"Mr. Van! Mr. Van!"
He turned quickly. Behind, his new-made acquaintance was making effort
to run, but to run and still hold the hand of her father was
difficult. With a smile he stopped.
"Oh, Mr. Van!" The words came breathlessly. "I was so afraid we would
lose you! Father can't cross quick, and once I couldn't see you. Here
he is, Father." She took Van Landing's hand and laid it in her
father's. "He can tell by hands," she said, "whether you're a nice
person or not. I told him you didn't have anybody, and--"
Van Landing's hand for a moment lay in the stranger's, then he shook
the latter's warmly and again raised his hat. In the circle of light
caused by the electric lamp near which they stood the blind man's face
could be seen distinctly, and in it was that one sees but rarely in
the faces of men, and in Van Landing's throat came sudden tightening.
"Oh, sir, I cannot make her understand, cannot keep her from talking
to strangers!" The troubled voice was of a strange quality for so
shabbily clothed a body, and in the eyes that saw not, and which were
lifted to Van Landing's, was sudden terror. "She believes all people
to be her friends. I cannot always be with her, and some day--"
"But, Father, you said that whoever didn't have any friends must be
our friend, because--because that's all we can be--just friends. And
he hasn't any. I mean anybody to make Christmas for. He said so
himself. And can't he go with us to-night and see the shops? I know
he's nice, Father. Please, please let him!"
The look of terrified helplessness which for a moment swept over the
gentle face, wherein suffering and sorrow had made deep impress, but
in which was neither bitterness nor complaint, stirred the heart
within him as not for long it had been stirred, and quickly Van
Landing spoke.
"It may not be a good plan generally, but this time it was all right,"
he said. "She spoke to me because she thought I could not see what
was going on across the street, and very kindly shared her better
position with me. I--" He hesitated. His name would mean nothing to
the man before him. Their worlds were very different worlds. It was
possible, however, that this gentle, shrinking creature, with a face
so spiritualized by life's denials that it shamed him as he looked,
knew more of his, Van Landing's, world than he of the blind man's, and
suddenly, as if something outside himself directed, he yielded to a
strange impulse.
It was true, what the child had said. He had few friends--that is,
friends in the sense the child meant. Of acquaintances he had many,
very many. At his club, in business, in a rather limited social set,
he knew a number of people well, but friends--If he were to die
to-morrow his going would occasion but the usual comment he had often
heard concerning others. Some years ago he had found himself
continually entertaining what he called his friends, spending foolish
sums of money on costly dinners, and quite suddenly he had quit. As
long as he entertained he was entertained in return, and for some time
after he stopped he still received invitations of many sorts, but in
cynical realization of the unsatisfactoriness of his manner of life
he had given it up, and in its place had come nothing to answer the
hunger of his heart for comradeship and human cheer. His opinion of
life had become unhealthy. As an experience for which one is not
primarily responsible it had to be endured, but out of it he had
gotten little save what men called success; and that, he had long
since found, though sweet in the pursuit, was bitter in achievement if
there was no one who cared--and for his nobody really cared. This
blind man with the shabby clothes and ill-nourished body was richer
than he. He had a child who loved him and whom he loved.
"It is true what your little girl has told you." Van Landing took off
his glasses and wiped them. "I have no one to make Christmas for, and
if you don't mind I wish you would let me go with you to the shops
to-night. I don't know much about Christmas buying. My presents are
chiefly given in mon----I mean I don't know any little children."
"And I know forty billion!" Carmencita's arms were outstretched and
her hands came together with ecstatic emphasis. "If I didn't stop to
blink my eyes between now and Christmas morning I couldn't buy fast
enough to fill all the stockings of the legs I know if I had the money
to buy with. There's Mrs. McTarrens's four, and the six Blickers, and
the ashman's eight, and the Roysters, and little Sallie Simcoe, and
old Mr. Jenkinson, and Miss Becky who mends pants and hasn't any front
teeth, and Mr. Leimberg. I'd get him specs. He has to hold his book
like this"--and the palms of two little red hands were held close to
Carmencita's eyes. "Oh, Father, please let him go!"
Hesitating, the blind man's eyes were again upturned, and again Van
Landing spoke.
"You are right to be careful; but you need not fear. My name is Van
Landing, and my office--"
"You are a gentleman!" Two hands with their long slender fingers were
outstretched, and swiftly they stroked Van Landing's arms and body and
face. "Your voice, your hands, tell me your class, and your clothes
that you have money. Why--oh, why do you want to go with us?" Quickly
his right hand drew his child toward him, and in terror he pressed her
to his side. "She is my all, my light, my life! Away from her I am in
darkness you could not understand. No, you must not go with us. You
must go away and leave us!"
For a moment Van Landing hesitated, puzzled by the sudden fear in the
man's face, then over his own crept grayness, and the muscles in it
stiffened.
"My God!" he said, and his mouth grew dry. "Have men brought men to
this?"
For another half-moment there was silence which the child, looking
from one to the other, could not understand, and her hands, pressed
close to her breast, gripped tightly her cold fingers. Presently Van
Landing turned.
"Very well," he said. "I will go. It was just that I know little of a
real Christmas. Good night."
"Oh, don't go--don't go, Mr. Van! It's going to be Christmas two days
after to-morrow, Father, and the Christ-child wouldn't like it if you
let him go!" Carmencita held the sleeve of Van Landing's coat with a
sturdy clutch. "He isn't a damanarkist. I can tell by his eyes. They
are so lonely-looking. You aren't telling a story, are you Mr. Van? Is
it truly truth that you haven't anybody?"
"It is truly truth," he said. "I mean anybody to make Christmas for."
"No mother or father or a little girl like me? Haven't you even got a
wife?"
"Not even a wife." Van Landing smiled.
"You are as bad as Miss Barbour. She hasn't anybody, either, now, she
says, 'most everybody being--"
"Miss who?" Van Landing turned so sharply that the child jumped. "Who
did you say?"
"Miss Barbour." The eyes which were so like those he could not forget
were raised to his. "If you knew Miss Barbour she could tell you of
plenty of people to make Christmas for. She's living right now with
Mother McNeil, who isn't really anybody's mother, but just
everybody's. But she don't live there all the time. Most of her people
are dead or married and don't need her, so she came to Mother McNeil
to see how children down there live. What's the matter, Mr. Van?"
To hide the upleaping flame in his face and the sudden trembling of
his hands Van Landing stooped down and picked up the handkerchief he
had dropped; then he stepped back and out of the circle of light in
which he had been standing. For a moment he did not speak lest his
voice be as unsteady as his hands, but, taking out his watch, he
looked at it, then put it back with fumbling fingers.
"Her first name--Miss Barbour's first name," he said, and the dryness
of his throat made his words a little indistinct. "What is it?"
With mouth rounded into a little ball, Carmencita blew on her stiff
finger-tips. "Frances," she said, and first one foot and then the
other was stamped for purpose of warmth. "The damanarkist says God
made her, but the devil has more to do with most women than anybody
else. He don't like women. Do you know her, Mr. Van?"
"If your friend is my friend--I know her very well," he said, and put
his hands in his pockets to hide the twitching of his fingers. "A long
time ago she was the only real friend I had, and I lost her. I have
wanted very much to find her."
"Oh, Father, if he knows Miss Barbour he's bound to be all right!"
Carmencita's arms were flung above her head and down again, and on her
tiptoes she danced gaily round and round. "We can show him where she
lives." She stopped. "No, we can't. She told me I must never do that.
I mustn't send any one to her, but I could tell her of anybody I
wanted her to know about." Head uplifted, her eyes searched Van
Landing's, and her words came in an awed whisper, "Was--was she your
sweetheart, Mr. Van?"
"She was." Again Van Landing wiped his forehead. It didn't in the
least matter that he was telling to this unknown child the most
personal of matters. Nothing mattered but that perhaps he might find
Frances. "You must take me to her," he said. "I must see her
to-night."
"I can't take you to see her to-night. She wouldn't like it. Oh, I
know!" Carmencita made another rapid whirl. "We can go down-town and
get"--she nodded confidentially to her new-made friend and pointed her
finger in her father's direction--"and then we can come back and have
some toast and tea; and then I'll send for Miss Barbour to come quick,
as I need her awful, and when she comes in you can say: 'Oh, my lost
and loved one, here I am! We will be married right away, this minute!'
I read that in a book once. Won't it be grand? But you won't--" The
dancing ceased, and her hands stiffened in sudden anxiety. "You won't
take her away, will you?"
"If she will come with me I will not take her where she won't come
back. Can't we start?"
But the child was obdurate. She would do nothing until her purchase
was made, and to her entreaties her father finally yielded, and a few
minutes later Van Landing and his new acquaintances were on a
down-town car, bound for a shopping district as unknown to him as the
shops in which he was accustomed to deal were unknown to them.
Still a bit dazed by his chance discovery, he made no comment on the
child's continual chatter, but let her exuberance and delight have
full play while he tried to adjust himself to a realization that made
all thought but a chaotic mixture of hope and doubt, of turbulent fear
and determined purpose, and of one thing only was he sure. Three years
of his life had been wasted. Another hour should not be lost were it
in his power to prevent.