It was not until Kate Dayton reached her father’s gate that the spell
wrought by the flickering firelight and the dim glow of the ghostly
candle wore off. The crisp air of the winter night--for it was now quite
dark--had helped, but the sight of Mark’s waiting figure striding along
the snow-covered path to her home and his manly outspoken apology,
“Please forgive me, Kate, I made an awful fool of myself,” followed by
her joyous refrain, “Oh, Mark! I’ve been so wretched!” had done more. It
had all come just as Cousin Annie had said; there had been neither pride
nor anger. Only the Little Gray Lady’s timely word.
But if the spell was broken the pathetic figure of the dear woman, her
eyes fixed on the dying embers, still lingered in Kate’s mind.
“Oh, Mark, it is so pitiful to see her!--and I got so frightened; the
whole room seemed filled with ghosts. Christmas seems her loneliest
time. She won’t have but one candle lighted, and she sits and mopes in
the dark. Oh, it’s dreadful! I tried to cheer her up, but she says she
likes to sit in the dark, because then all the dead people she loves can
come to her. Can’t we do something to make her happy? She is so lovely,
and she is so little, and she is so dear!”
They had entered the house, now a blaze of light. Kate’s father was
standing on the hearth rug, his back to a great fireplace filled with
roaring logs.
“Where have you two gadabouts been?” he laughed merrily. “What do you
mean by staying out this late? Don’t you know it’s Christmas Eve?”
“We’ve been to see Cousin Annie, daddy; and it would make your heart
ache to look at her! She’s there all alone. Can’t you go down and bring
her up here?”
“Yes, I could, but she wouldn’t come, not on Christmas Eve. Did she have
her candle burning?”
“Yes, just one poor little miserable candle that hardly gave any light
at all.”
“And it was in the corner on a little table?”
“Yes, all by itself.”
“Poor dear, she always lights it. She’s lighted it for almost twenty
years.”
“Is it for somebody she loved who died?”
“No--it’s for somebody she loved who is alive, but who never came back
and won’t.”
He studied them both for a moment, as if in doubt, then he added in a
determined voice, motioning them to a seat beside him:
“It is about time you two children heard the story straight, for it
concerns you both, so I’ll tell you. Your Uncle Harry, Mark, is the man
who never came back and won’t. He was just your age at the time. He and
Annie were to be married in a few months, then everything went to smash.
And it was your mother, Kate, who was the innocent cause of his exile.
Harry, who was the best friend I had in the world, tried to put in a
good word for me--this was before I and your mother were engaged--and
Annie, coming in and finding them, got it all crooked. Instead of
waiting until Harry could explain, she flared up, and off he went. Her
hair turned white in a week when she found out how she had misjudged
him, but it was too late then--Harry wouldn’t come back, and he never
will. When he told you, Mark, last year in Rio that he was coming home
Christmas I knew he’d change his mind just as soon as you left him, and
he did. Queer boy, Harry. Once he gets an idea in his head it sticks
there. He was that way when he was a boy. He’ll never come back as long
as Annie lives, and that means never.”
He stopped a moment, spread his fingers to the blazing logs, and
then, with a smile on his face, said: “If ever I catch you two young
turtledoves making such fools of yourselves, I’ll turn you both
outdoors,” and again his hearty laugh rang through the cheery room.
The girl instinctively leaned closer to her lover. She had heard some
part of the story before--in fact, both of them had, but never in its
entirety. Her heart went out to the Little Gray Lady all the more.
Mark now spoke up. He, too, had had an hour of his own with the Little
Gray Lady, and the obligation still remained unsettled.
“Well, if she won’t come up here and have Christmas with us,” he cried,
“why can’t we go down there and have Christmas with her? Let’s surprise
her, Kate; let’s clean out all those dead people. I know she sits in the
dark and imagines they all come back, for I’ve seen her that way many a
time when I drop in on her in the late afternoon. Let’s show her they’re
alive.”
Kate started up and caught Mark’s arm. “Oh, Mark! I have it!” she
whispered, “and we will--yes--that will be the very thing,” and so with
more mumblings and mutterings, not one word of which could her father
hear, the two raced up-stairs to the top of the house and the garret.