when I--despaired, Anthony. Oh, the days, the nights, the +slow, slow empty years! And poor I so alone!” An immense weariness +enveloped her, sitting grotesquely upon her young sweetness. She +shivered; before his eyes her face grew pinched and sharp, and upon the +smooth brow came a pucker of pain. She drew away; and in an instant an +impassable barrier, delicate as moonlight, strong as adamant, seemed to +arise between them. He had the prescience as of a thing inevitable. + +“Anthony!” said she, “I--I can’t explain even to myself just how I am +here to-night, no, nor how you came to me. But I do know it had to +happen. You will not forget?” + +“How in God’s name could I?” he wondered. “Nor is there need of +explanation. Why, we love each other! How could I forget what I’ve been +trying to remember ever since I was born?” + +“You will remember--always, Anthony? Oh, my dearest dear, be sure!” + +“I am sure.” + +“Then--never doubt--about to-night, Anthony--and me,” she said. + +Shaken out of himself, he got to his feet and held out his arms. + +“Who talks of doubt and of forgetting?” he cried. “We two _belong_. +Ah, don’t you see how great my need of you is? I want you, I love you! +Lydia, come; come now!” His outstretched arms pleaded for him. + +“Do not touch me!” her gesture was almost repellent. + +“Lydia!” + +“I--I cannot!” she gasped again. Her voice trailed into a sobbing +whisper. “I remember--I had to find you--and that you had to come. But +beyond that--I never thought.” + +“Well, think beyond that now, my child,” he insisted, conquering his +pained amazement. He added, with a gleam of playfulness, “Finding’s +keeping, Lydia.” + +“Finding’s keeping--when one makes it so,” she said, still out of his +reach. “But now that you have found me, you must go. I cannot stay +longer. See, the rain has ceased, the moon is out.” + +“Now? I am to leave you here--alone?” + +“You are to leave me here--alone.” + +“There is no word for me, no--no surety? What am I to think?” + +“You must come,” she said, “here to King House, to-morrow, and take +what you find. See, where I put my finger in the heart of this middle +rose in the wreath just over the mantel? Come to-morrow and touch that +spot, Anthony, and take my gift. And--stand so, for one last minute, +Anthony, so that I may see your eyes and your lips and your black hair. +Then tell me good night and good-by.” + +With a noble patience, without further question, he obeyed. In his +heart he knew he should never lose her: and was he not coming back, +to-morrow, for a gift from her? + +Outside, in the wan light of a watery moon, the gaunt house among +the black cedars showed with tragic bleakness. The girl stood a slim +glimmering shape, in the dark doorway. + +“Good-by!” she whispered, and it seemed to him he felt her touch him +once, lightly, before the darkness swallowed her. When he reached the +gate the light flickered out. + +But unshaken and serene, as if he trod upon air, he walked through the +withered wet grasses, his forehead bare to the salt wind. The night +deepened; wider and wider grew the clear spaces in the sky, and light +upon shining light the cohorts of the stars swung into their ordered +and eternal places. Over in the east one glowed with a softer, larger +luster. Trescott smiled up at it. + +“I know you now!” he said, “you’re the Star of Beautiful Things that +happen at Christmas!” + +It had been to him rather a fable, hitherto, that old story of the +star; but to-night something of its hidden, tender meaning was clear +to him: along with the shepherds who had seen it shining upon Judean +fields, along with the Wise Men who had sought it, bearing in their +hands gifts of gold and myrrh and frankincense, the writer of books +felt himself following it, and knew himself nearer the Everlasting; for +that had come to him which made him understand, that which alone is +real, and permanent, and abiding, beyond doubt, above fear, stronger +than death: Love. + + Set me as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love + is strong as death.... Many waters cannot quench love; neither can + the floods drown it.... + +Oh, surely when the morning stars sing together it is thus they sing +before His face! + +Odorous of wet woods, dappled with sunlight, the Christmas morning +broke, and Trescott, looking out at his window, saw a new heaven and a +new earth. An earth, too, which held a Christmas gift from her! So he +went forth to claim it. + +The gate was still open; rusting upon broken hinges it hung upon the +ruined wall. He pushed his way through withered fennel, waist-high +grasses, thorny smilax, till King House lay before him. With the tides +of his blood freezing about his heart, Trescott opened the door and +tremblingly made his way to the mantel and groped for the carved rose +upon which--no, he had seen it with his eyes, he had not dreamed it--a +girl’s slim fingers had pressed. + +In the heart of the rose a tiny knob moved, a little panel slid back +and within the small recess thus revealed lay a package in a velvet +case whose moldering string broke at his touch. + +He found himself, presently, leaning weakly against one of the great +porch pillars. He was trembling violently; his mind whirled drunkenly; +but mechanically he clutched his Christmas present. When he could +command his senses again, he examined his gift--a small leather-covered +book, upon whose yellowed pages appeared delicate and tendrillar +writing. In the Christmas sunlight he sat down to read it. + + _18th Decembr., 1775_--You being a Birthday Present, and I eighteen + this day, and so much of joyous Import crowding upon me, I do make + you my most sweet Intimate secret, little Book; and what I may tell + none else I shall set down within you. Haply some day I shall show + you to _Him_, saying, “Such and such you did and said, Sir, on such + and such a Day, when we two were young and first you knew you loved + me! See, herein I did set the record for you that be nearer to me + than mine own heart’s beating is!” + + These be grievous & troublous Times, like as, my Grandfather saith, + were prophesied of old by Jeremy the Jew. In despite of which I + cannot but be happy, for that _Anthony loves me_! O God, how good + Thou art, that lettest Anthony love me! + + Yestreen I met with him in the green lane behind our House. I wore my + brown stuff, for I bethought me he had said he ever liked russet upon + a white-skinned maid. And the heels of my new silken shoon are red, + and I thanked God I had had patience to crisp my hair. + + He was wondrous smart, in claret colour, being indeed but newly + returned from London. God never made a likelier man, nor one so + proper shaped. When in Holy Writ I read how that Jesse’s lad was + ruddy and of a beautiful countenance, how that Saul was comelier and + by the head and shoulders above all Israel, then thought I, these be + like Anthony! + + He dismounted and walk’d beside me, leading of his horse; and before + we turned out of the lane he had told me. Now what he said is printed + upon my heart. Nor could I set it elsewhere, not even to your pages, + little Book. I greatly Wish’d but Fear’d to say that ever had I lov’d + him, yea, even when I was but a child in pinafores. That will keep. + + Beside our Gate he kiss’d me, and this will I remember even when I am + old to heaven. Never shall I forget, not even if I be grown familiar + with the glory before the face of our God. + + * * * * * + + _24th Decmbr._--Christmas Eve, and we Crowd’d to the Rafters, & much + merrymaking. Anthony supp’d with us, and afterward drew my dear + Father aside and spoke with him of me. My Father cry’d ’twas but + yesterday I was a child a-learning of her horn-book at his knee; + we might be betroth’d; but must e’en bide a while before wedding, + for that the times are evil and War upon us. Then gather’d all the + company about us & much kissing of me, and teasing, but my dear + mother weeping. + + The men talk ever of War & how the land must be swept with a besom + ere ever Freedom come. But I bethink me how God is above all War; and + that Anthony loves me! + + * * * * * + + _5th Jany., 1776_--To Aunt Chatty’s to sup. No tea, but elegant + plumb-cake. I greatly fear Eliza is a _Jealous Thing_, for she + sniff’d most odious and catty & hop’d my fine gentleman, fresh from + Lunnon, trifl’d not “with thy young affections, child.” I recall now + that never did I love Eliza. An her husband--though I much doubt + she comes by one--ever beats her soundly, I shall die in the firm + faith she deserved it. Back in the tilbury with Anthony. Sure ’tis a + beautiful world, in spite of some Elizas in it. + + * * * * * + + _3rd Febry._--He is gone, he & my Father. War has taken them. I saw + him ride away from me and all my hope go with him; sure my soul + itself did follow him a-whimpering. He waved his hat for a last + farewell, and the sunlight was upon his beautiful countenance and his + black hair. + + I wish my father had allowed us to wed. O God, I am afraid! I am + afraid! + + * * * * * + + _1st March, 1777_--No word this many, many weeks. + + O God, remember me because of these nights! Weigh me in the balance + with these black hours and see if all the errours of a thousand years + could weigh equal with this, my misery! + + * * * * * + + _17th Octbr._--They have fallen. Both together. Marion hath sent a + letter full of kind words and praise. To my poor mother came my lov’d + and honour’d father’s last words, but for me only mine own little + likeness taken from Anthony’s breast. I know not if he had time to + send one last thought to meward. + + It has rain’d and rain’d and rain’d. And ever before me I see him + lying and the cold rain drenching his hair. + + Oh, what is left to me, what? My gentle Mother shames me with her + meek patience: _she_ saw her children cradled in my father’s arms. + But I--what of me? + + * * * * * + + _Midsummer, 1780_--They ever bid me remember, Anthony, that I am + still young and that many find me fair. They tell me ’tis not seemly + for Youth to cherish Grief so fondly, that I must e’en look up and + see in other eyes what once I saw in yours. They know me not, O my + love! + + * * * * * + + _Mayday, 1782_--To-day have I sat up for the first time, after my + long, long illness. Black Matty brought me at my bidding my litle + mirrour, blubbering, poor wench! For indeed I am greatly changed. + + It pains me, I being so sadly altered, to look upon those pictured + faces that are so smiling and so young. I am minded to lay those + pretty semblances of what once we were in the little recess above the + mantel, in that room which saw us Betroth’d. There shall they lie, + with this little Book I was minded once to show you, in coming years! + Alas, my heart! + + * * * * * + + _Octbr., 1782_--My own sweet love, in what I do know now to be + these my last few days, a something grows within me of presage + and of peace. I know that I shall find you, “For Love is strong + as Death.... Many Waters cannot quench Love, neither can the + floods drown it.” I do hold fast to that as to an anchor, and I am + comforted. For still shall I be I, and you, you. So O my own love, so + greatly lov’d, for a little space, good-bye! + +There was no further entry. Trescott laid aside the yellowed pages, +and opened the other half of the package. The girl herself smiled up +at him, brown-haired, brown-eyed, rose-lipped, a wilful cleft marking +her little chin. One saw on the blackened gold true lover’s knot, +which formed the loop of the picture, her initials--_L. K._ From the +other frame, most gallantly attired, young, clear-eyed, very grave and +beautiful, another Anthony Trescott looked hopefully. + +The hush that fell upon Trescott seemed to communicate itself to the +day itself. The very wind seemed to stand still in the cedars. Time +itself passed. Then, out of the heart of the holy silence, a girl +stepped, a girl all in brown, a motor bonnet swinging on her arm and +the sunlight full upon her shining hair. At sight of him sitting there +so sunk in revery, she stopped short. + +“Anthony Trescott!” she breathed. And he looked up of a sudden and met, +glance to glance, her intense and luminous regard. + +“Lydia--Why--Lydia!” he mumbled. Blackness swooped upon him as his +overwrought nerves snapped. + +He came to, to find his head upon the girl’s supporting arm. She +was fanning him with a brown motor bonnet--a perfectly enchanting, +expensive, ultra-modern motor bonnet. But Trescott had no eyes for +anything save the rose-lipped face. He stared at her unblinkingly. + +“Lydia,” said he, gravely. “I found it, dear, your Christmas present.” + +“I wish to gracious I’d brought Aunt’s smelling salts!” said she, +anxiously, and fell to fanning him more vigorously. + +“I thought,” said Trescott, sitting up, “that your message was all I +could expect. Lydia, I didn’t even dare to dream you would come. Oh, +you were right--beautiful things do happen at Christmas-time. For you +are here! Lydia, the wonder of it!” + +“But the wonderful thing isn’t that I’m here, but that I should really +and truly find you here, Mr. Trescott!” said she, puzzled. “I’m awfully +sorry I startled you so; you wouldn’t hear me coming, of course, with +all this dead grass about, and I was right upon you before you saw +me or I saw you, either. Then you called my name, almost as if you’d +expected me, Mr. Trescott!” she finished shyly. + +“How have you come, and why have you come, here of all places under +heaven, and to-day of all days in the year?” he wondered. + +A dimple danced into her cheek, and her eyes danced with it. + +“Why--I came, really and truly I came--on your account, Mr. Anthony +Trescott!” she said gaily. “Why do you look at me so strangely? It’s +very simple. Don’t you remember how in your own ‘The House of Their +Fathers’ you made _Regina_ visit, on a holy day, the house of her +ancestors, just to let the poor old faithful place know that she +cherished it? I thought it such a perfectly beautiful thing for Regina +to do, and I made up my mind I’d pay just such a visit to King House +one of these days. I’m one of the blood, you see: I was named for a +girl who used to live here. + +“It just happened that my aunt decided to motor over in her new car +for a Christmas dinner with her favorite nephew and his wife and their +brand-new baby that we haven’t seen yet. She made me promise to come +along. Poor dear, she has such a horror of motor cars I wonder she ever +trusts herself in one. We stop ever so often, because she has nerves if +a chicken runs across the road, or there’s a curve; or anything. She +insisted we must stop for lunch at the very hotel you’re putting up at. +They boasted of it, of course. You’ve no idea how I felt! Why, I’d +been thinking for days and days and days of visiting this old place; I +dreamed of it last night, and I woke up thinking of it this morning. +But I never dreamed I’d be lucky enough to run across you! It’s really +wonderful to find you here, now, isn’t it?” + +“Yes,” said Trescott, readily, “it is really wonderful, when one comes +to think about it.” + +“I knew you at sight, of course,” she said, thrilled and kindling. “You +see, I’ve read every sin-gle sol-i-ta-ry thing you’ve ev-er written! +And I’ve got a full dozen or more of your pictures, all cut out of +magazines and newspapers. Of course I know you! But oh, however did +you happen to be here, right now? It--it seems like a lovely, happy +miracle!” + +“Miracles,” Trescott informed her oracularly, “happen at +Christmas-time, which is exactly when they should happen. I may say +truthfully I came expecting to find you here too. And--here you are, +you see! And now will you please look at me directly and tell me, in +all truth, just exactly how Anthony Trescott appears to the eyes of +Lydia King?” + +The rose in her cheek deepened vividly. Flame leaped into her glance. +“Why, Mr. Trescott, I think you are marvelous--quite the most wonderful +person in the whole world!” she blurted out naïvely, then blushed more +deeply because of her own words. Nevertheless she kept his eyes bravely. + +“I remember,” she said, “the first day I ever read one of your books +and how it was like a voice I knew talking to me. And I remember the +first time I saw your picture. It--it jumped out of the page, and I +shut my eyes and counted ten before I could look at it again. Somehow +I’d known you were going to be like that, Mr. Trescott. Wasn’t it +curious? And I eat and drink your books and live with them, and dream +with them. I don’t very well see, then, how I could help thinking +you’re the most wonderful person alive--everybody else thinks so +too--or they should think so!” + +Praise, fulsome and flattering, praise critical, had been showered upon +Trescott in his time, but this clean glowing living understanding was +as deep calling unto deep. + +“We will dismiss ‘everybody else,’” he decided, “and consider only you +and me. Now sit down here beside me, for I have something to show you,” +and he laid the little book in her hand. + +She read, and the radiance died from her; the eyes she lifted to his +were too old and sad and wise for her young mouth, her child’s dimple. + +“I can hardly bear it!” she said in a stifled voice. + +Trescott smiled consolingly. “All over and done with, Lydia. For you +are here--and I also,” he reminded her, and put the two pictures, so +fresh and smiling, in her palm. + +She turned pearly white. “Why,--_they’re us_!” she gasped. They looked +at each other mutely. Then, in a low voice, he told her. + +“We seem to have been caring and waiting and hoping a long, long time, +don’t we, Lydia?” + +She sat very, very still, staring straight in front of her. And again +the wind ceased to move in the cedars, and over all the shining day +hung a waiting hush. Then, timidly, she put out her hand, and the man’s +closed upon it. + +“Anthony!” her voice broke a little. “Anthony, are you--quite sure?” + +“And you?” + +“I want you,” she said, “to take back my picture. And to give me yours +once more. That’s how sure I am!” She turned to him a face sweet with +trust, bright with faith. + +After a while, she roused herself from the dream into which, side by +side, both had fallen. + +“Hadn’t we better go?” she ventured. + +[Illustration: “I think it must have been just here that Anthony +Trescott kissed Lydia King”] + +“My aunt is getting ready for another fit of nerves, right now, I know +it! Come on, the car’s waiting down the road, and we can make the hotel +in half an hour.” + +They walked slowly, hand in hand; at the broken gate they stopped for a +moment. + +“I think it must have been just here,” he said, “that--that Anthony +Trescott--kissed Lydia King.” And he looked down at her. + +For a moment she hesitated; then youth, sheer dazzling joyous beautiful +youth, flashed into fire within her and swept her free of every vestige +of grief; a rosy finger flew to her lip and her eyes full of innocent +mischief smiled at him enchantingly. And, as his arms closed upon her, +“It’s--it’s a long, long time between kisses!” said Lydia King. + + + + +THE YOUNGEST OFFICER + + + + +THE YOUNGEST OFFICER + + +Junior’s consciousness of himself as an individual seems to have begun +upon the day when the major’s wife came out of his mother’s room, and, +finding him sitting lonesomely upon the stairs, sat down beside him and +gathered him into a tight embrace. + +“Kindy,” said he, kindly but insistently pressing a fat forefinger +against her cheek, “you’re k’yin’. What you k’yin’ ’bout, Kindy?” + +“Oh, precious little man!” murmured Mrs. Kennedy gulpingly. “And she so +young--and so beautiful--and so loved--and with you and the captain--” + +The three-year-old wriggled his sturdy little body out of her embrace +and got on his feet. His small shoulders straightened, a trick he had +from his father. His clear and questioning eyes refused to be evaded. +“Vey said,” he whispered, “’at she was goin’ ’way, Kindy. Is she goin’ +’way?” + +“Junior,” began the major’s wife miserably, “Junior--” + +“Is she goin’ ’way, Kindy?” + +The major’s wife began to weep then because she couldn’t help it. And +somehow Junior understood. His gaze widened. “Is she ’fwaid to go, +Kindy?” he wondered. + +“She--she--We haven’t told her, Junior,” quavered Mrs. Kennedy. She +beat her hands together softly, palm to palm. “We--we can’t tell her! +She--oh, my God!” + +Junior pondered. It was characteristic of him that he usually knew what +to do--and did it. Before Mrs. Kennedy could seize upon him again he +had reached his mother’s room, where his father stood with clenched +hands and a face stony with agony. The colonel’s wife, a stout old +lady, sat in a chair, all in a pale heap. A doctor, compassionately +professional, conferred in a low voice with a nurse who held a +hypodermic syringe. The chaplain, with his face in his cupped hands, +prayed in a trembling whisper. + +Junior paid no attention to these, but trotted up to the bed and took +his young mother’s limp hand in his own warm moist fingers. “Poo’ +Muzzer,” he cooed. “Darlin’ Muzzer, ’peak to Duny.” + +The great tragic eyes opened. Wanly she tried to smile. + +Junior’s warm pressure tightened comfortingly. “Mustn’t be ’fwaid,” he +told her sweetly, while the helpless grown-ups watched him. “Booful +Muzzer, mustn’t be ’fwaid to go ’way.” + +“Am I--going away?” she murmured. + +Junior kept his steady baby glance on hers and nodded. + +For a moment a spasm quivered across her face, and her eyes sought help +piteously; for she was very, very young. Then her eyes came back to +Junior’s, and, as if they had found what they sought, stayed there. + +“Nothin’ to be ’fwaid of, sweetie Muzzer. Nothin’ to be ’fwaid of,” +said he, repeating in her hour of stress the lessons her simple faith +had taught him. “Dust teep tight hol’ on my han’ an’ go sleepy. It’ll +be all light then.” + +She smiled again, more faintly but without a trace of fear. And so, +clinging to her baby’s hand, she went to sleep. It was “all light then.” + +The major’s wife took the little hand gently away from Junior’s. To his +mind his mother had simply gone to the “lovely country”; she had told +him so herself. So she stayed in his memory, becoming in time shadowy +but very real and vital. And she left him, as a legacy, her love for +his father. + + * * * * * + +The post mothered Junior, from the woman who washed his rompers to the +colonel’s wife, who did her best to spoil him. And every man in the +regiment was his sworn blood brother, whom he knew from the soul to the +shoe straps. He, as it were, embodied in his gallant little person the +esprit de corps of the army. + +An education like Junior’s affects one very materially. When you know +that your great-grandfather fell at Malvern Hill and your grandfather +at El Caney, that your own, ownest daddy bears scars from San Juan--and +all in the service, in the same old regiment--why, you get a sense +of personal responsibility. The service looms very largely upon your +perspective. You learn to carry your head up, your eyes level, your +chin out, your back straight; to fight fair and to hit hard, and to +look every man in the eye. And you must never, never, never forget that +always and in all circumstances you’re an officer and a gentleman. +You’ve got to live up to yourself and the service. + +Life was immensely interesting and livable. Junior didn’t know that the +word “unhappiness” existed until orders came for the regiment to go +into exile. In construing the word “unhappiness,” however, one learns +to estimate the value of its twin-sister word “duty.” + +“Orders,” said the captain, looking very hard at Junior, “are to be +obeyed, without whimpering.” + +Junior brought his hand to his forehead, sat stiffly erect, and used +all his endeavor to keep his chin from quivering. He did wink and he +did gulp a little, but on the whole his behavior was a credit to the +regimental system of instruction for a small boy who is going to be +a soldier himself some day--and he knew it. This helped further to +stiffen his backbone. + +“Yes, sir,” he agreed gravely. + +“My orders,” said the captain, “mean that I must leave you, Junior. +Your orders are to stay at home and be a credit to us. You’re the +youngest officer, you know, and you’ve got to represent us older +fellows. That’s a man-sized job; but I think you can hold it down, +don’t you?” + +Junior considered. “I can try mighty hard to, sir,” said he, still more +erect. + +The big captain reached out a long arm and caught up the little son. He +spoke with his face against the soft light hair: “You see, I’d have to +be sending you away from me pretty soon anyhow, Junior. You shouldn’t +be tagging around from post to post, half the time thick as thieves +with rookies. The women--God bless ’em!--have been so good that you +haven’t fared badly. But you ought to have a regular home. I know it. +Only--since your mother left us--I couldn’t bear to part with you. I +couldn’t bear to make you do without me, either. We’re all we’ve got, +you know, old chap.” + +The little boy’s arm tightened about his father’s neck. + +“I’d like to send you to my old school, to put you in training for +the Point. But I can’t do it yet, son. That’ll come later. Just now +I’d rather you’d be at home with somebody that’s kin to you. So I’ve +written your Great-Aunt Lydia, and she’ll come for you. I think she’ll +be glad to have you. I think she’s going to love you a lot as soon as +she knows you. You’re pretty decent, Youngest Officer,--thank God! +Anybody’d love you, let alone my good old aunt. And now--I’m going to +give you something, little son.” + +He took from his breast pocket a light, fine gold chain from which +swung a little flat locket. When you pressed a spring it was as if a +tiny golden door opened to reveal an angel--so lovely, so pure, so +tender the face within. The captain kissed it with reverence, then he +pulled back Junior’s collar and clasped the little chain about his neck. + +“You’re to wear this locket and chain,” said his father, “day and +night. It’s your talisman. You’re to remember that she’s with you; +proud and happy when you win out, Junior, sad and sorry when you +fail. Why, boy, you’re her son! You’ve got to live up to her and the +regiment. Don’t you ever forget that, my son. And--just hold on to me +tight for a while, old chap, won’t you?” + + * * * * * + +In the days that followed it seemed to Junior that his pleasant world +was disintegrating. Faces that were as his landmarks vanished. Always +sad and tired, his father’s eyes were now heavy with the pain of +parting. Somehow as he clung silently to the big brown hand the little +boy’s mind went straight back to that day when another hand--a small +cold hand--had been taken from his clinging fingers. But he hadn’t +been trained militarily for nothing. He kept his chin up and he didn’t +cry--at least not until after lights were out. + +A tall, thin, stately old woman came presently. Daddy called her “Aunt +Lydia” and kissed her withered cheek with real affection and respect. +He, too, had lived at her house when he was a little boy. She held +Junior firmly by the hand when the train pulled out and took the +Youngest Officer away from his regiment and his captain. + +Now when you’ve been raised on a gun barrel, as it were, and your +rising up and your lying down have been at the bugle’s call, and +everybody from your colonel down calls you “Son” and loves you like +one, why, it’s rather like pulling you up by the roots--without +water--to plump you of a sudden in a calm, still, old New England +town with a calm, still, old New England lady who hasn’t been used to +a little boy for perfect ages, and the nearest soldiers those in the +grass-grown cemetery. + +Aunt Lydia was painfully just and kind. You saw her see her duty and +do it. She had a way of fixing her eyes upon you and drawing her +lips together and saying in a missionary-to-the-heathen voice: “Good +Heavens! This child’s been allowed to run perfectly wild! Those awful +men! Oh, this must be seen to at once!” And it was. + +Junior learned to close doors with terrifying gentleness, because +it seemed to Aunt Lydia a heinous thing to have them shut with the +slightest healthy slam. No; properly raised children open and shut +doors gingerly, as if, say, the doorknobs were loaded and might go +off; and they enter a room with becoming meekness of demeanor. Junior +also learned never, never to rush into the house. He wasn’t really +inclined to rush into the house, anyhow. When he had done so it was +only half-heartedly, just to pretend that there was something to rush +to. He learned to slide punctually into his place at table at one +minute to six, dinner being served on the stroke, and to sit through +the meal silently, being as silently served. This at first brought +poignant comparisons of gay riots with Mrs. Lieutenant’s frolicsome +four, and allowance of dessert with Mr. Lieutenant--sometimes with the +chaplain, sometimes with the fat, jolly major, always with Daddy. In +time, however, one becomes accustomed to everything, even to silence +at table. Aunt Lydia wrote to Daddy, cautiously admitting that the boy +was well-behaved, truthful, and hardly any trouble at all. Which is +praise indeed from a maiden lady. + +Next to his father’s letters Junior’s greatest solace, friend, and +help was old McAndrews, who lived in two fascinating rooms over the +stable and managed Miss Lydia’s comfortable estate--and Miss Lydia. +There existed between these two a curious friendship. McAndrews, Junior +thought, was the oldest person alive. When Miss Lydia’s bedtime chapter +had been fifth Genesis Junior had glanced rather uneasily at McAndrews, +who seemed to him actually to visualize those long-lived gentlemen +whose many years Aunt Lydia was sonorously enumerating. + +All of a ripe eighty, with a hale, ruddy face framed in a New England +snow of beard, McAndrews had known every Palmer born for three +quarters of a century. What tales of them he told Junior! Some of them +sailors, some of them soldiers, all of them men of action. Junior’s +Daddy was in his memory as a little boy, a youngster fresh from West +Point, a big brown fellow home from Cuba. And oh, more wonderful than +all, he had known Junior’s mamma, for she had lived within a few miles +of this self-same little town! She was, he said, the most beautiful +girl in the world. Even yet his voice broke a little when he talked +about her. + +He used to take Junior by the hand and go trudging over the +country-side in heavenliest rambles. Every house called for a history +in detail, until once they passed a fine old place set back from the +road, embowered among many elms, and McAndrews, pausing, glowered at it +silently. He hadn’t intended to take Junior by the Holcomb house, and +he was angry with himself. + +“What a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful place!” said Junior, attracted +by the old mansion and its magnificent trees. + +“Aye!” snarled McAndrews. + +“I wish,” said Junior, “that I could climb up in those trees, +McAndrews, or roll in the grass beneath them. I like how this place +looks. Whose house is it?” + +“That,” said the old man after a pause, “is the Holcomb house. And,” he +added, shaking his stick at it, “if it hadn’t belonged to an old devil +it might have sheltered a young angel. That door’s closed to you and +your father, boy; it was closed against your mother.” + +McAndrews trudged along in grim silence for a while, and Junior, too, +had no words. His heart was beating fast. His mother had lived there +in that place! But why had those doors been closed against her and him +and Daddy? Junior couldn’t understand. Nobody at the post had ever told +him anything about her, save that she was very young and very, very +lovely. But of a sudden, as if he thought the little boy should know, +McAndrews began to tell him more. + +She had been a great heiress, McAndrews said--that is, very, very rich. +Her papa and mamma had been very vain and proud of her, and they had +planned that she was to make what is called a great marriage: that is, +they wanted her to marry a man they knew who wished to marry her--a man +who had millions of dollars. But she had laughed and shaken her head. + +Then came the Captain from El Caney, with a wounded leg and a great +grief upon him because of the gallant old father he had left behind. +Everybody had been nice to him and had been proud of the handsome young +man; but the nicest and proudest of all had been the most beautiful +girl in the world. + +“Because,” said McAndrews, “those two just were made to love each +other. They couldn’t help it.” + +But when the captain went to Aaron Holcomb to ask for the most +beautiful girl there had been a terrible to-do. They said he shouldn’t +have her; they said he wasn’t anything but a poor soldier with nothing +but his pay; they said she’d have to choose between nothing but a +soldier and them; and that she would have to marry another man, anyhow. +Then she had put her hand in the captain’s and chosen him. Neither +her father nor her mother had ever looked upon her face again, nor +named her name, nor given any sign when she wrote to tell them about +the little boy that presently came to live with her and the captain. +They hadn’t even given a sign when they were told that she had left +the little boy and the soldier. So the little boy really hadn’t any +grandparents, you understand. In the place that should have been his +they had put a little great-grand-niece, who was to get all that was +theirs. + +“Ah!” said McAndrews angrily, “how could anybody think of casting out +an angel, and a soldier, and a little chap that was an honor to their +blood?” Moved out of himself, he dove into his pocket and gave Junior +his own treasured clasp-knife--for keeps! + +That night when Junior opened the little locket he kissed with a +deeper tenderness her girlish face. And somehow, as if she had gently +whispered it into his soul, he began to be sorry for that sad, bad old +man and woman who had turned away from her and couldn’t ever call her +back again. + +Junior couldn’t say that he was actually unhappy at Miss Lydia’s; she +was too really just and kind to make anybody truly unhappy. But he was +horribly lonely at times. He missed, as little boys do so acutely, just +lovingness. He couldn’t actually put it into words, you know; but he +wanted people to do things for him because they loved him and wanted +to, not because it was their duty. + +There were many lessons and much studying to catch up, for Miss Lydia +said the child’s education had been, to say the least, peculiar and +irregular. Miss Lydia only knew some of the things Junior didn’t know; +she couldn’t guess the many fine and tender and beautiful lessons the +regiment had taught him, because she was a reticent old lady and Junior +a shy little boy. + +With the first snows and the red sled McAndrews had bought for him +things picked up. He was getting along fairly well in the mazes of +modern learning. He hadn’t done anything that the regiment would blush +for. He had had, too, a few good gallant fights, in which he had borne +himself like a man of his hands, thereby winning the enthusiastic +friendship of those whom he had “licked.” Also just outside of the +small town was a particular hill high enough and breakneck enough to +satisfy even the most ardent little boy’s desire for thrills, and a +pond big enough to hold a whole townful of skaters. Junior began to +think that life, even outside of the post, may be pleasant enough--in +spots. + +It was on the rather lonesome road leading to the pond that Junior +fell in with the Fairy at the close of a particularly freezing day. +The Fairy was obviously out of her element, but was just as obviously +delighted with the fact. Floundering waist-deep in drifts had draggled +her line furbelows; for she was most gorgeously “got up,” as a fairy +should be. One mitten had gone, leaving bare a little hand turned +purple from the cold. Under her furred cap her eyes were dancingly, +gaily blue,--almost as bravely, steadily blue as Junior’s. Escaped in +many an ensnaring curl, her hair was of an indescribably bright gold. +At sight of Junior and his sled she gave a squeak of delight, holding +out both hands. + +Her name, she said, was Ga’sie. His? Oh, just Junior. Junior was really +hungry to have somebody call him that again. Aunt Lydia wouldn’t. +She disapproved of it. She said it wasn’t a name, it was a sort of +appellation. But Junior thought it brought the post and the colonel and +the major and the rookies and Daddy a little nearer. Somehow it made +him feel as if it were not himself, but some other little boy, when +people addressed him as “Bruce Palmer.” The Fairy, however, accepted +“Junior” beamingly. Only, as he himself had once done, she called it +“Duny.” Duny began to adore her right then. + +He knew that the proper thing was to put her on his sled and haul her +home; but this she brought to naught by not knowing where home might +be. Junior at her bidding put her on his sled and hauled her about the +pond, wrapping her bare little hand in his own larger mitten. They had +a beautiful time, for never was a fairy more graciously delightful to a +little boy hungry for one. + +Junior was sorry when a giant in livery dashed, panting, out of the +growing gloom and swooped upon the Fairy with exclamations of joy and +reproach. Not a word of gratitude was bestowed upon Junior; nothing +but a growling threat against bad boys that helped runaways. + +“Duny finded me, nas’y man!” shrieked the Fairy, kicking with all the +force of her short legs. “I tummin’ ’den, Duny! Doo’-by! Doo’-by!” + +Junior went home rather unwillingly. There wasn’t anybody there to play +with nor to snuggle against. Under the bleak gray sky, in the fading +light, Miss Lydia’s square brick house looked squarer and brickier than +ever; it didn’t look a bit warm and welcoming, but rather as if it +thrust out angular elbows to push one away. And the Fairy had been so +like Mrs. Lieutenant’s youngest that it made Junior’s eyes smart. If +crying weren’t “cowardy custardy” he could have cried copiously; but +the regiment discourages sniffling. + +As it was he was a full seven minutes late for dinner, which waited +coldly for him, Miss Lydia rigidly resigned in her high-backed chair. +She didn’t say one word; she just looked at the clock and then at +Junior. And the clock spoke up for her: “Sev-en min-utes late for +din-ner! Sev-en min-utes late for din-ner!” The little boy’s ears +burned. + +He didn’t mention the Fairy. He had never even mentioned the pond +itself. Miss Lydia had a fashion of worriedly wrinkling her brows, +pursing her lips, and asking aloud: “Should that child be allowed to +run about so much by himself? Is that pond”--or that hill, or that +road, or that anything else--“perfectly safe? Perhaps, Bruce, you would +better stay within calling distance of the house to-day.” + +Within calling distance of the house was out of calling distance of +any reasonable diversion. Junior didn’t want to stay away from the +pond. She hadn’t said he couldn’t go, but then she might, after the +unaccountable fashion of grown-ups. Junior wisely held his peace. + +For instance, he had been forbidden by McAndrews to go down the big +road curving by the Holcomb house. So although he desired above all +things to see the place where his mother had played as a little girl, +he didn’t go. + +He had, too, an almost fearful curiosity to see those two who had lost +her. In his short experience everybody had been kind, so he couldn’t +believe that unkind and naughty folks can look just like ordinary +people. No, indeed. You can always tell the witch by her long nose and +her curved chin and her fierce eyes; and the ogre usually has sharp and +bloody teeth, hasn’t he? + +His mother became to his mind like one of those beautiful and charming +princesses who are detained by a wicked king and queen, but who escape +and ride away on the crupper of the prince’s big black steed. And, +despite his fear of the old king and queen whom she had left, Junior +wanted to see that house in which she had grown up. + +The place, he learned later, was open. The old king and queen were +staying there that winter, after an absence of years. Distant +cousins, nephews, nieces, and their wives and husbands and children +filled up the many big rooms, for they were to spend Christmas there. +Preparations for that great event were already under way on a huge +scale. Sleighs full of noisy, laughing folks dashed by Miss Lydia’s +house; wagons loaded with crates and bales and bundles went to and fro. +But the little boy who was the lost princess’s son flattened his small +nose against Miss Lydia’s diamond-paned windows, watched them wistfully +and had no place in their thoughts, their merrymakings or their hearts. +His very existence was quite as effectually ignored as it had always +been. But, somehow, keeping faith with his mother’s sweetness, Junior +didn’t feel ill treated or resentful; he only felt sorry. + +“Poor things!” he said to her at night, “they haven’t got you any more; +and Daddy and I have.” + +Because of a slight cold he had been strictly kept indoors of late, +and it palled upon him who was by nature free. If there had been any +small folks to keep him company he wouldn’t have minded so much, but +there wasn’t anybody. And oh, how he wanted to go out and find that +fairy again! + +Aunt Lydia, as she said herself, wasn’t much of a hand for visiting. +She sent you fine clear jellies and flaky bread and cake and spicy +pickles and steaming broths by way of neighborliness, but she never +seemed to give you herself. So she wasn’t what you’d call really +sociable. People didn’t drop in to see Aunt Lydia and bring the +children and stay for tea. Good gracious, no! When they called they sat +stately on the horsehair parlor sofa, and pretended to be thawed out by +the frosty fire which had just been kindled, and talked about church +work, district visitin’ and the Woman’s Auxiliary. Junior thought at +first that this latter was something to wear; later he decided that +it was something akin to the rheumatism which stiffened Aunt Lydia’s +fingers, or the everlasting cold which made Mrs. Pepper’s voice like a +crow’s. It was uninteresting, however, anyway you looked at it. Junior +usually managed by polite degrees to slide out of the room. Once when +he had closed the door gently upon half an hour of Auxiliary he had met +the cat in the hall and promptly kicked her. This was one act for which +Junior afterward blushed. The cat got sleek on tidbits covertly fed to +her by way of expiation. + + * * * * * + +Just before Christmas, the weather being then mild, Aunt Lydia +pronounced Junior’s cold cured and set him free. She was very busy with +Christmas cakes herself just then. + +Junior made straight for the pond. Because of the thaw, the ice, +although not actually dangerous, was pretty thin in spots, and Junior +avoided these spots carefully. He knew that recklessness isn’t +bravery. When it comes down to risking your life--for other people’s +safety--why, you’ve just got to take it in your ten fingers and risk +it, that’s all. That’s the code. Otherwise you keep yourself in trust +and you are careful. + +Over on the farther shore, under the shadow of the trees, the ice was +still thick and firm, and Junior flew up and down this shore until his +blood tingled joyously. The rapid flight made him almost forget for a +few minutes how horribly he wanted his Daddy, to hear him speak, to +hold his hand. Christmas had always been so gay at the post; this year +he was away from the regiment, and it came bitterly hard. + +After a while he sat down, and, chin in hand, wondered about his +captain ’way over in the Philippines. Oh, wasn’t he missing Junior, +just as Junior was aching for him? And wasn’t he, too, feeling “all by +himself”? A big, big lump grew and grew and grew in the little boy’s +throat. You do miss people terribly just about Christmas-time, you +know. Despite pride and the regiment’s scorn of a cry-baby a full +half-dozen extra-sized tears ran bitingly down his cold cheeks. + +And just then there fell upon his shoulder a small, light, friendly +hand. + +“What you k’yin’ ’bout, Duny?” demanded the Fairy, thrusting the little +hand comfortingly into his. “Darlin’ Duny, don’t you k’y!” Of her own +accord she put up her rosy mouth and kissed him roundly. Junior didn’t +say a word. He couldn’t. But he put his arms about her warm little body +and snuggled her. She felt like a plaster upon his sore heart. + +“Wanted to see you, Duny,” she said placidly, stroking his cheek. +“Ga’sie love Duny. ’Nen I yunned and yunned and yunned. Dot nas’y +Fräulein!” And she fetched a great sigh as if from a deeply afflicted +bosom; but her expression was so impish that Junior laughed aloud and +hugged her again. + +A stout young woman broke through the screen of bushes behind them, +panting and indignant. + +“_Ach_, thou naughty one! _Himmel_, but I have this day run!” she +gurgled. “Leave the boy and come away instantly.” + +The Fairy turned into the Fury. Down came the small foot, stamping; the +mittened hands doubled, the face grew raging. + +“I tummed to fin’ Duny. I want Duny. Duny take me home. You go ’way!” + +But the Fräulein advanced, stretching out a determined hand. + +“Shall thy mother and thy rich uncle ask for thee, naughty one, and I +answer that I left thee in the forest with a strange wild one of these +parts?” she demanded. + +The Fairy backed off warily. In a second she was in full flight, flying +toward those danger signals in the center of the pond--signals which +meant nothing to her. And Junior, with an eagle swoop, flew after +her; but the Fairy was like one of her own elfin race and evaded his +clutching fingers, ignored his warning cries. + +Just beyond the second pole she slipped, slid forward a few feet, the +thin ice crackling under her. Then the ice tipped and her bright head +disappeared. Junior found himself staring horror-stricken into the +black hole which had swallowed her. He waited for her to reappear, but +there wasn’t even a ripple on the surface of the black water which hid +her. + +Sheer panic came upon him and by the very newness and terror of the +sensation he realized that for the first time in his life he was +scared, just plain scared. He was but nine. He wasn’t a particularly +good swimmer; even if he had been, one can’t swim under ice. There +wasn’t a rope nor any help near save the German woman screeching to +Heaven in her own tongue. + +And then Junior remembered the regiment. Why, he held the honor of +the old regiment in the hollow of his hand! It was just as if he’d +heard his captain’s voice: “... the Youngest Officer ... representing +us older fellows....” And the face in his locket! His heart fell to +beating naturally. Off came skates, cap, shoes, jacket. Junior, with +his eyes wide open, disappeared after the Fairy. + +One wouldn’t think that water could be so cold--so alive, as it were. +It seemed to Junior as he went under, groping for the child, that the +water had gripping fingers that caught at him, trying to hold him down. + +There wasn’t much trouble in getting the Fairy, who had stayed down. +The only trouble was to get her back to the opening--and the ice was so +thin just there--and the water was above his head-- + +A million years marched over Junior’s head before he got it above +water, dragging the limp child up with him. With one hand he held her, +chin just above the surface; with the other he tried to hold on to the +edge of the ice. His choking cry was answered by a longer, louder, +shriller scream from the governess, a piercing cry that brought a +flying sleigh to a standstill a hundred yards down the road and sent +its two men occupants running toward the sound. + +The Fairy was unconscious then, and heavier than lead in Junior’s +numbing grip. He barely managed to hold on. He doesn’t remember how +they pulled him out of those icy fingers which seemed to hold him. He +heard shouts; saw, as it were, a flash of fire before his eyes; felt +himself go, and then darkness came upon him. + +Along with the Fairy he was bundled into the sleigh and rushed to a +house, whither doctors were wildly summoned, and a great hush fell upon +joyous Christmas preparations. + +[Illustration: He tried to hold on] + +Not a soul in his mother’s house knew him who should have been best +known and loved of all. They only knew that this strange child had at +the risk of his life saved little Grace’s, and a sense of gratitude +sent Mrs. Holcomb herself to the room where he had been brought. +She helped to remove his soaked and icy garments. She noticed then the +locket at his sturdy throat, and later, while the others were working +upon him, she took off the locket to see if by chance it might inform +her who he was. + +Just as she smiled at Junior nightly, when he kissed her before he +went to sleep, so the little lost Princess smiled now, tenderly, +exquisitely, in her mother’s face. + +The woman staggered; but she was a proud old woman, so she didn’t +scream aloud. Only, in a bound she was back by the bed, and all pale +and trembling looked down at her child’s child, and wondered why she +hadn’t known him at once. Oh, great and terrible link of Love, that +Time and Death might weaken but could not break! She knew him for blood +of her blood; she wanted to snatch up his beautiful unconscious body in +her arms, as if through him she might touch once more that other one. +It was as if God had drawn back a curtain and let her see the result +of her own pride and folly; as if his lost mother’s shadowy shape stood +beside him and looked at her and reproached her for what had befallen +him. + +She gave a great cry at that and ran out of the room, with Junior’s +“talisman” in her hand. With a stirred and pale face she came up to her +husband, who, seated in the hall, waited for news of little Grace. + +“Is Grace--” he began, alarmed at sight of her pallor. But she shook +her head impatiently. Grace was--Grace--dear and beloved of course, but +the other child was _hers_. + +“The little boy!” she gasped. “Aaron, Aaron--the little boy! Come, come +at once!” And she dragged him to his feet. + +Wondering if her mind were shaken he followed. + +Junior was just giving faint signs of life under the doctor’s hand. His +thick light hair fluffed about his forehead in the curls he hated, and +his black lashes showed the marble of his cheek. But the brave little +face was one which a whole fighting regiment adored. + +“Coming around now. But he’s had a tussle for it, the brave little +chap! Must have the grit of a man to hold out as long as he did,” +mumbled the doctor. + +But the old lady paid no attention to the doctor. She just dropped on +her knees by the bed and took Junior’s hand in hers and kissed it. +She had ten years’ tears to shed, and they burst over the child in a +terrible flood. + +The old man sank into a chair, his knees giving way beneath him. He +didn’t need to look into the locket thrust into his hand; he knew too +well whose unforgotten face looked out of its small gold door. So he +looked instead at the face on the pillow, a face to make any father +glad and proud. Presently the slow and awful tears of an old man who +has done wrong, and suffers for it, crawled into his eyes. + +He and his wife were still with Junior when McAndrews, stern and +bitter, and Miss Lydia, in tears, came to demand the captain’s son. +Even the grief and remorse that met him couldn’t quite soften McAndrews. + +“Give us the boy and let us go,” said McAndrews. + +But the old lady kneeling beside Junior tightened her clasp. “Take him +away from us? Now?” she asked. + +“And why not now when he’s naught to you?” asked McAndrews. For he was +touched to the heart about the lad, and angry and sore against these +people. “This roof,” he said stoutly, “is no place for the captain’s +son to bide under. He’s needin’ no care from them that never had aught +to give him, not even Christian kindness. Sir and Ma’am, keep you your +gold and your pride, and her you’ve put in his place and that he’s +given back to you. You’re welcome to them all. Miss Lydia and I, that +love him, will take and keep our little lad.” + +The old man sitting sorrowfully beside the bed lifted his face and met +Miss Lydia’s gaze. All the pride and hardness had gone, leaving him +what he was in reality--a sad and sorry old man, lonely in his age and +his gray hairs. + +“I am glad--that you have at least seen him; that he has been able to +render you so great a service,” said Miss Lydia, proudly. “Oh, such +a good, brave, gallant little soldier! It may ease your burden to +know him as he is--a credit to his father’s name--and to his mother’s +memory.” + +McAndrews blew his nose fiercely then to conceal his feelings, and said +grumpily: “Let us take the child and go.” + +But the doctor wouldn’t have it. He said McAndrews was a crazy old man +who talked as if he wanted to kill the child outright, after all the +trouble they’d had to pull him through. + +When Junior woke up a brand-new, sun-bright, glittering day was getting +the earth ready for Christmas. But never in his life had Junior felt +so weak and tired as he did that morning. If it hadn’t been that a +strange new room caught his attention at once--and he a most curious +and observant little boy, bound to investigate everything new--he’d +have snuggled under the covers and gone right back to sleep. + +Miss Lydia, however, had seen his eyes open and she spoke to him. +Her face wore a brand-new, sun-bright look too--a sort of unlocked, +doors-open look. She kissed him as if she’d been waiting to do it a +long time and was glad to have the chance, and she called him “Junior” +in a tone that widened his eyes. + +Over Miss Lydia’s shoulder came two other faces: both old, both gray, +both sad and loving and entreating; both begging with their eyes for +Junior to look at them and be friends. They seemed nice old people, he +thought. The old man now--there was something in that old man’s hungry, +grim, stern, loving face that called to something just like it ’way +down deep in Junior. + +“Why, he’s better, thank God! He’s all right! He’s all right!” said the +old man, and his eyes went right on claiming Junior. + +But Junior was just then remembering things. Then came his first +words--the words of a youngest officer. “Is--is the Fairy all right?” +he asked anxiously. + +“I suppose,” said the old man, smiling, “that you mean our little +Gracie. Oh, yes, she’s all right this morning, thanks to you.” + +Junior’s hand went right up to the locket that had been replaced +about his throat. He gave a sigh of satisfaction; he knew that she’d +understand and be pleased. + +“Oh, darling child!” said the old lady. “You have been so brave.” + +Junior blushed a little, remembering that he had been frightened. + +“Why, you have to,” he said simply. “You’re scared, you know; but you +mustn’t stop for that. _She’d_ feel pretty bad; and--there’s the +regiment.” + +“The regiment?” The old man’s brows bunched, but he looked at the +little man with a great and growing pride; the pride, say, of an old +lion for a particularly promising cub. + +“Ours,” explained the youngest officer and gentleman in it. “My +grandfather’s, who died at El Caney; my father’s and mine.” + +“I see,” said the old man, thoughtfully. “I’d like, sir,” he added +respectfully, “to shake hands with you. For the regiment, you know.” + +Junior got it the other way about. His mother’s own sunshiny smile +broke over his face and he put out a frank hand. But he couldn’t +understand why this old man should hold his hand so long and so tight, +nor why Aunt Lydia and the other old lady should turn aside their +heads, nor why tears should run down the old man’s cheeks. Also he +wished they’d tell him where he was and how he got there, and who they +were that seemed to claim him. + +“My head,” he explained, “got sort of twirly and I can’t remember just +how I came here. Would you mind telling me, sir?” + +“This,” said the old man, and his eyes seemed to bore right through +Junior, “is the Holcomb house. My name is Aaron Holcomb, and that lady +there is my wife.” And he drew her forward to stand beside him. + +Astonishment and open disbelief struggled in Junior’s face. Why, this +was a _nice_ old man; and one might very, very easily love this old +lady. It simply couldn’t be these people who had driven “her” away! + +“Aren’t there,” he wanted to know hopefully, “two Aaron Holcombs? Isn’t +there another one--not like you?” + +The old man winced, for he couldn’t help reading in the child’s face +the meaning of that question. “No,” said he gravely, “there is just +one--myself.” + +“Oh, no!” protested Junior. “Not you! You--you don’t look like +_that_!--either of you!” + +So they stared at each other. And presently the child nodded, reaching +right down to the secretest bottom of that proud old heart. “I think,” +he said sweetly, “that you must have been awfully sorry and sad and +ashamed after you’d let her go. Because, you know, you couldn’t get her +back ever any more.” + +Aaron Holcomb flung out his hands with a groaning cry. “I was!” he +whispered. “I am! I am!” But his old wife came and took his arm. + +“Don’t you think,” she said to Junior, “that you’d like to stay with +us, little grandson? We want you so much; and maybe--after a while, +dear--you’d even grow to love us.” + +Junior considered. He liked these two old people already; they weren’t +in the least ogreish, but on the contrary very, very pleasant to look +at. He wanted to stay in his mother’s old home; he rather thought she’d +like him to stay there. But if he left Miss Lydia and McAndrews, who +had been so kind to him, wouldn’t the regiment think he’d flunked? +Would the regiment approve? + +Miss Lydia herself settled the matter out of hand. “I have a piece of +Christmas news for you, Junior,” she said, with a very tender smile. +“Your father’s coming home on leave of absence--soon. And until he +comes I think you’d better stay right here and get acquainted with your +grandparents. Then you can _both_ stay with me.” + +“All right!” said Junior, rather sleepily. + +“He’s going to stay, Aaron. We can have him!” said his grandmother, and +she bestowed upon Miss Lydia a look full of gratitude. + +“And play with the Fairy. I love the Fairy,” said Junior, more +drowsily. His eyelids couldn’t stay open; he went to sleep. + +With immense pride and tenderness his grandfather bent over him. +Delicately he moved the fair head on the pillow and touched the ruffled +hair. Then he laid his hand on his wife’s shoulder and kissed her as he +hadn’t kissed her since the Princess went away. + +“Bone of our bone, Jenny, flesh of our flesh,” he said. “My +grandson--my little grandson!” He bent over and kissed Junior, and his +wife and Miss Lydia knew he was kissing Junior’s mother then too. + +Even McAndrews, who had come to see his lad, hadn’t a word to say. + +“Give me his father’s address, Miss Lydia,” the grandfather said +presently. “I’m going to cable my son to come home to us. And now you +women clear out. Jenny, you’re to fix--_her_ room for my grandson. +Miss Lydia, won’t you please help us to get his Christmas tree ready? +Sit down in the library and write out a list of the things you think +he might like--you help her, McAndrews, please. We’re to have the +big-best Christmas ever, Miss Lydia. Why, I want the whole town to come +here Christmas night and welcome my boy home.” He sat down and waved +his stick at them to leave him. + +As they went out McAndrews grudgingly held forth his hand. “_I_ loved +him before _you_ ever clapped an eye upon him,” he said, surlily. + +But Aaron Holcomb only shook his head. “That’s why I have to sit here +and get acquainted with him,” he said. “You see, he was born nine years +old to me. Besides, he might wake up and want something, and I’ve got +to pray, McAndrews, that that something’ll be me.” + + + + +LINDEN GOES HOME + + + + +LINDEN GOES HOME + + +Over the entire region, through which distracted beings wandered +like lost souls, there hung by day a column of smoke and by night a +pillar of fire. A calamity that one named Sherman--a vast, awful blue +thundercloud edged with crooked, bright gleams of bayonets--spread from +Atlanta to the sea. + +Everybody was running; one’s destination did not seem to make much +difference, so long as it happened to be somewhere else. Then when one +reached somewhere else, folks were flying from there, too; so that +women and young children and old men and scared negro servants milled +around in a horrid circle of fear. + +When her fleeing friends besought the little lady in black--not alone +for her own sake--to leave lone “Linden,” just off the Hardeeville +Road, she shook her head with the obstinacy of the meek. Wherefore they +went their ways and left her. + +“I feel,” she remarked presently to old Cindy, “I feel as if I were +the only person left in the big, empty, lost world the day after the +Day of Judgment. Everything’s happened that could happen; everything’s +finished and done with.” + +What she really meant was that _he_ had fallen. Understanding this, +Cindy reached over and soothingly patted her hand. + +Only the master and mistress had never been afraid of Cindy; they had +always been kind to the gruesomely ugly old African. Cindy remembered; +and now that the other negroes had gone like chaff before the wind, and +the little desolate lady needed immediate help, Cindy marched unasked +up to the Big House and took capable charge. + +So long as Cindy stayed in the Big House, no negro would willingly +cross its threshold. _Cindy was obi._ Dowered with evil power, in +the dark she dug baleful roots, and with these and the fearsome +“swamp-puppy,” cast spells and talked with h’ants. Her very appearance +inspired terror. She was nearly six feet tall, though age had somewhat +stooped her broad shoulders, and under her black turban her head was +quite bald. Her little red eyes were so deep-set that one felt rather +than saw their snake-bright glitter. From her blue gums (_blue-gummed +negroes are poison; if one should bite you, you would die_) projected +canine teeth of incredible length. When Cindy drew back her withered +lips, and her face, with its wrinkled forehead, and enormous nostrils, +twitched in silent laughter, one wished to run away. Only the gentle +eyes of the little mistress had ever looked with affection and trust +upon that grotesque mask. + +When the disturbing rumor spread that they were coming toward Linden, +Cindy instantly decided to remove her mistress, willy-nilly, to some +place less lonely. There was in Columbia a favorite kinswoman, Mrs. +DeSaussure. They would go to her. Linden was left to its fate. + +At Hardeeville an old man who had loved the master of Linden managed +to find a place in the overcrowded train for his widow, and big Cindy +crouched at her feet. At every station were dolorous crowds; and +long lines of vehicles, all piled with household effects, came and +went, moving endlessly, aimlessly, in a horrible confusion, as in a +nightmare. Always, in a cleared space upon the platforms, were narrow, +long pine boxes--waiting. Sometimes the old negroes who had come to +receive these boxes broke into lamentable cries and wailings. But the +white men and women took them away silently, being as silently watched +by the rows of sad faces in the train windows. The little lady in +black, looking upon them, gripped her hands together in her lap; she +also had received such a six-foot box from the front. + +They reached Columbia at night; and here, too, was the nightmare of +people and things moving aimlessly, always, always moving, moving. + +It was bitterly cold; there were no conveyances to be had, and the +little lady’s knees were trembling. She was shudderingly ill. An old +priest, noting her pitiful plight, came mercifully to Cindy’s aid. Upon +the threshold of the DeSaussure house, the moaning creature collapsed. + +“I’m afraid,” said the priest to Mrs. DeSaussure, “that I can’t find +you a doctor. They’re pretty nearly all gone. But I’ll try. God help +us! God help us!” He wrung his hands, and disappeared, running. + +No doctor came. But at dawn, in the bare, stripped drawing-room whose +hangings and carpets had long since been made into saddlebags, the +little boy who was the last of his race opened his huckleberry-blue +eyes. + +“Poor--little--baby!” murmured his young mother faintly. +“Poor--poor--little--fatherless--baby! Never, never--to know--_him_!” +Two slow, cold tears crept down her white cheeks. + +Aline DeSaussure bent over and kissed the child compassionately. This +frail old woman, whose diseased heart had rendered her hold upon +life purely tentative for many years, had yet, by the irony of fate, +survived her stalwart husband, her strong young sons. Over the baby’s +unconscious head, the two unhappy women looked at each other piteously. +Cindy looked at both, and muttered prayers not addressed to the white +man’s God. That God had come to Cindy along with slavery. Now the +opportunity had come to let them both go; the old pagan felt herself +free to return to her own gods, the old gods, the bush gods. It was a +great relief, as if one removed tormenting tight shoes and stretched at +ease one’s cramped and aching feet. + +That day Columbia, stored with the treasures of half a State, +bursting with loot, was invested. Ominous hours dragged by, leadenly, +oppressively, with a sense of inevitable disaster overhanging and +imminent. In the middle of the night there arose of a sudden a glare; +and then upon all sides sounded the crackle of flames. Bells clanged; +dogs began to howl dismally. Shouts arose, and shrill and piercing +screams. One heard the frightened crying of children suddenly aroused +from sleep. As the flames spread, the light of burning buildings showed +unbelievable things, things grotesque and heroic and sometimes terrible. + +In the Catholic Church, the orphans, hastily gathered, stood in a +huddled group, looking with frightened eyes at the pale, praying +sisters, and at the vestmented priest, who addressed with passionate +words and gestures certain grim-faced men in alien blue uniforms. + +One of these men rapped out an order; the priest cried aloud; and then +the children, at a word from the sisters, began to move. They hurried +out into the frightful din and clamor of the streets, while behind +them church and convent began to burn. When the door fell in, one +glimpsed statues wrapped and writhing in flame, as the damned in the +Florentine’s hell. Columbia was a gigantic torch lighting up the black +night of war. + +When the house on the corner was ablaze and thunderous knocks resounded +on the DeSaussure door, Cindy answered the summons. + +“Who’s here?” There were bayonets beyond the voice, and Cindy looked +upon the group witheringly. + +“White women’s hyuh, white men!” said she savagely. “Two uh dem--an’ a +new-come chile.” + +“Get ’em out!” was the sharp order. “Get ’em out--or they’ll burn with +the house!” + +Already the intruders were trampling through the rooms. They helped +themselves, rather whimsically, one thought, to whatever caught their +fancy; the owner looked on silently, with that disdainful and desperate +calmness with which intrepid souls face fate. + +The baby and his mother were carried out, on a cot hastily piled with +such coverlets as could be snatched up, and set down in the nearest +clear space, a small square brilliantly lighted by the burning house +on the corner. The woman, who was extremely weak, had lapsed into +a merciful unconsciousness, but the baby squirmed and cried. Mrs. +DeSaussure, bareheaded, and with a worsted shawl about her thin +shoulders, sank down beside them. It was piercingly cold, and in the +grip of a bitter frost the torn and trampled streets were like iron, +over which swept a cruel February wind. + +Toward dawn the woman on the cot opened her eyes. + +“C-Cindy!” + +“Yes, missis. Yes, chile.” + +“I’m--I’m going.” Her stiff blue lips formed the words with difficulty, +but her eyes besought. “Promise--you’ll take the baby--back home--to +Linden. _Oh! God! God!_” + +From a near-by street had come a hoarse and confused murmur of many +voices. Men in soiled uniforms tramped into sight. Capering negroes, +shouting, laughing, clapping, accompanied them. And of a sudden the +black people burst into an exultant and measured singing: + + “B-ab-y-lon’s a-fallin’! B-ab-y-lon’s a-fallin’! + An’ de dar-kies gwine ter oc-cu-py de lan’!” + +Bitten through by the teeth of the fire, the walls of the majestic old +house on the corner crashed down with a roar. Wild chant and wilder +figures swept by. + +The little lady was shaken, head to foot, with a long, slow shudder. +A deep, deep sigh escaped from her bosom, and her head, crowned with +very heavy, bright hair, fell forward. Mrs. DeSaussure presently drew +the sheet up over her face. Under Cindy’s shawl, held close to her +flat black breast for greater warmth, the baby mewed with cat-like +plaintiveness. + +The DeSaussure house had been adding its quota of illumination. As +they crouched upon the ground beside the cot, the two watchers could +see flames leap upward from its roof. When the roof fell in, Aline +DeSaussure moaned. It had sheltered generations; it had covered her +young wifehood, her lads’ childhood. + +Presently, detaching itself from a chaotic background of smoke and +flame, there came a figure, clapping its hands, staring, screaming with +staccato laughter. Now she minced and bowed, smiling horribly, with +bitten lips. A torn velvet robe hung about her, soiled and disheveled. +She flung up her hands, and, catching the unbound black hair that +streamed about her, tore it, and laughed and laughed and laughed. +Vainly clutching at the flying, fantastic figure, which always lightly +eluded her, stumbled and panted a fat black mammy, calling with +endearing and coaxing tenderness upon her stark nursling. + +Aline DeSaussure looked with wide and anguished eyes upon the terrible +and tragic figure, but a little while since the honored, the beloved, +the beautiful; and it seemed to her that Carolina herself, distraught, +ruined Carolina, went by in the wind of the mad-woman’s passing. She +uttered a lamentable cry; her hands flew to her heart, rent by a mortal +pang; and, as if to shut from her sight that poignant vision, her eyes +closed. + +Cindy lifted her to the cot and drew the sheet over both women, who +were so slim that they did not crowd each other on its one pillow. The +black woman stood looking down upon them reflectively. + +“Ain’t scared uh dem white folkses’ God no mo’. Not me!” she grumbled. + +An hour or so later, at a cabin in the outside country, Cindy got +some milk for the well-nigh famished baby. Her evil aspect, and +the significant bag now openly worn about her neck, commandeered +respect--and necessities. But she was warned that not only season and +weather, but ruin, starvation, and soldiers, lay between herself and +Linden. + +Cindy smiled awesomely. + +“I done got powerful spell tuh lan’ dis chile home,” she confided. “He +natchelly _’bleeged_ tuh git home. Uh-huh! I done call muh own ol’ +big black god clean f’um Afficky ’count uh dis hyuh same chile.” She +paused, and added, with dark impressiveness: “Wouldn’t like ter be de +pusson tarrygatin’ _him-all_!” + +With the speck of humanity snuggled in her shawl, Cindy set out. + +What was given willingly, she repaid with charms; what was not, she +took--when there was anything to take. If milk was procurable, Cindy +nosed it out with a truffle-hound’s flair. But far too often there was +no milk; then the child fed upon teas made from simples gathered by the +roadside, or for days at a time he lived upon corn meal boiled into +a very thin gruel. By all the fancied laws of hygiene he should have +succumbed. He grew. + +At night, in some lonely thicket under the open sky, the witch woman +would squat upon her heels beside a small fire of crossed sticks and +with a palmful of earth and another of water would mutter spells over +his bald, innocent head. If there were any powers Cindy failed to call +to his aid, it was because she had never heard of them; and Cindy was a +witch doctor’s daughter. + +Once, indeed, she had dared to call Names that filled even her +rock-ribbed heart with cold, awful fear. That, however, had happened +upon a most auspicious occasion, in the full of the moon, and when she +had captured one of the last few cocks left in Carolina--a black cock, +young and perfect. For these Names must never be uttered unless one +has a black cock’s blood to offer. They will come then to eat the smell +of the blood, and also because of certain prayers and words. Now if +they are to be petitioned to grant their favor and protection to, say, +a young child, that child must be laid mother naked upon Mother Earth +between Father Fire and Sister Water. And his skin must be pricked a +certain number of times, until drops of blood appear. Three times, +then, shall the Names be named, with the Word of each for a sign. +And then--if they are pleased--they will put upon that child their +spell--and Earth and Fire and Water shall never harm him--and all his +life people must love him and serve him. It is a very good spell for +any child to have put upon him. + +When one is burdened with a young and lusty baby for whom food +must be foraged far and wide over a war-swept country-side, one’s +progress is necessarily slow, particularly when one is past fourscore, +and overdriven old legs and lungs show signs of wearing out. The +indomitable old woman, despite all obstacles, had made each week’s end +find her a little nearer to Linden. But one evening at sundown she felt +herself suddenly fail, as an old horse fails in harness. + +It was long past dark when Cindy reached the nearest shelter, a cabin +set down at the edge of a swamp. In the incredibly old, wrinkled, and +palsied man who opened the door, the conjure woman recognized one of +her own calling, and sighed with relief. _They_ had not failed her yet; +she had found in her extremity the very help she stood most in need of. + +Long, long into the night, while the baby slept peacefully upon a bed +of gunny-sacks, Cindy and the old man communed. Presently Sally, one +of his two granddaughters, was called in, and upon a tuft of the black +cock’s feathers, dipped in blood and tied with a seven-knotted string, +the scared girl was made to swear that she would take the baby home to +Linden when Cindy was gone. Cindy, in fact, had managed to stay only +long enough thus to settle her affairs to the best of her ability. So +the baby passed into the slack hands of strange negroes. + +They were very kind to him; negroes are, as a rule, kind to children. +But in that parlous time, with a cabinful of hungry children and no men +to help them, the women had neither means nor time to send the child +forward, much as they would have liked to obey their grumbling old +grandfather’s repeated urgings. + +In the meantime the child slept beside the youngest black baby in an +overcrowded cabin; and presently he was learning to walk, by the simple +process of getting up when he fell down and falling down when he got +up, with many an unnoticed bump and bawl between. He grew fat and +rosy on corn-meal mush and bacon grease eaten from a tin plate with a +mouth-stretching iron spoon. The many little negroes taught him early +to talk. He was not a year old when he would lisp his name--Linden. +Cindy had so insistently mentioned Linden that they named him thus; he +had no other name. On the whole, he fared, perhaps, as well as most +babies fared just then in war-worn Carolina. + +Through the big teamster who just then caught her fancy, Sally at +last saw her chance to keep her troublesome promise. The teamster, in +the employ of the Union forces, had seen the unravaged and prosperous +North, and he wished Sally to go thither with him. Colored Canaan did +not lie in the South. Zeke knew the men who were coming home--in rags +and tags, battered, scattered, maimed and halt and in driblets--_but +who were coming home_. And he rather thought he would prefer to +be somewhere else for a while. Sally was quite willing to go; but +first she must fulfil the promise wrung from her by her baleful old +grandfather and the black witch with the red eyes and gorilla teeth. +If she did not do what they had made her swear to do--_and that big, +awful old woman came up out of the swamp some night--with all those +teeth_-- + +Zeke hastily agreed that Sally had better keep her word; it is very +unsafe to meddle with witches’ doings. When his job of hauling timber +for the Government was finished, and the last money collected, they two +would take the child back to Linden and then turn their faces northward. + +Linden, however, no longer belonged to the baby; for, by one of those +summary military transfers common in conquered provinces, it had been +declared confiscated, and so passed into the strong hands of John +MacLean. + +Full of a fierce and fiery faith--and full of Scotch-Irish prejudice +and obstinacy as well--John had seen in the South a field ripe for a +great spiritual harvest, and had laid aside the gun to arm himself +with the gospel. Having valiantly helped to free enslaved bodies, he +started in just as valiantly and as stubbornly to free enslaved souls. + +In that country of wrecked plantations, of ruined rice-fields and +roofless houses, calm Linden, fronting the bright May River, pleased +him. Save that it bore sad evidences of marauders and that a great +deal of the fine furniture had been either broken or stolen outright, +the house was intact. Once in secure possession, John settled down to +what he meant to make his life-work, and called in the lighthearted, +sensuous colored people to drink deep of the cold well of orthodox +Calvinism. They were appreciative: they wished to please the white +man who offered them, for the mere taking, Thirty-nine unbreakable +Articles; but they found the well-water unpleasant to the palate +and--slyly made a sieve of the dipper. + +He opened for the colored children a school, in the stately dining-room +from whose walls arrogant patricians looked out of splendid frames; the +room’s marble mantel bore their carved escutcheon; beneath which one +read: “_Ad Astra_.” John thought that such stars as these slave-holding +gentry had looked to were evil ones. He smiled to see their painted +semblances look down helplessly upon the sons and daughters of Ham +learning their A B abs in the room of their feastings; and his dour +humor was tickled at the contrast between the grinning little negroes +and the fine, gay, bare-bosomed ladies, with slim, pointed fingers that +had never toiled and slim necks one might think would break under the +weight of heads crammed with such damnable pride. + +He was very hopeful. When he saw his dusky audience swaying like barley +in the breeze of his words of sound counsel, John MacLean felt himself +glimpsing the mountain peaks of coming Canaan, rising, rosy-pink, +in the dawn. He was as yet unaware of the neat holes bored in his +gospel-gourd. + +When he did finally begin to be aware of the nature and extent of the +leakage, he was seized with stern, wrathful impatience. It was very +difficult for him to view the subject in any clear perspective. He had +been at first too far off; and now, being too near, he put his eye +against the object he wished to study and so blinded himself. One could +wish that all reformers should take a preliminary course in optics. + +Why should a race be so childishly frivolous, behave with such naked +and unshamed untruthfulness, at so great a turning-point in its career? +Perhaps, he reflected, it was because they had not as yet been taught +their value as human beings,--free human beings, with a part, and that +no mean part, to play in the world. Yes, that must be it. John began +to teach them their great value as human beings, very persistently and +insistently. + +But if black faces beamed approval, when he went abroad among his +new neighbors white faces looked upon him with a cold and hostile +contempt. He had come in their most evil hour, and he had been allied +with those forces which had crushed the South. Therefore they judged +him even as they were judged by him. They were engaged in the most +frightful struggle in which any people can engage,--the struggle to +preserve the integrity and purity of a race in the midst of a world +turned topsy-turvy. They neither asked nor desired outside help or +counsel; they insisted upon their inherent right to manage their own +affairs in their own way. And it was in order to do this that they had +of late called into being a force born of desperation and duty--the +Klan--against which John MacLean thundered without fear, but not +without fanged and ravening reproach. + +John could no more understand that movement than the men behind it +could understand _him_. With flashing eyes and compressed lips he had +listened to dark and wild tales, to whispered, fearful confidences, to +terrified comments. + +Of the seed that burned bravely at market crosses, fell singing +fighting hymns on lonesome moors, starved unwhimpering in forgotten +dungeons,--he was devoid of fear. A man of his hands, his utmost +Christianity could not keep his blood from kindling joyously to a +rousing battle. He had no faintest notion of counseling meekness. +Bareheaded, on the front steps of Linden, he called the colored +country-side around him and advised them to get guns and to use them. +For himself, he said disdainfully, he had no tinge of fear; and he +asked them to remember that for such a cause as this had his old friend +John Brown died at Charlestown. + +They left Linden glory-hallelujahing; it was John MacLean’s gauntlet +thrown down openly for all members of the outlaw Klan to see. + +The Klan watched silently. And presently they decided that they +had most grievous ground of complaint against this cantankerous +carpet-bagger; a fact perfectly well known to Mr. MacLean, who, like +a particularly bad-tempered St. George in conflict with a particularly +devilish dragon, honed up the tongue of denunciation accordingly. + +And, while the storm lowered over Linden, and the cruel, bleak winter +of direst want and woe drew near to one of those sad, sad Christmases +after the war, Zeke and Sally, with the little boy between them, +were journeying homeward by ox-cart express. The baby was simply and +chastely clad in a parti-colored shift worn next to his grimy skin, a +man’s old coat with the sleeves rolled up to allow his small arms free +play, and a battered and shapeless felt hat pulled down over his ears +in the effective fashion of an extinguisher. Of shoes he had none. +Cindy’s bag, sewed up in a very dirty piece of calico, was tied about +his neck; and his cheeks--such as one might glimpse of them under the +enshrouding headgear--bore upon them etchings done in wet points of +bread and molasses. + +On Christmas Eve, in a chill and dreary twilight, they left the ox-cart +in a thicket and entered the path that leads through the pines to +Linden. Wet, swaying pendants of trailing moss, hanging from the huge +oaks that interspersed the pines, brushed against them with a clammy +and ghostly touch. Zeke and Sally, both nervous and silent, were filled +with exaggerated fears. All along the long road, terrible and wild +stories had been whispered, filling tellers and listeners alike with +apprehension. + +They breathed deep with relief when at last Linden lay before them, +dark, quiet deserted, with closed doors and windows, and light showing +in one room only. Stepping noiselessly upon the pillared porch, Zeke +swung the sleeping baby off his shoulder and plumped him down with his +back against the closed door. Linden had come home. + +The baby was quite used to cold and darkness, but not at all used to +being left alone and supperless. He called softly: “Thally! Thally!” +But “Thally” did not come back. His lip trembled; tears filled his +eyes; the vague, formless fear of aloneness assailed him, and lifting +up his voice he cried loudly. + +The door was hastily opened by a big, fair, bearded man who held a +candle in one hand and shaded his keen blue eyes with the other. The +bundle of rags upon the threshold waited no further invitation than the +opened door, but trotted into the hall, his small bare feet pattering +on the uncovered floor. A sleeve of the coat unrolled and flapped +beside him emptily, grotesquely. + +Whether the outlandish waif were black or white John could not for the +moment tell; in truth, it mattered little, all children being dear +to him. He ushered his small visitor into a room warm with fire and +candlelight, and removed the evil odored coat, the shapeless hat. +Periwinkle eyes, white brow, gold hair, revealed themselves. + +“And where will _you_ be from?” John wondered. + +“Thally gone. Thally leave Linden,” said the baby gravely, shaking his +head over Thally’s defection. + +“And who’s Sally, now?” + +But the child had imparted all the information at his command. Sally +was Sally, and Sally had gone and left him. He patted the big man’s +hand to make him understand. + +The big man was absurdly grateful for that friendly, light touch. He +had been feeling most horribly alone; he had, in all truth, felt that +same vague honor of aloneness which had made the child cry out at his +door. The house was quite deserted, save for himself, the cook having +gone into Bluffton for the night, on Christmas business of her own. But +the emptiness that John recognized was not so much in the house as in +himself, the inevitable result of social ostracism. + +[Illustration: The bundle of rags on the threshold waited no further +invitation] + +The Bible opened at random, which he had been reading when the cry at +his door interrupted him, had given him for his pains the lugubrious +eighty-eighth: + + Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me; thou hast made me + an abomination unto them.... + + Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, _and_ mine acquaintance + into darkness. + +The words stung him. For he was most absolutely cut off from his kind, +a thing calamitous for a white man. The evil, greedy carpet-baggers +exploiting ignorant ex-slaves, making of them political pawns upon the +bloody chess-board of the South, filled him with a stern disgust and +anger; and he viewed the ex-slaves’ former owners very much as, say, a +biblical Jew might have viewed Baal worshipers overthrown, hewed hip +and thigh by the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. He said, therefore, +in substance: + +“Gentlemen, I am everybody’s enemy.” + +And they replied unanimously: “For this, be anathema.” + +And already the light, volatile natures, the easy, pilfering morality, +the irresponsible, gay inconsequence of the pupils and protégés for +whom he labored had begun to chafe and fret his own honest and truthful +nature. He had no thought, however, of giving up a fight just begun. +But to keep him sweet he needed communion with his equals. + +That the wee visitor, come mysteriously out of the dusk of Christmas +Eve, should be a white child touched him curiously and tenderly. Blood +is thicker than water. He did not love the black babies less but the +white baby more. + +Moreover, the white baby was looking at him with starry eyes full of +the sweetest trust and friendliness. And John did so greatly need trust +and friendliness just then. One may have very, very, very little, +and still not be without some inward and sure staff of comfort and of +hope; but, oh, to be alone and hated, without love, without intelligent +sympathy, without friendliness--on Christmas Eve! + +The childless man felt his heart melt in his bosom, remembering old, +tender stories of that dear Baby of the Star, who at times delights to +reveal himself to sad men on pilgrimage; and always in the guise of the +beggar and of the lowly whom he loved. + +On the table, beside the big Bible, stood the remains of John’s supper. +The child pointed to it eagerly, for he was very hungry. + +“Linden wan’ thuppeh.” + +Linden! Why, the child’s name was Linden! What a pleasant and curious +coincidence! + +Having supped, the baby yawned, looking about him for a good spot to +curl up and go to sleep, like a puppy with a full stomach. He decided +upon the hearthrug. But John’s bachelor neatness and cleanliness were +scandalized at the bare idea of any human creature going to sleep +anywhere in such a shocking state of grime. He wished that Viny, the +cook, were there to help him; but she was not, and John rolled up his +sleeves and set himself seriously to the task, fearsome to any man, of +getting a thoroughly dirty child thoroughly clean. The one discolored +garment made him shudder, as he consigned it to the fire. Cindy’s bag +was laid upon the table for later investigation, and he handled it as +gingerly as if he had seen the old black woman mumbling her spells with +its aid. + +Linden enjoyed the warm water hugely. He splashed and shouted and +laughed, and grabbed at the soap, and worried the wash-rag; and he +howled only when John, with more zeal than deftness, soaped his eyes +and mouth. It was a drastic scouring, but there presently emerged from +it a sweet and rosy cherub, hard to be recognized as the dirty little +grub of an hour since. + +When he had been trussed in an undershirt by way of a nighty, and the +room decently put to order again, Master Linden decided that the nice +big man should sing him “nighty-night”; he stood on tiptoes to be taken +up and rocked. + +“Thing by-bye,” he urged, settling himself comfortably in the crook +of a big arm, and the big arm that was all too empty closed about him +hungrily, instinctively, God having made all big arms for the great +purpose of cuddling soft, snuggling little bodies. An inexpressible, +exquisite sense of fatherhood welled up in John’s heart. He pressed his +face down against the damp curls. He began to sing: + + “God rest you, merry gentlemen! Let nothing you dismay. + For Jesus Christ our Saviour was born on Christmas Day.” + +The baby, with half-closed eyes, crooned a tuneless tune to the fire, +his hand patting John’s arm. Then he went to sleep in the arms of the +man who had taken his inheritance, and was held close and lovingly. +Reluctantly John laid him down upon the sofa and covered him with a +blanket brought from his own bed. + +He had time then to examine the extremely dirty little bag tied with +knotted string, and to marvel at the unchancy plunder it contained. +But he whistled when, from the midst of the conjure stuff, there came +to light the rings Cindy had taken from a dead hand. With them was +a man’s very handsome and heavy gold watch-fob, stamped with a coat +of arms--the same arms blazoned upon the marble mantels and over the +great doors of Linden. John stared at the jewel almost unbelievingly. +Then he stole over and looked long and earnestly upon the sleeping +baby, and saw how race and breeding marked every lovely line of him. +John knew him now, bone of the bone and blood of the blood of those +proud patricians whose portraits still hung upon the walls of their +despoiled home, men and women allied to the lordliest names of England +and of France. Eh, but this was a bonny baby! In his secretest heart +the dour, doughty Puritan adored his strength and grace and comeliness. + +When he had taken over Linden for the glory of the Lord, John had +heard, of course, of the little widow and her flight to Columbia; also +he knew that there had been an heir expected. But the little widow was +dead, and no one had heard of any child surviving. Yet--here he was! + +Who had brought him home, or why, or how, John never knew; but he was +quite, quite sure Who had sent him, and he had no thought of refusing +the heavenly gift. He would have thought such a refusal sacrilegious, +he who saw the hand of the Almighty in all his affairs, shaping his +destiny and guiding his days. With all humility and willingness and +gratitude, he took over his new stewardship and all that it implied. +He sat by the fire, and, full of a happy awe, dreamed and planned. +There was a far, fair future in which he and this child, viewing the +great work they should do together, might, too, say reverently: “What +hath God wrought!” He smiled; he was no longer alone. + +His Christmas present presently stirred in his sleep, woke, and sat up. + +“Wanterjinkerwater!” said he plaintively. “Dimmyjinkerwater!” + +Vain of the delightful fact that he so readily understood this angelic +lingo, John got the water, eager to wait fatherlily upon his child. +The little man drank slowly, with long and deliberate pauses between +little sips. Then he stuck his fat fingers in the glass, paddled them, +laughed, and looked up at John with bright, mischievous eyes. + +And even then sheeted figures were dismounting from sheeted horses +before the pillared porch of Linden. They moved soundlessly, as might +the phantoms they resembled, and their appearance, in that lonely place +and hour, was such as froze the blood. Under the tall leader’s hand the +great hall door swung open, for in his surprise at the child’s entrance +John had forgotten to draw the bolts. Soundlessly they moved down the +wide hall toward the room from which light issued. The leader opened +this door, too. + +Candles and firelight dancing on the walls; upon the table nothing +worse than bread and milk and an open bible. And John himself, +kneeling, smiling fatherlily upon a rosy and roguish elf who paddled in +a glass of water and laughed gleefully. + +The child saw them first, and gasped. At that John looked up and knew +his fate was upon him. Rage shook him head to foot, and he would have +rushed upon them, unarmed as he was, but--one could not endanger a +child’s life in such a mêlée of killing as must ensue. He got to his +feet and faced them, disdaining words, without a trace of fear, but +with eyes blazing with bitter contempt. Twenty pairs of eyes cold with +condemnation looked back at him, the carpet-bagger, the preaching +fire-brand, the enemy. The tall leader beckoned, an imperious and +menacing gesture. John shrugged his shoulders, a grim, scornful smile +curling his lips. + +“So much mummery for one lone man’s murder!” said he, bitingly. + +Something in that tense, electric atmosphere troubled the young child’s +spirit. He slipped off the sofa, and as the big undershirt tripped him, +and John, with a quick gesture, stooped to raise him, the little man +gripped the big one with warm, moist fingers. He frowned disapprovingly +at the things in the doorway. + +“Go ’way, boogermans!” he ordered, with pretty imperiousness. “Go ’way!” + +When the boogermans failed to go, the baby wished John to take him up +in his arms. But John shook his head regretfully. His brows puckered +then as the problem of the child’s fate presented itself. He looked +about desperately, praying for an inspiration for the child’s sake. +Then, holding up his hand impressively, he addressed the tall leader, +and told of the child’s coming, of what Cindy’s bag contained. + +But the baby himself, after vainly twitching his friend’s trouser leg, +began to roar dismally, with the fearless lack of restraint that is a +baby’s most potent weapon. John and his visitors looked at one another, +not so much with hate as with perplexity. There was a thing to be done; +but, in the doing, what of the baby? + +“And _you’re_ of his kin and his race!” spat John, with sudden +exasperation. “Christmas Eve--and an innocent roused from his sleep +to witness murder! Could you find no fitter time for your devil’s +prankjankins than the birth-night of the Lord?” + +Nobody answered. In sheer desperation, John went on his knees to +comfort the wailing child, and as the baby strangled his sobs on the +big man’s breast, they in the door looked on through the slits of forty +eyeholes. + +“If you can dare to handle innocence with bloody hands--if there’s one +among you that’s a father--take the child home to some woman to-night, +for the love of God!” said John. And gently he put the child aside. “It +goes sore against my grain to part with you, my bonny man,” he said +softly and regretfully. “I looked to be a father to you. But the will +of God be done! Never yet did John MacLean gainsay a decree of his +Maker. And in my Maker’s name I beseech my murderers to deal fairly +with you after I am done away with, and to put you into possession of +what must be yours. Stay!” + +He fished a stubby pencil from his pocket, drew a chair to the table, +seated himself calmly, and on the fly-leaf of his Bible made his brief +will, leaving Linden to the child. When he had signed and dated it, he +rose and nodded. + +“That will make it surer,” said he, with a satisfied smile. + +And all the while the baby, refusing to be lightly put aside, clutched +at his knees, protesting against such neglectful treatment with raised, +tearful eyes and heartbroken sobs. + +“And now,” said John to his gentlemen-in-waiting, “there is but one +thing more.” He fished a handful of small change from his pocket, bowed +to them, and laid the money on the table. “You will be so kind,” he +said politely, “as to buy with this some little baubles to please him? +It’s Christmas, remember--Christmas! I think it would ease me in my +extremity to remember I had made the wee thing happy on Christmas!” He +straightened his shoulders at that, and his head went up. “And now I’m +ready,” said he calmly. + +Once more he had to put aside the clutching little hands as he bent +to kiss the child’s fair head. With a firm and manly tread, he walked +toward the men, who were already moving through the hall. The door shut +upon the baby’s wails. + +“God forefend he’ll set himself on fire!” said John anxiously. “You +might hurry,” he suggested as they stepped upon the porch. + +Night hung over the dark earth, wet with rain and sweet with woodsy +odors. Above the dim, slim pines clouds scurried about, trying to clear +a space in the sky for a few timid Christmas stars. One caught, too, +the salty sweetness of the tide-water. John drew a deep, deep breath, +filling his lungs with it. + +At the foot of the steps, ghostly horses drifted up to meet ghostly +riders. Their movements were very deliberate. + +“And the child alone with fire!” snarled John, and stamped his feet. + +The tall leader spoke in a slow, low voice, and instantly the men +mounted and began to move off. From the house came a muffled cry, +and John sucked his teeth sympathetically. Dear baby,--so bright and +brave and beautiful, so loving and loyal and like the Holiest Baby of +all--good night, good night, and good-by! + +The masked horsemen, drifting into the shadows of the pines, melted +into the night. Then the leader drew near and laid a firm hand upon his +captive’s shoulder. + +“Ah can’t spare any of my men to-night to tend babies,--not even +white babies,” he remarked in a soft, pleasant voice. “Didn’t reckon +_you_ ever had time to tend babies--white babies--either.” He paused +meditatively. “Ah don’t believe,” he murmured, “Ah don’t believe that +God A’mighty was just projeckin’ when He sent that little chap hyuh +to-night of all nights to you of all men. No, suh, Ah don’t believe it! +Aftuh you’ve had him a spell--and learned to use yo’ white man’s eyes, +you everlastin’ fool, you--you’ll understand it’s because of him and +his mothuh and his sistuh--that the Klan’s hyuh.” + +He walked down the steps and swung a lithe leg over his mount. + +“If Ah were you, Ah’d go on back in the house and keep that little chap +from burstin’ himself cryin’,” he said casually. + +Once in the saddle, he leaned forward and waved a slim, capable +hand--such a hand as had gripped by the hair of its drowning head the +safety of a race and held it alive above a black flood. A note of +amused and tolerant understanding, of a new respect and kindness, crept +into his soft, dangerous voice. + +“_Merry Christmas!_” said he, genially, and was off. + +John’s throat, which had not tightened at the thought of a rope collar, +felt of a sudden a big, aching lump crowd into it. He swallowed +tolerance and understanding gulpingly; the underlying kindness helped +them go down--and stay down. + +“M-merry Christmas!” he found himself stammering. + +And as the flying horseman vanished, he ran back to the warm and +lighted room and gathered the weeping spirit of Christmas into fatherly +and consoling arms. + + + + +THE LITTLE BROWN HOUSE + + + + +THE LITTLE BROWN HOUSE + + +The senator’s wife was returning from the very smartest of afternoon +affairs; her white-haired and fresh-colored loveliness had charmed +and delighted the most famous and fastidious of diplomats, and the +Chinese minister had expressed frank amaze at the magical youthfulness +of the American Grandmother; as she stepped into her car the magically +youthful rose still blew in her cheeks. + +To avoid a crush, her chauffeur had made a detour, swung down two or +three residential streets, slipped through the region of fashionable +boarding-houses, and turned into a side street, quiet, tree-shaded, +peaceful, as if, like the birds, it were going to bed with the sun. On +a corner, with a hedge between it and another small house next door, +stood the Little Brown House. + +The chauffeur wasn’t speeding then, so the senator’s wife had a chance +really to see the place. It was quite as if the Little Brown House had +seen her first, and called out friendlily, as one may to one’s own. + +She came out of her pleasant self-satisfaction with a start; as usual +she had been telling herself that she hadn’t failed _him_; that step +by step she had kept the pace set by his boundless ambition. An +international figure now, the West had hammered him out of her giant +forge--one of those wonderful Americans about whom, some day in the far +future, not the Great American Novel alone, but the greatest epic of +the entire race is going to be written. Not the least of his successes +was the fact that for forty years he had retained the single love and +adoration of his wife; she was proud of him with an almost terrible +pride. + +There had been times when she had wanted to pause, and catch breath, +and rest; but always he had been marching upward, and she had gone +with him. Once she had thought that afterward--when, say, the children +had grown up and settled--they two might grow peacefully and gently +old together, in the evening of their day. But that dream had been +foregone; she had but grown old youthfully, wonderfully, with a +ripening beauty. Now it was only at times, when, disrobed and massaged, +she was at last alone, that she admitted she was--tired. + +Her social secretary--and _she_ knew her social centers like the palm +of her hand--said that the senator’s new house was the one perfect +house in all America, and those affairs at which his wife presided the +most delightful outside of Vienna. She never knew that, deep down in +the other woman’s soul weariness, a longing for simpler things, stung +at times like a nettle. + +But when her car rolled slowly by the Little Brown House something +broke in her breast; something became alive and fluttered as with +wings. Why, it was just such a little house as she had dreamed of, +always, in her secretest dreams! It was a pity, she thought, that a +great “For Sale” sign was nailed on the front porch, and that all the +windows were closed. Little brown houses should never, never be spoiled +by “For Sale” signs, and their windows should always be open. + +She was going to dine at the White House that night, in a Paris gown, +wearing the pearls that the senator had lately given her. And--she +would come home weary. She wished that for just one night out of these +gold-and-glory public nights they two might linger over a small table +whose simple meal was lighted by the lamp of home. Oh, just for once +to be only a gray-haired man and his gray-haired wife, in life’s calm +closing day, looking steadfastly out into the fading sky, in whose +deepening twilight would presently shine, like a beacon, the evening +star! No light save that, and the bedtime candle; no noise, no glitter; +no great orchestra, only the dear every-day music of the tea-kettle, +and the cricket, and the settling log. + +[Illustration: Why, it was just such a little house as she had dreamed +of!] + +The car swung around a corner; the Little Brown House was left behind. +She had left behind so much, she thought. Old neighbors, old faiths, +old friends, old simplicities. She had advanced, but to what? What, of +all the great essentials, had she gained? In all this success, what was +hers--to _keep_? + +At dinner she met her youngest daughter, married to a title incidental +to a big blond Englishman of unimpeachable morals and a goodly +rent-roll. The other daughter, Milly, had married the millions of +Kilian van Cuypt. Dick, the only son, had married a virtually penniless +Virginian, but Dick’s wife brought connections. The children had all +done well: she was satisfied with things as they were; but at dawn she +admitted again that she was tired, too tired to sleep. + +The Little Brown House crept into her mind soothingly. In the room +shaded by that one great tree the lights would long since have been +out. That would be a very simple room; the toilet articles wouldn’t be +of crystal and of hammered gold, for instance; there would be no inlaid +and priceless furniture: it would be just dear and clean and cozy; +after a quiet day one might pass there a quieter night. + +She wondered what it would be like, living in a little brown house. +Whimsically she lay awake and furnished it, room by room. At first she +failed to note the significance of her omissions, the curious sense of +rest and freedom which the mere thought of eliminating a great retinue +of servants gave her. Little brown houses haven’t room for retinues; +one had perhaps a little maid whom one really knew, and in whose +affairs one was interested. It occurred to her that she knew just about +as much of the lives of _her_ servants as she knew about the man in the +moon. But in little brown houses one might come into pleasant human +contact with one’s few necessary helpers. She surmised that this was +the right way, the good way, the Galilean Carpenter’s way. + +_The Carpenter!_ + +Her thoughts drifted back to her girlhood’s churchgoing, the +churchgoing of people in little homes, who have sometimes not enough, +sometimes just enough, but never, oh never, too much. Of a sudden she +remembered her mother’s sweet untrained soprano, her father’s stern +bass: + + “Abide with me; fast falls the eventide; + The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide!” + +And her mother had had but one best cashmere; her father a sacred suit, +religiously laid out on the bed of a Sunday morning! + +There had been Wednesday-night prayer-meetings; she had gone, a little, +little girl, holding tight to the hired girl’s hard, kind hand. She +wondered, with a tightening of the heart, what had become of Martha. +Perhaps she was some gray-haired grandmother to-night; perhaps Martha +too slept under the stars and the night wind and the grass, in a corner +of that old cemetery wherein, lying very close together, her own father +and mother rested. + +How calm and serene those two time-worn faces had been! The simplicity +of their lives and their faith seemed to make a deeper gulf between +her and them than death or years. As in a dream she remembered the +quavering voice of their oldest friend reading over them: + + “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, ... the love of God, ... the + fellowship of the Holy Ghost....” + +Ah, but to them these things had been the real and the essential--“the +substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” To her +they had been for many a year but empty echoes, to which one listened, +if one listened at all, with polite inattention and unemotion. + +And then she thought with astonishment, “Why, perhaps _they_ succeeded, +who held fast to things they were never to lose; perhaps it is _we_ who +fail--we who have only the things we can touch with our hands.” In her +carved and lace-hung bed, which had cost more than all the furniture in +her father’s house, she began to weep softly; but as if those tears had +cleared her vision she saw what she might do. + +The senator was more than scrupulous about his wife’s more than liberal +allowance; if was a very easy matter for her to purchase the Little +Brown House. Never, she thought, had the mere possession of any one +thing given her so much pure pleasure. + +It wasn’t, however, the sort of house you can furnish by a wholesale +order at the nearest furniture store. No, indeed; you have to hunt +carefully for things to put into little brown houses. Piece by piece +the senator’s wife found her belongings: here an old dresser, there an +old chair or an older table; all good and solid and beautiful, with +the beauty of being _lived with_. + +She was tired of the pitiless bright glare of electricity; so on her +dining-table stood a softly shaded family lamp. The sort of lamp _you_ +used to sit beside once, long ago, while your brother and your sister +studied their lessons near by, and your mother, a stocking of yours on +her hand, looked up, smiling, from time to time to answer your many +questions; and your father twinkled over his glasses and his paper at +all of you. You remember now, don’t you? You wouldn’t take anything +life might offer, for just that memory, would you? And isn’t it strange +that, looking back at them now that they’ve gone, just these simplest +memories seem somehow the holiest? + +Upstairs the bedrooms, all in freshest dimity, and smelling of lavender +and rosemary, begged you to come in and lie down and rest a while. And +you didn’t need to look at the Unrevised Version on a stand by the bed +to know that they were rooms you could _pray_ in. On the wall in the +front room hung, in a blackened frame, a sampler, a nice moral sampler, +with an edging of painfully prim flowers, “Work’d by Anne Alice Hardy, +Aged 12 Yrs.” Anne Alice was the senator’s wife’s mother; and the +sampler had lain for years at the bottom of a trunk, because, among the +notable pictures on the walls of the great new house, there wasn’t room +for anything so crude. + +When with loving exactitude the Little Brown House of dreams had been +wrought into reality the senator’s wife drew a long breath of relief. +She said with a smile and a sigh: + +“Now I need flowers, and a cat, and a canary, and a friend.” + +Getting flowers, and a cat, and a canary do not present difficulties; +getting a friend does. The senator’s wife knew exactly what she wanted; +she knew that the Little Brown House must spell happiness, and home, +and hope to any who were to dwell therein. + +Face after face flitted through her mind, to be dismissed. The social +secretary? _She_ despised little brown houses! The senator’s wife began +to wonder if, perhaps, people do not build great houses more to please +social secretaries, and visitors, and butlers, and footmen, and maids, +than to live and be happy in themselves! + +Apply to the pastor of her church? But he too was one for whom +the bigger houses are built. Her friends? Fashionable friends +are--acquaintances. They would smile to one another, with lifted +eyebrows, over their bridge-tables, if they knew. + +Her husband? Never, never, never he: he was with all his heart and soul +a man of his times; never was he to know that the high place he had +coveted and won for her wasn’t her ideal realized. + +The Little Brown House remained closed, and dark at night when a +friendly light should have streamed through its windows. Every time +she walked through its homy rooms--rooms which seemed to be complaining +of not being allowed to be home--the Little Brown House asked +reproachfully: + +“You who have so much, haven’t you one, just one real friend you can +share my simple secret with? Why, those you regard as utter failures +can call in friend and neighbor to share their joys and sorrows! Do you +know why? Because Just-Enough, and more often Not-Enough, draw folks +together brotherlily; but Too-Much cuts you off from your kind. + +“Why do you come, senator’s wife, to me, who am only a little brown +house, and keep me empty? You must share me--or leave me!” + +Among her charities were several Homes for women--women that haven’t +any homes of their own, and that nobody on earth wants in theirs. Her +name figured on their lists of patronesses and on their many boards. +And while the social secretary attended to all the mere business +details, and she had but to sign the necessary checks, she made it a +rule to appear at each annual function, exquisitely gowned, smiling, +affable, a being from another sphere almost. + +The price that one insensibly pays for Too-Much is that one insensibly +forgets one is just folks; the whole great toiling wonderful terrible +race becomes to one--the common people. Just as if all that has been +created in our common universe hadn’t been made by our common God for +His common people! + +The senator’s wife, naturally enough, had drifted into this common +error. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel kindly; why, she wished to +help--with checks. But she simply couldn’t imagine that people who had +nothing at all could be just like herself. So she had never looked at +any one face among all these faces to know it from its fellows: these +were just the faces of old women in Homes. + +It was only because the Little Brown House was so insistent in its +demands, making her thoughtful, that she found herself watching at one +of these sad receptions the strong, serene face of Anne O’Driscoll. +Moved by a sudden impulse, she approached the middle-aged woman, who +was looking about her with the merry courage of Irish eyes. + +“I hope,” she began, “that you’re happy here?” + +Anne O’Driscoll’s voice hadn’t the usual complacent sureness of the +grateful reply. + +“My two eyes,” said she, after a pause, “went back on me last winter, +an’ I could sew no more. I’m too old to find payin’ work, though I’m +too young, I’m thinkin’, for _this_. But I’m grateful for the shelter, +ma’am, for I’d been alone and sick.” + +“Alone and sick!” The sheltered and beloved woman shuddered slightly. +“I’m sorry, Mrs.--Mrs.--” + +“Thank you kindly, ma’am, but I’m used to it--the being alone--for a +good many years. An’ I’m no Mrs., but just Anne O’Driscoll.” + +“You aren’t unhappy here, at least?” + +“I’d be less so, ma’am, if I’d the hopes of gettin’ work, an’ my cat +Blinkie back. I minded losin’ Blinkie most of all, I think. Ah, he was +a fine cat, an’ more knowin’ than most folks, Blinkie was!” + +“And you couldn’t bring him here? Why, the very idea, wanting and not +being able to keep--just a _cat_!” + +“Why, ma’am,” said Anne gently, “you couldn’t expect the Home to take +you an’ your cat too. Just think now, if we’d all be allowed to bring +what we liked with us--this one a cat, and t’other one a dog, and +another one a parrot, might be! Oh, no ma’am, it wasn’t to be expected; +so I let Blinkie go to the grocer on the corner’s wife, that’d always +wanted him. If you’re to keep things yourself you must have a home +that’s yours to keep them in.” There wasn’t the faintest trace of +bitterness in her voice. + +An old woman, plain, unlettered; an old cat that she couldn’t keep: +could anything be more _banal_? But Anne looked something like her own +old aunt, her father’s sister, dead these many years. + +“May I,” said the senator’s wife, “call you Anne?” + +“Why, of course, ma’am, if you like.” Anne was neither flustered nor +flattered by the great lady’s notice, just simply and pleasantly +responsive. + +“Anne,” said the lady after a pause, “Anne, don’t you think you’d like +a really, truly home, where you’d grow old gently and in peace and +surety, with enough work to make things worth while, and not enough +money to spoil things, and a cushion in the sun for Blinkie, and +flowers in the windows--and--somebody else to help, Anne?” Her voice +was a bit breathless. + +“There’s women,” said Anne softly, “that’s born to ache for a home all +their days, an’ never do they find nor keep it. I’m one of ’em.” + +The senator’s wife wondered a little at herself. She had known Anne but +a few minutes; Anne was a plain woman, a woman in a Home, and she knew +that she was going to tell Anne all about the Little Brown House; and +Anne would understand! + +“Will you come with me to-morrow, Anne, to see a little brown house +that needs somebody--and I think that somebody’s you--to take care of +it?” + +Over Anne’s face fell an autumn fairness of emotion. She lifted humid +eyes. + +“To-morrow, then!” said the senator’s wife, delicate finger on lip. +“And remember, it’s a secret, Anne.” + +She came for Anne in her big new car, and together they went over the +Little Brown House. Anne fingered the table-cloths and towels and +bed-linen lingeringly, and laid her hand on the shining tables with a +loving touch. + +“You like it, then?” asked the senator’s wife. Anne began to cry +for answer. And after the senator’s wife, seated beside her on the +chintz-hung sofa, had explained things, Anne took the white hand in her +brown one. + +“Dear heart! To think you were like that all along, underneath, an’ me +thinkin’ you weren’t anything but just a fine lady!” she wondered. “I’m +thinkin’ it’s a grand thing, now, to be a fine lady, because women’s +women; that’s all they be--thank God!” She lifted her head, and the +other woman saw, not admiration nor flattery nor envy, but love, real +love, look at her out of the eyes of a friend. + +As they shut the door of the Little Brown House after them, they heard +through the open windows of the house next door the painfully measured +splashing of “Silvery Waves” spilled over a piano by childish fingers. + +“Why, we’ve got neighbors!” said the senator’s wife gaily. “I’d +forgotten _that_. And we’re neighbors too, aren’t we? Anne, after a +while you must send things over on a tray, and we hope they’ll be +neighborly and just drop in when they can. Isn’t it nice, Anne? And +after they’ve called on you, you must tell me all about them. I hope +they’ve got _little children_. We’ll give their little girl a doll, and +their boy a train of cars, won’t we? My little grandson dotes so on +trains of cars!” + +When she could come, between whiles, she found herself in the midst of +a pleasant neighborhood life; and all about her were the soft noises +and sights and smells of home. Anne’s pride in the place was almost +piteous. How clean and sweet it was; how everything was polished, and +how it shone and twinkled; but nothing was fussy and not-to-be-used! +The neighbors whom she began to meet knew and accepted her as the Lady +Who Came to See Anne. They didn’t wonder she liked to come to see +Anne: they liked to come too. + +Next door was a mother of six. They had all come over to see Anne, and +Blinkie had purred over the baby. Anne had given all of them little +cakes that bound them to her forever. She was going to have the whole +noisy, hungry, beautiful brood of them once a week to tea. Anne reveled +in their company. + +“You know,” she told the senator’s wife, “I’d never much of a home at +best, Miss Barbara, me bein’ out all day, workin’. So I’d no chance of +knowin’ little children, except I’d see them on the street, an’ have +to take out my love o’ them in passin’. Why, I’ve known me to be happy +for a whole long day because a little thing in its carriage waved its +hand an’ gave me a smile, passin’ by. Now, thanks be to God an’ you, +I’ve got a real home, an’ a chance to have them about me a bit, though +they’re none o’ my own. I look forward all week to the time they’ll +come, an’ the noise they’ll make, an’ the joy o’ them, an’ the way +they’ll look, an’ talk, an’ laugh. Miss Barbara, I’m thinkin’ this is +the kind of a house that _likes_ to have children under its roof; and +there’ll be more an’ more o’ them comin’ by an’ by. An’--you wouldn’t +be mindin’ if I called in, one or two at a time, the old women that’s +got to stay on in the Home, Miss Barbara? They’re tired, sometimes, of +just havin’ to keep alive, an’ a day here’d hearten them, maybe. I’d +like to share.” + +The senator’s wife looked about her. It _was_ the sort of house that +likes to shelter the young and call in the old and the poor for warmth +and kindliness. + +“Have them all, Anne. And tell me all about it afterward. You dear, +dear woman, you!” + +“I’d most forgotten to tell you about the Westerner, hadn’t I? The +lady next door brought him first, Miss Barbara, him bein’ a great +friend o’ the children’s. An’ he’s the clearest-eyed, softest-spoken, +brownest-faced man ever I clapped my two eyes on. Right around the +corner from us he is, him keepin’ house by himself, except for the +passel o’ men that’s always comin’ to set with him. I ain’t one +for praisin’ up men-folks’ housekeepin’, Miss Barbara; so one day +I upped an’ sent him a tray--a big heavy one at that, jest to show +him! He brought it back himself, him havin’ no servant, an’ he was +that kind an’ sociable I took to him like the children do. I like +Westerners--they’re so just _themselves_, ain’t they? He’s real glad +we’re neighbors, he says, an’ him an’ his friends’ll be glad to be of +any service to us. I told him us bein’ women-folks an’ the best cooks, +they’d better come over an’ neighbor with us holidays. The nicest man +ever I knew, Miss Barbara--it’s him fixed our kitchen-window shelves.” + +The senator’s wife smiled appreciatively, then went up-stairs for her +usual half-hour of quiet thought and rest by that shaded window. +Outside the day was rather dark, and the tree was bare now to the +autumn winds. She sat with her hands in her lap, thoughtfully. The +senator hadn’t been so well of late. He looked, she thought, more gray +and old. + +“Why, it’s getting so we just see each other going up and down stairs!” +she thought indignantly and sorrowfully. “We’re getting old too, Hugh +and I are. Oh, it isn’t fair, it isn’t fair. We aren’t even sharing any +more--I _can’t_ share his work, and he _won’t_ share my house!” + +That was perhaps the most strenuous winter either of them had known. +They crossed each other’s orbits frenziedly. At her affairs he showed +his fine worn face for a few dutiful minutes, then disappeared. And +when at times they did go out together, the usual tactful hostess, +following immemorial custom, separated them. + +In the midst of this mad swirl Christmas drew near. To the senator’s +wife Christmas had come to mean merely a long list of gifts, dutifully +checked over with her secretary: you gave just as you received; you +had to. You knew that from the housekeeper down every one in the house +must be remembered; the secretary saw to it that they were. There was +no planning; no hiding of things half done when somebody came into the +room; no mysterious hints nor smiles; no air of subdued eagerness; no +tender sacrifices that make gifts doubly precious. + +But at the Little Brown House things were different. Anne had made with +her own skilful hands something for everybody: for the little Maid Who +Helped; for the Mother of Six and her brood; for the old women from the +Home; for the Man around the Corner, who was so glad to be neighborly; +and for the senator’s wife. Anne even had a tree; and they were all to +come for a while on Christmas eve, except, perhaps, Miss Barbara. + +“I wish,” said Anne, looking up from the cake she was whisking +together, “that you’d put on your plainest frock. Miss Barbara, and +come. It’d make Christmas more like Christmas as it ought to be for +me.” Her eyes implored the senator’s wife with so much of love and +longing that the heart in her warmed anew to Anne. + +“The senator and I have simply got to attend our daughter’s Christmas +Eve reception, but I think, by close management, I _might_ get +here--from half-past six until nearly nine, say. And I could drive +home and dress, and nobody be the wiser for my pleasantest Christmas +secret!” She thought for a moment, and laughed like a girl: “Anne, I’m +coming!” + +The senator was to accompany her to their daughter’s. She knew that +until then she wouldn’t see him; she knew, too, that some beautiful and +costly gift, chosen with exquisite care, would be lying by her plate on +Christmas morning. No, he wasn’t forgetful, nor neglectful, any more +than she herself; he was only--too busy. + +It was quite half-past seven when she reached the Little Brown House on +Christmas Eve. When she opened the door she knew that Christmas itself +had arrived before her; for the house was alive with young children, +as all self-respecting houses would be if they had the chance. You +heard the children’s shouts, and their mothers’ worried admonitions, +and Anne’s cheerful, “There, there, let ’em be! It’s Christmas Eve, an’ +Christmas Eve’s children’s eve. Ay, my dearies, laugh, do! An’ when +Miss Barbara comes we’ll open that settin’-room door; an’ then you’ll +see what you’ll see--bless you!” + +“Miss Barbara” came in to be swallowed in a warm sea of joyous +welcomings. She wore what she considered a plain dress; but the Mother +of Six, and the women with her, looked upon its lustrous folds almost +with awe; only the baby disregarded it, and sat upon it, and kicked +his feet against it unconcernedly. + +The sitting-room door had been opened; they were in the midst of +gift-giving, and receiving, and exclamations when the doorbell rang. + +“That,” said Anne, pausing, with the Baby’s jumping-jack in her hand, +“will be that Westerner from ’round the corner. I’ll let him in, Miss +Barbara; he’ll want to stay with the children here for a while, I know.” + +The senator’s wife heard the front door open and close, and men’s feet +in the hall, and the Westerner saying in his pleasant out-of-doors +voice full of the burr of R’s: + +“Here’s a bunch of real holly, and some real mistletoe to hang up; +and here’s my oldest friend along with me--he’s an old friend of +those kids, too. We’ve brought you a few things to add to the tree +for ’em. Say, now, it sure makes us two old chaps feel right good and +Christmassy to get in here with you women and kids to-night!” + +Anne and the Westerner came in together. The other man followed more +slowly, looking about him with merry eyes. He was a very, very big man, +and he seemed to fill the whole doorway in which he stood. Then the +children saw him, and shouted rapturous welcomings; and he returned +these with somewhat of a tender wistfulness in his smile. + +From her sofa the senator’s wife looked up; their eyes met, +incredulously. She rose to her feet, putting down the baby. + +But Anne had advanced to him, holding out a friendly hand. + +“I know you’re the Big Man That Plays with the Children!” she said +cordially. “I’m sure glad to meet you at last, Neighbor; welcome, an’ a +Merry, Merry Christmas to you!” + +He returned her greeting cordially; then the senator’s wife came +forward. Her eyes were large. + +“You!” said she faintly. “You--neighbor--playing with children. You +here!” + +“You!” said the senator. “Here to-night--why, Barbara, my dear!” + +“I come--when I can find time--Anne keeps house--” she began. + +He nodded. “I go around to Jack’s--when I can find time. One’s got to +have a few friends one can visit, don’t you think?” + +The baby set up a great wail, because he was a baby, and he had had +enough of presents, and play, and grown-ups; and he wanted to go home +and be put to bed. The Mother of Six picked him up, and her friends +gathered the rest of the brood and their belongings together and +carried them off, with many Christmas wishes tossed back and forth. + +Anne beckoned the Westerner into the dining-room and pointed to the +table. + +“No real gentlemen,” said she, “will refuse to fall to an’ help eat up +a lady’s pie that she’s made with her own hands for Christmas.” + +“I am,” said the Westerner, “a long-fanged wolf on pie. An’ if you’ll +cut yours in just halves, I’ll be everlasting grateful to you, ma’am.” +And he sat down, turning his back upon the sitting-room door. + +The senator and his wife came to each other slowly, he looking down +upon her whimsically, she looking up at him with eyes of pure wonder. + +“Why, Barbie, is there ever any reading a woman? I’d never guess that +you’d come visiting a little house like this--” + +“This little house,” said she, “is mine: I bought it. I’ve wanted just +this little house all my life, and I wasn’t honest or brave enough to +tell you so.” + +“I thought,” said the senator, “that it was the other sort of house you +wanted, Barbie. That’s why I built it--for you.” + +“I did want it and I do want it--for you,” said his wife. “That’s why +I let you build it. But I want this for _me_--to get rested in, to be +folksy in.” + +A slow twinkle grew in the senator’s eyes. + +“Barbara,” he said, “you ought to see Jack’s house, around the corner! +A mighty nice little house. I’ve been going there for a long time. +Didn’t you ever guess I might like to be just folksy too, Barbie? +There’s no tiresome bunch of servants tagging at your heels at Jack’s. +You can sit down in your shirt-sleeves and smoke a cuddy, if you want +to; you can wait on yourself without shame and reproach--think of +that! Do you know what Jack had for supper to-night? Fish-chowder, and +pan-bread, and coffee that’d make your hair curl! Gee, it was good! + +“You see,” he went on thoughtfully, nodding his head, “I like to go to +Jack’s because I get rested there--he’s a man. I can quarrel with him, +even! Now you know I’ve loved you, and you alone, all my life, Barbie; +it’s for you I wanted--the top-notch. But I--get tired at times. I +want to loaf a little, and be folksy too. And you, Barbie--you?” + +“I also,” said the senator’s wife with a girl’s laugh. She put her +arms about his neck and clung to him. “Oh, Hugh, my dear, don’t you +see, we’ve come together again! Hugh, we’ve come together, close! It +wasn’t the big house, nor the too-muchness: it was that we didn’t know, +Hugh, and we couldn’t take time to find out! All these years--and I +didn’t know the real You until to-night; all these years, and you had +to stumble by chance into the Little Brown House, on Christmas Eve, and +find the real me.” + +He kissed her with a young delight that shook his years from him, and +straightened his shoulders, and kindled his face; so, for a while, they +held each other. + +“I wonder,” he said presently--“Barbie, I wonder if you or any other +woman can keep a secret?” + +She waved her hand about the room by way of reply. + +“Why, of course you can, all of you!” said the senator. “There’s no +end to the wonder of women! Well, now, Barbie, here’s the secret: I’m +to take a two weeks’ rest after New Year’s, and dodge everybody. I’d +thought of running out West--but, say, let’s just cone right here to +this little house of yours, and get acquainted all over again, Barbie. +I feel as if I didn’t half know you, anyhow. Will you come, dearest +dear?” + +“I’ll come,” she said with shining eyes. “Hugh, Hugh, I’m beginning +to fall in love with you all over again--and I fifty-seven and a +grandmother!” + +The senator took out his watch. “There’s the girl’s reception, +Barbie--we’ve got to fly,” he said regretfully. “Is the car to come for +you?” + +“Oh, let’s tell Anne to send it back, and we’ll walk home,--as we used +to--remember?--when a callow fledgling of a country lawyer courted and +married a penniless district school-teacher?” + +He nodded, wrapping her carefully in her sables. Anne and the Westerner +asked no questions, expressed no surprise, made no comments: they were +just such friends as that! They shook hands with a warm and loving +pressure, and wished a million Merry Christmases with all their heart. +And the Little Brown House breathed after them a message of peace and +of understanding; and overhead the sky was thick with stars--one, +larger and brighter than the others, dominating a great clear space. + +They walked along together, hand in hand. The great holiday crowd +jostled them, and they, being afoot, knew themselves a part of it and +caught its spirit, and were glad. After a while the senator glanced up +and called her attention to the biggest star. + +“The same old star!” said he softly. + +“And we together under it!” she answered happily. + +“Why come to think of it, so is everybody else!” said the senator with +a hint of reverence. + +“So is everybody else!” she repeated. “And that,” she added, “is just +what makes Christmas _Christmas_!” + + + + +“THAT MAKES THE WORLD GO ’ROUND” + + + + +“THAT MAKES THE WORLD GO ’ROUND” + + +If I hadn’t loved Willy more than any girl had ever loved any man +before, I should never, never, never have had the wild courage to +marry him, on account of my mother; and if Willy hadn’t adored me to +distraction, he would never, never, never have had the temerity to +marry me, on account of his father. Not that there was anything in +the least objectionable about Willy’s father, or about my mother, who +are about as dear, delightful angels as one shall find this side of +Elysium. But--divided, they stood; united, they simply fell upon each +other, tooth and claw! + +When Willy passed the little millinery shop in West 127th Street, with +the big “Valleau et Cie.” above the door, and glancing in saw the +“Cie.”--who was only little me--sitting with head bent over the bunch +of red roses which was to adorn a stunning hat, he stopped dead short +and stared with all his blue, honest, German eyes,--the very nicest +eyes that ever were. And I looked up and stared back with my French +black ones. From that moment neither of us had the faintest doubt but +that the good God had meant us for each other. It was just like that! +One minute before, and I had had no thought but of making a fine hat, +and Willy had had no thought but of hurrying on to his luncheon; and +the next moment the eternal, beautiful miracle had happened, snatching +us out of every-day ordinary 127th Street and plumping us into +Paradise, an Adam and Eve who didn’t know each other’s name. + +After that my days were divided into the hours of waiting for a tall, +fair young man to pass and fix me with his fine eyes, and the hours in +which I reflected upon that glance. And then one day he marched in, +very straightforward and serious, and told Maman and me who he was and +all about himself, in a direct and manly way that won her respect at +once. When we knew more of him Maman agreed that he was a very charming +young man,--irreproachable, a desirable _parti_ for a dowerless +demoiselle like me. Only, in our dear, splendid America one does not +have to have a _dot_ to make a fine marriage. + +When we were betrothed Willy had at once brought his father to see us. +Willy looks up to his father as one does to Providence. He considers +this old man with the big bald head and the white beard and the +twinkling blue eyes quite perfect. When he says “My father” it is with +an air of pride and affection that makes one’s heart glow. One cannot +but smile tenderly to see these two looking upon each other with such +naïve delight, and to hear with what happiness this father says “My +son.” + +The old Herr Roeder is organist and choirmaster in the Lutheran +Church, where Willy himself plays the violin and sings in a pleasing +counter-tenor. Willy is a bank clerk, and as good an American as one +shall find in a week’s march. But his father is what Maman at once +said was “effusively, emphatically, offensively Teutonic.” Maman said +that if Willy’s father had been present upon the day when le bon Dieu +finished making the heavens and the earth, he would have stamped upon +both “_Made in Germany_”--as a guarantee of worth. + +You see, Maman’s father and grandfather had been Lorraine soldiers in +1870. Indeed, her grandfather had fallen fighting. And when Lorraine +had been taken away from France, her father’s French heart couldn’t +beat happily under German rule. So presently he picked up himself +and his motherless young daughter--who was Maman--and came over to +New York. He was a mender and maker of clocks and watches,--a mild, +amiable, fiery man with stooped shoulders upon which his white hair +fell. I used to sit in his shop and hear his endless stories of bloody +and bitter fighting in the streets and houses of Alsatian mountain +towns, and of sorties and surprises and reprisals in the pleasant +country of Lorraine. The big clocks upon the wall would go “tick, tick, +tick,” solemnly; and Maman would hold her sewing in her lap and murmur, +“_Une crime! Une crime!_” remembering what her childish eyes had seen. + +My dear gay artist father died when I was very little, and, like most +artists, he left us nothing but his cherished memory. So Maman and I +lived with my grandfather, and were very happy until he, too, died. +Then Maman opened the millinery parlor in the shop where the clocks +and watches used to tick. Although she is astonishingly clever and our +shop had “Imported French Hats” on its sign, we didn’t make much more +than our living. But we were grateful and happy, putting our love of +beauty and our joy in life and work into folds of ribbon and chiffon +and clusters of flowers which were to make other women look pretty. + +Maman is really more like a sister than a mother, she is so gay and +charming. Her hair framing her rosy face is of that cottony, shining +whiteness which is so rare and lovely, and her eyes are the brown, +sparkling, animated eyes of a girl. She stands about five feet high in +her shoes; and I am sure she would be enchanting and ensnaring if she +lived to be a thousand, she has so much sheer power of personality. +But--she is very temperamental. And she remembered cruel things she had +seen and heard, even as Willy’s father remembered. Although Willy’s +lovableness had disarmed her, and she loved him, Maman simply detested +Germans in general. And although Herr Roeder had at once taken me +into his big, warm, kind heart, he loathed French people as a rule. +Maman shrugged her shoulders, and Willy’s father wrinkled his nose. +One wouldn’t dream what immense and baleful powers of insult lie in +shoulder and nose, until they had witnessed a performance by Maman and +Willy’s father. They disliked and distrusted each other with a fire +and fury which threatened to consume our happiness. I think Maman was +jealous that I should care so much for Willy’s father, too; and Willy’s +father disliked the thought that his son should so greatly admire my +charming Maman. + +I shall never forget the night Willy made in their rooms a little feast +in honor of our betrothal. Maman was silent and depressed. She would +have been perfectly horrified at the bare thought of my remaining +unmarried, but she was averse to having me go out of her life just yet +and into Willy’s--and his father’s. + +Her eyes, roving critically about the stiff, bare, clean dining-room, +met of a sudden the insulting stare of Prince Bismarck, looking +forbiddingly out of a big oak frame,--grim, military, formidable. +She gave an involuntary shudder of distaste and aversion. But Willy’s +father, with a proud and sweeping gesture, and in a voice one might use +to name Deity, said reverently: + +“Bismarck!!” + +“Brute!” said Maman. “Despoiler of France! Ah, mon Dieu! How I abhor +that ill-favored visage of adamant!” + +Herr Roeder stroked his beard tolerantly. “Ach, well!” he admitted +soothingly, “one cannot blame you so greatly: he was one to trounce you +thoroughly, the great Chancellor!” + +I could almost see Maman’s hair rise, and I trembled. Echoes of old +songs, of old tales, firelighted memories, floated through my mind. + +“I forgive him,” said Maman, gently, “for the evils he helped to +inflict upon my stricken country. Besides,” she added piously, “one +should even be sorry for him, now that he is undoubtedly in hell, +thank God!” + +It was turn for Willy’s father’s hair to rise, and I am sure that if he +had had any it would have stood on end. Only, he is bald. His face grew +purple, as if he were threatened with apoplexy. + +“He is in the bosom of God!” he said with violence. “In hell! A man +like that!” + +“A man like that!” repeated Maman. “_Hein!_” and she and Herr Roeder +locked eyes like horns. + +“Madame!” stammered Willy, imploringly. “Dear Madame! Will you +not--Madame, I beg of you to take a slice of seed-cake! Father, let me +beg of you to offer our honored guest a slice of seed-cake. Do! It is +such fine seed-cake!” + +“Do, dear Maman!” I besought. She shrugged her shoulders, but a smile +dimpled her lips and her eyes danced. + +“Very well, my dears: I will have a slice of this fine seed-cake,” she +agreed. It was really very good indeed, and she said so, graciously. + +“It is good German cake,” said Willy’s father, complacently. “For other +peoples the messy cooking, yes; but for the good, plain, sensible, +satisfying, body-building cooking, always it is the German which is the +best. Ach! The gosling-stew of Germany! With dumplings!” He looked up +at the ceiling ecstatically, as one who sees a beatific vision. + +“Do not, I beseech you, forget the soup!” said Maman, gravely. “The +fine water, with a thimble-ful of vegetable-parings floating upon the +surface. Ah! The soup of Germany! Without seasoning!” She, too, looked +up at the ceiling, with a droll naughtiness to make one giggle. + +Willy had never been separated from his father, any more than I from +Maman, and to break that tender intimacy, which a lifetime’s love and +service had built up, seemed to us intolerable. We could not bear the +thought of leaving them alone. We had, in truth, so much love that +it spread out and embraced everything and everybody, and we thought +that our parents’ great affection for us would in time make them more +tolerant of each other. + +And so Willy and I were married, in St. Agatha’s parsonage, with Maman +and Herr Roeder looking on. Maman had made my frock herself, not +allowing any one else to put a hand to it, and it was a dress to dream +over and put away and cherish. When Father Bazin had read the service +which united us, Willy’s father put his arms around us both: he kissed +Willy. “For your mother, my son, my dear, dear son!” said he, tenderly. +“Ach! If she were only here to welcome our sweet new daughter! Always +she longed for a daughter! But I will love you for myself and for her, +too, my pretty Leontine!” He kissed me then, so fatherly that a great +wave of affection flowed over my heart for him. But Maman only wept. + +We all settled down together in a new bright apartment, up in the +120’s. Maman had sublet the rooms over our shop, which she still +retained; and as our new home was only a few blocks away from our old +one, she wasn’t much inconvenienced going to and fro. It is true that +the new rooms were small, and that Father’s piano and music racks and +arm-chair took up most of the sitting-room, just as Bismarck and Von +Moltke took up most of the wall space in the dining-room, which they +seemed to dominate. I was so glad to make Willy’s father happy that I’d +have welcomed those pictures if both had been twins. It was delightful +to me to see him at his piano, singing _lieder_ sentimentally, or +roaring out a drinking chorus at the top of his voice. He had, too, a +pipe some two or three feet long, with a little ridiculous china bowl +on the end of it, to which he was particularly devoted. Because I kept +his jar full of his pet tobacco, and never meddled with his music, he +praised me as an angel, pulling my ears, rumpling my hair, and kissing +me smackingly on both my cheeks, while Willy looked on, pleased and +happy. + +But the pipe gave Maman a headache; she couldn’t, she said, abide the +German fare I was learning to make, from Willy’s mother’s cherished +recipe book, given me as a treasure upon a state occasion. She hated +_lieder_. She said they were jellyfishy squishysquashy things, all +sentiment and bereft of sense. She accepted the big pictures in the +dining-room with a bad grace. She said their ungracious visages spoiled +her appetite and gave her indigestion. And then she bought a fine +new record of the “_Marseillaise_” for her victrola, as an offset to +“_Die Wacht am Rhein_,” which Father liked occasionally to sing in the +evening, in a lusty voice that carried a full block. + + “_Lieb’ Vaterland, magst ruhig sein, + Fest steht und treu die Wacht, die Wacht am Rhein!_” + +shouted Father. + + “_Aux armes, citoyens! formez vos bataillons! + Marchons, marchons! + Qu’un sang impur abreuve nos sillons!_” + +shrieked the victrola belligerently, upon the heels of it. + +That was the real beginning of overt and covert hostilities. Father +felt himself affronted upon his most vulnerable points--his music and +his affections. The most jovial and kindly of men, he couldn’t forgive +that; he brought heavy artillery to bear upon his nimble antagonist, +who skirmished lightly about and around him, attacking him upon all +sides at once, until he was forced to retreat in raging disorder. Willy +and I had to stand by, distressed and helpless. + +“If only my mother would even try to appreciate your father!” I wept +upon Willy’s shoulder. + +“If only my father would be his true agreeable self to your mother!” +Willy lamented to me. We were both exquisitely unhappy, because there +lowered above the little home a heavy storm-cloud, liable at any moment +to burst forth into thunders and lightnings of wrathful remarks and +exploding retorts discourteous. If Willy had been less angelic, he +would have been horribly cross; but he was strong and good enough to be +patient as Job and meek as Moses. + +“We will bear with them both,” I told Willy. “It may be that some day +you or I may be alone, like them, in a child’s house, and we shall need +love and patience then, too, my dearest. So let us now give both to +these two people who are so dear to us.” + +I am sure we tried to. But Maman complained bitterly and with tears +that I loved “that ruffianly old German” better than I loved her; and +Father said Willy had forgotten his own sainted mother and loved in her +stead a saucy French jade knee-high to a duck and with the temper to +shame the devil’s mother-in-law. + +Willy and I were caught between the upper and the nether millstones. +It wasn’t that they didn’t love us; they did, passionately. I am sure +Father would have died for me, a thousand times; I am sure Maman loved +Willy as her own son. She said his mother had evidently been an angel, +as, despite his horrible old father, she had been able to endow him +with her perfect disposition. And when I at first ventured to speak up +timidly in behalf of the hot-tempered, kind-hearted old man, Maman made +a thin red line of her pretty mouth, shrugged her shoulders up to her +ears, flashed at me a glance of flaming disdain, and marched off to her +own room, locking me out. + +“I have but one favor, one last favor, to ask of you, my child,” she +said, before shutting the door upon me. “Let me be dead before you give +to me grandchildren that resemble little dressed Christmas pigs--and +named Karl Johann. I could not support that indignity.” + +I went back to the kitchen to look after the pot-roast with herbs which +simmered upon the back of the range, and I reflected sorrowfully that +we should have all been so much happier for only a little reasonable +kindness! I suppose I cried a little over the stove about the Christmas +pigs named Karl Johann. Oh, Maman, how could you! I said not a word to +Willy, however; and when Maman wouldn’t come to table, complaining that +she simply couldn’t endure the fumes of Father’s pipe to-night, Willy +himself carried her in a tray, with a rose laid upon it which he had +brought home. She thanked him somewhat shamefacedly. + +“Willy,” said she, “I’m very, very glad my child had the good sense +to love you and the good fortune to marry you. And I’m still gladder, +Willy, that it is I, and not the good little Leontine who has the bad, +bad, bad temper.” She kissed him and gently pushed him out of the room. + +“Ah!” said Willy to me, regretfully, “such a kind heart, with so +much love! If only we could make her happy!” I am sure my own heart +crowded up into my eyes then to look out at Willy; and I dropped the +basting-spoon and flung my arms around him in a passion of gratitude. +Willy held me for a long minute. + +“So!” said Father, entering on tiptoes, and putting his arms about us +both. “So! Son! Daughter. I--” His voice broke. He kissed us quickly +and ran out. + +I think they honestly tried to avoid quarrels; but they possessed to an +unusual degree the power of arousing each other’s antagonism and anger; +and so they did little else than quarrel. Maman’s merry chatter, her +lighthearted insouciance, left her. She wore a dissatisfied face, and +she took to staying longer at the shop, coming home I hate to think +how unwillingly. Father’s loud laughter was a thing of the past; he +looked bewildered, as one who expects and dreads rebuffs. He no longer +roared out drinking-songs, and the piano was too often closed. + +I had taken a severe cold and had to remain in bed, and so Maman left +the shop in charge of her assistant and remained at home with me. I +required very little attention; and she took this opportunity to give +our apartment a particularly thorough cleaning, which, indeed, it +didn’t need. But Maman had the French passion for dustlessness. + +She really doesn’t make the nerve-racking uproar most superclean people +raise when they clean and polish and shine what is already clean and +polished and shining. Not she! In cap and dust-apron she whisks from +one thing to another, giving everything an extra touch; and the light +sound of her little feet is pleasant to hear, as a child’s footsteps +about one’s house. So I lay back in satisfied half-consciousness, +until she came to the dining-room. When she was polishing Bismarck’s +picture she broke into irrepressible speech: + +“_Ja! Ach! Ich! So! Gewiss!_” she mocked, in an irresistibly funny +imitation. “_Kolossal!_” Then: “Iron-faced animal!” said she, +viciously. “Cruel, cold, arrogant Prussian! It is your overbearing +spirit which animates this unhappy house and blights my one child’s +affection for me!” The cake of scouring-soap came down with a +resounding crack, followed by a still more ominous crack. Maman had +brought more force to bear than she intended, and the cake went right +through the glass and came down on the Chancellor’s broad nose. Maman +gave a little scream, and just at that inopportune moment Father +stalked in. + +“Infamous!” he roared. “Miserable Frenchwoman! You should be locked up +in jail for such an outrage!” He stamped with his feet so violently +that the broken glass fell out of the frame with a loud shivering +crash. Maman jumped aside. + +“Assassin!” said she, passionately. “Do you deliberately try to murder +me? Ah! You would like to, brute of a German!” + +“Little anarchist! To wreck my picture--my fine, noble picture!” +stormed Father. “It is dastardly!” + +“I did not deliberately break it; it was an accident--” + +“To drive her revengeful fist upon his honored countenance!” gritted +Father. “Demoniac!” + +“Beast!” hissed Maman, quivering with rage. “Is it not enough for you +to steal from me my only child’s affection but you must also insult me +with brutal doubts upon my truthfulness, and then try to murder me with +broken glass?” + +“Horrible woman! You estrange from me my son, my only son, prevent your +daughter from loving me, wreck my home and my peace of mind, and then +smash my beautiful picture!” + +“Oh! This German is insufferable!” exclaimed Maman, in a suffocating +voice. “Frightful old man! It is you, you, who blight this house!” + +“Madame! I love my children. You, Madame, love nothing but your own +way. You have the devil’s own temper, Madame. It is you, you, who make +us all wretched.” + +I got out of bed then, and in my dressing-gown, trembling, sick at +heart, came and stood between them. + +“Father! Maman! Allow me to love you both without making you and Willy +and myself frightfully unhappy. Ah! You are killing me!” I sank into a +chair and wept uncontrollably. They watched me in stricken silence. + +[Illustration: “Such scenes shall not be repeated”] + +“Monsieur,” said Maman in a subdued voice, after a long and painful +pause, “it is not you, not I alone, but both of us, who make our +beloved children weep. We must remedy this.” She patted me on the +shoulder and then assisted me to rise. “Calm yourself before Willy +comes home and is troubled, my child,” said she quietly, though she was +very pale. “There! Go back to bed. Such scenes as this shall not be +repeated, I promise you.” + +I went over to Father, who had sunk dejectedly into a chair, with his +arms hanging down lifelessly, and kissed him timidly upon the cheek. +He looked at me unhappily, but said not a word. _Ah, le bon Dieu!_ Why +do we make one another thus miserable, when at the best and longest we +have such a little, little while to stay! + +That night, when Father had gone out, Maman came into my room, where +Willy was sitting beside my bed. + +“My children, I have a thing to say to you,” she said seriously. +“I am going to leave your house. No! Do not protest. Do not do me +or yourselves the injury to wish me to remain. My mind is made up, +irrevocably. You know the tenants of my flat above the shop are +leaving the city. I shall at once move back into my own house, which I +should never have left. It was a grievous thing for me to come to you, +my dears, for no one should be a useless fifth wheel upon another’s +domestic coach. You should have your chance to be happy--alone. Forgive +me, forgive me, for having made you unhappy! You see, Leontine is my +only child, and her father--” She turned her head aside for a moment. +But Willy leaned over and took her hand, consolingly. + +“You are quite right, little Mother,” he said, truthfully. “It would +be as great a wrong to you as to us to wish you to remain, when you +are not happy with us. But do you realize why you are unhappy here, +Mamanchen? It is because you are too young and too pretty to play +second fiddle in anybody else’s house, even Leontine’s.” + +Maman laughed through her tears. “Willy!” she cried, “you might have +been a Frenchman!” + +When Father was told, he nodded his head. “I, too, go,” he said +bluntly. “She is right for once, that odious woman. For there is no +room in the new nest for the old birds; they crowd the youngsters, and +for themselves they make starvation. Sing and fly by yourselves, my +children. That will make me happy. Only--do not fly too far away from +thy old father, Willy!” + +So Maman went back to the rooms over the shop and was too busy to allow +herself to be unhappy, even if she were inclined to be; and Father took +two pleasant rooms near us, and went right on with his music lessons. +Maman was to come on Tuesdays and Fridays, and Father on Mondays and +Thursdays, with an alternate Sunday for each; thus they would escape +the unpleasantness of meeting each other in our house. + +It was pleasant to have such a darling little place as Maman’s flat to +visit. Now that she was alone she gave full rein to her own individual +taste, and never did any little place look daintier, more homelike and +simple and charming than Maman’s rooms. And Maman herself! Under our +astonished and delighted eyes Maman grew younger. She arranged her +thick white hair ravishingly, with fleecy curls about the ears; she +manufactured for herself enchanting little hats with hints of lilac in +them, and she evolved frocks of a chic to make one gasp. She was witty +as only a Frenchwoman can be; she was pretty as only an American is. +Then she began to skip her evenings with us; she began to visit us, not +as a pleasure only to herself, but as a pleasure and a privilege to us. + +As for Father, the change in him was of a longer growth, but it +was none the less certain and sure. He began to do without us. He +looked brushed and groomed and well-fed and prosperous and jovial. He +developed a taste in ties that made us marvel. His ragged beard had +been Vandyked into a trimness which clipped ten years off his age, and +his clothes were modern and dignified. + +It was our turn now to suffer a little wholesome neglect, for our +parents _were_ neglecting us. They were seeking--and, what is more, +finding--other objects of absorbing interest outside of our dear selves +that loved them so much; they were living their own lives in their own +fashion, without so much as a by-your-leave from either of us. + +When our dear adored baby was born they behaved as distractedly as any +well-brought-up grandparents could, however. They were extravagantly +delighted. Never was there so exquisite a baby! Maman said that I had +been an adorable baby myself, but that I simply wasn’t to be compared +with _this_ angel. Father remembered that Willy had been a very nice +baby, too, but not to compare to our baby, who, judging from the +magnificent formation of his head, would undoubtedly grow up to be a +statesman. Poor, dear, red, wrinkled little statesman, with no language +at his command save a squeal, and never a hair to his precious head! + +The baby had come to us at Thanksgiving--that good, beautiful American +holiday of ours that I so greatly love--so it was almost Christmas +before I was able to take him out, myself. Willy and I had decided that +his first visit should be to his grandmother; we would take him to see +her on Christmas Eve, all snugly wrapped up. And we would then go to +Father on Christmas morning. It was to be a beautiful surprise. + +To tell the truth, for the last week or ten days we had seen very +little of Maman or of Father, either. They were so busy with their own +affairs. + +We knew that Maman had intended to dismiss her assistants early, close +the shop, and spend Christmas Eve at home; she could afford to be so +independent, for those charming hats of hers were beginning to sell +for good prices. At dusk, then, we wrapped our little baby up snugly +and tucked him among his carriage cushions, took our presents, and +started out. We were both in a glow of pride and happiness when we +reached Maman’s. Her windows were lighted, so we knew she was at home. + +She met us at the door with a cry of pleasure; then she ushered us into +her living-room, calling in a gay, glad voice: + +“See who’s here! See who’s here!” + +A big man in a brand-new smoking-jacket got up out of the new Morris +chair in which he had been making himself comfortable. + +“Ha! Our children!” said Willy’s father gaily, and fell upon us. + +We could only gasp, and stare. The room was lovely with Christmas +greens, and Maman herself was a vision in a red gown, with red satin +slippers on her little feet and a vivid Poinsettia in her beautiful +white hair. On a new mahogany stand was a powerful bust of--who but +the Chancellor himself, a gay holly wreath adorning his beetling brows! + +“Father!” gurgled Willy. “Maman!” I echoed weakly, and almost fell into +a chair. + +Willy’s father shifted his small grandson very tenderly to his +shoulder, and beckoned to Maman, who came and stood beside him, slipped +her small hands about his big arm, and laughed at our bewilderment. + +“My surprise for you, my children!” said she. + +“It is like this,” said Father, gravely. “I came one night to Madame, +forced by loneliness and repentance, to beg her pardon for driving her +out of her child’s home. I found her sad and lonely, even as I was; but +how good the little home she had made for herself looked to me, who had +none! And we consoled each other. She loved my son and I adored her +daughter, and thus we fell into kind talk and discovered that each was +better than the other had thought. And how heavenly a meal she set +before me, seasoned with such wit! It is true that there are no cooks +and no wits on earth like the French! + +“Afterward I came again--and yet again. And we discovered that we were +not so very old--not too old to be young--and that there was much, very +much, in life, for both of us. We decided to share, to help each other. +I taught her much of German, she explained to me much of French, and +the great immortal ones of our countries healed us with their divine +art.” + +He paused to rub his cheek softly against the baby’s bald head. “Ach! +She is a wonderful woman--wonderful!” he said, with a vast pride. “Dear +little child, if thou wilt but take after thy wise, beautiful, witty, +perfect, ever-to-be-adored grandmother, thou wilt be the greatest of +men!” he told the baby. + +Maman laughed like a girl. “What I most admire about the best Germans,” +she said thoughtfully, “is their fine domestic sentiment. They have +such tender hearts, which they are at times wise enough to show. Ah, +Willy, how I rejoice, for my dear child’s sake, that you so greatly +resemble your good father!” + +“And so,” continued Father, comfortably, “our love for our children +having made us hate each other, their love for each other and for us +made us love each other. I found I was unhappy away from Madame. Madame +discovered that she was happy only in my company. Do you think the +young alone are capable of love? No, no! While there is life there is +love. So Madame and I propose to make for ourselves a home, a fireside, +where we shall sit, loving each other and our children, until our good +Herr Gott removes us to a better Home. Your mother, Leontine,” he added +to me, “is a remarkable woman, a perfectly marvelous woman! Wonderful, +my child, wonderful! It is not to be told how I adore this angel of a +woman!” + +“You are going to be married?” Willy’s voice was all but hysterical. + +“We were married,” said Maman calmly, “three days ago. Your father,” +she told Willy, “is a very masterful man. He would have it so, without +fuss and without explanations; and I was glad to please him.” + +Father pointed to the holly-wreathed bust. + +“My dear wife’s first Christmas present to me!” he said happily. + +“Yes,” said Maman, with unabashed serenity, “Johann has labored to +explain his real character to me. Johann loves and respects him, so +there must be something to be said for the man, although I of course +deplore the fact that he thought he had to be harsh to my dear country. +But we are both good Americans. _This_ is our country. Remembering +that, why should we waste our time quarreling about foreign statesmen?” + +“Now you shall hear _my_ little gift to my dear wife,” said Father, +proudly. Still holding the baby, who seemed perfectly content to +snuggle on his shoulder, he marched over to a magnificent graphanola +and slipped in a fine new record. Under the Chancellor’s mighty nose +rose the soul-stirring, martial magic of the “Marseillaise.” We +listened with delight, until it ceased. Then Maman, with a glance of +affection and gratitude at Father, put in another record. Flooding +the little Christmas-decked room came a beautiful blending of men’s +and women’s and children’s voices, singing the old, old, lovely, holy +Christmas hymn. + + “Oh, come ye, oh, come ye, to Bethlehem!” + +We all drew closer together, feeling our hearts in unison; and +remembering the Holiest Baby of all, we looked down upon our own little +baby very tenderly. + +“My dearest children,” said Maman, with her hands clasped around +Father’s arm, “I have to beg of you a favor, a great favor: for my +best Christmas gift, promise me to name my little adored grandson Karl +Johann!” + + + + +TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: + + +Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. + +Perceived typographical errors have been corrected. + +Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized. + +Archaic or variant spelling has been retained. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78711 *** |