He woke to his first Christmas. That is, he woke to find a chair drawn
up beside his cot and stocked with little presents. He had never had
presents before. It had not been his mother's custom to make them.
Since she gave him what she could afford, and they shared everything in
common, presents would have seemed to her superfluous.
But here were half a dozen parcels done up in white paper and tied with
red ribbon, and on them he could read his name. At least, he could read
Tom, while he guessed from the length of the word and initial _W_ that
the other name was Whitelaw. So he was to be Tom Whitelaw now! The fact
seemed to make a change in his identity. He stowed it away in the back
of his mind for later meditation, in order to feast his soul on the
mystic bounty of Santa Claus.
He knew who Santa Claus was. He had often seen him in the windows of
the big stores, surrounded by tempting packages, and driving reindeer
harnessed to a sleigh. He knew that he drove over the roofs of houses,
down chimneys, and out through grates. Somewhere, too, he harbored the
suspicion that this was only childish talk, and that the real Santa
Claus must be a father or a mother, or in this case Mrs. Crewdson; only
both childish talk and fact simmered without conflict in his brain. It
was easier to think that a supernatural goodwill had brought him this
profusion than that commonplace hands, which had never done much for
him hitherto, should all of a sudden be busy on his behalf.
Raising himself on his elbow, his first thought came with the bubbling
of a sob. "My mudda is in jail!" His second was in the nature of a
corollary, "But she'll like it when I tell her that Santa Claus took
care of her little boy." The deduction gave him permission to enjoy
himself.
At first he only gazed in a rapture that hardly guessed at what was
beneath these snowy coverings. What he was to get was secondary to the
fact that he was getting something. For the first time in his life he
was taken into that vast family of boys and girls for whom Christmas
has significance. Up to this morning he had stood outside of it
wistfully--yearning, hoping, and yet condemned to stand aloof. Now, if
his mudda hadn't been in jail....
The parcels were larger and smaller. Beginning with the smallest, he
arranged them according to size. Merely to touch them sent a thrill
through his frame. The smallest was round like an orange and yet
yielded to pressure. He was almost sure it was a rubber ball. He could
have been quite sure, only that he preferred the condition of suspense.
It was long before he could bring himself to untie the first red ribbon
bow, his surprise on finding a rubber ball being no less keen than if
he hadn't known it was a rubber ball on first taking it between his
fingers. A handkerchief laid out flat, making the second parcel seem
bigger than it was, sent him up in the scale of social promotion. By
way of candies, nuts, a toothbrush with tooth paste, he came to the
largest of all, a History of Mankind, written in words of one syllable,
and garnished with highly-colored pictures of various racial types. If
only his mother hadn't been in jail....
That his mother was no longer in jail was a fact he learned later in
the day. It was a day of extremes, of quick rushes of rapture out of
which he would fall suddenly, to go away somewhere and moan. When he
begged, as he begged every hour or two, to be taken to the jail, he
could be distracted by rompings with the other children, most of them
in some such case as his own, or by some novelty in the life. To eat
turkey and plum pudding at the head of one of three long tables, each
seating twelve or fourteen, was to be raised to a point of social
eminence beyond which it seemed there could be nothing more to reach.
But in the midst of this pride the hard facts would recur to him, and
turkey and plum pudding choke him.
That something had happened he began to infer when his beloved
policeman appeared at the home in the afternoon. Having seen him enter,
the boy ran up to him.
"Oh, mister, are you going to take me to the jail?"
Mister patted him on the head, though he answered, absently, "Not just
now, sonny. You know you're goin' to have a Christmas Tree. I've come
to see Miss Honiton."
Miss Honiton, one of the day matrons, having appeared at the end of the
hall, the policeman turned him about by the shoulders.
"Now be off with you and play. This has got to be private."
He took himself off but only to the end of the hall, where they didn't
notice that he lingered. He lingered because he knew that, whatever the
mystery, it had something to do with him.
He caught, however, no more than words which he couldn't understand.
Cyanide of potassium! Only his quick ear and retentive memory enabled
him to lay hold of syllables so difficult. His mother had taken
something or hadn't taken something, he couldn't make out which. All he
saw was that both of his friends looked grave, Miss Honiton summing up
their consultation,
"I'll let him enjoy the Christmas Tree before saying anything about it."