The Man Who Found
Christmas
Books By
Walter Prichard Eaton
“The Idyl of Twin Fires”
“In Berkshire Fields”
“Green Fields and Upland Pastures”
“Skyline Camps”
“Penguin Persons and Peppermints”
_Copyrighted, 1927_
W. A. WILDE COMPANY
_All rights reserved_
THE MAN WHO FOUND CHRISTMAS
MADE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
[Illustration]
The Man Who Found
Christmas
By
Walter Prichard Eaton
Frontispiece by
Walter King Stone
W. A. Wilde Company
Boston :: Massachusetts
The Man Who Found Christmas
A new generation has come into the world since what is here recorded
took place. There has been a mighty war, when “peace on earth” seemed
very far away. The automobile has conspired mightily to change our ways
of life, possibly our ways of thinking and even feeling. You will find
in this story, dear Reader, mention of forgotten things--sleighbells!
We today, and especially our young people, are supposed to be more
sceptical of sentiment than we were of old; so therefore we are
presumably more sceptical of Christmas, which is the feast and holiday
of sentiment. But unless this story grievously errs--and how can
that be, since it took place as set forth just about twenty years
ago?--young people have been sceptical of sentiment before; and if
Christmas could prove them wrong then, perhaps it can again. If you and
I can learn to drive a motor car, surely St. Nicholas can. Maybe the
old world doesn’t change so much as we little, self-important mortals,
proud each in our generation, fondly suppose. We may, as we elegantly
phrase it, have “debunked” a lot of things since good Victoria went to
her rest and Henry Ford and the Kaiser conspired against ours. But
here is one bet still laid on Christmas!
Life, of course, may not have been so lively twenty years ago.
The life of a young bachelor in New York twenty years ago, at any
rate, was humdrum and conventional. It was not popularly supposed
to be, but it was. (It certainly isn’t popularly supposed to be
today, but probably it is.) Wallace Miller was a young bachelor in
New York, the New York when taxi cabs were a novelty and motion
pictures cost a nickel, and the only unconventional thing in his
life was the To-Hell-with-the-Merry-Yule-Tide Association, which
met every Christmas Eve, and dined. And, alas, even that dinner was
conventional,--Delmonico’s and dress coats! His profane association
numbered six members. There was Mercer, who had organized it and
supplied the original profanity; he was city editor of a daily paper,
and had to work on Christmas day, so perhaps may be forgiven. There was
Jack Gleason, formerly one of Mercer’s reporters but now a playwright,
who supplied most of the good spirits, which Mercer said was no
wonder, since he had an income of $20,000 a year. There was Gilsey, a
short, dark, thick-set, scowling man with an astonishing vocabulary of
invective and all the instincts of a born iconoclast, who by day was
sub-editor of a mild religious weekly. There were Smith and Stedman,
brokers and club mates of Miller’s, who resembled closely their kind,
even to the angle at which they pushed back their hats when sitting in
the club before dinner. Finally there was Wallace Miller himself, who
had begun his New York career after leaving college as a reporter under
Mercer, like Gleason, but, being blessed--if it was a blessing--with
a small inherited income, had abandoned journalism for “letters,” and
sought to create literature in a littered apartment down a side street
not too far from his club and the magazine offices.
When Mercer had broached to him the idea of the To-Hell-with-the-Merry-
Yule-Tide Association, he had fallen in eagerly with the scheme.
“Fine!” he cried. “I loathe Christmas. The club is always so desolate
on that day, and the service so bad! Every year you have to subscribe
to an employees’ Christmas fund, and then when the day arrives half
the employees are missing and the rest act as if they wish they were.
There’s nobody to dine with. You have to sit at the general table,
with men you don’t know, and every last one of ’em eats as if his food
choked him. It’s worse than Sundays in August. Besides, I’ve got an
aunt in Somerville, Mass., who always sends me a present! You bet I’m
for the association!”
The other four members had been carefully selected from a host of
possible candidates, each one on the basis of his genuine contempt for
this particular holiday. Gilsey had declared that he, personally, would
support Christmas as soon as anybody he knew really gave Christianity
a trial, but under the circumstances felt safe in taking out a life
membership. So the new association was assembled, and held its first
dinner on Christmas Eve, whereat plans for the next summer’s vacation
were discussed. The dinner was followed the ensuing year by a second,
and again by a third, for there had been no defections from the
ranks. They seemed, indeed, matrimonially and Christmas-spiritually
impregnable. December of the fourth year had come, and with it a
snowstorm. Wallace Miller still lived in his littered apartment, down a
side street, a little more prosperous than of old, but even more wedded
to his habits.
He was digging in the bottom drawer of an old secretary one afternoon,
hunting for a long-buried manuscript (after the fashion of authors),
when he came upon a bundle of ancient souvenirs, dusty and forgotten.
Dropping all other tasks, as one will when suddenly confronted by
visible tokens of one’s past, he untied the parcel and began going
through it. It was a motley collection--the program of his preparatory
school Class Day exercises; the class prophecy he had read on that
occasion, full of names many of which he could not now connect with the
forgotten faces; a dance card, equally full of disembodied initials;
a photograph of the old, square house amid its apple trees where
he had lived as a boy, and which he tenderly laid aside; another
photograph of a face between parted strands of heavy hair, a face once
loved with the chivalric passion of seventeen. Wallace looked at this
picture a long time, as the memories crowded back upon him, and laid
it back with a wistful smile. Then he resumed his inspection of the
package. Next came a blank book full of quotations copied in a boyish
hand--and mostly sentimental--and another blank book labeled “story
plots.” He remembered that one; it was compiled when he was “trying
for” the preparatory school literary monthly. The plots were amusingly
melodramatic. Below these books came souvenirs of still earlier years,
which must have been saved by his mother--childish compositions, a
letter he had written home when he went on his first visit without his
parents, and finally a big Christmas card.
As he turned this card to the light, to see it better, a sudden wave
of memories swept in over the threshold of his consciousness and he
sat quite still while they had their way with him. The card, in color,
depicted a small boy in a long nightie standing before a big fireplace
with his hands stretched to the blaze. The warm red glow of the fire
illumined his face and nightie. From the mantle hung a stocking. Behind
him was a window, with small leaded panes, and through this window you
saw a church roof, white with snow, and a cold moon riding high. Below
the picture, in Old English type, were the words
Merry Christmas
Long, long ago, in the forgotten, dim years of childhood, he had loved
that card. Once, he recalled, he had taken it to bed with him. The cold
moonlight in contrast to the warm red fire had fascinated him, and the
great, wallowing flames, and the jolly stocking. Dimly there came back
to him the awareness of white roofs visible from his own window in the
moonlight, of his own stocking hung up, of wallowing flames and his
father’s big, hearty voice, and a Christmas tree in the morning, with a
red sled under the branches and a star on the top.
He sat on the floor with the card in his lap, still and silent. Outside
the snow was falling steadily. It was growing dim in the room. The
steam pounded suddenly in the radiator. Wallace looked up angrily.
The place was certainly gloomy, lonely, oppressive. He put the card
hastily back into the package, slammed the drawer shut, and set off
for his club, without lighting the lamps. Outside, the streets were
already sloppy with the snow, and horses were falling down. Wallace
vaguely recalled his boyhood delight in the first snow fall, his dash
out into the drifts, upturning his face to meet the soft sting of the
descending flakes. He turned his face up now, and snow went down his
collar. He looked down again, and saw that the bottoms of his newly
pressed trousers were getting draggled. Stepping off the curb into an
apparently firm drift, he sank ankle deep in gutter slosh. He swore
crossly to himself, as he stamped and shook the snow from his feet and
garments and entered his club.
It was that hour preceding dinner when the club was full. Young men
like himself were sitting in groups in the grill room, their hats
tipped back on their heads, canes across their laps, highball glasses
before them. He could hear confused scraps of their conversation--“...
took a tumble today, all right. If it goes much lower it’ll wipe out
my margins”; “--you bet, it’s some show, and that girl on ...”; “--no,
you should have made it no trumps.” In corners men were absorbed in
the asinine game of dominos. Wallace suddenly reflected that the amount
of domino playing which goes on in New York clubs is a good argument
for woman’s suffrage. Several men hailed him with the usual “What’s
yours?” but he passed them by and went up to the squash courts. There,
at least, men were getting exercise, he thought. The courts were full,
so that he could not play. They smelled sweaty and stale. He went back
downstairs, and found Smith and Stedman, just up from downtown, joining
them in the inevitable cocktail.
“About time we began to plan our To-Hell-with-the-Merry-Yule-Tide
feast, isn’t it?” Stedman asked. “I noticed today that all the shops
were crowded, and a poor gink in our office showed me a ring he’s had
to buy for his wife. The silly season is upon us.”
“I suppose it is,” said Wallace, suddenly reminded of their
association. “Hope I sha’n’t be out of town for Christmas.”
“What’s that?” cried the others.
Wallace was rather surprised himself at his words, for he hadn’t the
slightest intention till that moment of being out of town. But the card
had made him unconsciously long for Christmas, for a real Christmas
such as his childhood knew.
“I might be taking a trip soon,” he replied. “I’m a bit stale on the
town.”
“Nonsense,” said Smith. “You’re the most confirmed New Yorker of the
bunch. You’ll be here. Where on earth could you go?”
Wallace made no reply. He didn’t know where he could go, to find
a welcome, and the thought somehow hurt him. They went out to the
dining room and consumed the usual dinner, every item of which could
be predicted. After dinner they went to the theatre, to a new musical
comedy every song and dance and joke of which could be predicted with
equal certainty. Then Wallace went home to his apartment, after the
usual half hour at the club for a nightcap. It was cold and dismal
in the apartment. “Also as usual,” he suddenly reflected. The next
morning it was still dismal. Rather than work, he went out into the
streets, through Madison Square which showed some traces of yesterday’s
snow, and up the Avenue. The shops were gay. A toy store window
attracted him. He saw many children going inside, with radiant faces of
expectancy. One of them smiled at him.
“I’d like to give somebody something,” he suddenly thought. “It would
seem rather nice.” He walked on. The pavements and walks were sloppy,
but all faces were cheerful. Christmas seemed to be in the air. Wallace
felt curiously aloof from the life about him, isolated, lonely. Why had
he hated Christmas? Was it not, perhaps, just because he _was_ lonely,
isolated? Was not the fault with him rather than Christmas? This was a
disconcerting reflection. He put it away from him, and went to the club
for lunch. Gilsey was there, holding forth “agin the government,” as
the old phrase had it.
“Christmas!” he was saying. “Christmas is now degenerated into a season
when most people have to study out how they can afford to give useless
presents to all the people who have given useless presents to them.
They can’t afford it, but they do it. Getting generous by calendar is
almost as spontaneous as kissing your wife--if you’re so unfortunate as
to have one--by the clock. It’s ...”
“It’s something rather nice, as I remember it,” Wallace interrupted.
“What?” roared Gilsey. “_Et tu?_ You’d better consult a doctor!”
“Gilsey,” the other answered, “did you ever try the band wagon instead
of the scorner’s seat on the brownstone steps?”
Gilsey looked at his friend with a comical expression of quite genuine
grief. “I--I don’t know what you mean, Wallie,” he said.
“Never mind,” said the other, contritely, “doubtless I don’t mean
anything. I’ve been a bit upset by a memoir of my dead life, that’s
all.”
But after lunch he returned to his apartment and took the memoir from
the drawer again, looking tenderly at the little chap in the fire-lit
nightie. “My dead life--yes,” he reflected, sentimentally touched by
the memories. “That Christmas spirit of those days, can it not be found
again? Is one foolishly seeking a lost Eden to search for it? Moonlight
on a white world, a Christmas tree, the merry screams of children--of
children--”
His reflections trailed off into incoherence, and chiefly he was
aware of an oppressive sense of loneliness. The thought of his
club bored him. Gilsey, with his eternal knocking, bored him, the
To-Hell-with-the-Merry-Yule-Tide Association struck him as rather a
farce, not to say a pose. He wanted Christmas, that was the size of it.
He wanted something he did not possess and in his present surroundings
could not possess. He was living outside of Christmas.
“I’m a sort of a man without a country,” he suddenly thought. “Gilsey,
Smith, Gleason--we all are. We are single men in New York. I’m going to
find Christmas! I’m going to find moonlight on white roofs! I’m going
to find that kid in the white nightie!”
He rose abruptly, and began to pack his bag and steamer trunk. He had
no idea where he was going, but he was very cheerful. He felt like
whistling, and found himself whistling a long-forgotten tune which his
father had sung to him twenty years before. It was the ancient carol of
Good King Wenceslaus.
That evening he did not go to the club to dine. The next morning,
early, he was at the Grand Central Station, where he selected various
time tables and hotel guides, and retired with them to the waiting
room. He might have gone to the town of his birth and childhood, but
for many reasons he did not care to. A trolley, he knew, ran past the
big house where he had lived. Perhaps the house no longer stood there!
The spawn of the city had by now reached the village; it would be no
longer country, but suburb. He did not want a suburb. Neither did he
desire to hazard enjoying Christmas in the shouts of children whose
mother’s picture now reposed in his dusty drawer amid the souvenirs
of his buried youth. So he ran through lists of stations till his eye
chanced upon North Topsville, Massachusetts. The name pleased him.
There was a South Topsville also, though Topsville itself did not exist
so far as the railroad was concerned. South anything, he reflected,
is usually the part of the community which has the mills and motion
picture theatre--just why nobody has satisfactorily explained; so he
cast his lot with North Topsville, and purchased a ticket for that
place. An hour later he was sitting in a Pullman car and leaving New
Rochelle behind.
By the time the train was well up into the New England hills, it had
begun to snow again. Wallace looked out of the car window fascinated by
the panorama of reddish gray hillsides seen through the white storm. As
station after station was passed, each taking its quota of passengers
from the train, each passenger met on the platform by welcoming friends
or relatives, the Pullman began to be almost empty. Wallace felt
lonely. There would be nobody to welcome _him_ at North Topsville. He
felt rather sorry he had come when he reflected on this. After all,
his search was probably hopeless. He ate luncheon, and became more
cheerful, for the train was passing out of the storm into a glittering,
white world of broad valleys and lovely hills and snug farmhouses on
the roads between tidy New England villages where beautiful naked elms
arched the streets. At South Topsville, sure enough, there was a big
mill, and down the street from the station a motion picture theatre.
Wallace grinned at the correctness of his intuition (“Almost feminine!”
he thought), and began to put on his coat. The train ran into snowy
meadows, into a strip of woodland and swamp, and then emerged into a
gentle intervale where graceful vase elms fringed a stream, and came
to a stop at the North Topsville station. Wallace alighted--the only
passenger to do so--and the train moved on. He stood with his grip
beside him and looked about. The station was a small one. Beyond it a
road stretched across the meadow to the village street, where he saw a
white steeple. On the other side of the tracks lay a snowy field, then
a road with two or three farmhouses upon it, then the steep wall of a
mountain. The station agent was up the platform examining his trunk.
Beside the platform stood a pung of ancient vintage, and in it was
seated a young man swinging his arms against his chest for warmth.
Wallace took a step toward him, and the youth nodded. “Be you goin’ ter
the hotel?” he said.
“I am if there is one, and you are,” Wallace answered.
“I be ef you be,” the youth replied, “and there is. Hev ter come back
agin fer the trunk,” he added. “Most folks as come here in winter is
drummers, an’ they travel light--sample case an’ tooth brush an’ a copy
of the Saturday Evenin’ Post. What’s your line?”
“Christmas,” Wallace answered with a laugh, as the pung moved across
the meadows in the cold, crisp country air.
“Wall, I reckon now’s the time ter sell that,” the young man answered
imperturbably. “Quite a brisk demand fer it these days. My little gel,
she’s writ a letter ter Santa Claus thet’s goin’ ter nigh bust him, I
reckon, him bein’ me.”
“Have you a little girl?” Wallace asked in surprise.
“Gol, I got two of ’em, but t’other’s only six months, and ain’t very
good at spellin’ yet,” the driver replied. “Why not? I bin married more
’n five years. I’m twenty-six.”
Wallace made no reply. He was thirty himself, and felt curiously
ashamed.
At the door of the Mansion House he gave the driver a dollar. “Keep
the change--for the little girl,” he said. The other looked rather
surprised, but finally put back his little bag of change into his
pocket.
“Wall, seein’ yer put it thet way, I will,” he said. “But I don’t jest
like it.”
“I _am_ a long way from New York!” thought Wallace, as he entered the
hotel.
The Mansion House of North Topsville was a relic of past generations.
Large Doric pillars in front gave it an air of dignified antiquity; but
the interior was surprisingly neat and clean, though darkened by the
protecting portico. That it should remain open during the winter months
surprised Wallace at first, but he learned later that most of the
business visitors to the South Topsville mills stayed here, attracted
by the superior accommodations and a rather famous kitchen, while a
certain number of health seekers could always be relied on. He signed
the register, and was escorted to his room, a large, old-fashioned
chamber with a broken pediment, like a highboy top, over the door, and
an open fireplace. He ordered a fire laid at once, and began to unpack
his bag. Outside, on the village street, he could hear sleighbells
jingling, and presently the shouts of children going home from school.
As soon as his trunk had come, he put on a woollen cap which pulled
down over the ears (purchased the day before in New York), and hastened
out of doors.
The village street was packed hard by the sleigh runners. There were
half a dozen old-fashioned stores here in the town centre, a white
church, a small stone library, a bank, a town hall. The town hall was
built of brick, a simple rectangular block with white stone trimmings,
and looked very cheerful over the snow. Out of the town centre, in
either direction, the main street led beneath graceful arches of bare
elm boughs into the white country. Wallace turned west, following a
crowd of children with sleds and toboggans. For a quarter of a mile
the street was lined with substantial old houses, several of them
of considerable architectural beauty, and nearly all, apparently,
surrounded in summer by lawns and gardens. North Topsville was
evidently still a good specimen of a too rapidly disappearing type of
aristocratic New England village. It seemed to the man as he walked
along behind the children that he was less a stranger here than in New
York. He felt as if he were coming back home. He walked with memories
of his own childhood in such a town, and the intervening years faded
from his consciousness. He half expected to meet somebody whom he
should recognize, and once, indeed, seeing a girl’s figure coming down
the path from a Doric porch behind guarding evergreens, his heart
gave a startled bound, for it appeared to his excited imagination the
figure of her whose picture he had so recently unearthed. Most people,
probably, know that curious sensation of false recognition. If we have
been thinking much of a person, we will often see him a score of times
in a single day, ahead of us in the crowd, perhaps, or sitting across
the theatre. At any rate, the shock of this sensation accounted for
Wallace Miller’s pronounced stare at the girl’s face, when they met
at her gate. Her eyes returned his gaze for a second, as if she, too,
were appraising him, and then she passed quickly by, leaving behind on
the keen winter air the faintest of perfumes, not the perfume which
comes in bottles, but which comes from garments kept in lavender, from
soap and health. The man drew a long breath, rather astonished at the
acuteness of his nasal sense, long unused to subtler perfumes, and
pleasurably warmed by the encounter. He looked sharply at the house
from which the girl had come, to fix it in his memory. There were
plants at several of the square, small-paned windows, and the tracks
of a sled and toboggan all over the lawn. Behind it he could hear
children screaming and laughing. He walked on more briskly.
The road soon passed into more open country, and to the right was
a long, smooth field, ending in a hill slope. Field and slope were
alive with sleds and children, their shouts making a shrill, ceaseless
chorus, almost like spring frogs. The man climbed through the fence and
ascended the slope, attracting a few curious glances from the coasters,
and stood at the top watching the sport. He felt ridiculously shy. He
wanted to coast, he wanted to join in the sport, but he did not know
how to begin. Nobody spoke to him. There was a group of red-cheeked
high school girls there, but his coming caused no flutter nor
whispering among them, as he knew it would had he been younger. This
made him feel uncomfortably and unreasonably old. The smaller boys were
paying no attention to anybody except themselves. The smaller girls
were timidly coasting on a gentler incline of their own, and doing a
great deal of the screaming. Two busy small boys were industriously
hauling up a big toboggan, and bumping down on it over the runner
tracks, hard put to keep it from swerving and upsetting them. Presently
two other toboggans appeared, and had the same difficulty on the
smooth, uncharted hillside.
The man finally plucked up his courage, smiling to himself at his own
embarrassment, and asked the evident owner of the first toboggan why he
didn’t build a slide.
“Dunno,” said that young person. “What’s a slide?”
“You don’t know what a slide is?” exclaimed Wallace, glad to see that
his scorn made an evident impression. “The only real way to get speed
and distance out of a toboggan is to have a slide. You use up half your
speed now by the friction of steering. All you’ve got to do is to make
two banks of snow a couple of feet apart, and keep the sleds out. Then
the chute between the banks will get almost glare ice, you won’t have
to bother to steer, and you can go a mile a minute clear to the other
end of the pasture.”
“Gee, let’s build one, Joe,” exclaimed the second small boy.
“Ain’t got no shovel,” said the first.
“If you’ll bring shovels tomorrow afternoon, I’ll help you,” said
Wallace.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” the boy replied, with some scorn.
“So it is, I forgot,” Wallace laughed. “Well, how about nine o’clock
tomorrow morning, then?”
“You’re on, Judge,” said Joe, easily, as he kicked the toboggan around
to face down the slope. “Want to try a ride?”
Wallace sat down on the cushionless toboggan, between the two boys,
and with a yell of warning they started off. The additional weight
in the centre made the task of steering too much for the helmsman.
Two-thirds of the way down the toboggan began to pivot, skidded madly
to the left, upset, and rolled all three riders over and over in the
snow. They picked themselves up, laughing, while other coasters shouted
and jeered. The man’s wrists and neck were full of snow. His nose was
scratched by a piece of crust. His eyes were weeping. But he laughed as
he rose. “That won’t happen when we get the slide,” he said.
“Ho, that’s fun,” the owner of the toboggan answered. “Want to try it
again?”
“I think I’ll wait till morning,” said Wallace. “Good-bye till
tomorrow.”
“So long,” said the boys, turning from him at once, as if he no longer
existed.
He went back to the road, digging snow out of his neck and sleeves,
and feeling rather sore and wrenched. In front of the house with the
Doric porch he now observed a toboggan standing. The girl was nowhere
visible, but the toboggan was a hopeful possibility! He went back to
the hotel and unpacked his trunk while the early twilight came on and
his wood fire sparkled cheerfully. He felt cheerful again himself now,
and sleepy with the unaccustomed country air, and pleasantly tired and
hungry. Supper was announced by a big bell clanged in the lower hall,
and it was an excellent meal, with real maple syrup to pour on piping
hot griddle cakes. Still sleepier and more contented, Wallace went back
to his room to read, nodded over the pages in front of his fire, and
finally decided to go to bed at the unheard-of hour of nine. After he
had undressed and turned out the light, he suddenly became aware of
moonlight outside. Going to the window, he saw it gleaming palely on
the white roof of the church. The village street was still and almost
deserted. The stores were closed. Save for a distant sleighbell, there
was hardly a sound. He opened the window and sent his breath steaming
out into the night, and then sucked back a great lungful of the sweet,
stinging cold air. With a final glance at the white roof sleeping in
the moonlight, he tumbled into bed, as the clock solemnly boomed nine,
and almost before the last reverberation had died away into silence, he
was asleep.
He was awakened in the morning by the clangor of the breakfast bell,
breaking strangely in upon his dreams, and for several moments he
lay in bed enjoying the odd sensation of sunshine in his chamber and
comparative quiet in the outside world. He heard sleighbells in the
village street, and the voice of somebody saying “good mornin’” to
somebody else, with the old Yankee nasal inflection, which was like
forgotten music to his ear. At 8.30 he was through his breakfast, and
set forth to find a snow shovel and a toboggan. There were plenty of
shovels, but only one toboggan in the store.
“Thet’s the last one,” said the storekeeper. “Kinder thought I warn’t
goin’ ter sell it, seein’ it’s six dollars. The rest wuz three an’
four. Would you like the cushion, too? Kinder absorbs the shocks!”
Wallace took the cushion, too, and set out down the main street
dragging his new purchase and feeling rather sheepish. Nobody, however,
paid much attention to him. He looked for the girl at the house
behind the evergreens, but she was not visible. The toboggan was still
standing beside the Doric porch. He passed on, vaguely disappointed,
and was soon at the hillside. His two friends of yesterday were already
there, and with them six other small boys, with a total of four snow
shovels. Evidently the word had gone forth that untoward events were
on! Wallace was secretly pleased and rather flattered. He felt so shy
with these boys that their response seemed to him a compliment.
“Good morning!” he cried. “Well, you are ahead of time. I’ll bet you
don’t get to school so early.”
The boys grinned at this, looking at each other. Wallace felt more at
ease.
“Well,” he said, “let’s get busy right away. Let’s build the slide
somewhere so it won’t interfere with the sleds. Over here a little to
the left, eh?”
The boys followed him to the left side of the slope, and under his
direction they began to work.
It did not take them long to raise banks nearly two feet high halfway
down the hill, but before this much was completed a score of other
coasters had arrived, and come over to watch the work. One large boy,
with a sled, got into the incompleted slide and came whizzing down.
“Hi, get out of that!” yelled the workers. “This is for toboggans.”
“Aw, chase yourself, I’m goin’ down it again,” said the coaster, as he
came back up the hill.
“No, you’re not, is he, sir?” cried the workers.
Thus appealed to, everybody looked at Wallace, including the large boy.
That individual spoke up quickly. “I guess this hill’s as much mine as
it is yours,” said he, with the characteristic aggressiveness of his
type, “an’ I’ll coast where I please.”
Wallace looked at him sharply. “You are considerable of a bully, aren’t
you?” he said. “Well, I’m something of a bully myself. We’ve left all
of this hill to sleds except just this narrow strip, which is going
to be for toboggans. Everybody who’s decent will keep out of it with
sleds. Anybody who isn’t decent, who’s just mean and nasty and selfish
and not thoughtful for other people, will have me and all these eight
boys to reckon with. Now, young man, go ahead and try to coast here, if
you care to!”
Wallace’s voice didn’t rise above a conversational key, but he looked
the bully square in the eyes, and that individual slunk off to the
other side of the hill. The smaller boys looked at the man with evident
admiration, and began to talk excitedly.
“Gee,” whispered Joe to Wallace, “Jim never got a lacin’ down like that
before! I’ll bet he comes and spoils the slide tonight, though.”
“When we get it done,” said the man, “we’ll offer to take him down it
on a toboggan. That’s the way to pull his teeth. He’ll be ashamed then,
maybe.”
No sooner had he spoken, than something made him turn. Standing close
behind him was the girl of yesterday. In the excitement, she had come
up the hill without his seeing her. She was dressed in a white angora
wool cap, a white angora sweater, and a short, heavy skirt, with heavy
knee boots below it. She held a toboggan rope in her hand, and beside
her stood a yellow-haired youngster of six, with cheeks like two ripe
apples. She was looking at Wallace. He unconsciously smiled and half
nodded as his gaze met hers. She spoke, rather to all the boys than to
him.
“That’s right,” she said, “you scorch Jim’s head with coals of fire and
maybe it will do him good. Some of these boys are in my Sunday School
class,” she added more directly to Wallace, “so I’ll just get a day
ahead with the lesson!”
The boys all laughed at this and Wallace said, “That’s right. _Carpe
diem_, in a new sense!”
Then he reluctantly turned back to the slide. Presently he saw the girl
and her small charge tobogganing down the hills. He sent two of his
own “gang,” as he called them, down the slide to see how it worked,
and set the rest to completing the bottom part. It was soon done, and
with a shout all the eight boys piled up to the top, crowded aboard the
toboggans, and one after another went yelling down. After a few trips
the bottom was packed smooth, and the coasters scooted clean across the
pasture at the bottom to the very road.
“Gee, this is great!” cried one of them.
“You bet, best we ever had!” shouted another.
Wallace looked along the hilltop and saw the girl. “Run and tell your
teacher, Joe, that the slide is for everybody who has a toboggan,” he
said. “Is that her son with her?”
“Ho, she’s Miss Woodford. That’s her sister’s kid,” said Joe,
scampering off, while Wallace felt a secret relief and a glow of
pleasure.
Joe returned with the girl and two other younger girls as well, who had
a toboggan.
“We built the slide for everybody,” said Wallace to Miss Woodford.
“It’s for the toboggans, so they won’t have to be steered. The sides
make it perfectly safe even for children. Try it.”
“It’s very nice of you,” the girl smiled. “Our boys need a man to
direct their play.”
“I fear I’m a poor hand, and a very inexperienced one,” Wallace
answered. “But I’m having a good time.”
“Doubtless that is why the boys are,” she replied, as she tucked her
skirts around her trim boot-legs, told her little nephew to hang on
tight, and Wallace pushed them over the brim.
The slide grew more and more slippery, and the fun more and more
furious. Half the coasters came over to watch, or to beg for rides.
Even Jim, the bully, cast envious eyes toward the slide. “Now’s a good
time,” said Wallace, to a couple of boys. “Go over and offer Jim a
ride.”
“You do it, Joe,” said one of the boys.
“No, you do it,” said Joe.
“What’s the matter, are you afraid?” said the man. “You just show him
once you’re not afraid of him, and he’ll come down off his high horse.”
“Ho, I ain’t afraid!” cried Joe, going at once toward the bully.
“Come on and try the slide on my toboggan, Jim,” the rest heard him
saying.
Jim scowled and hung back for a moment, but his curiosity got the
better of him, and he came.
“Take my toboggan, Joe,” said Wallace; “it’s bigger than yours.”
Joe took it, Jim the bully and another boy and two girls piled on, and
went screaming down the slide. The man smiled, and turned to meet the
smile of Miss Woodford.
“Won’t you try mine?” she said.
He put her on the front, and held the small nephew between them. That
young person was very solemn. Wallace could feel the muscles of his
little arms tighten as he gripped the toboggan rails. His little face
was set, his lips parted, his yellow hair blown about his temples from
under his cap. He was deliciously frightened by the speed. As they came
to rest at the bottom, however, he automatically relaxed, and let out a
bottled-up yell.
“Having a good time, son?” asked Wallace, as a small hand grasped the
rope beside his arm.
“My-name’s-Albert-Andrew-Goodwin,” the young person replied, all in one
gasping breath. “I-think-this-slide’s-the-bestest-fun-I-ever-had.”
Wallace laughed, and so did the girl.
“My name is Wallace Miller and I quite agree with you,” he answered.
“My name is Nora Woodford, and I’m not inclined to present a minority
report,” the girl smiled.
“What’s that, Auntie Nora, that thing you just said?” demanded Albert
Andrew Goodwin.
“It’s my way of saying the slide is lots of fun,” she replied.
“Why don’t you just say it, then?” the boy asked.
Again the grown-ups laughed, and Wallace felt a curious thrill through
his glove as the little hand beside his on the toboggan rope pressed
close against his fingers.
At the top the small fellow took actual hold of his hand, with a most
engaging smile, and demanded that he steer them down again. This time
Albert sat at the front, and Wallace grasped the rails at either side
of the girl, to hold her on, while she put protecting hands about her
nephew. The slide was already like glass, and it was developing a few
spots where the banks were not quite true and the toboggans were thrown
from one side to the other. Two-thirds of the way down little Albert
was whipped so sharply to the left that he let go of the rail. His
aunt, with a scream, grabbed him hard, and the shift in her weight was
more than Wallace could counteract at the speed they were traveling.
The toboggan rode madly up the bank at an oblique angle and shot over
on the other side, burying its nose in a drift and sending all three
riders overboard in a complete header. Wallace was on his feet in a
second, and had his arm about the girl, lifting her, for he saw that
the child must be underneath.
“Are you hurt?” he cried.
“No, but Albert, quick!” she gasped.
Nothing of Albert was visible save his legs. His head and body had
completely disappeared. The legs were quite still, and something inside
of Wallace went down to his boots with the sickening lurch of a badly
run elevator. He put his hands through the snow, grasped the body, and
lifted it up. It came up looking like a small snowman, wabbled in his
grasp, straightened itself, and suddenly emitted a wail.
“Oh, where are you hurt?” cried the girl, kneeling beside the child and
dabbing the snow from his face and eyes.
Albert blinked the water from his vision, meditatively lifted first one
foot and then the other, stopped crying, and said, “Why, I ain’t!”
The change was so comically sudden that both man and girl laughed in
nervous relief.
“Are you sure?” she urged.
“Sure,” he replied stoutly. “Ho, that wa’n’t nothing!”
Again Wallace helped the girl to her feet. “And you, are _you_ sure?”
he asked solicitously.
“I’m all right,” she said. “I had Albert to land on. You’re a fine
cushion, Albert.”
“And I had both of you,” Wallace laughed. “It was a case of the women
and children first, with a vengeance! Let me brush you.”
As he stooped to do so, all three were suddenly aware of how
snow-bepowdered they were, and laughed again, while the others on the
hill, who had gathered about, laughed with them.
“Thank heaven we can laugh!” Wallace whispered. “When I saw those two
little leggings so still in the snow I seemed to grow ten years older.”
The girl looked into his face, and shuddered, without speaking. It was
as though they had touched hands across a sudden gulf. He brushed the
snow from her clothes as best he could, and then he spanked it off
Albert, and on an impulse strange to him put his arms about the little
fellow and gave him a hug. His eyes looked up to meet those of the
girl, which were regarding him oddly.
“I didn’t know before that I liked kids,” he said, as if in apology.
“You do. I’m sure,” she smiled.
Before any more toboggans were allowed on the slide, Wallace and his
gang made the banks higher and straighter at the dangerous points,
and thus corrected the chute held like a vise. The coasters were soon
whizzing down again.
But before they could start back, the town clock struck twelve.
“Oh, gee, dinner time!” cried Joe. “I’d rather slide.”
“The slide will be here this afternoon,” Wallace laughed. “You go home
to dinner before your mother gets after you, Joe!”
The rest grinned at Joe, and followed Wallace and Miss Woodford out of
the field. It was a considerable procession which marched up the road.
Little Albert refused his aunt’s hand, proudly insisting on tugging his
own toboggan, and chattering of his adventure. Half a dozen small boys
disputed for the right to drag Wallace’s. Another boy carried his snow
shovel. Even the bully was in the group.
The girl looked back, laughing. “I believe you are the Pied Piper,” she
said.
“If I should confess to you,” he answered, “that this morning I was
afraid of these boys, as timid as a child before them, maybe you
wouldn’t believe me. But I’m not used to kids.”
She again darted an odd look of curiosity at him. “Are you visiting in
town?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know a soul here. I’m at the Mansion House.
I just came--saw the name North Topsville on the time table and liked
it. I’m hunting for Christmas.”
Once more she looked at him. “That shouldn’t be hard to find. Christmas
is nearly everywhere, isn’t it?”
Wallace shook his head. “I’ve not met Christmas personally in a decade,
at least,” he answered.
The girl paused in front of the house amid the evergreens. “I think we
can introduce it to you here,” she said, with a bright smile. “We keep
quite a supply on hand in Topsville.”
Then she nodded to him, and to the children, and turned up the path.
The bully touched his cap.
“Boys,” said Wallace, “don’t you know what to do when a lady meets you,
or leaves you? What is it, Joe?”
Joe turned red. “Touch yer cap,” he said.
“Exactly,” said Wallace, “and Jim, here, was the only boy who did it.
Good for you, Jim!”
It was Jim’s turn to color--with pleasure as well as embarrassment.
The other boys looked at him. The villain of the early morning had now
become the hero! They scattered their several ways in some perplexity,
while Wallace walked on to his dinner, every nerve tingling with the
excitement of the morning, the unusual contact with small boys, the
thrill of little Albert’s touch, his warm baby arms and hand, the
sudden surge of horror at the thought of injury to him, the feeling of
intimacy which followed the accident, the perfume of the girl’s hair,
her bright, friendly smile, the whole atmosphere of naïve enjoyment. It
wasn’t much like his mornings in New York, he reflected. And what an
appetite he had!
But he discovered after dinner that he was tired, that the muscles of
his legs ached from climbing the hill, that his hands were chapped and
his face smarted. Indolence stole over him, and he curled up before the
fire in his room and read a book, until the light began to fail. Then
he went out once more, into the cold twilight, and his feet led him
up the street to the house with the Doric porch. He told himself that
he must inquire if Albert were really unhurt. Almost at the gate he
met Miss Woodford, Albert, and several of the boys, which answered his
unspoken question.
“Hi, where were you this after’?” called Joe. “Gee, the slide’s so
slippery now it’s most ice!”
“Yes, an’ I mos’ fell off again twice!” cried little Albert Andrew
Goodwin, running up to him and thrusting a tiny hand into his.
“Did you?” cried Wallace. “Well, now you see why you’ve got to hang on
tight, all right.”
The other boys moved on, and Joe led them in touching his cap to the
girl.
(“That’s right, Joe,” whispered Wallace, as the boy passed him.)
Miss Woodford acknowledged the salute with a bright smile and a “Good
night.” The little chap kept fast hold of Wallace’s hand.
“I gotta snow man in the back yard. You come ’n see it,” he pleaded,
tugging at his new friend’s fingers.
Wallace laughed, a little embarrassed. “I guess not today, Albert,” he
said. “It’s bedtime for little boys and snow men.”
“Ho, snow men don’t go to bed at all, an’ I don’t go till seven!” cried
Albert. “Please tell him to come, Auntie Nora.”
“You’ve asked him, dear,” said Auntie Nora, with a smile. “I’m sure
he’ll come for you if anybody.”
Wallace looked at her, and her eyes met his for a second and did not
tell him to refuse, so with Albert’s hand still tugging at his, he was
taken up the path between the evergreens, around the big, square house,
into a large garden space, where a snow man stood, with lumps of coal
for eyes.
“Why, how do you do, Mr. I. C. Snow!” cried Wallace, pretending to
shake hands. “I am glad to see you looking so well. I trust you don’t
find this weather too cold for you?”
Albert shouted with glee. “Say it again!” he cried.
Wallace put his ear to the snow man’s mouth, and shook his head
gravely. “Oh, that’s very sad!” he said. “Very sad!”
“What does he say?” Albert asked, crowding close.
“He says he’s got such a cold from not wearing a hat that he’s lost his
voice,” Wallace answered.
The boy looked solemnly puzzled for a second, and then burst into
shouts of laughter.
“Ain’t he funny, Auntie Nora?” he demanded. “The snow man don’t really
talk.”
“_What?_” cried Wallace. “Well, I guess you never listened very close!”
“I like you,” said Albert suddenly, grabbing his hand again. “Come in
an’ see my blocks.”
“Do,” added the girl, noting Wallace’s hesitancy; “we will have some
tea.”
“You are very kind,” Wallace answered, “but I’m afraid our little
friend is forcing your hospitality.”
“We always have tea at this time,” she smiled. Her eyes were friendly.
In her white cap and sweater, her cheeks red with a day in the open,
her hair curling out rebelliously about her temples, she was a
temptation hard to resist. The warm little hand was tugging at his
fingers. But Wallace managed to say, “Another time, sonny,” and made
his way to the street.
The next morning he debated the propriety of going to church. He had
not gone to church for so many years that the idea was invested with
novelty. Yet he knew that he was going in reality to see the girl
again, and it seemed hardly an appropriate motive. However, he went!
A farmer sat directly in front of him, with a sunburned neck like
wrinkled leather, rising above a rubber collar. Wallace thought of
his own grandfather, who had been a Yankee farmer, too. The whole
congregation, and the bare meeting house with its gallery on three
sides and its lofty pulpit reached by a winding stair, reminded him of
his childhood. He saw Miss Woodford in the choir. She wore black furs,
which became her as much as white. Presently she sang a solo, and her
voice was sweet and quite evidently trained. Wallace found himself
suddenly thrilled by it, as he used to be years ago by the voices of
those he loved, and long after the congregation had rustled to silence
and the minister had begun to preach, he sat with his eyes on the
choir, in a delicious revery.
When the sermon was over, and the congregation had sung the closing
hymn and bowed for the benediction, there was an immediate outpouring
from the pews and the hum of greetings. This was the social hour of the
week. The minister came down from the pulpit, exchanging salutations.
Children came running in on their way to Sunday School in the vestry.
Neighbors chatted in groups. Before Wallace had fairly left his pew,
a farmer in starched best was grasping him by the hand, and hoping
he would come again. The minister came up and greeted him. A moment
later he saw Miss Woodford drawing near. She put out her hand. “Good
morning,” she said. Then, turning to the minister, she added, “Mr.
Miller taught some of my boys in one day to do what I’ve not been able
to teach them in a year--to touch their hats. I really think you ought
to give him a Sunday School class.”
“Good gracious!” gasped Wallace, with such evidently genuine amaze that
the others laughed.
“I should be delighted to get a man into the Sunday School,” said the
minister. “Who knows, we might start up some Boy Scout work!”
“Mr. Miller is just the man,” said the girl, with a twinkle.
“I don’t think this is fair of you, Miss Woodford,” Wallace put
in. “For all you know, I’m a heathen--maybe the Pied Piper, as you
suggested.”
“The Pied Piper would have made an excellent scout master,” the
minister smiled. “Well, Mr. Miller, if you stay in North Topsville
long, we shall hope to catch you yet.”
He moved on, leaving the two young people together. A second woman,
in black, drew near, a few years older than Miss Woodford. “May I
introduce the mother of your friend Albert--my sister, Mrs. Goodwin,”
said the girl.
“I am always delighted to meet Albert’s friends,” the second smiled.
“He tells me you wouldn’t come to see his blocks. I really think you
will have to come if only to keep him quiet. For tea tomorrow, perhaps?”
Wallace bowed, as Albert’s mother passed on. The girl turned toward the
vestry. “Now to my class,” she said. “I do wish you would take it,
instead.” Her eyes met his for a second, half twinkling, half earnest.
He shook his head. “Really, I’m unfit. You don’t know.” He spoke
seriously.