Abel smiled. "I'll take the blame," he said, "and you take the tree."
And seeing Simeon hesitate, "Now let's stop by for Mis' Moran's
coffee-pot," he added. "Hustle up. The Local must be in."
So presently the tree, partly divested of its brightness, was carried
through the streets to the other house--in more than the magic which
attends the carrying in the open road of a tree, a statue, a cart filled
with flowers,--for the tree was like some forbidden thing that still
would be expressed.
"_He_ might not come till Christmas is 'way past," Ellen thought,
following. "She'll leave it standing a few days. We can go down there
and look at it--if he comes."
[Illustration: "THEIR WAY LED EAST BETWEEN HIGH BANKS OF SNOW"]
A little way behind them, Simeon and Abel, with the coffee-pot and the
warming oven, were hurrying back to Mary's. They went down the deserted
street where Abel's candle burned and Simeon's saint stood mute.
"When I was a little shaver," Abel said, "they used to have me stand in
the open doorway Christmas Eve, and hold a candle and say a verse. I
forget the verse. But I've always liked the candle in doors or windows,
like to-night. Look at mine over there now--ain't it like somebody
saying something?"
"Well," said Simeon, not to be outdone, "when we come by my window just
now, the light hit down on it and I could of swore I see the saint
smile."
"Like enough," said Abel, placidly, "like enough. You can't put
Christmas out. I see that two weeks ago." He looked back at his own
window. "If the little kid that come in the store last Christmas Eve
tries to come in again to-night," he said, "he won't find it all pitch
dark, anyway. I'd like to know who he was...."
Near the corner that turned down to the Rule Factory, they saw Ebenezer
Rule coming toward them on the Old Trail Road. They called to him.
"Hello, Ebenezer," said Abel, "ain't you coming in to Mary Chavah's
to-night?"
"I think not," Ebenezer answered.
"Come ahead," encouraged Simeon.
As they met, Abel spoke hesitatingly.
"Ebenezer," he said, "I was just figuring on proposing to Simeon here,
that we stop in to your house--I was thinking," he broke off, "how would
it be for you and him and me, that sort of stand for the merchandise end
of this town, to show up at Mary's house to-night--well, it's the women
have done all the work so far--and I was wondering how it would be for
us three to get there with some little thing for that little kid that's
coming to her--we could find something that wouldn't cost much--it
hadn't _ought_ to cost much, 'count of our set principles. And take it
to him...." Abel ended doubtfully.
Ebenezer simply laughed his curious succession of gutturals.
"Crazy to Christmas after all, ain't you?" he said.
But Simeon wheeled and stared at Abel. For defection in their own camp
he had never looked.
"I knew you'd miss it--I knew you'd miss it!" Simeon said excitedly,
"cut paper and fancy tassels and--"
"No such thing," said Abel, shortly. "I was thinking of that boy getting
here, that's all. And I couldn't see why we shouldn't do our
share--which totin' coffee-pots and warming ovens _ain't_, as I see
it."
"Well, but my heavens, man!" said Simeon, "it's Christmas! You can't go
giving anybody anything, can you?"
"I don't mean give it to him _for_ Christmas at all," protested Abel. "I
mean give it to him just like you would any other day. We'd likely take
him something if it wasn't Christmas? Sort of to show our good will,
like the women with the supper? Well, why not take him some little thing
even if it is Christmas?"
"Oh, well," said Simeon, "that way. If you make it plain it ain't _for_
Christmas--Of course, we ain't to blame for what day his train got in
on."
"Sure we ain't," said Abel, confidently.
Ebenezer was moving away.
"We'll call in for you in half an hour or so," Abel's voice followed
him. "We'll slip out after the boy gets there. There won't be time
before ... what say, Ebenezer?"
"I think not," said Ebenezer; "you don't need me."
"Well--congratulations anyhow!" Abel called.
Ebenezer stopped on the crossing.
"What for?" he asked.
"Man alive," said Abel, "don't you know Bruce has got a little girl?"
"No," said Ebenezer, "I--didn't know. I'm obliged to you."
He turned from them, but instead of crossing the street to go to his
house, he faced down the little dark street to the factory. He had
walked past Jenny's once that evening, but without being able to force
himself to inquire. He knew that Bruce had come a day or two before, but
Bruce had sent him no word. Bruce had never sent any word since the
conditions of the failure had been made plain to him, when he had
resigned his position, refused the salary due him, and left Old Trail
Town. Clearly, Ebenezer could make no inquiry under those circumstances,
he told himself. They had cut themselves off from him, definitely.
How definitely he was cut off from them was evident as he went down the
dark street to the factory. He was strangely quickened, from head to
foot, with the news of the birth of Bruce's child. He went down toward
the factory simply because that was the place that he knew best, and he
wanted to be near it. He walked in the snow of the mid-road, facing the
wind, steeped in that sense of keener being which a word may pour in the
veins until the body flows with it. The third generation; the next of
kin,--that which stirred in him was a satisfaction almost physical that
his family was promised its future.
As he went he was unconscious, as he was always unconscious, of the
little street. But, perhaps because Abel had mentioned Mary's house, he
noted the folk, bound thither, whom he was meeting: Ben Torry, with a
basket, and his two boys beside him; August Muir, carrying his little
girl and a basket, and his wife following with a basket. Ebenezer spoke
to them, and after he had passed them he thought about them for a
minute.
"Quite little families," he thought. "I s'pose they get along.... I
wonder how much Bruce is making a week?"
Nellie Hatch and her lame sister were watching at the lighted window, as
if there were something to see.
"Must be kind of dreary work for them--living," he thought, "... I
s'pose Bruce is pretty pleased ... pretty pleased."
At the corner, some one spoke to him with a note of pleasure in his
voice. It was his bookkeeper, with his wife and two partly grown
daughters. Ebenezer thought of his last meeting with his bookkeeper, and
remembered the man's smile of perfect comprehension and sympathy, as if
they two had something in common.
"Family life does cling to a man," he had said.
That was his wife on his arm, and their two daughters. On that salary of
his.... Was it possible, it occurred to Ebenezer, that she was saving
egg money, earning sewing money, winning prizes for puzzles--as Letty
had done?
Outside the factory, the blue arc light threw a thousand shadows on the
great bulk of the building, but left naked in light the little office.
He stood looking at it, as he so rarely saw it, from part way across the
road. Seen so, it took on another aspect, as if it had emerged from some
costuming given it by the years. The office was painted brown, and
discoloured. He saw it white, with lozenge panes unbroken, flowered
curtains at the windows, the light of lamp and wood stove shining out.
And as sharply as if it had been painted on the air, he saw some
unimportant incident in his life there--a four-wheel carriage drawn up
at the door with some Christmas guests just arriving, and himself and
Letty and Malcolm in the open doorway. He could not remember who the
guests were, or whether he had been glad to see them, and he had no wish
in the world to see those guests again. But the simple, casual, homely
incident became to him the sign of all that makes up everyday life, the
everyday life of folk--_of folks_--from which he had so long been
absent.
His eye went down the dark little street where were the houses of the
men who were his factory "hands." Just for a breath he saw them as they
were,--the chorus to the thing he was thinking about. They were all
thinking about it, too. Every one of them knew what he knew.... Just
for a breath he saw the little street as it was: an entity. Then the
sight closed, but through him ran again that sense of keener being, so
poignant that now, as his veins flowed with it, something deeper within
him almost answered.
He wheeled impatiently from where he stood. He wanted to do something.
At the end of the street he could see them crossing under the light, on
their way to Mary Chavah's. Abel and Simeon might stop for him ... but
how could he go there, among the folk whom he had virtually denied their
Christmas? What would they have to say to him? Yet what they should say
would, after all, matter nothing to him ... and perhaps he would hear
them say something about Bruce and Jenny. Still, he had nothing to take
there, as Abel had suggested. What had he that a boy would want to have?
Unless....
He thought for a moment. Then he crossed the street to what had been his
house. He went in, seeing again the hallway and stair, red-carpeted, and
the door opened into the lamplit room beyond. He found and lighted an
end of candle that he knew, and made his way up the stair. There he set
the candle down and lowered the ladder that led to the loft.
In the loft, a gust of wind from the skylight blew out the flame of his
little wick. In the darkness, the broken panes above his head looked
down on him like a face, and that face the sky, thousand-eyed. He
mounted a box, pushed up the frame, and put out his head. The sky lay
near. The little town showed, heaped roofs and lifting smoke, and here
and there a light. Sparkling in their midst was the light before the
Town Hall, like an eye guarding something and answering to the light
before his factory and to the other light before the station, where the
world went by. High over all, climbing the east, came Capella, and
seemed to be standing above the village.
As he looked, the need to express what he felt beset Ebenezer.
"Quite a little town," he thought, "quite a little town."
He closed the glass, and groped in the darkness to where the roof,
sloping sharply, met the door. There he touched an edge of something
that swayed, and he laid hold of and drew out that for which he had
come: Malcolm's hobbyhorse.
Downstairs in the hall he set it on the floor, examined it, rocked it
with one finger. The horse returned to its ancient office as if it were
irrevocably ordained to service. Ebenezer, his head on one side, stood
for some time regarding it. Then he slipped something in its worn
saddle-pocket. Last, he lifted and settled the thing under his arm.
"I donno but I might as well walk around by Mary Chavah's house," he
thought. "I needn't stay long...."
* * * * *
At Mary Chavah's house the two big parlours, the hall, the stairs, the
dining room, even the tiny bedroom with the owl wall paper, were filled
with folk come to welcome the little boy. And on the parlour table, set
so that he should see it when first he entered, blazed Ellen Bourne's
little tree. The coffee was hot on the stove, good things were ready on
the table, and the air was electric with expectation, with the
excitement of being together, with the imminent surprise to Mary, and
with curiosity about the little stranger from Idaho.
"What'll we all say when he first comes in?" somebody asked.
"Might say 'Merry Christmas,'" two or three suggested.
"Mercy, no!" replied shocked voices, "not to Mary Chavah, especially."
But however they should say it, the time was quick with cheer.
At quarter to eight the gate clicked. The word passed from one to
another, and by the time a step sounded on the porch the rooms were
still, save for the whispers, and a voice or two that kept unconsciously
on in some remote corner. But instead of the door opening to admit Mary
and her little boy, a hesitating knock sounded.
Those nearest to the door questioned one another with startled looks,
and one of them threw the door open. On the threshold stood Affer, the
telegraph operator, who thrust in a very dirty hand and a yellow
envelope.
"We don't deliver nights," he said, "but I thought she'd ought to have
this one. I'm going home to wash up, and then I'll be back," he added,
and left them staring at one another around the little lighted tree.