and rushed off with the box to the sitting room.
The girl had scarce lifted her rosy face to Wallace, their eyes meeting
in silence, when her mother and sister descended the stairs, and the
cord was snapped. But it was at the girl’s side that Wallace entered
the sitting room, and as they passed through the door together their
hands brushed, and he knew that she, too, felt the spark.
In the middle of the sitting room lay Albert’s tree, mingling its odor
with the odor of burning apple wood. Albert was hovering about it.
“How’s it going to stand up?” he demanded.
“Maybe we’ll bore a hole in the floor,” Wallace suggested.
Albert regarded him gravely. “No, I don’t think Grandmother would
approve,” said he, lapsing as he sometimes did into a quaint adult
vocabulary.
“When I was little, we used a tub of furnace coal,” Wallace laughed.
“Come on!” cried Albert. “I know where the tub is!”
His mother grabbed his flying coat tails, and diverted him to the
dining room. The excitement of dining with the family, of candles and
turkey, of a big tinsel star suspended over the centre of the table,
made him quite forget what he was about, and he was talking rapidly as
he pulled up his chair.
“Albert!” said his grandmother.
The three women bowed their heads, and Wallace bowed his.
Albert drew in his breath, expelled it in a grace, had just enough left
for the “Amen,” and instantly resumed his interrupted chatter. The
elders exchanged smiles, but Wallace was thinking how at that moment
five members of the To-Hell-with-the-Merry-Yule-Tide Association were
on their way toward Delmonico’s, and of what a contrast to this little
act of old-fashioned devotion the preliminaries of that feast would be.
He grinned to himself at the irony of it.
Wallace’s attention during dinner was divided between the girl at his
side and the boy opposite, between efforts to talk sense and nonsense,
for Albert loved his nonsense, and demanded minute details of Santa
Claus’s appearance as he drove over the church steeple, which he
accepted with the paradoxically trustful unbelief of small boyhood.
Wallace finally got into a considerable argument with the old lady
regarding the number of reindeer in Santa’s team, she insisting that
in her day, at any rate, there used to be twelve. In the excitement of
the debate, the plum pudding was forgotten, and suddenly it appeared,
burning merrily, and then everybody stopped talking to cheer.
After dinner, Albert was permitted to stay up long enough to see
the tree mounted. He went for a tub, while his aunt took Wallace
to the cellar for a big hod of furnace coal. One must make all the
preparations one’s self on Christmas Eve! She held her skirts high as
they went laughing over the dusty, uncemented floor, and her silk-clad
ankles shone in the dim light. In the far corners of the cellar dark
shadows seemed to crouch and stir. She gave a mocking little shiver.
“I used to be so terrified down here when I was a child!” she said. “I
don’t remember whether it was rats or ghosts.”
Wallace filled the hod, and on the way back from the bin stopped in
front of the furnace.
“I want to look into a furnace,” he said. “I haven’t been down in a
cellar and looked into a furnace since I was a boy and had to do it
every night and morning. It is so homey!”
He opened the door, and the warm red glow came out and fell full on the
girl’s face and bare shoulders, as she stood close beside him, peering
in. He turned from the fire to look at her.
“You _are_ so beautiful!” he whispered.
“Sh--, you mustn’t,” she answered. But her color rose and her eyes
softened.
“I must, I must!” he exclaimed. “I cannot help it any longer! You are
so beautiful, and so good! If I’d stayed in New York I should be at the
dinner of the To-Hell-with-the-Merry-Yule-Tide Association. Now I’m
gazing into Heaven with the most wonderful woman in the world!”
“It doesn’t look exactly like Heaven,” she twinkled, pointing to the
wallowing little spits of flame above the bed of coals, and moving a
little from his side. “Come, we must go back!”
He followed her reluctantly up the stairs, into the rear hallway.
There, for a brief second, she faced him soberly.
“I’m--I’m glad you are not at that horrid association you spoke of,”
she whispered, and ran ahead swiftly into the sitting room.
It was not long before the tree stood erect in the centre of the room,
its top just bent against the ceiling; and poor Albert was ordered off
to bed, refusing, however, to go unless Wallace carried him up on his
shoulder and his aunt undressed him.
“Auntie Nora lets me kick my shoes,” he explained.
Wallace swung him up and marched up the stairs with him, Auntie Nora
following behind. There was an open fire in the little chap’s nursery,
and his stocking hung from the mantle. There were toys on the floor.
When, a few moments later, he came dashing out from the bathroom in a
long flannel nightie, followed by the girl, he ran to the fireplace and
pinched the toe of the stocking. Then, instinctively, he held his hands
out toward the blaze, and Wallace saw his Christmas card--saw the warm
red firelight reflected on the little figure, the dangling stocking,
the cold moonlight on a whitened world through the window beyond. He
almost held his breath, whispering to the girl what it was that held
him so in the picture.
They stood side by side a moment, watching Albert, who was gazing in
silence into the fire, his chatter suddenly stilled.
“What are you thinking about, son?” said Wallace, presently.
“I was thinking maybe Santa’d get his feet burnt if the fire didn’t go
out,” Albert replied.
“Well, you say good night to Mr. Miller now, and go to bed,” his aunt
laughed, “and we’ll put it out.”
The boy ran over and flung his arms about Wallace’s neck, giving him a
soft, dabby kiss on the cheek. “Good night!” he cried. Then he dashed
into his chamber.
When the girl came back, she found Wallace standing in front of the
fire, looking into the coals. She came over and stood beside him.
“Come,” she said softly, “we must go down and decorate the tree.”
He put out his hand and took hers, drawing her closer to his side.
“That present,” he said, “I have not told you what it was. It was the
gift of Christmas, it was the gift of a new spirit, it was the gift of
my lost childhood--it was the gift of love.”
She did not speak, but her hand lay warm in his, and her fingers closed
a little tighter about his own.
“When I suddenly saw my Christmas card right here in flesh and blood
tonight,” he went on, “I was not surprised. It is but a symbol. Once
I was the little boy on that card. Now I am my own father and mother
looking at him. Last night I stood out there a long while before your
windows, realizing that hearth and home are the altars of Christmas,
alike its foundation and the flower of its spirit. I realized that,
because love had entered my heart, because you had entered my heart. I
have been so selfish these many years! I have not helped others, I have
not liked children, I have been far away from all the deep, natural
instincts. But you have brought me back. You have given me the present
of a new spirit, the Christmas spirit.”
“You were not really so selfish as you thought,” she whispered, “and
you always loved children, only you didn’t have a chance to find it
out. I knew that as soon as I saw you.”
He put his arm about her waist and felt the perfume of her hair
beneath his face, as her head rested on his shoulder.
“It is so short a time,” he said, “and I am so unworthy. Why should you
care for me?”
“It has been a very long time,” she answered softly. “I am not a child.
I have known the man whom I should love, and only waited for him till
he came, and till he, too, knew. That is what those intervening years
were for--that we might learn.”
She lifted her face, then, and he bent down his head and kissed her,
while his eyes closed with the wonder of it.
“Auntie Nora, I want a drink of water,” came the voice of Albert
suddenly. “What are you whispering about in there?”
“Maybe we were talking to Santa,” she answered, as she slipped from her
lover’s arms and ran to get the water.
Hand in hand, they moved down the stairway, and her eyes flashed back
at him like two pools of happiness as she went ahead through the
sitting-room door.
The three women and Wallace spent a gay and busy hour hanging the tree
with tinsel and candles and stars and presents. When it was nearly
finished, Nora disappeared. Presently she came back with a parcel.
“This is for you, from Mother and Albert,” she said to the man. “You
ask Santa to put it in your stocking tonight.”
“Yes, and come tomorrow morning and let me see what I’ve given you!”
chuckled the old lady.
Both Albert’s mother and grandmother had bidden him a Merry Christmas
and gone upstairs to tie up the presents hidden away from the prying
eyes of the youngster, when Wallace rose to leave. The girl stood in
front of him, between the glittering tree and the fireplace. The red
glow threw her beautiful body into high relief. She put her hand into
the bodice of her gown and drew out a tiny parcel.
“This is something for your stocking, too,” she said, “not from Albert
nor Mother.”
He took it tenderly. “And I have nothing for you,” he answered, “for
you who have given me everything--who have given me life anew!”
“I have given you nothing which I haven’t received back again,” she
whispered, suddenly coming into his arms.
Her lips were close to his ear in the doorway. “Merry Christmas, dear,”
they said.
He kissed her hair. “Those words mean more than I can utter now,” he
answered. “I--I’m not used to saying them so. Oh, may the Author of
Christmas guard and keep you!”
He went down the path between the evergreens, and the moonlight poured
a soft, golden glory on the white world, which had never seemed to him
so beautiful.
He hung up his stocking when he reached the hotel, and put his two
presents into it. When morning came, he sprang out of bed, shut the
window, turned on the steam, grabbed his stocking, and climbed back
under the covers. He opened the parcel from Albert and the old lady
first, and drew forth a large barley sugar elephant, which he gave a
slow, contemplative lick with his tongue, reviving memories of his
childhood. Then he opened the other present, with fingers that bungled
in their eagerness. It was a quaint and valuable old scarf pin, a ruby
set in seed pearls, and wrapped around it was a tiny note.
“This was my father’s. I have been keeping it for you, Dearest, on our
first Christmas.”
Wallace smoothed out the bit of paper and read it again and again,
foolishly happy. Then he rose, beaming on the world in general,
pinned an extravagant present for the chambermaid on his pillow, in
an envelope labeled “Merry Christmas,” and went down to breakfast. As
soon as the meal was over, he hastened out to the telegraph office,
chuckling to himself, and sent five telegrams to the five members of
the To-Hell-with-the-Merry-Yule-Tide Association. He wished that he had
thought to send them the night before, to the dinner. But it was not
too late even now. The five telegrams were alike. They all read--
Merry Christmas!
“You can have eight more words for your money,” said the operator.
“I don’t need ’em,” he answered. “Those two will do the trick.” Then he
hastened, almost running, up the street.
Albert was already out in the front yard, pursuing his aeroplane over
the snow, while the three women stood in the windows, watching him. He
rushed at Wallace to give him a hug and a “Merry Christmas,” and then
dashed back to wind up the propeller again. The door opened as Wallace
stepped upon the porch, and in the hall he felt, like a man in a dream,
two arms about his neck, and another “Merry Christmas” whispered in his
ear.
In the sitting room the old lady came forward to greet him, regarding
his face sharply. She took his hand in one of hers, and put the other
on his shoulder.
“If my daughter hasn’t said it, I will say it for her,” she
remarked--“this is so sudden! But I am too old a woman to be surprised
at anything young folks will do. I believe you are a good man, for I
have known many of both sorts and have never been fooled yet. Are you?”
“Only negatively,” he answered, “till you showed me Christmas.”
“Well, Christmas is a very good time to begin,” said the old lady.
“Here is a present for you.”
She brought him a token from the tree, while the younger women stood
near him, the widow with her arm about Nora’s waist. He opened the
package, and found within a beautiful old-fashioned watch fob, and a
card, “From your new mother.” He knew instinctively that it had been
her husband’s, and that its gift to him was a sacrifice not lightly
made. In his eyes it linked him with the past, in hers it bound him
with the future. He held this link of amethyst and gold in his hand,
touched to silence, and then walked over and kissed the old lady on
the cheek, while she patted his hair with a little laugh that was
suddenly half a sob, and the two younger women watched the scene
tenderly, the one with soft, happy laughter, the other in silence and
with a furtive glance through the window toward her son.
He felt a great, heart-warming, new instinct to protect and guard them
all, to keep inviolate the gentle atmosphere of this old room, to watch
over the little chap who was playing and shouting out there in the
snow. The mother presently went to the rear of the house to attend to
her housekeeping, and as Wallace and Nora sat talking softly before the
fire, he was aware of the elder sister looking wistfully at them from
her seat at the window, where she could also keep an eye on Albert.
“This is only her second Christmas without John,” the girl whispered.
“Poor Marion! I feel almost selfish today in my new happiness.”
Wallace watched the other woman steal softly from the room, and he saw
that she was clenching her handkerchief in her hand, and biting her
under lip. When she had gone, Nora slipped to a footstool, her hands
crossed over her knees. He laid his hand gently on her hair.
“All the deep mysteries of love and death and sorrow seem opening to
me on this Christmas morning,” he said. “I don’t quite know whether to
laugh or to cry.”
The girl raised her face to his, and her own eyes were misty now.
“Poor, poor Marion!” she said. “Oh, now I know what she has lost!”
Her hands suddenly clasped him hard, as if he were about to slip away.
Just then the front door opened, and Albert dashed into the room.
The girl did not rise. He came over to them as if there were nothing
unusual in their attitude, crying that his aeroplane had stuck in a
tree out of his reach.
“We’ll get it in a minute,” said Wallace, drawing the boy to him. As he
held the little body close against his side, he looked down again at
the girl.
“And now I know, also, what she has found,” he whispered.
The girl’s eyes looked into his for a reply, and Albert, awed by the
silence, gazed from one to the other without speaking a word.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.