"She said, 'You watch for me, Bud, all the time.' That's what she said.
So she'll come. She always does, when she says. Then we're going to the
country to be good children together. I'll watch for her."
So he fell asleep, and Jinny kissed him,--looking at him an instant, her
cheek growing paler.
"That is for you, Benny," she whispered to herself,--"and this,"
stooping to touch his lips again, "this is for Charley. Last night," she
muttered, bitterly, "it would have saved her."
Old Adam sat on the side of the bed where the dead girl lay.
"Nelly's child!" he said, stroking the hand, smoothing the fair hair.
All day he had said only that,--"Nelly's child!"
Very like her she was,--the little Nell who used to save her cents to
buy a Christmas-gift for him, and bring it with flushed cheeks, shyly,
and slip it on his plate. This child's cheeks would have flushed like
hers--at a kind word; the dimpled, innocent smile lay in them,--only a
kind word would have brought it to life. She was dead now, and he--he
had struck her yesterday. She lay dead there with her great loving
heart, her tender, childish beauty,--a harlot,--Devil Lot. No more.
The old man pushed his hair back, with shaking hands, looking up to
the sky. "Lord, lay not this sin to my charge!" he said. His lips were
bloodless. There was not a street in any city where a woman like this
did not stand with foul hand and gnawing heart. They came from God, and
would go back to Him. To-day the Helper came; but who showed Him to
them, to Nelly's child?
Old Adam took the little cold hand in his: he said something under his
breath: I think it was, "Here am I, Lord, and the wife that Thou hast
given," as one who had found his life's work, and took it humbly. A
sworn knight in Christ's order.
Christmas-day had come,--the promise of the Dawn, sometime to broaden
into the full and perfect day. At its close now, a still golden glow,
like a great Peace, filled the earth and heaven, touching the dead Lot
there, and the old man kneeling beside her. He fancied that it broke
from behind the dark bars of cloud in the West, thinking of the old
appeal, "Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and the King of Glory shall
come in." Was He going in, yonder? A weary man, pale, thorn-crowned,
bearing the pain and hunger of men and women vile as Lot, to lay them at
His Father's feet? Was he to go with loving heart, and do likewise? Was
that the meaning of Christmas-day? The quiet glow grew deeper, more
restful; the bell tolled: its sound faded, solemn and low, into the
quiet, as one that says in his heart, Amen.
That night, Benny, sleeping in the still twilight, stirred and smiled
suddenly, as though some one had given him a happy kiss, and, half
waking, cried, "Oh, Charley! Charley!"