CHRISTMAS AGAIN
The ten Hutchinsons having left the library entirely alone in the hour
before dinner, David and Margaret had appropriated it and were sitting
companionably together on the big couch drawn up before the fireplace,
where a log was trying to consume itself unscientifically head first.
"I would stay to dinner if urged," David suggested.
"You stay," Margaret agreed laconically.
She moved away from him, relaxing rather limply in the corner of the
couch, with a hand dangling over the farther edge of it.
"You're an inconsistent being," David said. "You buoy all the rest of
us up with your faith in the well-being of our child, and then you
pine yourself sick over her absence."
"It's Christmas coming on. We always had such a beautiful time on
Christmas. It was so much fun buying her presents. It isn't like
Christmas at all with her gone from us."
"Do you remember how crazy she was over the ivory set?"
"And the bracelet watch?"
"Do you remember the Juliet costume?" David's eyes kindled at the
reminiscence. "How wonderful she was in it."
Margaret drew her feet up on the couch suddenly, and clasped her hands
about her knees. David laughed.
"I haven't seen you do that for years," he said.
"What?"
"Hump yourself in that cryptic way."
"Haven't you?" she said. "I was just wondering--" but she stopped
herself suddenly.
"Wondering what?" David was watching her narrowly, and perceiving it,
she flushed.
"This is not my idea of an interesting conversation," she said; "it's
getting too personal."
"I can remember the time when you told me that you didn't find things
interesting unless they were personal. 'I like things very personal,'
you said--in those words."
"I did then."
"What has changed you?" David asked gravely.
"The chill wind of the world, I guess; the most personal part of me is
frozen stiff."
"I never saw a warmer creature in my life," David protested. "On that
same occasion you said that being a woman was about like being a field
of clover in an insectless world. You don't feel that way nowadays,
surely,--at the rate the insects have been buzzing around you this
winter. I've counted at least seven, three bees, one or two beetles, a
butterfly and a worm."
"I didn't know you paid that much attention to my poor affairs."
"I do, though. If you hadn't put your foot down firmly on the worm, I
had every intention of doing so."
"Had you?"
"I had."
"On that occasion to which you refer I remember I also said that I had
a queer hunch about Eleanor."
"Margaret, are you deliberately changing the subject?"
"I am."
"Then I shall bring the butterfly up later."
"I said," Margaret ignored his interruption, "that I had the feeling
that she was going to be a storm center and bring some kind of queer
trouble upon us."
"Yes."
"She did, didn't she?"
"I'm not so sure that's the way to put it," David said gravely. "We
brought queer trouble on her."
"She made--you--suffer."
"She gave my vanity the worst blow it has ever had in its life," David
corrected her. "Look here, Margaret, I want you to know the truth
about that. I--I stumbled into that, you know. She was so sweet, and
before I knew it I had--I found myself in the attitude of making love
to her. Well, there was nothing to do but go through with it. I wanted
to, of course. I felt like Pygmalion--but it was all potential,
unrealized--and ass that I was, I assumed that she would have no other
idea in the matter. I was going to marry her because I--I had started
things going, you know. I had no choice even if I had wanted one. It
never occurred to me that she might have a choice, and so I went on
trying to make things easy for her, and getting them more tangled at
every turn."
"You never really--cared?" Margaret's face was in shadow.
"Never got the chance to find out. With characteristic idiocy I was
keeping out of the picture until the time was ripe. She really ran
away to get away from the situation I created and she was quite right
too. If I weren't haunted by these continual pictures of our offspring
in the bread line, I should be rather glad than otherwise that she's
shaken us all till we get our breath back. Poor Peter is the one who
is smashed, though. He hasn't smiled since she went away."
"You wouldn't smile if you were engaged to Beulah."
"Are they still engaged?"
"Beulah has her ring, but I notice she doesn't wear it often."
"Jimmie and Gertrude seem happy."
"They are, gloriously."
"That leaves only us two," David suggested. "Margaret, dear, do you
think the time will ever come when I shall get you back again?"
Margaret turned a little pale, but she met his look steadily.
"Did you ever lose me?"
"The answer to that is 'yes,' as you very well know. Time was when we
were very close--you and I, then somehow we lost the way to each
other. I'm beginning to realize that it hasn't been the same world
since and isn't likely to be unless you come back to me."
"Was it I who strayed?"
"It was I; but it was you who put the bars up and have kept them
there."
"Was I to let the bars down and wait at the gate?"
"If need be. It should be that way between us, Margaret, shouldn't
it?"
"I don't know," Margaret said, "I don't know." She flashed a sudden
odd look at him. "If--when I put the bars down, I shall run for my
life. I give you warning, David."
"Warning is all I want," David said contentedly. He could barely reach
her hand across the intervening expanse of leather couch, but he
accomplished it,--he was too wise to move closer to her. "You're a
lovely, lovely being," he said reverently. "God grant I may reach you
and hold you."
She curled a warm little finger about his.
"What would Mrs. Bolling say?" she asked practically.
"To tell you the truth, she spoke of it the other day. I told her the
Eleanor story, and that rather brought her to her senses. She wouldn't
have liked that, you know; but now all the eligible buds are plucked,
and she wants me to settle down."
"Does she think I'm a settling kind of person?"
"She wouldn't if she knew the way you go to my head," David murmured.
"Oh, she thinks that you'll do. She likes the ten Hutchinsons."
"Maybe I'd like them better considered as connections of yours,"
Margaret said abstractedly.
David lifted the warm little finger to his lips and kissed it
swiftly.
"Where are you going?" he asked, as she slipped away from him and
stood poised in the doorway.
"I'm going to put on something appropriate to the occasion," she
answered.
When she came back to him she was wearing the most delicate and
cobwebby of muslins with a design of pale purple passion flowers
trellised all over it, and she gave him no chance for a moment alone
with her all the rest of the evening.
Sometime later she showed him Eleanor's parting letter, and he was
profoundly touched by the pathetic little document.
As the holidays approached Eleanor's absence became an almost
unendurable distress to them all. The annual Christmas dinner party, a
function that had never been omitted since the acquisition of David's
studio, was decided on conditionally, given up, and again decided on.
"We do want to see one another on Christmas day,--we've got presents
for one another, and Eleanor would hate it if she thought that her
going away had settled that big a cloud on us. She slipped out of our
lives in order to bring us closer together. We'll get closer together
for her sake," Margaret decided.
But the ordeal of the dinner itself was almost more than they had
reckoned on. Every detail of traditional ceremony was observed even to
the mound of presents marked with each name piled on the same spot on
the couch, to be opened with the serving of the coffee.
"I got something for Eleanor," Jimmie remarked shamefacedly as he
added his contributions to the collection. "Thought we could keep it
for her, or throw it into the waste-basket or something. Anyhow I had
to get it."
"I guess everybody else got her something, too," Margaret said. "Of
course we will keep them for her. I got her a little French party
coat. It will be just as good next year as this. Anyhow as Jimmie
says, I had to get it."
"I got her slipper buckles," Gertrude admitted. "She has always wanted
them."
"I got her the Temple _Shakespeare_," Beulah added. "She was always
carrying around those big volumes."
"You're looking better, Beulah," Margaret said. "Are you feeling
better?"
"Jimmie says I'm looking more human. I guess perhaps that's it,--I'm
feeling more--human. I needed humanizing--even at the expense of
some--some heartbreak," she said bravely.
Margaret crossed the room to take a seat on Beulah's chair-arm, and
slipped an arm around her.
"You're all right if you know that," she whispered softly.
"I thought I was going to bring you Eleanor herself," Peter said. "I
got on the trail of a girl working in a candy shop out in Yonkers. My
faithful sleuth was sure it was Eleanor and I was ass enough to
believe he knew what he was talking about. When I got out there I
found a strawberry blonde with gold teeth."
"Gosh, you don't think she's doing anything like that," Jimmie
exclaimed.
"I don't know," Peter said miserably. He was looking ill and unlike
himself. His deep set gray eyes were sunken far in his head, his brow
was too white, and the skin drawn too tightly over his jaws. "As a
de-tec-i-tive, I'm afraid I'm a failure."
"We're all failures for that matter," David said. "Let's have
dinner."
Eleanor's empty place, set with the liqueur glass she always drank her
thimbleful of champagne in, and the throne chair from the drawing-room
in which she presided over the feasts given in her honor, was almost
too much for them. Margaret cried openly over her soup. Peter shaded
his eyes with his hand, and Gertrude and Jimmie groped for each
other's hands under the shelter of the table-cloth.
"This--this won't do," David said. He turned to Beulah on his left,
sitting immovable, with her eyes staring unseeingly into the
centerpiece of holly and mistletoe arranged by Alphonse so lovingly.
"We must either turn this into a kind of a wake, and kneel as we
feast, or we must try to rise above it somehow."
"I don't see why," Jimmie argued. "I'm in favor of each man howling
informally as he listeth."
"Let's drink her health anyhow," David insisted. "I cut out the
Sauterne and the claret, so we could begin on the wine at once in this
contingency. Here's to our beloved and dear absent daughter."
"Long may she wave," Jimmie cried, stumbling to his feet an instant
after the others.
While they were still standing with their glasses uplifted, the bell
rang.
"Don't let anybody in, Alphonse," David admonished him.
They all turned in the direction of the hall, but there was no sound
of parley at the front door. Eleanor had put a warning finger to her
lips, as Alphonse opened it to find her standing there. She stripped
off her hat and her coat as she passed through the drawing-room, and
stood in her little blue cloth traveling dress between the portières
that separated it from the dining-room. The six stood transfixed at
the sight of her, not believing the vision of their eyes.
"You're drinking my health," she cried, as she stretched out her arms
to them. "Oh! my dears, and my dearests, will you forgive me for
running away from you?"