Poor David Dubbs! Oh, the long time it seemed since boon companions had
smitten him on the back and cried, "Bravo, Dave Dubbs! Bravo, old
fellow!" to his little songs, or encouraged him by such exclamations as
"Dave Dubbs can't be beat at a ballad!" Oh, the long, long time ago! But
to proceed. As David Dubbs met the ambushed winds that leaped upon him
at the corner of the court, he also met the person to whom he had waved
his hand from the store-door. If you had looked for the stature of a man
you would have been doubly mistaken,--first in sex, next in size. It was
neither a man nor a woman. There, in a blustery doorway, shaking with
cold, but ever on the alert, crouched a little girl. She wore a knitted
hood, and out of it fell overflowing curls; but her poor, attenuated
little body was ill-assorted with plenty of any kind, and the wealth of
curls mocked the poverty of her clothes. A patched shawl affected to
protect her poor little shoulders, and a calico dress flapped coldly
about her legs. As David turned the corner she arose, and, for all her
stiffness and shivering, exclaimed, cheerily, "A merry Christmas,
father!" and reached to kiss him.
He took her in his arms--she was very, very slight--and lifted her to
his lips, and then, throwing one side of his own scanty coat about her
and holding it there with an affectionate hug, he said, "Come, come,
little daughter, it's too bleak for a little body like you to be out.
It's cruel, cruel, but I dared not tell him it was so late. What does he
know or care for my poor little faithful, Loving Scout?"
"Your Scout couldn't miss Christmas Eve, father, if it was ever so
cold."
"And does she ever miss? No, no, she's a dutiful Scout, winter and
summer, rain and shine, morning and night, and what should I ever do
without her!"
So, talking and fighting the wind by turns, they walked on, the bent and
shuffling old man and his Little Scout, as he had named her and as they
all affectionately called her, through dark streets where, ever and
anon, a car or belated dray shivered by, as if the cold had touched even
its insensibility, and made the tracks resound and the paving blocks
rattle in the clear air; through deep cisterns of streets, between lofty
stone banks--as stern almost as their governing boards, for, although
boards are chiefly wooden, a supplication will quickly petrify them;
through rows of illuminated stores like walls of Arabian Night visions,
with traceries of frost on their windows richer in design than the gems
within them; through clustering crowds that entered or left continually
the swinging doors of saloons and hotels; past waiting carriages; past
swearing men; past laughing ladies, and past beggars, wearier, and
colder, and lonelier than themselves. So they travelled, scarcely
heeding what they saw in their speed until, on the margin of all the
din, by a turn through a dark street, they reached a darker alley, and,
passing down it, at last stopped before their own homely door.
The building had once been a warehouse,--David liked it the better for
that, he said. "Why, all my life has been spent in trade, and, you see,
I've sort a become attached to anything that smacks of it, though I've
little reason to feel so, the Lord knows!" he would exclaim to his
friends. Up above, over a long door in the top story--you can scarcely
make it out in the uncertain light--jutted a weather-beaten crane, with
a long disused pulley dangling at its point, cracked, and rusted, and
abandoned, and no less cracked and abandoned, shot out from the second
floor a moss-covered platform that had been intended for the reception
of bales of stuffs that had never arrived. The mortar had, here and
there, been wrenched from between the bricks by savage weather and age,
and the doors, too, had shrunk before their united malignity. How such
a house had drifted to such a locality is unaccountable, unless--as is
often the case--some navigator of real estate had thought he descried a
port, where was only a shoal that left his venture high and dry among
newer and costlier craft.
However, the nearest approach it had made in the last twenty years or
so--so David said--to fulfilling its commercial place in the world was
in opening its doors to a gentleman in the carpentering line. This
gentleman, Mr. Jacob Tripple by name, occupied the ground floor, and all
around it were scattered evidences, in the shape of window-frames, and
wooden-horses, and props, and old lumber, of a thriving business. He,
with all his men, had departed long ago and left the place dark, and
still, and cold.
It had lain in this stupor of silence for more than an hour, waiting
against hope to be resuscitated by any stray echoes that should drop in
from the neighboring hubbub and waken it up, when it caught among its
bleak angles the cheery voice of David's Little Scout, and revived--as
some old men do under the charm of gentle words--to a more respectable
opinion of itself. So immediately it seemed refreshed, that if it were
possible for such a decrepit--not to say inanimate--old structure as
that even metaphorically to prick up its ears, it metaphorically did as
the sound of Dolly's--her proper name--cheery welcome home echoed round
it.
"Here we are once more, father," she cried, breaking away from him to
have the door open when he plodded up to it. "Once more, and a welcome
home, and a merry Christmas to you!"
"Always on duty, Little Scout! Always on duty!" he called after her.
(The wind was keen and drew water to his eyes again, and again he
brushed it away.) "Always on duty," he went on repeating, with a doleful
effort at cheerfulness.
She was up-stairs by that time, and, opening the door above, had called
in, "Here's father!" then ran back to meet him, which she did at the
door below.
What these unusual proceedings meant, David Dubbs might have guessed or
might have known traditionally, they being of an annual nature, but
whether he did or not, or whether his ignorance was also traditional, he
gave no sign, and walked feebly up-stairs, guided by the Little Scout,
just as if it were not Christmas Eve at all.
What the proceedings did mean was that a steaming pot of coffee at the
given signal was lifted from its warm corner and tilted into a cup that
held a conspicuous place at the head of a little white spread table. On
its right hand sat, in the position of an honored and seldom present
guest, a juicy-complexioned, but not corpulent beefsteak; opposite to
it, inviting death by explosion, rested a bowl full of steaming potatoes
in their native jackets, and the centre was fully occupied by a huge
loaf with a large family of slices.
Around this collation--aroused by the signal, for they had been idly
waiting before--moved two pairs of hands with loving attention. The
cloth was resmoothed, the knives and forks straightened, a brace of
mealy potatoes was emptied on the two plates that awaited them, and at
last a ruddy slice of beefsteak was deposited beside and oozed through
them its savoriness. This last climax was reached just as the door
opened, and the two pairs of hands speedily transferred themselves to
the duty--no very arduous one--of helping David and Dolly out of their
wraps.
And then, with many caresses and kisses and cries of "Take this side,
father, where the coals are bright!" or "Put your feet here and get them
good and warm, poor Little Scout!" then, when thick flying questions and
travellings to the one end of the room for things that were not wanted,
and excursions to the other end of the room for things that were wanted;
when the chairs were drawn up; when the grateful old man and his little
daughter, with those tender hands over their mouths to stifle the
gratitude they struggled to utter, were duly seated at the table, and
when the kettle was singing its approval in the corner, then,
only,--when all these preliminaries were gone through with,--did the
possessors of the hands that devised them seat themselves on a low
wooden settee opposite the table and enjoy the zest and delight they had
ministered to.
Good nature and tender hearts, pale faces and cheerful eyes, honest red
hands and neatly bound-up hair have never been faithfully reproduced in
a state of print and paper, much less in imagination, and, indeed, how
can anything so buxom and comely, even if the plainest in dress, be
expected to be? It is, therefore, needless to say that the twin
daughters of David, namely, Molly and Polly Dubbs, being all that is
here set down, should have been seen in all their kindliness to be truly
known, and no other form of introduction would do them full justice.
Molly was the counterpart of Polly in all respects save height. She was
a very little taller than Polly, and a fortunate thing it had been for
all concerned that she was so. Else, consider the vexation of the
measles and other diseases essential to youth. Why, in their quandary
which to begin on, they almost missed the twins altogether as it was.
Consider the complexity of young lovers who should pour into the ears of
Polly passionate adjectives intended solely to captivate the heart of
Molly; and, most important of all, consider the conflict of choice which
would have disquieted the soul of Mr. Jacob Tripple and at last driven
him to the alternatives of suicide or bigamy.
But all these dangers had been averted by the provisions of Nature, and
the twins, who had supped, for economic reasons, earlier in the evening,
sat beaming on while David and little Dolly heartily devoured the
supper.
David, looking up now for the first time, in the interval of a mouthful
swallowed and a mouthful threatened, espied a bowery wreath of holly
that hung around a picture of General Washington in the act of crossing
a dark, green river Delaware in a court dress of red and breeches of
yellow, surrounded on all sides by ice and officers in rainbow uniforms,
and, as this was the only adornment of a rather bare room, it is no
wonder it caught his eye.
"Why, who's been a-brightening up the gen'ral so Christmas-like?" he
exclaimed.
"We did, father! Leastwise it was Polly's present," said Molly.
"And who may be a-sending presents to Polly now?" asked David, with a
twinkle in his eye that had seen better days but none kindlier. "It
wasn't young Cuffy over at the baker's, nor Jake Tripple, now, was it?"
He looked at Polly for an answer, whereat she stretched her arm along
the back of the settee and let fall her hand on Molly's shoulder with a
punch which was intended as punishment for the giggles her sister
struggled to confine in her mouth with both hands; but which, in spite
of her, bubbled over and attacked David, and then, with a blush, Polly
muttered,--
"It wasn't young Cuffy at all, and I hate his loafy, little face, and I
hate----"
"Not Jacob Tripple! No, no, not good Jake Tripple?" said David,
reprovingly.
"I didn't say that, father!" she exclaimed. "He's your good old friend,
and how could I hate him? He came in just before leaving for the day,
and asked for you--what, made him think you were home I can't tell, for
it was long before your time--and asked for you, and left the wreath
for--for--me."
The hem of her long checkered apron then needed close scrutiny and
folding for some unknown purpose, and this duty diverted her thoughts
from the subject, but she turned to Dolly, who enjoyed this banter in
her own quiet little way, which seldom rippled into a loud laugh, for
her own quiet little face was too pale and too pinched to invite such
freebooters. "Come, come, Little Scout," she said. "Is she warm now, and
were the rations good, and did she meet Kriss Kingle on his cold journey
(with a caress of her pale little cheeks) with heaps of warm dresses,
and heaps of pretty dolls, and heaps of sweetmeats too big to carry
himself, so he asked her to carry some home to help him! Did she? (with
another caress.) And would our Little Scout be sorry if he didn't come
himself to look after them and----"
"Ah, that reminds me!" said David, quite audibly for him, and rising
from the table with knife and fork still in hand.
"What reminds you, father?" asked the twins, in chorus.
"Why, coming home!" said David, not very intelligibly.
"What coming home?" again from the chorus, in expectant attitude.
"Why, Tom, I told you!" which he hadn't done at all, but as by this time
he was deep in the cupboard, where his overcoat hung, and as his voice
was a little more muffled than usual, it was useless to argue the point,
so the chorus loudly exclaimed,--
"Tom?"
"Yes, yes, yes!" from David, faintly and rather testily, as he had
groped through his old coat, and had successively dropped the knife and
fork, reeking with gravy, into the inside and outside pockets.
"To be sure! Tom coming home and I clean forgot it, what with the cold
and the surprises," he said again, emerging with the knife and fork in
one hand and a letter in the other. "Here it is. He'll be home
to-morrow, he says, God willin', and eat our turkey with us. Poor Tom,
poor boy! He's been away so long he's forgot Griffin and hard times, or
he wouldn't say that!"
"Tom! Be home! and to-morrow?"--interruption of chorus as it reaches for
the letter, opens and reads it aloud--Dolly being lifted in the sturdy
arms of Molly to look over.
David, meanwhile, overcome by the toothsomeness of beefsteak, falls to
again, while the others dance a sort of fandango, and turn up the rag
carpet, and rattle the dishes on the dresser, and lift Dolly high in the
air to the improvised tune of "Tom's coming home! Tom's coming home!
Tom's coming home to-morrow!"
"It's another mouth to feed, but it's hard to wish the poor boy back to
Californy again," huskily said David; then he exclaimed, as the noise
increased, "Hey dey! Why, you'll spill the coffee next, and cave in the
walls, too, in a minute, and then there'll be no home for Tom to come
to!"
This was good humoredly added as the final swing was given to the dance,
which brought the twins holding Dolly aloft in their arms laughing and
panting on the settee.
"But tell us, father, is he coming home for good? He don't say so in the
letter," asked Dolly, and all leaned forward to hear his answer.
"Coming home for good?" mused David. "Yes, he's coming home for good, I
hope; but I'm fearful he'll find little beside the good in his sisters'
hearts."
"Poor Tom," said Dolly, with far-away eyes, "he's had a weary life of it
in the mines, I guess, poor fellow."
"Yes, yes," said David, "and that's what makes it harder that we can't
greet him with a good Christmas to-morrow. Well, well, it'll be a
delight to see my poor boy again, hard times or no hard times, and we'll
be as cheerful as we can be and are now, thanks to my good girls," and
here he arose from the table, and, seating himself at the fire, opened a
morning paper that he had found in the waste-basket in Mr. Griffin's
counting-house (and very worthless it must have been to be found there!)
in which, through the kind offices of a massive old pair of spectacles,
he was soon absorbed.
And now, while the Little Scout--in fulfilment of her established
character--plays the spy on sundry crumbs that slink from notice under
the table, and while the twins, too busy to talk, wash the dishes and
dispose them in a glistening row along the dresser, and, while David
opens the paper and plods up and down it, column by column, like a
ploughman furrow by furrow up and down a field, and with almost as much
toil; and while the ancient clock on the shelf over the stove and under
the motley General Washington ticks loud enough to be heard above the
clinking dishes and simmering kettle; and while the table, divested of
its cloth and exhibiting a stained and blistered old back, is glad
enough to avoid attention by being stowed away in the corner; while the
pleasant spirits of domesticity that come only at the call of good men,
and good wives, and good sons, and good daughters, but resist the
imperious beckonings of the wealthiest hands, and wing on over their
roofs to lowlier, and scantier, and purer habitations--while the
pleasant spirits of domesticity and kindliness throng invisibly into the
room, and David Dubbs reads stray scraps from his paper to his
daughters, grouped near the fire at his feet, we must softly withdraw
and leave them to the care of coming Christmas dreams.