THE new Mr. Prawley (by this time a family, but we still clung to the
name Prawley, just as all coloured waiters are called “George”) was a
most unusual man.
For a month before we hired him he had been trying to undermine Isobel's
faith in the Mr. Prawley from East Westcote. He had called at the house
two or three times a week. At first he merely asked for the job of
man-of-all-work, as any applicant might have asked for it, but he soon
began speaking of our Prawley in the most damaging terms. I believe
there was hardly a crime or misdemeanour that he did not lay at the door
of our Mr. Prawley, and so insistent was he that Isobel and I had ceased
to speak of him as living in our attic.
Isobel decided the two men must be deadly enemies, and that this
fellow was set on hounding our Mr. Prawley from pillar to post, like an
avenging angel. She concluded that this man must have been frightfully
wronged by our Mr. Prawley, and that he had sworn to dog his footsteps
to the grave.
But when she let our Mr. Prawley go and hired this new Mr. Prawley,
his interest in his predecessor ceased entirely. In place of the eager,
longing look his face had worn, he now wore a thin, satisfied look,
which I can best describe as that of a hungry jackal licking his chops.
Mr. Prawley--his name, he told us, was Duggs, Alonzo Duggs, but we
called him Mr. Prawley--was a tall, lean, villanous-looking fellow, with
a red, pointed beard, and at times when he leaned on the division fence
and looked into Mr. Millington's yard I could see his fingers opening
and shutting like the claws of a bird of prey. He seemed to hate Mr.
Millington With a deep but hidden hatred, and often, when Mr. Millington
was preparing to take Isobel and me to Port Lafayette, Mr. Prawley would
stand and grit his teeth in the most unpleasant manner. When I spoke
to Mr. Prawley about it he said, “It isn't Mr. Millington. It is the
automobile. I hate automobiles!”
For that matter, I was beginning to hate them myself. Many a pleasant
ride behind Bob did I have to sacrifice because Millington insisted that
we take a little run up to Port Lafayette with him and Mrs. Millington.
We would all get into his car, and Millington would pull his cap down
tight, and begin to frown and cock his head on one side to hear signs of
asthma or heart throbs or whatever the automobile might take a notion to
have that day. And off we would go!
I tell you, it was exhilarating. After all there is nothing like
motoring. We would roll smoothly down the street, with Millington
frowning like a pirate all the way, and then suddenly he would hear the
noise he was listening for, and he would stop frowning, and jerk a lever
that stopped the car, and hop out with a satisfied expression, and begin
to whistle, and open the car in eight places, and take out an assorted
hardware store, and adhesive tape, and blankets, and oil cans, and
hatchets, and axes, and get to work on the car as happy as a babe; and
Mrs. Millington and Isobel and I would walk home.
The sight of an automobile seemed to madden Mr. Prawley, but otherwise
he was the meekest of men, and a good example of this was the manner in
which he behaved at our Christmas party.
The idea of having a good, old-fashioned Christmas house party for our
city friends was Isobel's idea, but the moment she mentioned it I adopted
it, and told her we would have Jimmy Dunn out. Jimmy Dunn is one of
those rare men that have acquired the suburban-visit habit. Usually when
we suburbanites invite a city friend to spend the week-end with us, the
city friend balks.
Into his frank eyes comes a furtive, shifty look as he tries to think
of an adequate lie to serve as an excuse for not coming, but Jimmy was
taken in hand when he was young and flexible, and he has become meek and
docile under adversity, as I might say. When any one invites Jimmy to
the suburbs he hardly makes a struggle. I suppose it is because of the
gradual weakening of his will power.
“Good!” I said. “We will have Jimmy Dunn out over Christmas.”
“Oh! Jimmy Dunn!” scoffed Isobel gently. “Of course we will have Jimmy,
but what I mean is to have a lot of people--ten at least--and we must
have at least two lovers, because they will look so well in that little
alcove room off the parlour, and we can go in and surprise them once
in a while. And we will have a Santa Claus, and lots of holly and
mistletoe, and a tree with all sorts of foolish presents on it for every
one, and--”
“Splendid!” I cried less enthusiastically.
“Now as for the ten--”
“Well,” said Isobel, “we will have Jimmy Dunn--”
“That is what I suggested,” I said meekly. “We will have Jimmy Dunn,”
repeated Isobel, “and then we will have--we will have--I wonder who we
could get to come out. Mary might come, if she wasn't in Europe.”
“That would make two,” I said cheerfully, “if she wasn't in Europe.”
“And we must have a Yule-log!” exclaimed Isobel. “A big, blazing
Yule-log, to drink wassail in front of, and to sing carols around.”
I told Isobel that, as nearly as I could judge, the fireplaces in our
house had not been constructed for big, blazing Yule-logs. I reminded
her that when I had spoken to the last owner about having a grate fire
he had advised us, with great excitement, not to attempt anything so
rash. He had said that if we were careful we might have a gas-log,
provided it was a small one and we did not turn on the gas full force,
and were sure our insurance was placed in a good, reliable company. He
had said that if we were careful about those few things, and kept a
pail of water on the roof in case of emergency, we might use a gas-log,
provided we extinguished it as soon as we felt any heat coming from it.
I had not, at the time, thought of mentioning a Yule-log to him, but
I told Isobel now that perhaps we might be able to find a small,
gas-burning Yule-log at the gas company's office. Isobel scoffed at the
idea. She said we might as well put a hot-water bottle in the grate and
try to be merry around that.
“I don't see,” she said, “why people build chimneys in houses if it is
going to be dangerous to have a fire in the fireplace.”
“They improve the ventilation, I suppose,” I said, “and then, what would
Santa Claus come down if there were no chimneys?”
I frequently drop these half-joking remarks into my conversations with
Isobel, and not infrequently she smiles at them in a faraway manner, but
this time she jumped at the remark and seized it with both hands.
“John!” she cried, “that is the very, very thing! We will have Santa
Claus come down the chimney! And you will be Santa Claus!” I remained
calm. Some men would have immediately remembered they had prior
engagements for Christmas. Some men would have instantly declared that
Santa Claus was an unworthy myth. But not I! I dropped upon my hands and
knees and gazed up the chimney. When I withdrew my head, I stood up and
grasped Isobel's hand.
“Fine!” I cried with well-simulated enthusiasm. “I'll get an automobile
coat from Millington, and sleigh bells and a mask with a long white
beard--”
“And a wig with long white hair,” Isobel added joyously.
“And while our guests are all at dinner,” I cried, “I will steal away
from the table--”
“John!” exclaimed Isobel. “You can't be Santa Claus! Can't you see that
it would never, never do for you to leave the table when your guests
were all there? You cannot be Santa Claus, John!”
“Oh, Isobel!”
“No,” she said firmly, “you cannot be Santa Claus. Jimmy Dunn must be
Santa Claus!”
We had Jimmy Dunn out the next Sunday and broke it to him as gently as
we could, and explained what a lot of fun it would be for him, and how
I envied him the chance. For some reason he did not become wildly
enthusiastic. Instead he kneeled down, as I had done, and put his head
into the fireplace, in his usual slow-going manner, and looked up to
where the small oblong of blue sky glowed far, far above him.
When he withdrew his head, he began some maundering talk about, an uncle
of his in Baltimore who was far from well, and who was likely to be
extremely dead or sick or married about Christmas time, but I had had
too much experience with such excuses to pay any attention to him.
Isobel and I gathered about him and talked as fast as we could, with
merry little laughs, and presently Jimmy seemed more resigned, and said
he supposed if he had to be Santa Claus there was no way out of it if
he wanted t o keep our friendship. So when he suggested getting an
automobile coat to wear, we hailed it as a splendidly original idea,
and patted him on the back, and he went away in a rather good humour,
particularly when we told him he need not come all the way down from the
top of the chimney, but could get into the chimney from the room above
the parlour. I told him it would be no trouble at all to take out the
iron back of the fireplace, for it was almost falling out, and that we
would have a ladder in the chimney for him to come down.
It was Mrs. Rolfs who changed our plans.
As soon as she heard we were going to have a Santa Claus, she brought
over a magazine and showed Isobel an article that said Santa Claus was
lacking in originality, and that it was much better to have two little
girls dressed as snow fairies distribute the presents from the tree,
and Mrs. Rolfs said she was willing to lend us her two daughters, if we
insisted. So we had to insist.
[Illustration: 99]
By the merest oversight, such as might occur in any family excited over
the preparations for a Christmas party, Isobel forgot to tell Jimmy Dunn
that the plan was changed. She had enough to think of without thinking
of that, for she found, at the last moment, that she could not pick up a
regularly constituted pair of lovers for the little alcove room, and
she had to patch up a temporary pair of lovers by inviting Miss Seiler,
depending on Jimmy Dunn to do the best he could as the other half of the
pair. Of course Jimmy Dunn does not talk much, and it was apt to be a
surprise to him to learn he was scheduled to make love, but Miss Seiler
talks enough for two. When Jimmy arrived, about four o'clock Christmas
eve, Isobel let him know he was to be a lover, but he was then in the
house, and it was too late for him to get away.
Isobel had done nobly in securing guests. Jimmy and Miss Seiler were the
only guests from the city, but she had captured some suburbanites. Ten
of us made merry at the table--that is, all ten except Jimmy. I was
positively ashamed of Jimmy. There we were at the culminating hours of
the merry Yule-tide, gathered at the festive board itself, with a bowl
of first-rate home-made wassail with ice in it, and Jimmy was expected
to smile lovingly, and blush, and all that sort of thing, and what did
he do? He sat as mute as a clam, and started uneasily every time a new
course appeared. Before dessert arrived he actually arose and asked to
be excused.
Now, if _you_ intended making a fool of yourself in a friend's house by
impersonating Santa Claus and coming down a chimney in a fur automobile
coat, and nonsense like that, _you_ would have sense enough to remember
which room upstairs had the chimney that led down into the parlour
fireplace, wouldn't you? So I blame Jimmy entirely, and so does Isobel.
Jimmy says--of course he had to have some excuse--that we might have
told him we had given up the idea of having Santa Claus come down the
chimney, and that if we had wanted him to come down any particular
chimney we should have put a label on it. “Santa Claus enter here,” I
suppose.
Jimmy said he did the best he could; that he knew he did not have much
time between the threatened appearance of the dessert and the time
he was supposed to issue from the fireplace--and so on! He was quite
excited about it. Quite bitter, I may say.
It seems--or so Jimmy says--that, when he left the table, Jimmy went
upstairs and got into his automobile coat of fur, and his felt boots,
and his mask, and his fur gloves, and his long white hair, and his
stocking hat, and that about the time we were sipping coffee he was
ready. He says it was no joke to be done up in all those things in an
overheated house, and he thought if he got into the chimney he might
be in a cool draught, so he poked about until he found a fireplace and
backed carefully into it, and pawed with his left foot for the top rung
of the ladder. That was about the time we arose from the table with
merry laughs, as nearly as Isobel and I can judge.
No one missed Jimmy, except Miss Seiler, and she was so unused to being
made love to as Jimmy made love that she thought nothing of a temporary
absence. It was not until I took Jimmy's present from the tree and sent
one of the Rolfs fairies to hand it to Jimmy that we realized he was not
in the parlour, and then Isobel and I both felt hurt to think that
Jimmy had selfishly withdrawn from among us when we had gone to all the
trouble of getting the other half of a pair of lovers especially on his
account. It was not fair to Miss Seiler, and I told Jimmy so the next
time I saw him.
When the Rolfs fairy had looked in all the rooms, upstairs and down, and
had not found Jimmy, she came back and told Isobel, and that was when
Isobel remembered she had forgotten to tell Jimmy we had given up the
idea of having a Santa Claus. Isobel looked up the parlour chimney, but
he was not there, and then we all started merrily looking up chimneys.
We found Santa Claus up the library chimney almost immediately. He was
still kicking, but not with much vim--more like a man that is kicking
because he has nothing else to do than like a man that enjoys it.
I think we must have been gathering around the Christmas tree to the
cheery music of a carol when Santa Claus put his foot on a loose brick
in the fireplace and slipped. I claim that if Santa Claus had instantly
thrown his body forward he would have been safe enough, but Santa Claus
says he did not have time--that he slid down the chimney immediately, as
far as his arms would let him. He says that when he caught the edge of
the hearth with his hands he did yell; that he yelled as loud as any
man could who was wrapped in a fur coat and had his mouth full of white
horse-hair whiskers and his face covered by a mask. I say that proves he
yelled just as we were singing the carol. He should have yelled a moment
sooner, or should have waited half an hour, until the noise in the
parlour abated. Santa Claus says he tried to stay there half an hour,
but the two bricks he had grasped did not want to wait. They wanted to
hurry down the chimney without further delay, and they had their own way
about it. So Santa Claus went on down with them.
I tell Santa Claus that even if we were singing carols we would have
heard him if he had fallen to the library floor with a bump, and that it
was his fault if he did not fall heavily, but he blames the architect.
He says that if the chimney had been built large enough he would have
done his part and would have fallen hard, but that when he reached the
narrow part of the chimney he wedged there. I said that was the fault
of wearing an automobile coat that padded him out so he could not fall
through an ordinary chimney, and I asked him if he thought any man who
meant to fall down chimneys had ever before put on an automobile coat to
fall in.
Certainly I, the host, could not be expected to stop the laughter and
merriment when I was taking presents from the tree, and bid every one be
silent and listen for the muffled tones of a Santa Claus in the library
chimney. I do not say Santa Claus did not yell as loudly as he could.
Doubtless he did. And I do not say he did not try to get out of the
chimney. He says he did, but that with his arms crowded above his head
he could do nothing but reach. He says he also kicked, but there was
nothing to kick. He says the most fruitless task in the world is to kick
when wedged in a chimney with a whole fur automobile coat crowded up
under the arms and nothing below to kick but air.
Luckily I was able to send for Mr. Rolfs and Mr. Millington, whose
advice is always valuable, since when I know what they advise I know
what not to do. Mr. Rolfs rushed in and was of the opinion that we must
get a chisel and chisel a hole in the library wall as near as possible
to where Santa Claus was reposing, but when Mr. Millington arrived,
breathless, he said this would be simple murder, for as likely as not
the chisel would enter between two bricks and perforate Santa Claus
beyond repair. Mr. Millington said the thing to do was to get a
clothesline and attach it to Santa Claus's feet and pull him down. He
said it was logical to pull him downward, because we would then be aided
by the law of gravitation. Mr. Rolfs said this was nonsense, and that
it would only wedge Santa Claus in the chimney more tightly, and that we
would, in all probability, pull him in two, or at least stretch him out
so long that he would never be very useful again.
Mr. Rolfs and Mr. Millington became quite heated in their argument. Mr.
Rolfs said that if a rope was to be used it should be used to pull Santa
Claus upward, but they compromised by agreeing to cut the clothesline
in two, choose up sides, and let one side pull Santa Claus upward,
while the other pulled him downward. Then Santa Claus would move in
the direction of least resistance. So they got the clothesline, and Mr.
Rolfs was about to cut it, when Miss Seiler screamed.
I was doubly glad she screamed just at that juncture, for we had all
become so interested in the Rolfs-Millington controversy that we had
forgotten how perishable a human being is, and, with two such stubborn
men as Rolfs and Millington urging us on, we might have pulled
Santa Claus in two while our sporting instincts were aroused by the
tug-of-war. That was one reason I was glad Miss Seiler screamed. The
other reason was that it showed she was doing her share of representing
one half of a pair of lovers. She had done rather poorly up to that
time, but she saw that when her lover was about to be pulled asunder was
the time to scream, if she was ever going to scream, so she screamed.
So we all went upstairs and let the rope down to Santa Claus, and the
entire merry Christmas house party pulled, and after we had jerked a few
times up came Santa Claus with a sudden bump.
At that moment Miss Seiler screamed again, and when we turned we saw
the reason, for the glass door to the little upper porch had opened and
Jimmy Dunn was entering the room.
We laid Santa Claus on the floor and let him kick, for he seemed to have
acquired the habit, but after awhile he slowed down and only jerked his
legs spasmodically. Mr. Millington explained that it was only the reflex
action of the muscles, and that probably Santa Claus would kick like
that for several months, whenever he lay down. He said if we had
followed his advice and pulled downward we would have yanked all the
reflex action out of the legs.
As soon as I pulled the mask from his face I recognized Mr. Prawley.
Jimmy slipped out of the room and walked all the way to the station, and
Miss Seiler stood around, not knowing whether she was to be half of
a pair of lovers with Mr. Prawley as the other half, or stop being a
lover, or weep because Jimmy had gone. I felt sorry for her, because Mr.
Prawley was not a good specimen of a Christmas lover just then. When
we stood him on his feet his trousers were still pushed up around his
knees, and his fur coat was around his neck. He was so weak we had to
hold him up.
“What I want to know,” said Mr. Millington, “is what you were doing in
that chimney in my automobile coat?”
“Doing?” said Mr. Prawley. “Why, I'm jolly old Santa Claus. I come down
chimneys.”
“Well, my advice to you, Mr. Prawley,” I said, “is to stop it. You don't
do it at all right. Don't try it again. I've had enough of this jolly
old Santa Claus business. Who told you to do it?”
“The little gentleman with the scared look,” said Mr. Prawley, looking
around for Jimmy Dunn. “He isn't here.”
“And what did he give you for doing it?” I asked.
“Nothing!” said Mr. Prawley. “He just--”
“Just what?” I asked when he hesitated. Mr. Prawley drew me to one side
and whispered.
“He said I might wear an automobile coat. And I couldn't resist the
temptation,” said Mr. Prawley. “I've been hankering to get inside an
automobile coat for weeks and weeks, sir. I couldn't resist.”
Of course, I could make nothing of this at the time, so I merely said a
few words of good advice, and ordered Mr. Prawley never to try the Santa
Claus impersonation again.
“Of course, I'm only an amateur at it,” said Mr. Prawley apologetically,
and then he brightened, “but I made good speed as far as I got. I'll bet
I broke the world's speed record for jolly old Santa Clauses!”