KRIS KRINGLE’S JINGLES
“It’s funny,” said Beth thoughtfully. “New York seemed to be doing all
sorts of things when I came, and till now, and now it doesn’t seem to
be doing anything else but get ready for Christmas.”
“Those are not really automobile horns you hear; they are Kris
Kringle’s jingles!” laughed Natalie, pausing with the slender tip of
her small screw pencil on her lip.
“What did Helen Van Voort send us last year, Nat?” asked Alys. Her brow
was drawn by a vertical line of puzzle and her voice sounded worried.
“I can’t remember whether she joined the C. C. C. or not, so I can’t
tell whether to put her in the much or little column.”
“She sent us each a flower pin, don’t you remember? You liked mine
better than yours. They were good ones. She belongs in the muchies,”
replied Natalie.
Beth looked her curiosity over this cryptic conversation. Natalie saw
the question in her eyes and laughed again.
“The C. C. C.’s are a club of girls. The three C’s stand for
Commonsense Christmas Contributions. I named it. It means that the
members will not go above a dollar in buying Christmas presents. Some
of the girls joined and some didn’t. I’ll tell you one thing: it sounds
all right, and we did it because there is such a crowd of girls whom we
all know that it runs up to a fearful sum to buy decent things for each
one! Besides we know a few who are really nicer girls, come from better
families, than some of the richer ones, yet who haven’t enough to spend
to afford fine gifts all around. But you have to work so hard to think
up things for a dollar, and then spend so much time chasing around
shops to get them, that you really might as well spend more than a
dollar--it costs more than money to get through. Alys and I gave it up;
some of the girls hold on. It’s terrible to try to remember which are
Three C’s and which aren’t! You must send little gifts to the members,
of course, or they’ll be disgusted that you got something expensive for
them, when you’re supposed to know they’re C’s.” Natalie reached the
end of this lengthy explanation with relief.
“But you have a long list!” cried Beth, glancing at the pad on which
Natalie had been setting down names and at its counterpart on Alys’s
knee. Only in a few cases had there been an article written down after
a name and of these several had an interrogation mark after them,
showing that these articles had not been finally decided upon.
“About seventy-five, not counting the family and the servants!” cried
Alys fretfully.
“But at a dollar apiece--would that be little to spend for Christmas?”
asked Beth.
“Tell us about your Christmases, little Cozbeth,” said Natalie gently.
“At home?” asked Beth, flushing. “Well, there aren’t any big stores in
town. Some people send to Boston for their presents; lots of people buy
from catalogues. Of course we have a Sunday-school celebration. Aunt
Rebecca mostly gives me sensible things, things I’d have to have some
time. Janie and I----” Beth stopped. She found it hard to describe the
little gifts that she and Janie made each other with those long lists
lying under her eyes upon her cousins’ knees. For the first time since
she had really known them, she felt half afraid of Natalie and Alys.
“Janie and you got each other some nice little thing that you each
knew the other wanted, or else made something,” Natalie said, with her
mother’s tactful kindness. “That’s the best way to keep Christmas, but
you can’t help doing as Romans do when you’re in Rome. Did you decide
on everything you were going to get, Beth?”
Beth shook her head. “There aren’t many people I know,” she said,
holding up a sheet of paper. “Janie and Daisy and Nell and Edith
and May and Ruth--that’s all the girls. I’m going to subscribe for
magazines for Aunt Rebecca; she’s crazy to read and she has used up
’most everything in the Public Library. I put down some sensible things
for some people who haven’t any money. And I’m going to buy a lovely
rose pink dress for Miriam Gaines. She’s a cripple from scarlet fever,
but she’s young and I’m pretty sure she’d love a pink dress. People
will all ask her why I ever in this world got her that, why I didn’t
buy her a dark wrapper that would be useful. But I’m going to get a
sort of dancing dress, ready made, as rose colored as it can be, and
I sort of know Miriam will have a fit over it. I believe she’ll think
she’s going to get well, else such a dress wouldn’t come for her; I
can see her just living on it! And on Fourth of July, or days like
that, I guess she’ll get her mother to put it on her. I think Christmas
presents ought to be lovely, useless things that make you think things
like fairy tales, even if they never come true. It seems to match Santa
Claus stories better than sensible things do. Maybe they are useful
things, if they make people happy.”
“Where could you have learned such heart wisdom, my Beth?” asked Mrs.
Cortlandt. She had come in quietly behind Beth and her voice close
beside her chair made the little girl jump. “That’s the trouble with
this campaign for useful Christmas gifts; people test usefulness by the
sense of touch. If you three lassies are ready, we’ll go shopping.”
“We’ll never be ready, mama,” sighed Alys. “We may as well start out
and get what we know we want; it will take nearly every day from now
on, anyway.”
Beth’s eyes dilated, then she looked a little cast down. “It wouldn’t
take long to get my things, but I’d be glad to have them in the house a
while to gloat over them,” she said.
Mrs. Cortlandt laughed, as she always laughed at Beth’s funny
seriousness.
“Here is half of your Christmas spending money,” she said,
straightening Beth’s hair ribbon by way of a caress. “Your uncle left
me the hundred for you, but I brought you only half; you will have to
shop more than once.”
“Half!” cried Beth, turning pale at the thought of being responsible
for such a sum. “Fifty dollars? Oh, Aunt Alida, you’d better let me
leave almost all of that here! Aunt Rebecca carries large sums like
that in the waist of her dress when she goes to Boston to shop--she
doesn’t often go! But I’d not have any place to carry it safely,
because I button up in the back and I’d never be able to get it out.”
At this speech Natalie and Alys collapsed and Aunt Alida fairly shook
Beth in a funny ecstasy of enjoyment of her.
“Uncle Jim was quite right: you are an Anomaly and a Survival, you
little animate New England primer!” she cried. “Keep your purse hand
in your muff till you are ready to use the money, and touch your
selections with one hand only! Meet me down-stairs in half an hour,
lassies.”
Aunt Alida hurried away with this injunction and Beth seized the
opportunity to consult her cousins in regard to a gift for her, just as
she had consulted Aunt Alida for them.
“Oh, no one ever knows what to get for mama,” cried Alys. “Lots of
her friends ask us, but we never know. We three are going to have our
pictures taken for her and, if we can, we are going to get father to
sit, too. That would really please her, for there is no picture of him,
except dreadful snapshot things, since we were babies. You have your
picture taken with ours and we’ll get them framed prettily. You have
yours alone, and then in a group with Dirk and us, and help us coax
father to sit, and that will be the best thing you could give mama.”
“Isn’t that a little--sort of conceited? In me, I mean. Not you,
because of course she’d love a picture of her own children. But
wouldn’t it be queer in me to think she’d rather have my picture
than--well, anything else?” asked Beth.
“Now, Bethie, don’t pretend you don’t know that mama loves you!” cried
Natalie.
“Yes, better than our other cousins, her own nieces and nephews.
She’d love a nice picture of you. There’s a splendid place on the
avenue where we’re going; real portrait pictures they take,” Alys
chimed in. “Oh, and why not send one to all your old friends in
Massachusetts--send it instead of a Christmas card, to tell them where
your present comes from! And two or three different ones to your friend
Janie.”
“Alys has an idea, Beth!” added Natalie, refraining from suggesting
what a hole this would make in Beth’s Christmas allowance and privately
resolving to get her father to pay so much toward these pictures that
Beth should never know what their actual cost had been.
“Well,” Beth submitted to their wisdom. “And for Uncle Jim? Is there
anything on earth he wants? I thought I’d like to make him and your
mother something.”
“Make father a case to carry his traveling slippers in,” said Natalie
promptly. “You can easily do it; just an oblong with a flap; he will
put it in his bag when he goes away for a night. It is a case to keep
the slippers from touching other things--a white tie, for instance!
If we don’t get ready we shall keep mama waiting. She always allows
us enough time and then has no mercy on us for being behindhand. Mama
demands punctuality from us in all our engagements.”
“Aunt Rebecca always says ‘procrastination is the thief of time’ and
that if I get into the habit of being late I’ll be doubly dishonest,
stealing my own time and other people’s too. It’s really strange how
much alike Aunt Alida and Aunt Rebecca are in their way of seeing
things, though they certainly aren’t one bit alike any other way, and
Aunt Rebecca never would believe they could be alike at all,” said Beth
scrambling her papers and pencil together and hastening off to prepare
for her first extensive shopping on her own account.
It was noon when the Cortlandt car joined the line of its fellows
skirmishing in and out before the doors of the great shops in and
around Thirty-fourth Street. It deposited its four occupants at a vast
plate glass doorway and disappeared to allow its successor to come up
and to wait until it should be summoned to resume its passengers.
With what seemed to Beth like superhuman swiftness Natalie and Alys
selected the gifts upon which they had already determined, said
briefly: “Charged and sent,” and went on to the next purchase.
After a while Beth, too, woke up from her maze and decided upon her
gifts for the girls at home. She found herself in possession of four
bangles, almost alike, slender golden hoops, for the four girls who
stood in the second tier of friendship toward her; these bangles were
to be marked with the girls’ initials and sent to her uncle’s later,
each in an alluring square box with white velvet lining.
She also found that she had bought for Janie an exquisite little circle
brooch, set with sapphires, which, Beth foresaw, would match Janie’s
eyes, and which Beth found appropriate, as well as satisfactory,
for the clerk assured her that brooches of this sort were called
“Friendship circles,” and that their endlessness was an emblem of true
friendship, such as she knew hers and Janie’s would prove to be.
Aunt Alida, too, bought in this shop, so glorified by great spaces,
fine bronzes, glittering gems, that it seemed ridiculous to speak of
it as a shop. She bought swiftly and decidedly, at times secretly, so
that the lynx-eyed girls did not know what it was that she had quickly
ordered “charged and sent.” But she selected many things that Beth did
see, with awe and admiration. Trinkets “for her girls’ other cousins,”
she said, for her friends, silver mesh purses, beautiful things in
leather and glass, as well as in gold, silver and jewels.
Beth recalled the three little shops at home, the gimcracks that were
not pretty, nor useful, which appeared in them at this season, Janie’s
and her own shopping in them, their long discussions over articles that
cost about a quarter, or half, of a dollar, for which they had long
saved their spending money! She deliberately pricked herself with the
pin of Janie’s brooch to see if she were really here in the body, not
dreaming in her small iron bed, in that far-off Massachusetts chamber
which was hers.
Natalie saw her do this and demanded the reason for it.
“Nothing,” said Beth blushing. “Have you other cousins, Natalie? I
haven’t any but you. It seems queer that you have any but me.”
“Mother’s sister’s boys and her brother’s girls,” replied Natalie. “The
girls are in California; Aunt Justine is not well. The boys are living
in Washington, the state. Uncle Hubert wanted them to study scientific
agriculture, so he bought a big farm there. I suppose they will come
east again. Of course you haven’t any cousins but us; father had no
other sister but your mother, no brother. Oh, I forgot there might be
Bristead cousins! Aren’t there?”
“No,” said Beth. “My father was the youngest of five children and the
other four died of diphtheria, all together, when he was a baby. It
must have been awful for their mother. Of course it kept me from any
Bristead cousins, too.”
“We will lunch now, my dears; it is high time,” Aunt Alida interposed
just then, opportunely, for Natalie hardly knew how to reply with
proper sympathy to this story whose tragedy seemed spent and impersonal
now.
Aunt Alida took her three to lunch at a place of the utmost perfection.
Beth was getting used to imposing restaurants and they no longer took
away her appetite. But the music of the small, but excellent orchestra
made eating difficult; Beth was helpless under the spell of good
music. Aunt Alida had chosen this place for its orchestra, knowing how
Beth would enjoy it; for her own part she preferred music and eating
separate.
“Is that three-quarter, or four-four time, Aunt Alida?” Beth asked
after a long silence.
“Six-eight, dear. Why? And I didn’t know you had been taught music,”
cried Aunt Alida.
“I was beginning to be taught; a new young lady came to live in our
town and she was teaching me. I hadn’t gone far. The reason I asked was
that I was trying to eat my roll in time and I couldn’t make my teeth
keep right with four-four counting. No wonder, if it was six-eight! I
didn’t have much in six-eight time, but I like it; it seems to go right
along, so smooth and nice,” said Beth.
And this speech caused Alys to choke so violently over her lunch that
it was a long while before she could stop coughing and eat again in any
time whatever.
“I think I shall send Anna Mary with you to do some of your shopping,
Beth,” said Aunt Alida. “She can take you to places where you can buy
your serviceable articles for the people at home who have, as you said,
‘no money,’ and where you can find the rosy evening gown at lower
prices than in this neighborhood. It will not matter if the dancing
gown is not the very last utterance of fashionable magnificence, will
it, dear?”
“No, indeed!” cried Beth. “I’ve been wondering if there weren’t any
places in New York where they kept bargains. I think a bargain evening
dress would be just the thing for a lame girl who wouldn’t ever wear
it, don’t you?”
“I really do,” smiled Aunt Alida. She laid a crisp bill on the salver
the waiter offered her and arose without waiting for him to return
with change. Nothing so impressed and distressed little Beth’s frugal
mind as the reckless way in which her aunt and uncle left change to be
gathered up by those who served them in public places.
“Now, girleens, no more shopping to-day!” announced Aunt Alida as they
entered the car. “I am going to a tea this afternoon and this evening
to the opera, so I must rest and dress for the tea. Natalie, you and
Alys and Beth had better ride; the afternoon is beautiful. I hope Dirk
may be found to join you. We’ll drive around by the stable and tell Tim
to be ready to go with you at--half-past three.” Aunt Alida consulted
the tiny watch on her wrist before mentioning the hour.
“That’s good! I’ve been wishing for Trump, Aunt Alida,” cried Beth.
“I’ve no doubt he wishes for you, or at least would like to go out,”
said Aunt Alida. “Beth, what else do you wish for? You are too big to
write letters to Santa Claus, so you must be big enough to consult on
your own Christmas presents.”
“Aunt Alida, there isn’t a thing, not one thing that I really want,”
declared Beth earnestly. “There are lots of things I see that I’d like
to have when I see them, but I see so many that I forget what they were
the next minute. I honestly believe I’d like a doll that was very, very
beautiful. I always thought there must be a perfectly lovely doll in
the world, not like any I ever saw. But I couldn’t play with her if I
had her, because when you get old for dolls they seem to stand off and
not play with you. I’m just crazy about them, but I don’t know what
to do with them the way I did. Janie could help me, but I couldn’t do
it alone. So I don’t need even the doll. It is just like ‘Hush, my
dear, lie still and slumber’; don’t you know? ‘All my wants are well
supplied.’ And they certainly are.”
“Couldn’t Alys and I play dolls with you?” asked Natalie.
Beth shook her head decidedly. “I don’t believe you could have played
dolls with me if you were Janie’s age; Janie’s not as old as I am,”
she said. She looked at Natalie and Alys’s charming costumes, at their
dawning young womanhood with penetrating eyes. “You are too far-off,”
she added. “Alys is farther off than Natalie, though she is younger.
You have too much. When you get bigger you have to want something in
order to love dolls. I can’t play with them, but I love to cuddle them.”
“So do I, Beth,” said Natalie.
Mrs. Cortlandt looked at Beth, wondering for the unnumbered time at the
thoughtfulness that this simple little girl sometimes displayed. When
it came to heart knowledge, Beth always seemed to understand profound
things that she could not possibly know.
“Yes, I guess you would like to cuddle them, Natalie,” said Beth,
regarding her oldest cousin attentively. “Your eyes look cuddly.”
Aunt Alida telephoned the stable after they reached home, to save time,
and sent the girls thither in the car after they had put on their
riding habits. Dirk proved to be at home and he joined the riding party.
Tim had been bidden to ride beside Beth who, though she had by
this time ridden several times in the park, was still lacking in
self-confidence. Another groom accompanied Natalie and Alys, who were
good riders, for such young ones, and who needed no more than an
attendant should anything go wrong.
“I can’t help being glad, Tim, that Trump is no taller,” said Beth, as
she and faithful Tim turned in at the park entrance in the rear of the
small cavalcade. “It would not be far to fall off, if I had to fall.”
“No, Miss Beth, and I’m suspectin’ that had something to do with Mr.
Cortlandt’s pickin’ the pony for you. That and his gentleness,” said
Tim. He had become utterly devoted to Beth since he had esquired her.
“She was that quaint and old-fashioned and sweet,” he told Mrs. Tim at
home.
“I thought it was, Tim. I’d be afraid on a real horse, but Trump is
like a footstool. He trots beautifully, though, doesn’t he? And he is
the sweetest thing! I’m afraid to begin to love him, because it will
be spring so soon and I’ll have to go home and leave him. But I don’t
have to _begin_ to love him, because I just worshiped him the moment I
saw---- What is that, Tim?” cried Beth sharply, interrupting herself.
“Sure it’s some kind of a to-do with a child,” replied Tim.
Tim on his horse and Beth on Trump hastened forward; the rest of the
party was already out of sight around a curve of the bridle path. A
small crowd had collected at a point a short distance ahead of Beth and
her escort; they saw the gray form of a tall park policeman dominating
it.
“I’ll have to run you in,” Beth heard the policeman say as she came up.
“Oh, what is it?” cried Beth, and a boy beside her explained that the
forlorn little girl, whom the policeman held by the arm in a state of
collapse, had been accused of snatching a lady’s purse and throwing it
into the shrubbery on the mall beyond the bridle path, intending to
find it later. But that the lady had felt the child’s touch and had
pursued her here, whither the small footpad had run to escape her.
“Oh, I’m sure she didn’t!” cried Beth, slipping from Trump’s back to
Tim’s horror and pushing her way over to the child. “You didn’t steal
the purse, did you?” she cried.
The child looked up into the anxious face, scarcely older than her
own, but far plumper, rosier and happier. She saw the pity in the sweet
blue eyes and her own dark ones filled with tears.
“No, miss; oh, no, miss!” cried the little creature. Her thin body
shook with sobs and she broke into passionate weeping, interrupted by
Italian words.
“Why, there’s a purse!” cried Beth. Her eyes had spied a mesh purse
dangling on the end of a long silver bar, held by a silver chain
around the neck of the child’s accuser. The bar sustained an immense
pillow muff. The muff nearly hid the purse, but its gleams chanced to
fall under Beth’s eyes as she looked at the excited woman, who was
eagerly clamoring for the arrest of the small robber and her immediate
deportation to the reformatory. “Is that the purse you lost?” cried
Beth.
The woman looked down, lifted the purse as if she suspected it of being
capable of further tricks, and detached it gingerly from the muff bar.
“It was twitched--I suppose the muff bar caught it----” muttered the
woman, and stopped, ashamed of her accusation and annoyed by the angry
murmurs of the knot of people which had collected.
The poor frightened child, who had been in danger of arrest, sank in a
pitiful heap of sobbing weakness on the ground, utterly unable to stand
when the relief from her danger brought its reaction.
“I’ll walk, Tim, and let her ride Trump; it isn’t far,” said Beth.
“Get on my pony, dear; he’s very low and very gentle; all you’ll have
to do is to sit on him. I can’t ride, but I never have a bit of trouble
staying on,” added Beth to the prostrate little victim.
“No, Miss Beth dear,” said Tim, inexpressibly touched and pleased. “I
wouldn’t dare let you walk home, in your habit, too; they’d sure be
blamin’ me. Here, boy; go call a taxi and there’ll be a quarter in it
for you,” added Tim to the boy who had explained the situation to Beth.
“Be quick with you!”
The boy ran off, open-mouthed with admiration for this little lady who
had appeared in time to effect such a rescue.
Natalie, Alys and Dirk rode back with their groom to find out what had
happened to Beth. When they heard the story Alys was half inclined to
be annoyed at the oddness of it, but Natalie beamed on unconventional
little Beth, and leaned over to pat Trump as a means to squeeze Beth’s
hand slyly.
“You are going to be a little Saint Elizabeth, doing something for the
unlucky ones all the time; I see that!” whispered Natalie.
“What a right all right you are, Beth Bristead!” cried Dirk, forgetting
his audience and speaking aloud.
“She surely is!” cried a red-faced old gentleman standing by. “And I’m
glad to learn her lovable little name.”
Beth was thankful when the messenger returned announcing that the
taxicab, which he had fetched, was waiting at the head of the next path
leading out from the bridle path to the drive.
“May I go with Dirk to see her off, Tim?” asked Beth.
“Sure; I’ll wait ye here,” replied Tim, already with Trump’s reins in
his left hand.
Beth and Dirk led the trembling little Italian-American to the cab,
escorted by a considerable proportion of the crowd. As they put her in
Dirk asked her name and address.
“Annunciata Carmaldo,” the child told them, and that her home was quite
across the city, in Second Avenue. She seemed to find the cab a species
of smelling salts, for she revived from her fainting condition and
began to sit up erect, even to assume small airs of importance, the
moment she took her place within it. She bridled behind the doors which
shut her in, her dark eyes peering over them, like a small seal in a
tank.
“Maybe we shall see you again some day,” said Beth, bidding her
good-bye. And, to her great embarrassment, the child leaned out and
kissed Beth’s hands, raising them to her brow with fervor of adoration,
while tears ran down her thin, pretty face, telling Beth of the
gratitude for which the small Italian lacked all English words.
“Now that,” said Beth emphatically to Dirk as the cab rolled away and
she and her cousin started back to their mounts, “that is what I call
an adventure!”
“Were you really going to put that little Italiano on your pony and
walk home, Beth?” asked Dirk, eyeing the little girl as if she were an
entirely new specimen.
“Yes, of course; why not?” said Beth.
Dirk looked at her again, slapped his leg and laughed.
“Well, if I ever!” he cried, not explaining to Beth’s eager questioning
what he meant.
That night Beth sat in her aunt’s room watching her made ready for
the opera. It was an unfailing delight to Beth to see her beautiful
aunt robed in her evening splendors, to watch the wonderful costumes
adjusted and the flashing jewels placed in her dusky hair and on her
white throat, scintillating among the laces on her breast.
Aunt Alida was to Beth the embodiment and illumination of all her
dreams, a sort of combination of a royal princess, a fairy queen and
a household goddess and mother whom she might worship, but must love.
It had become a habit with Beth, and, consequently, with her cousins
since she had come among them, to go to Mrs. Cortlandt’s room when she
was dressing for a great occasion to absorb her loveliness and do her
homage. Aunt Alida found no flattery that she received later in the
evening in the great world half as sweet as this admiration from her
children.
To-night Beth thought Aunt Alida had never been so beautiful--but she
thought that each night! Anna Mary fastened a tiara of diamonds on
her lady’s hair and clasped a long chain of perfect blue-white stones
around her throat.
“You look like Iris!” cried Beth, as she caught the rainbow colors that
flashed at her from the jewels.
“What do you know of Iris, small niece?” asked Uncle Jim, entering in
sequence to his knock on his wife’s door.
“I know she was the rainbow and so is Aunt Alida,” Beth answered. “You
look just as nice, in all that white linen front, as Aunt Alida does,
Uncle Jim, but men can only be fine and nice; they can’t be wonderful.”
“Dear me, no; I should never so much as attempt to be wonderful,
Bethie,” laughed Uncle Jim. “What’s this I hear about your wanting to
give your pony to a beggar maid, while you walked? Saint Martin divided
his cloak with a beggar; I don’t know which of the saints, if any, gave
up his undivided horse to one.”
“She wasn’t a beggar, Uncle Jim,” Beth set him right. “And it was only
while she was faint and had to get home. Was it wrong? Dirk roared
laughing at me, but he wouldn’t tell me why.”
“It’s an unlikely thing to happen in New York,” said Uncle Jim.
“In New York? Oh! It’s--I suppose it would be something like my wearing
the aprons here I used to wear at home?” Beth looked meditative.
“Do you like New York, Bethie?” asked her uncle, tipping up the
thoughtful face.
“I just love it!” cried Beth fervently. “I used to be sort of jealous
of it, in history, you know, its being settled before Massachusetts. I
had to remember it was settled by the Dutch, and that Massachusetts had
the Pilgrim Fathers to get over that 1614 date, when Plymouth was 1620.
But now I don’t mind at all; I’d just as lief. It’s such a splendid
place and it’s so good to me and I’m so happy here that I wouldn’t care
if it had been Lief Ericsson settled it in the year 1000!”
“That’s fine and generous of you, Elizabeth, and I thank you in New
York’s name! But after all it was settled by your Cortlandt ancestors,
so you needn’t mind,” said Uncle Jim.
“I don’t think I ever realized I had Cortlandt ancestors then,”
said Beth. She sprang up to hug him--carefully, because of his
easily-crushed expanse of linen--for she thought her last speech made
him look sorry.