softly-curtained place, with its white furniture, and a blue rug in front
of the brass andirons on which the pine logs burned aromatically. A blue
and white bassinet swung by a gilded rod, and a white willow hamper
showed the blue satin-lined tray, filled with miniature ivory toilet
articles, and tiny garments, laced and ribboned—all the dainty appanage
of a “first” baby.
A silver and mother-of-pearl rattle and a French clown, belled and
tinselled, on a white stick, lay upon the blue table-cover, while a
large drum, fastened on the wall above, showed that in the pride of
welcoming a boy love hadn’t been able to wait for him to grow into his
heritage.
Her sisters-in-law characterized Violet fondly as a mere child; in
truth she was a jolly little girl, but underneath the jollity were the
directness and insight, and the shy, deep feeling of a child, so hidden
as to be almost unguessed. Only her husband saw and reverenced that
unfathomed sweetness. But even he did not know of those far-off journeys
which her spirit took in company with her little new-born son, in the
wonder of his soft, warm mouth, his tiny feet, and unconscious, clasping
fingers.
The birth of her child had been to Violet also the birth of Thought; she
pondered on the mysteries; for the first time she realized the existence
of that great chain whose links are composed alternately of life and
death, with the coming and the going of generations. In this infant life
she saw the time when her own days should be numbered, and grew pale, yet
unafraid, as she held him closer, because the goodness of God was so near.
He was such a very little baby that he was not much of anything as yet
to any one but his mother, though his father was indeed unmeasurably
proud of him as a son and heir, and regarded him with deeply expectant,
if amused, affection. But to Violet he was a wellspring not only of the
traditional pleasure but of infinitely more. As one who stands with the
ear to a sea-shell, rapt with the sound of the mysterious murmurs of
the far-off ocean, so Violet, when she sat bending over her baby, felt
a deep, tremulous connection with beautiful, unseen things that were
holiness unto the Lord. She was so happy that she longed for every one to
be happy; her child-heart even yearned maternally over grandfather, who
had lived so many years that people couldn’t see that he was still young.
She was a partner in the secret; if she called “Last tag” to him it was
because she knew he liked it. He was a kind, wise old man, who submitted
patiently to Miss Clara’s fusses and restrictions because he saw the love
back of them; and he had lived his life so fully and well that it did
not seem worth while to strive to live it now. Yet sometimes, as Violet
divined, he was contented to dwell in the past because the present was a
little lonely now that the house was no longer the rallying-place for the
young, as in the time of his daughter Kate, who had children of her own.
“Little blessedest! I want your grandfather to have a Merry Christmas,”
said Violet confidingly to the baby in her arms, who raised his tiny
lashes as if in response, and looked at her an instant before the lids
fell shut again. She pressed him closer in adoration. “Oh, aren’t you
sweet, _aren’t_ you sweet!” and fell to kissing him softly, a process
from which she found that mothers gain wisdom.
“Did you decide what to get for father yesterday?” asked her husband the
next morning. He was a man of noticeably fine appearance, and a lawyer of
repute; it was still a wonder in the family how he had ever come to marry
Violet, who yet seemed to suit him exactly.
“No,” answered Violet
“Then I think you’d better get that new dictionary I was speaking of;
it’s published by Worden. I’ll leave you the money.”
“I thought he had so many dictionaries.”
“My dear child, that’s just the reason for giving him another.”
“I will not get him a dictionary,” said Violet. Yet she weakened after
a tour through the shops. She could find nothing for her father-in-law
that appealed in the least to an imagination all ready to be fired. Yet
it was joy to be out for Christmas shopping in the crisp air to one who
had been so little able lately to go abroad, while before her raptured
vision she saw ever a wee sock hung by the nursery hearth, and a tiny
lighted tree. Many little children were to be made happy this holy-tide
because her child had come to her—Violet’s thank-offering had flowed
by many streams to reach unseen baby hands. As she went along now she
stopped to slip coins into the palms of longing boys and girls looking in
at Christmas-decked windows.
“Oh, _Violet_!”
It was Mrs. Tom who clutched her. “Isn’t it dreadful—the rush! I’m nearly
dragged to pieces. I’ve just bought an inkstand for father, in the shape
of a peach, with a thermometer on it—the kind of thing no one ever uses,
but I was desperate. I’ve a big woolly sheep for your baby, but if you
think he’s too little for it——”
“Oh, _no_!” cried Violet, her face rosy with pleasure. “How dear of
you!” She could have embraced Mrs. Tom before crossing over to the
toy store, a ravishing spot, one window of which was given up to
regiments and regiments of lead soldiers afoot and on horseback, on a
green plain dotted with little round white tents. The other window was
filled with dolls sitting at tea-tables, swinging, or lying in pink or
blue-and-white beds like the baby’s at home. When Violet was a little
girl she had always been taken through this shop at Christmas time;
it was one of the delights of the season, but never had it seemed so
delightful as now, when she was buying toys for a “first” Christmas,
while music-boxes played, and animals squeaked, and rattling, whirring
mechanical toys ran riot.
She stopped at last by a counter laden with glittering tree ornaments.
Opposite were shelves filled with stationary engines varied with an
occasional boat or locomotive. There seemed to be no clerk there, but
a small boy, seven or eight years of age, with a white sailor cap
pushed back to make a halo around his short golden curls, was walking
backward and forward, regarding the display with rapt, angelic eyes, and
incidentally putting out the tip of his chubby forefinger to touch a
cylinder or an electric battery. Looking up suddenly he caught Violet’s
eye; they both smiled, and she came over to him. So might her own little
boy look some day.
“Do you like engines?”
“Yes,” said the boy with a deep, indrawn breath. He forestalled
criticism: “I’m not too little to have one; my papa says so! He’ll
run it for me. He’s down-stairs now.” He pointed to the shelf. “Do
you see this one? That’s where you pour the alcohol in—and this is
the steam gauge—and here’s the safety-valve. She’s a hummer! And this
’lectric—that’s a hummer, too!”
“Oh,” said Violet. She sought for more definite accomplishment. “What do
they do?”
“They go!” answered the little boy. “And they set other things going,
too, if you want ’em.” He indicated an array near by: fountains, a man
sawing wood, a printing press, and the like. “You ’tach ’em by a thread.
See that one up there?” He pointed to a large cylinder of grey burnished
steel. His tone fell to one of reverence. “It pumps water!”
“Goodness!” exclaimed Violet with delightful appreciation. “I’m so glad
to talk to you because I have a little boy myself, but he isn’t as big as
you—he’s only six weeks old.”
“Gee!” said the little boy with his angelic smile. “I never knew any
one as little as that.” He stopped disapprovingly. “Why, that’s only a
_baby_!”
“Ah, that’s what people call him,” said Violet, sagely; “they think he
can’t even talk. Of course he doesn’t really say anything, but we have
long conversations together—I always know what he means.”
The little boy nodded. “My mamma and I talk that way too,” he said simply.
“Then there’s another one—I wish you’d tell me what to buy for him—he’s
about seventy or eighty years older.”
“But that’s an old man!” cried the boy in wonder.
Violet shook her head. “Oh, no! Of course, that’s what people call him,”
she explained again, tolerantly; “but we know better.”
The boy looked at her debatingly. “Is it ‘Once Upon a Time,’ or is it ‘A
True Story’?” he asked.
“It’s both,” said Violet.
Their eyes met this time in the joyousness of mutual understanding.
“I like you, I like you,” cried the little boy, and tucked his hand into
hers, jumping along with both feet in short flying leaps. “Come here!
I’ll show you what to buy for him, I’ll show you; _that_! Oh, there’s my
papa beckoning to me!”
He dropped her hand and disappeared like a flash in the crowd by the
stairs.
“Well,” said Violet to herself, staring in front of her. “Well—why not?”
“I couldn’t get here a minute sooner—I _had_ to lie down after I got
them all out of the house.”
Mrs. Tom, arriving late at the paternal mansion on Christmas afternoon,
was taking off her wraps in the hall as she looked in at the circle of
sisters-in-law sitting around the fire in the drawing-room, warm with the
smell of cedar, and bedecked with scarlet holly. Through the open doorway
beyond the mahogany table, set with the old white-and-gold china, showed
promise of good things to come.
“How cozy you all look in here—but where are the others?” asked Mrs. Tom.
Miss Clara spread out her hands with a gesture of dismay, belied by her
beaming face.
“Well, you’ll never guess—every man and boy is up-stairs with father,
trying to run that crazy engine Violet sent him; it’s one of those
dreadful electrical things. If I’d had the remotest idea what was in the
box—and she never even told Arthur! You can’t get one of them out of that
room, except to—— Listen to that!”
A boy’s footsteps came hurtling down the back stairs, and a moment later
an excited voice called:
“Will it work?”
“No,” came from above.
“Oh, I see what’s the matter. Will it work now?”
“No.”
“Wait a moment till I come up.”
“They’ve been doing that for two mortal hours,” said Mrs. Malcolm
placidly. “They have miles of wire trying to attach something—don’t
ask me what, for I haven’t the faintest idea. Of course it won’t work;
engines never do; if they did all the occupation would be gone. My
husband is just as bad as the rest. They all have engines at home, but
they say Violet’s beats the lot. Just hear that child laugh; she’s been
up there all the afternoon. We’ve been having the most beautifully
restful time down here by ourselves. I haven’t seen father look so happy
in months, and in all that clatter! _Did_ you hear that Kate is coming
back?”
“Will you listen to that!” said Mrs. Walter.
The inevitable footsteps were clattering again madly down-stairs, with
the accompanying voice:
“Will it work?”
“No.”
“Oh, I guess I see what’s the matter with it this time. Will it work now?”
“No.”
“Wait till I come up!”
The end of a holiday is the dearest part of a happy one, when the jewels
are counted over, to be strung on the silver thread of memory. The
lights were turned down low in the nursery, so that the flames of the
fire of aromatic pine were reflected rosily from the white surface of
the enamelled furniture, as Violet sat there in her loose blue gown, her
reddish hair half curling over her shoulders, rocking her little son with
his head pressed against her white bosom. After all the merry Christmas
Day, after all the clatter, and jollity, and family chatter, the supper,
the plum pudding, and the lighted candles, and the children’s carols of
the Child Divine, she was back here once more with her little, little
son—the life that was mysteriously her life too. Ah, not because of the
feasting and the presents, nor the merry companionship, not all because
of the inspiring engine even, had the day been Christmas indeed to an
old man and those who felt the sweetness, unknowing. Through Violet’s
happiness had come the Angel Note.
The drum hung upon the wall, and set out on the blue rug was a small
farmyard of animals, with the large white woolly sheep and a brown tin
cow on wheels, towering above them. On the table stood a tiny Christmas
tree, decked with a red, a blue and a yellow candle, a little horse, a
little horn, a candy hen and a glittering star, and on the mantel was a
paper angel in white and tinsel with dovelike wings and floating hair.
Violet’s husband coming through the room put his hand tenderly on her
hair as he passed.
“Little mother!” he said.
She leaned her head back against his hand, her eyes mutely acknowledging
his caress, before she withdrew once more into that holy place where she
lived to-night with the child, and where even the man she loved could not
follow her.
The Name of The Firm
The Name of The Firm
“So you’ve lost your place,” said his mother.
She looked with tender thoughtful eyes at the lad before her, and
smoothed his fair hair with a hand that had to reach up to touch it, for
she was a little woman.
“Yes,” said the boy, with a lip that he could not keep from quivering
a little. “Somehow I didn’t expect it. Of course, I know lots of the
fellows have been turned off lately; times are dull just now, and the
firm always cut down the force when they can. It’s easy enough to take on
new men when they want them, and those who have been there longest have
first right to stay. I know that. But somehow I had thought that father’s
work with them——”
“Yes,” said his mother. She sat down in a low chair, and with a gesture
drew the boy to her side. “You say you had not expected to be turned
away, Francis. Neither had I thought of it! There were reasons—— Your
father thought that your future was assured, at least, if only—only as an
atonement to him. The firm did not promise me to take care of you, to be
sure, but it was understood. They sent at once, you know, and offered
you the position. It was only right that you should begin at the bottom
of the ladder.”
“The bottom of the ladder is about under ground there,” said the boy
with a whimsical shake of his head. “It’s pretty low down, I can tell
you! Why there are firms not a quarter so rich as they who pay their
boys more—enough for car-fare and shoes and lunch, _anyway_—of course,
though that’s one of the ways they _get_ rich. I’m not complaining. But
I thought to-day if father were the head of the business, and I had been
one of Mr. Nelson’s boys——”
“Your father loved Mr. Nelson,” said the mother, after a silence during
which the two had sat with clasped hands. “And Mr. White too,” she added.
“And didn’t they love him?”
“Yes, once—before they began to make so much money, and after
it,—perhaps—sometimes! I don’t know. Mr. Nelson was moved when he came
to see me that first time; he meant to be kind about you. To your father
he was always the friend he had loved even when he was cut to the heart
with John Nelson’s altered ways. There are some people who are _born_
constant.”
“But don’t you mind,” said the boy, a little wistfully, “that I am
thrown out of the place? I walked around the town two hours this morning
before I could make up my mind to come and tell you, though I knew it
Friday. I was afraid it would be too great a shock to you; and yet you
don’t seem to think anything of it at all.”
“You will be taken back with a larger salary,” said his mother quietly.
“You need not look so startled, Francis. I know Nelson and White—what
they used to be, and what they are now; I know them thoroughly. If there
were any other way—— Dear, there are some things that I cannot tell you,
but your father’s son shall not be turned from his old firm while I live.
They must respect the honour of their name. No, don’t tell me not to go
to them! I’ll not shame you. I am not going to beg them to take you back
again, I have the right to demand it. Trust me, Francis!”
“I do, mother,” said the boy, but half doubtfully, as he stooped and
kissed the face raised to his.
It was a pretty face, with a broad low forehead and clear grey eyes, dark
now with a purpose that he could not understand. He felt uncomfortable
without knowing why, as he met their gaze. There was something in them
that was not like mother.
She looked a small enough figure going down the street in her plain black
garments and little black bonnet—a small figure to hold the fate of a big
business house in that white envelope in her hands. For two years past
she had felt that it would come to this some day. The thrill of definite
fulfilment tingled now in every tense nerve. The father’s fate should not
be his son’s too.
She remembered her husband’s bright faith in the friends of his youth,
when they were first married; how he had worked for them with all the
powers of body and mind, the manager who ran the business machinery of
the house and whose honesty was like the sun, radiating his every act,
and whose justice was tempered with mercy. Heaven only knew—and heaven
_did_ know—how many boys he had saved from temptation by the kind word in
season, how many men he had heartened by his prompt recognition of work
well done. He was a man who gave of himself, unvaryingly, to those with
whom he came in daily contact, and was a greater factor in the prosperity
of the great house than the members of the firm. She remembered how proud
he had been of their commercial honesty, and how he had kept his faith in
their own personal friendship for him even after the benumbing influences
of trade and the exigencies of prosperity had kept them really aloof
from each other for months and years. When there was a child born, or a
death in the family, the business mask dropped for a few minutes perhaps,
to show the old time faces underneath, and the manager loved them, and
talked about them long afterwards to his wife. Some day, when John Nelson
and Harry White had time——
Then the policy of the house changed. The manager’s salary was cut down;
he was no longer called into the confidences of the firm. His wife
remembered with hot cheeks and clenched hands how that had hurt him. It
was the thought that they could have done it; he would have lived on
a pittance willingly if they had needed money. But he defended them,
of course; it was his way. He was a very proud man, so proud that his
friends’ honour was as his very own; who doubted it, insulted him.
And then—ah, that was hardest! to know that what you love is rotten at
the core. That man had no business to tell her husband, but every one
in the house told George more even of their own private affairs than he
cared to hear. Nothing that went on, for or against their prospects, for
or against the good of the business, nay, for or against himself, but was
brought to his knowledge for comfort, advice, or denial. He had always
borne his full freight of other people’s troubles.
But this thing—— His wife knew how the burden of it had brought the
beginning of his illness. It struck at the life of the firm; they had
survived, but the blow had killed him. They had used his honesty to cheat
with, and had offered him as the sacrifice when they were on the point of
detection. Johnson, who partly in horror, partly in protesting doubt, had
shown him, with trembling adjurations to utter secrecy, the incriminating
paper, did not know that George held the other half of the clue. To have
used it in his own defense was to betray one who trusted him, and defile
the fair name of the firm.
His widow clasped the envelope tighter in her hands. She had been to her
husband the priestess of his heart’s inmost confessional; he had given
her a sacred confidence.
But her whole soul rose in rebellion to the thought that her boy was to
be sacrificed as her husband had been, with no hand upraised to help him.
Her hand was small, but it held a mighty truth in it! All the sense of
wrong, and yearning heart-break of years, surged within, to bring with
them a fierce avenging joy. Her promise to her husband? He had not known
to what it would bind her; she felt herself fully absolved. Nelson and
White, Nelson and White, their day of reprisal had come at last. The
powerful fetich of their name would crumble into dust, when she struck it!
The dingy brick building with its gaping doorway gave her a shock as she
came suddenly upon it. She had not seen it for over two years. That was
the doorway under which George used to pass, the steep, worn, wooden
staircase, that up which he was wont to climb daily. She had sometimes
stopped here for him on her way home. She held her breath with a sickness
of heart as she traversed the familiar ways again, looking perforce in at
the windowed door behind which his desk _used_ to stand. She was to climb
higher to-day, to the sacred rooms of the Firm, the mighty power that had
brought into being those rows and rows of clerks at the desks below.
She took her seat on a wooden settle outside the door of the office,
which, open at the top, was screened off with ground glass in one corner
of the long room, and waited her turn for an audience. She hardly saw the
inquiring glances given her from time to time by the clerks; she was full
of an intensity of purpose that cut through conventions like a knife. But
presently the conversation carried on by the rising voices of men within
the office forced itself upon her consciousness unpleasantly.
“Mein Gott! then I lose twenty t’ousand dollar! Consider what that means
to me, shentlemen. At this time, at _this_ time, it is ruin!”
“You should have looked out for that before, Hartmann,” answered a cold
voice, that the listener recognized as Nelson’s. “We gave you opportunity
to examine the goods—you cannot say we did not. If your man was a fool
it’s not our fault. We gave you opportunity.”
“Oh, oppo-_chu_nity,” moaned Hartmann. “Mein Gott, what oppo-_chu_-nity!
And the whole cargo rotten! Consider, shentlemen, that it is ruin.”
White’s high shrill tones broke in with an imprecation, “Consider—as
you’re so fond of the word—that you tried to cheat us, and got caught;
consider that you tried to cut _our_ throat, and we’ve cut _yours_. You
might have known you hadn’t a ghost of a chance with us. We _know_ you’re
ruined, and we don’t _care_. Understand that. We don’t care. Any one
who thinks he can work that game on us gets left. You’ve got the rotten
cargo, and we’ve got your twenty thousand dollars, and we’re going to
_keep_ it. If I were you I wouldn’t talk too much about the story, you
don’t show up any too well in it.”
“But my wife, my shildrens,” moaned the man.
“See here, Hartmann,” said Nelson, with dignity, “this is business.
Either you talk business, or get out of here. On second thoughts you get
out of here anyway. We’ve had enough of you for one day. You think so,
too, White? Shall I get somebody to put you out, Hartmann? No? Then _go_!”
He held the office door open, with a compelling gesture of his free hand
and a little man, bowed together, weeping and mumbling by turns, came
stumbling out as if blinded. As he did so, a boy with papers slipped into
the office, and behind him came a tall, pale clerk, with shabby clothes,
and a gentle, anxious face.
“Ah, Cramer,” said Nelson, half looking up from the papers as he scanned
them quickly in turn before affixing his signature. “What can I do for
you to-day?”
“I was told that you wanted to speak to me, sir,” said Cramer.
“Mr. White, I believe, takes your department in hand. White!”
“The fact is,” said White, “we shall not need you after the first of the
month, Mr. Cramer. You asked for an increase of salary.”
“I cannot live on what I get now,” said Cramer. “I have others to
support.”
“Exactly. We are sorry, but you must understand that we cannot run a
charitable institution. This is strictly business. On inquiry, we find
that other men in similar positions are willing to live on _less_ than
you are getting now, and it is our principle to reduce our expenses
whenever we can. You must know that.”
The listener inferred that Cramer bowed. “My services have been
satisfactory, irrespective of salary?” he asked.
“Oh, certainly. We shall be glad to recommend you. That is all at
present, Mr. Cramer.”
He had gone. Mrs. Stannard sitting out there felt a strange
discomposure—pity, and a helpless revolt against this iron system of
injustice: an injustice that hurt her idea of the promoters of it more
than those under them—they had been her husband’s friends.
“There’s a lady waiting outside,” said the boy, who was going out with
the papers. She rose perforce.