to be imagined struck with ominous amazement. And big James Falcontent
had got well past the years of simplicity; he was not easily startled.
The Fifth Avenue bus had stopped; Falcontent had glanced up from his
musing—a purely commercial calculation, being nothing more romantic
than some trick of the trade having to do with the sale of boots and
shoes. But what Falcontent had then observed—he was gently yawning
at the time—nevertheless astounded him beyond recent experience.
Moreover, it led him eventually to far-away places and engrossed him in
preposterous emotions. Here, indeed, was the first flutter of the wings
of Fate. No; it was not a woman. A splendid, high-stepping, modish
creature, of impeccable propriety, of gracious, aristocratic demeanor,
might mildly have interested James Falcontent in passing. But since the
last departure of Matilda—well, since the death of Falcontent’s wife,
Falcontent had persuaded himself that women were not at all pertinent
to his life in the world. No; it was not a woman. Nothing of the sort!
A church had dumfounded Falcontent.
Nobody was going in or out; the bronze doors were closed and doubtless
locked fast against untimely intrusion.
“Shut down for the week, by George!” Falcontent commented, in
astonishment.
It was a gigantic building occupying a great block of what Falcontent
called in his business lingo high-class real estate. And it was truly a
magnificent edifice. It occurred all at once to Falcontent that a plant
of this spaciousness and exquisite exterior, running full time, as it
were, only on Sundays, with occasional week-day operations, situated in
a neighborhood in which real-estate values were of such an appalling
character that few men could look upon them and live thereafter without
horrified envy, must have an enormous patronage to support it. That
is to say, a good many people of consequence must still be going to
church. And it astonished Falcontent to the very deeps of his knowledge
of the world to confront this visible evidence of what he had for a
good many years conceived to have become an old-fashioned and generally
abandoned habit of piety. Moreover, Falcontent could recall other
churches. There were hundreds of them. There were thousands. Good Lord,
there must be millions—the country over! And most of them, Falcontent
was shocked to remember, were of an extravagant magnitude and elegance,
each according to its community.
What the deuce did people still go to church for, anyhow? Nobody that
Falcontent was intimate with ever went to church. But there must still
be something in it!
Falcontent began to ponder this odd disclosure when the bus got under
way. Thus: Well, anyhow, the young women, God bless ’em! went to church
to display their dainty little attractions and to assert each her
peculiar interpretation of the fashions of the day. Of course! That was
plain enough. It always had been that way. It was tenderly feminine,
too—a most engaging weakness of the sex. And the young men—amorous
young sparks of the town—followed the young women. A very natural and
proper thing! It always had been that way. And Falcontent had done it
himself—long ago. The delectable business of mating, then, accounted
for a good deal. But not for very much. Still, there were the aged.
They went to church, of course, for the traditional consolations of
religion. Falcontent wondered, flushed with melancholy, whether or not
they got what they went for. Probably not. Falcontent did not know.
He had heard rumors to the contrary; and these rumors now mightily
incensed him. Hang it all, anyhow! There was nothing specific or
downright any more. Doubtless the old-fashioned religion, such as
Falcontent had known as a boy, was in these days altogether a thing of
the past.
“The devil!” Falcontent thought, out of temper with the times; “they
might at least have preserved that institution for a while—for one more
generation—if for nothing more than mere sentiment’s sake.”
Deuce take it all!
“Of course the thing had to go to the scrap-heap; but still—for a few
more years——”
Other folk went to church, as Falcontent very well knew; men of largest
riches, for example, whose hobby was pious behavior in private life,
and who voiced with amusing precision in the Sunday-schools the antique
platitudes of piety. Falcontent grinned grimly when this crossed his
mind with significance. Groot, of Groot & McCarthy, was a man cut
from that cloth. But never mind Groot! The upkeep of these expensive
establishments was not by any means to be accounted for by the piety of
Falcontent’s unctuous boss. What the deuce _did_ keep the churches on
their feet? Well, there was just one adequate answer; there must still
be a vast body of—of—well, of consumers of religion, so to speak—of
paying patrons of religious exercises—whom Falcontent had forgotten,
and of whose needs and ancient practices he had continued in surprising
ignorance. It was these substantial folk who kept the churches in
what was obviously a thriving state of health. Churches in the city,
churches in the towns—churches the whole country over. Steeples
everywhere, by George! Good Lord, there must be a big bunch of people
in the country—like that!
They were the real people, too. They were always the real people. No
matter what sort of big industry their patronage kept on its feet—_they
were the real people_! And every business man knew it.
“These people are not giving something for nothing,” Falcontent
reflected, somewhat disturbed by this novelty of truth. “They’re
getting _something_ out of it.”
That was a business proposition.
“I wonder,” Falcontent puzzled, “what the deuce they _do_ get out of
it—in these days.”
Falcontent was himself a robust fellow. He was highly efficient: he was
a hustler—of the most up-to-date and scientifically efficient sort.
And he conformed: he was sane according to every notion of the times.
In shirts, shoes, hose, cravats, hair-cut, occupation, waist-line,
language, habits, interest, antipathies, finger-nails, clean-shaven
condition, oaths, charities—in everything a man might be disposed to
call in question—Falcontent was of the day and proper beyond quibble.
He gave no sign even of the subtle beginnings of peculiarity. He was
precisely like everybody else in the world: it would have horrified
him—grieved and shamed him—to discover any symptom of significant
difference. In brief, Falcontent was in vigorous health. Not an
alienist of virtuous reputation could have discovered in him the least
divergence from the straight line of normality.
Nor could a surgeon with due regard for the ethics of his profession
have found in Falcontent any honest occupation for his knife; nor could
a devoted practitioner of internal medicine have supplied a need of
Falcontent’s hearty body.
Falcontent’s soul? Falcontent had no soul. Or rather, to be precise,
he had a soul, of course. Everybody has a soul. Nobody doubts that
any more; it is not in good taste even to discuss the thing. But
Falcontent was not abnormally conscious of having a soul. Nobody in
Falcontent’s world acknowledged the possession of a soul. Falcontent’s
soul took care of itself; it did not trouble him. And had such a
phantom of his childhood lingered to distress him—to cry out for the
bread and water of attention,—Falcontent would with caution have
concealed its aggravating habits from the normal fellows with whom
he was accustomed to mingle upon terms of the most normally jovial
good-fellowship. Falcontent—_with a troublesome soul_? You should have
heard Falcontent laugh! A big, ruddy, big-hearted chap—that was James
Falcontent; a clean, kindly, hopeful, energetic, merry fellow, given
to no meanness, to no greed, to no unworthy pride, to no dishonor
whatsoever.
Big James Falcontent surely stood in no peril of the machinations of
mysticism.
But——
“I don’t know,” Falcontent brooded, as the bus sped on up Fifth Avenue,
“but that little Jimmie had better start in going to Sunday-school.”
All very well! But little Jimmie might contract a morbid piety. He
might become—an angelic child! Oh, Lord!... Doubtless revival-meetings
were still in the fashion. And some vivid gentleman with a bright
brass cornet or a tinkling banjo might catch the poor little devil....
Well, how about it? That was all right, wasn’t it? Jimmie had to
rough it, hadn’t he?—as his father had done. Jimmie was going to the
public school; he was taking his chances there like a little man—and
surviving, too. That kid sure had the stuff in him.... But if Jimmie
should turn out a parson?... Falcontent gulped. Parsons, poets, and
pianists: they were the same sort of thing in Falcontent’s primitive
category of the professions.... Well, anyhow, how about _that_? That
was _Jimmie’s_ business, wasn’t it? What right had Falcontent to
butt in? If Jimmie really wanted to be a parson—or a poet—or even a
pianist.... No: Falcontent could not with any degree of pride listen
to suave sermons from Jimmie. Nor could he endure to hear Jimmie read
poetry of his own composition; nor could he with fond equanimity
observe Jimmie’s manipulation of the piano—no matter how astonishingly
skilful.
Come to think of it, it was little Jimmie’s future—and the good
prospect of a business partnership with little Jimmie—that kept James
Falcontent the decent, kindly, upright fellow that he was. And not an
uncommon sort of thing, either! Falcontent looked forward. Hope was
his; also faith.
“Anyhow,” he determined, “little Jimmie has got to take his chance. I
took mine.”
Having so determined, Falcontent’s muse merged into a grinning
reminiscence of New England days—long-ago times of top-boots and
mufflers and chapped hands and drowsy sermons. Had Falcontent’s next
neighbor on the right peered over his spectacles and all at once
demanded, “What is the chief end of man?” Falcontent would promptly
have replied, “To glorify God and enjoy Him forever!” and would have
chuckled the most hearty enjoyment of his own cleverness. And had the
dainty old lady opposite inquired, “What is sanctification?” Falcontent
would have been impelled to make an awkward attempt to answer the
appalling old question—stumbling, of course, over the very words upon
which he had always stubbed the toes of his memory. And had the prim
and pretty young person to the left smilingly requested a complete
statement of the Fifth Commandment, Falcontent would surely have
gained her approval by reciting the Fifth Commandment with twinkling
precision. Well, well, those days were long past! And since then
Falcontent’s attention had not been unduly aggravated in the direction
of God. Falcontent had been busy making good. Queer, though, how the
old doctrines would persist in a man’s memory!
Falcontent had made good. He was city salesman for Groot &
McCarthy—Boston, New York, and Philadelphia—earning with conspicuous
merit and spending with conspicuous generosity ten thousand a year.
“It’s Sunday-school for little Jimmie!” he concluded, with a smile, as
he jumped off the bus and stepped jauntily to the pavement. “_I_ went.”
Subsequently Falcontent’s attention was frequently aggravated—and with
persistent assiduity—in the direction of those religious mysteries
whose very existence he had forgotten in the business of getting on
in the world. And Falcontent was delighted to discover that he could
enlighten Jimmie—with the same enlightenment that he himself had
long ago enjoyed. Almighty queer how those old doctrines just _would_
continue in a man’s memory!...
* * * * *
Some six months after his amazing experience on Fifth Avenue,
Falcontent sat, a broken man, in the street arbor of an obscure French
hotel in Cairo. He was alone: he was lonely. Jimmie was dead. Good God,
how lonely it was without him—without the faith in his future!... And
Cairo was an outlandish place. It was the real thing, too: here was no
Coney Island plaster and paint. By George, how much like Coney Island
the East was! But a man could not here catch the B. R. T. for New York
and get there before bedtime. Falcontent was astonished and deeply
disgruntled to find himself in a corner of the world so detestably
foreign and far away and absurd. It was horribly outlandish. Everything
was outlandish: the shuffle of the street, soft, suspicious; and the
mutter of the street, not honest, hearty, but guttural, villainously
low-pitched, incomprehensible; and the laughter of the street, gurgling
with ridicule; and the veiled women in the carriages, and the painted,
plumed women who drove with outriders, and the skirted natives,
twirling flirtatious little canes or daintily fingering strings of
glass beads, and the beggars, and the dark faces, the uniforms of the
military, the incredible arrogance of the niggers, the ear-rings,
camels, cocked red fezzes.... And the Continental women, going in and
out—swishing, chattering, smeared little creatures! And the Continental
men; hairy, smirking, gabbing, posturing, stage-clad caricatures—oh,
ow! what waists! what mustaches! what hats! Surely one might fairly
expect some comfort from the mere caravansary contact with Europeans!
But—these!... It was hot weather, too. Whew! Falcontent was in a
summer’s-day sweat in the open—and here it was night and coming on
late in November!... There were none of the shipmates of Falcontent’s
crossing about. They had begun to avoid Falcontent long before the
landing at Alexandria; and Falcontent had taken care to avoid them
since the landing. Glimpses of the familiar in the Cairo confusion
only annoyed Falcontent the more by creating in his wretched spirit a
mirage of that which was altogether familiar—Home.... And Falcontent
determined that he must have another beastly brandy-and-soda....
* * * * *
Big Jim Falcontent was a broken man. Dragged from a decent seclusion,
stated in clear, straightaway, brief, bald terms, which anybody can
understand, Falcontent’s trouble was this: he was now fully aware that
he had no God. And that was all that was normally the matter with
Falcontent. Queer enough, perhaps, but true. No material happening of
Falcontent’s life could excuse or account for the ghastly collapse of
his spirit. Falcontent was an infidel: Falcontent was an atheist. He
had so declared himself. It was his best boast. Falcontent had said in
his heart, “There is no God.” But there are no longer any infidels:
the infidels of other times now denounce the social system. Nobody
denounces faith. A decent man, being extraordinarily troubled, says
to himself: “Oh, well, that’s all right! I don’t know anything about
it, anyhow. I’ll just have to take my chances with the rest of the
boys.” The talkative Falcontent found himself without listeners: he was
distasteful to his company. Bartenders would not humor his argument;
baseball patrons fled his neighborhood—and his approach instantly
dispersed every circle of his club-mates.
“What the devil’s the matter with Falcontent?”
“Why can’t the fellow keep it to himself?”
“Sorry? Why, sure! But in this little old world a man must help
_himself_. It don’t do Jim Falcontent any good to listen——”
“What the devil does he want to blatherskite his damned blasphemy
around here for?”
Falcontent’s business? Falcontent used to be “some” salesman: he
was “some” salesman no longer. And everybody knew it. Groot knew
it—and waited with pious patience for the imminent end. Galesworth
knew it—remarked it with melancholy: though Galesworth and his wife
were waiting with what patience they could command for Falcontent’s
more remunerative job of selling Groot & McCarthy’s shoes in Boston,
Philadelphia, and New York. And no wonder sales had fallen off! A buyer
of shoes cannot with profitable precision look over a line of samples
and at the same time indulge an argument rabidly directed against
the existence of God. Nor will he attempt the perilous acrobatics
involved. What has the existence of God to do with a line of shoes?
Presently Falcontent himself came eye to eye with the catastrophe
of his uselessness. “I’m just three months off from a Bowery
lodging-house,” he reflected, “and but a few weeks longer from the
bread-line and the gutter. That’s a devilish queer thing—to happen to
me!” But he knew why; it was because he had with resentful conviction
said in his own heart, “There is no God.” And he would go on saying
it—that selfsame thing, over and over again.
Being an honest fellow, Falcontent went straightway to Groot for a
friendly discussion of a distressful situation.
“Mr. Groot,” he began, “I guess I’m all in.”
“I guess so,” Groot admitted.
Falcontent started. “You think, then, that——”
“I said,” Groot drawled, “that I thought so, too. Isn’t that clear?”
Mr. Groot was the partner of privately pious inclinations in the
shoe-manufacturing firm of Groot & McCarthy.
“If that’s so,” said Falcontent, “I guess I’m not much use to the firm
any more.”
“No,” Groot agreed, “Not much.”
“I guess I’d better resign?”
“Huh!” Groot grunted.
“All right,” sighed Falcontent, despairing. “It might as well take
effect at once.”
A dreary silence fell.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Groot, looking up from his office-desk. “Maybe
it isn’t as bad as all that. Hadn’t you better try a six-months’
vacation with pay?”
Falcontent was listlessly grateful. “Thanks,” said he. “You’re kind. It
wouldn’t do me any good, though. I’m all in.”
“Can’t sell shoes any longer?”
“Devil a shoe! I can’t do _anything_. I’m in wrong—everywhere.”
Groot gave gloomy assent. “I guess that’s just about right,” said he.
“You see, Mr. Groot,” Falcontent began to explain, a blithering
loquacity obviously impending, “the trouble with me is——”
“Don’t tell me!” Groot ejaculated, alarmed. “I know what’s the trouble
with you.”
“But you _can’t_ know, Mr. Groot!” Falcontent’s voice was rising in
morbid agitation. “I haven’t spoken with you—about this.”
“No salesman of mine can run himself to hell in this town,” Groot
declared, thin-lipped, his gray eyes flashing resentfully, “without my
knowing pretty much what’s the matter with him.”
Falcontent flushed. “Well?” he inquired.
“You run over to the Holy Land for a while,” said Groot, smiling a
little, rubbing his lean hands like a Sunday-school Superintendent.
“That’ll fix you up. It fixed me.” He sighed; his eyes sparkled
wistfully. “I wish I could go along with you,” he added. “I’d—almighty
like to.”
Falcontent laughed softly. “Holy Land!” he scoffed.
“You want action, don’t you?” Groot demanded, grimly. “Well, a little
visit to the Holy Land will make you or break you. Now—you _go_!”
* * * * *
And here, at last, in an obscure French hotel in Cairo, was Falcontent,
bound for the Holy Land, to be made or broken, at the expense of
Groot & McCarthy. It was amusing; but Falcontent was not amused. It
was not possible for Falcontent in the pass of spiritual exhaustion
to which he had come to sustain even a flash of amusement. Falcontent
was in a wretched condition; he was thin, weak, untidy, downcast. He
was a little the worse of brandy-and-soda, too, of course—nothing to
speak of; and he was so very much the worse of Life that his long,
vacant face, his lusterless eyes, his listless attitude, all the
evidences of spiritual fatigue, communicated melancholy even to those
surroundings which had determined to be gay in spite of whatever might
happen. Falcontent attracted glances—which were averted, repelled. But
presently a spare, brown, alert little man—a muscular little fellow,
washed by wind and sun, now clad in the fashion of a Continental dandy,
with an inverted mustache, to which he was in the habit of giving a
quick, defiant twist, at the same time indulging a swash-buckling
scowl—sidled close to Falcontent, as though casually, and sat down
beside him, again casually.
Presently the brown little man flashed a keen eye over Falcontent. He
glanced off at once; but his clean, brown eyes presently returned, now
smiling ingenuously, and he made bold to address the traveler.
“Good evenin’, Mr. Falcontent,” he ventured, politely.
“Who the devil are you?” Falcontent growled.
“Ver’ proper in-qui-ry,” the little man warmly agreed. His smile
broadened trustfully. “I was born in Jerusalem. Mr. Amos Awad. It is
I.” The announcement was made with a flourish.
“Well, George,” Falcontent drawled—the little man was dark of
skin—“will you please tell me how you happened to know my name?”
“You wonder, eh?”
“A con game, George?”
“It is matter business; that is all.”
“Business? What business? You don’t mean to tell me that you’ve got an
Oriental gold brick up in your room?”
“Gold brick!” the little man laughed. “Oh, dear me, no! Oh, my
_dear_ sir! Here—it is not America. I have the honor to explain,” he
continued, seriously. “Privilege granted? Ah! Jus’ so! I am dragoman.
I am jus’ brought my party from Palestine. Ver’ fine people. I am
paid off an’ mos’ generously dismiss’ with mos’ elegant references.
Egypt? It is not my ver’ bes’ tour. I am not ver’ well acquaint’ with
Egyptian antiquities. But I am fully acquaint’ with Holy Land an’ all
things pertainin’ thereof. Holy Land! By Jove! What ver’ good Holy Land
dragoman am I! By any chance you go there, Mr. Falcontent? I hope so. I
_do_ hope so. I hope so in the ver’ bottom of my heart. Ah!”
“Look here, George,” Falcontent reproved, “you haven’t told me yet how
you knew my name.”
“Pst!”—scornfully. “It is nothing. The hotel
clerk”—contemptuously—“have his little commission for little favor like
that.”
“Oh, sure. I might have thought of that.”
“Ver’ simple thing.”
“Why didn’t you lie about it?”
Dignity galvanized the little man. “It do not compat’ with my general
behavior truth an’ probity,” he said, distinctly, “to tell the lie....
An’ not one single thing is to be gain’—in the end.”
“Oh!” Falcontent blankly ejaculated.
Falcontent’s surprise was sufficiently apologetic. “You see the world,
Mr. Falcontent?” the dragoman resumed, again mildly. “I do hope so. Oh
my dear sir! A tour ’round the world—includin’ the Holy Land? No doubt?”
“Well,” Falcontent admitted, “I’m resting.”
“Ah! Jus’ so! I understan’. Overwork—doubtless? A Wall Street panic?
Hum! Doubtless so.”
“No,” Falcontent sighed; “nothing like that.”
Wisdom and experience enlightened the little man. He precisely
comprehended.
“Oh, my dear sir!” he exclaimed.
“My little boy died,” said Falcontent. “It knocked me out.... Have a
drink?”
The dragoman lifted a delicate, brown hand. “I am mere child in such
matters, as it were,” said he. He was much like a boy jocularly invited
to partake in something preposterously beyond his years.
“You won’t mind,” Falcontent began, “if I——”
Again a lift of the brown hand and a polite little bow. “I shall have
the ver’ great honor,” said the dragoman, renewing the politeness of
the bow, “to observe consumption of brandy-an’-soda with keen sympathy
an’ relish.”
Falcontent almost laughed. “Where did you learn your English, old man?”
he asked interested.
“In New York, sir.”
“Oh, shucks!”
“An’ the Moody Institute—for some small time.”
“You didn’t learn that kind of talk anywhere _near_ New York!”
“Ah! I understan’. Oh, my, no!” the dragoman protested, quickly. “The
polish,” he explained, “is acquire’ by myself from readin’ great works
of literature an’ mos’ modern theology.”
Falcontent warmed to the little man. Awad was in health; he had the
color and sure power and the limpid peace of the open places. He was
companionable—possibly in a mercenary way; but what matter? He would
listen. In those days Falcontent found his most engaging form of
entertainment in elucidating a seditious philosophy of the universe.
And into the waiting ear of the dragoman he now poured the tale of
little Jimmie’s death. The boy was dead and buried; there had been
typhoid fever—and a long fight, through which, it seemed, Falcontent
had entreated the Almighty to spare the lad. But the lad was dead; as,
according to the unrelenting mysteries, many another man’s young son
had died before him. Falcontent was alone; he was stricken—ruined. But
the death of children? They vanish in multitudes and leave all places
vacant and desolate. It is nothing out of the way. Falcontent’s was a
commonplace sorrow: the world renews the like of it every day. But the
brown little man listened, with many a pitying “Tsc, tsc, tsc!” and
many a muttered “How ver’ sad!” to encourage a complete disclosure. He
was alive to more than the tale: he was like a physician—alert, intent,
analytical, discovering from Falcontent’s mawkish, and hardly coherent
recital the deeper springs of Falcontent’s pitiable state.
Falcontent was in rebellion. Ha! That was the trouble. But why rebel? A
laughable thing—thus to rebel! A preposterous and hurtful perversity!
Why not yield—presently? Why not say, “Thy will be done!”—and cultivate
some form of faith? It seemed to the brown little dragoman to be a
brave and sensible sort of behavior.
“Ver’ sad!” he sighed, at the end.
“Sad?” Falcontent snarled.
“The Lord gives,” the dragoman quoted, apparently with sincere
conviction, “an’ the Lord takes away.”
Falcontent leaned forward in disreputable anger. “You mean to tell me,”
he flared, his voice risen, “that the Lord _took_ him—deliberately?
That the Lord put that poor little fellow through weeks of useless
agony—and then killed him?”
“Hush!”
Falcontent would not be quieted. His eyes were flushed with rage;
his nostrils flared; his teeth were bared. “You call that Design?” he
cried. “Design—hell! That was _Chance_. There _is_ no God!”
Ha! Was it so? Awad needed nothing more. It was an old problem. He
gripped Falcontent’s forearm to restrain him. “Sh-h!” he commanded.
“It is too loud for be polite. You have shame yourself. An’ me—your
dragoman!” Falcontent’s resentment failed. He had not the strength to
sustain rage: he was able only to continue in sulky rebellion. He was
listless now once more; he stared vacantly upon the scornful comment
his outburst—though in English—had aroused. “Listen!” the dragoman
went on, his voice low, his words clear-cut, his way authoritative.
“You go the Holy Land by present intention. I know that much. It is
for the cure. Some friend say, ‘Go an’ be heal’.’ I understan’. Many
peoples—many, oh many, many peoples—come the Holy Land to be cure of
sorrow. Ver’ commonplace to happen. But mos’ dangerous practice. I have
see’ cure; I have also see’ ruin. Now I am deep student of ver’ mos’
new an’ modern theology. Ver’ good. I prescribe. Privilege granted?
Listen! We go to Jerusalem. True; but by way of Mount Sinai. By way
of Suez, the Monastery of St. Catherine, Akaba, Ell Ma’an, Petra, I
make no bones, sir. It is a long desert journey:—ver’ harsh journey
includin’ dangers proceedin’ from robbers’ habitations. But mos’
excellent health is thereby to be gain’. Ver’ good. Quite satisfy? I
prepare, then, my outfit of men an’ animals at once.... Mm-m?”
It was an appealing suggestion. Falcontent was moved to carry his
sorrow to an exceeding desolation. And he was sensible, too, of the
physical advantage. There was surely bodily cure—the cure of physical
folly—to be found on the caravan route.
“That listens all right, George,” said he. “But what do you get out of
this?”
“Surely,” the dragoman replied, with a shrug, “I have honor to arrange
contract with reasonable profit devolving upon me ... Expense, as it
were, Mr. Falcontent—no object? Mm-m? Doubtless not?”
“Oh, anything reasonable, George,” said Falcontent. “But I don’t want
to be stung.”
“Ver’ reasonable, Mr. Falcontent. No sting in contract of Mr. Amos
Awad. I do so assure you upon honor.”
Falcontent came to a quick decision. “All right, George,” said he, with
spirit. “I’ll go. And we’ll get to work and arrange the terms of that
little contract right now.”
* * * * *
Falcontent rode into Jerusalem near the close of day—the day before
Christmas. Awad had proved a faithful, companionable fellow; he had
been solicitous concerning Falcontent’s first pains of travel—he had
been grim, business-like, vastly determined in respect to the way and
the hours of riding. There had been no discussion of Falcontent’s
perplexities. There had been entertainment: Awad had told many engaging
stories to relieve the monotony of the sand—such Eastern tales as are
told, in various forms, names varying, incidents differing somewhat
from the Occidental traditions, but the moral unchanged, to while
away time and weariness in all the deserts of the East. And Falcontent
had indeed matched his sorrow against an exceeding desolation; a land,
however, unable to wrench any complaint against Fate from its lean
dwellers. Falcontent was himself now lean and brown with weeks of
desert travel. His eyes were clean and quick and sure. It had been a
short ride that day; he tingled with muscular exaltation. He was toned;
it was a physically rehabilitated Falcontent. He was in appetite; he
could sleep.... Sell shoes? Well, rather! By Jove—Falcontent would sure
show old man Groot that he had “come back!” And he had not yet even
seen the Holy Places! It would sure be a laugh on Groot!
Falcontent could laugh—now. But his mirth was hard, a mere reflex,
without feeling. It was mirth without sure foundation. There was no
spiritual health in it. At the first touch of adversity the laughter
might turn to jeering cachinnation. Life was a grim experience: a man
was born, lived, died. “To-morrow we die!” Falcontent stood no longer
in confusion between Design and Chance. He had settled that question
for good and all. And what a fool he had been to trouble about it
at all! How shall a man surely know? Falcontent laughed to think of
the hurtful folly of his brooding ... God? There was no God. There
were many gods: gods of all peoples—a vast variety. There were many
superstitions, there was much bowing down.... A flash of agitated
uncertainty passed over Falcontent when he reflected that his was the
only generation of all the generations of men (as he fancied) by whom
the worship of God had been generally abandoned.... But why not? “The
old order changeth.” The times were new.... “God of our fathers!” How
the old teachings persisted in a man’s imagination! Falcontent could
recall the psalm—and the nasal singing. It aggravated him to remember.
He concerned his thoughts with the road.... It was crisp weather; it
was much like a harvest evening—at home. Light lingered upon the city.
It was a city lying soft and half revealed in a mist of twilight.
“Jerusalem!” Falcontent thought. “Well—I’m damned! Jim Falcontent, of
Groot & McCarthy—in Jerusalem!”
Falcontent was subconsciously disappointed to find no glory of heavenly
light upon the flat roofs, and no glow of peace and beneficence upon
the countenances of the sinister-appearing inhabitants. He had,
like a child—it was a legacy of childhood—looked for some continued
manifestation of the story of the Divine residence.
“Nice town, Awad?” he inquired.
“Ver’ modern city accordin’ Eastern standards,” the dragoman replied,
with a flirt of his dainty mustache. “Ver’ human peoples live here.
Disappoint’, eh?” he ran on. “Jus’ so. Ver’ much like all tourist’
excep’ ver’ old people. You think to see pearly gates an’ golden
streets, eh? Ha, ha! Oh, dear me, no! Ver’ human city of present day.
Ver’ up-to-date town. Always was, I take it. Possibly so in time of
King Solomon. An’ in days of King David—doubtless so? Why not? Mm-m?”
It occurred to Falcontent for the first time with significant
conviction that Jerusalem was a reality; that the city had been
real from generation to generation—here situated—near by—and that
the happenings recorded were realities like the events of profane
history—of the American Revolution.
But——
“Garden of Gethsemane still around here?” he yawned.
“Oh, yes. Ver’ close by the city. Carriage an’ all fees suppli’ by
terms of my contract.”
“Got a fence around it?” Falcontent joked.
“Oh, yes.”
“What!” Falcontent exclaimed.
“Not what you call precisely picket fence,” the dragoman replied. “Much
more substantial. A ver’ solid wall.”
“Sure they got the right spot fenced in?”
“My habit truth an’ probity compel me say I personally ver’ much doubt.
Right place? What matter? Pst!”
What _did_ it matter?
“Haven’t moved the Mount of Olives, have they?”
“Oh, my _dear_ sir!” Awad laughed. “Impossible job for to perform. An’
Palestine antiquities, my dear sir, not for sale for decorate landscape
of the American millionaire.”
“Calvary?”
“Same ol’ place, sir,” the dragoman replied, gravely, “but naturally
ver’ much change’. Ver’ well authenticate’, too, accordin’ by latest
authorities. Which thing I am ver’ happy to state—with perfect truth,
at last.”
Falcontent rode on in silence. It was dark in the city. There were
no details: there was the mystery of dim-lit habitations—of narrow
streets—of shuffling forms.... And this was Jerusalem! There was
actually such a place! Falcontent all at once realized the existence of
the city as a physical fact. It had a place in history—not wholly in
legend. It was of old time. It was real.... The American Revolution and
the Civil War were legendary conflicts in Falcontent’s consciousness
until he had with amazed understanding set foot on the battle-fields
and stared about.... And Gethsemane was near by! Precise location?
Pst! What matter? There had been a Garden of Gethsemane! The Mount of
Olives, too: it was a remarkable hill—now within reach, like Grant’s
Tomb at home. And Calvary! There had been a place called Calvary!...
Falcontent was profoundly moved by his proximity to these places which
now at last were real. Falcontent was shocked; his unbelief in the
tradition—was it tradition?—of the Divine Presence upon earth was
disturbed. A presence in Jerusalem—roundabout: here and beyond....
Falcontent began to whistle a snatch from “The Queen of the Great
White Way.” It was incongruous; he could not bear to continue....
There had been a Teacher: that was true—it was as true as Grant and
Lincoln and Washington—and the teaching was not yet forgotten in the
world. Falcontent knew it all well enough—the life and philosophy which
somewhere near by these very places had had their origin.... To relieve
the agitation of these disclosures Falcontent tried once more the
topical song from “The Queen of the Great White Way.” It was impossible.
“Cold?” Awad inquired.
“No,” Falcontent answered. “I’m not cold. I’m shivering, though. That’s
funny, isn’t it?”
“Well, no,” said Awad. “Ver’ commonplace thing to happen. I should not
have be surprise’ if, on the other hand, you have swear ver’ harshly.”
Falcontent had experienced—and had thereby been horrified—a curious
impulse to blaspheme.
“That’s queer,” he drawled now.
“Ver’ commonplace thing,” the dragoman repeated. He shrugged. “I
recommend, if I be permit,” he went on, impassively, “a hot bath, food,
an’ perusal of Holy Scriptures for historical data. I am great believer
in original sources. Let us say, Gospel accordin’ St. Luke—chapter two,
especially. It is Christmas Eve. To-night—accordin’ by itinerary—we
visit Bethlehem. Carriage an’ all fees my pleasure to provide accordin’
by terms of my contract.”
* * * * *
When, late that Christmas Eve, the little dragoman knocked on the door
of Falcontent’s room in a hotel by the Jaffa Gate, Falcontent had
gathered a deal of historical data from the original sources.... _And
there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping
watch on their flocks by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came
upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they
were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not, for, behold,
I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people: for
unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour, which is
Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you: Ye shall find the
babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly
there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising
God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and
good-will toward men. And it came to pass that as the angels were going
away from them into heaven the shepherds said one to another, Let us
now go even unto Bethlehem, and see the thing which has come to pass,
which the Lord has made known to us...._ And Falcontent had perused the
tragedy from that beginning to its heroic end. It was all familiar,
to be sure—had continued in Falcontent’s memory since those old New
England days; but was now new with reality and meaning.
“I’m tired,” Falcontent protested to the dragoman. “I guess we’d better
put the Bethlehem trip off.”
“Ha!” the dragoman ejaculated. “We go,” he announced, calmly. “It is my
greates’ ambition to serve my gentlemen. I fail—never! We go. I am flat
in it.”
Falcontent was presently rattling over the road to Bethlehem. It
was a clear night. There were stars—brilliantly shining. A moon was
imminent. A shadowy country—waste like a wilderness in the night—was
on either side. The road lay white and dusty. It was an old road—an
old, old way of going and coming. It had felt the imprint of dusty feet
these many long, forgotten years.... The world was surely very old:
that which persisted from generation to generation was of value—new
things doubtful.... Falcontent was cold. But the night was warm. Yet
Falcontent shivered; his hands trembled—teeth clicked together. He was
hardly able to command this nervous spasm.... There came, by and by,
dark, winding streets, rough, narrow. The horses stumbled.... There
was the Church of the Nativity: it was like a fortification. There was
a narrow door—there were wide, cathedral spaces—there was the light
of candles—there were ecclesiastical robes—there was incense—there
were many voices distantly chanting—there was the wonder of some
mystical ceremony by which Falcontent was shaken from his hold on
the commonplaces of life.... And Falcontent stared and listened,
transported so far from Broadway by the vision and music of these
mysteries that Broadway was no longer with his recollection, save as a
blurred, contrasting horror.
Thereafter Falcontent stood for a long time midway of a narrow stone
stair—gazing awed now into the Grotto of the Nativity. It was a small
space. The yellow light of many candles illuminated it.... Many people
knelt below in adoration: these were Russian pilgrims—folk of a race
cruelly oppressed; yet their countenances gave no sign of oppression,
but were clean of guile and fear and suspicion and all manner of
trouble. Peace was upon all them that adored: such peace—Falcontent
reflected in the terms of other times—as the world can neither give nor
take away.... And so it had been: a faith continuing from generation
to generation, comforting, inspiring, peace-bringing, giving hope and
courage—the integrity of its essentials preserved, after all, against
the cocksure philosophies of all these new days.
“Ver’ much regret,” the dragoman whispered in Falcontent’s ear.
“Accordin’ my Bethlehem itinerary, it is time for visit Field of
Shepherds.”
Falcontent started.
“Oh, we’ll cut that out!” he whispered, hastily. “I guess I better get
back to the hotel.”
But Falcontent followed a rocky pathway, leading down, leading on,
inclining toward the stars, to a hill, near by some ancient ruins,
below which a field lay in a mist of moonlight.... Falcontent was cold;
but yet it was a warm night. It was not the cold. He was afraid; he
trembled—and was afraid.... Awad withdrew. Falcontent stood alone....
It is related of Saul of Tarsus, as Falcontent then singularly
recalled, that, being on the road to Damascus, _there shined round
about him a light from heaven, and he fell to the earth, and heard
a voice, saying unto him, Saul, why persecutest thou me_? And the
narrative continues: _And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord
said, I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest. It is hard for thee to kick
against the pricks. And he trembling and astonished, said, Lord, what
wilt thou have me to do?..._ No light from heaven shined round about
James Falcontent, of Groot and McCarthy; but yet he trembled and was
astonished—in a great illumination of the spirit. It was a simple
thing: it concerned only the realities of Falcontent’s experience....
_And the angel said unto them, Fear not, for behold, I bring you
tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people: for unto you is
born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour...._ And it was true!
Salvation had proceeded from that Birth: all liberty in the world, as
Falcontent knew the world and the ages of its spinning—every simple
kindness—all pure aspiration—every good deed—all true forms of love and
virtue and high courage and justice.... And the God of Falcontent’s
fathers was the only God Falcontent knew anything about.
There was a peal of bells; the ringing came liquid-sweet through the
moonlight from the Church of the Nativity on the hills of Bethlehem.
“Amos!” Falcontent called.
“Sir? I am here.”
“What they ringing the bells for?”
“It is Christmas mornin’, Sir.”
Falcontent stood staring into the mist of moonlight below. “I guess you
better leave me alone for a little while, Amos,” he said, presently,
without turning. “I—want to be alone.” After that Falcontent lifted his
face to the sky and prayed. It should astonish no one. Many a good man
has done the like of it since the world began....
* * * * *
Well, what miracle? What amazing transformation? Falcontent looked
fit: that was true. The same old Falcontent! the Falcontent of his
heartiest days. Back in New York now, still a bit lean and brown with
desert travel. To the eye—to the ear—to the heart of his intimates—he
was the same man he had been at his best. He was selling shoes for
Groot & McCarthy, too, in vast quantities, in Boston, Philadelphia,
and New York. There were some little omissions of behavior, to be
sure, as he went about. They were not obtrusive: they earned—they
deserved—no comment. A big, ruddy, big-hearted man—that was James
Falcontent: a clean, kindly, hopeful, energetic, merry fellow, given
to no meanness, to no greed, to no unworthy pride, to no dishonor
whatsoever. And he was sane according to every goodly notion of the
times. It would have alarmed him—shamed and grieved him—to discover any
symptom of peculiarity. Not an alienist of virtuous reputation could
have discovered in Falcontent the least divergence from the straight
line of normality. Nor could a surgeon with due regard for the ethics
of his profession have found in Falcontent any honest employment for
his knife; nor could a devoted practitioner of internal medicine have
supplied a need of Falcontent’s hearty body. Falcontent was a robust
fellow. Falcontent was in vigorous health. What need had Falcontent of
a physician or a surgeon?
Falcontent’s soul? Oh, yes, Falcontent had a soul—and had in some way
established peace with it!
[10] By permission of Dr. E. H. Duncan and Harper & Brothers.
VAN VALKENBERG’S CHRISTMAS GIFT[11]
_Elizabeth G. Jordan_
The “Chicago Limited” was pulling out of the Grand Central Station
in New York as Dr. Henry Van Valkenberg submitted his ticket to the
gateman. He dashed through, pushing the indignant official to one side,
and made a leap for the railing of the last car of the train. It was
wet and slippery and maddeningly elusive, but he caught it, and clung
to it valiantly, his legs actively seeking a resting-place on the
snow-covered steps of the platform. Even as he hung there, offering
to his fellow-travellers this inspiring illustration of athletic
prowess and the strenuous life, he was painfully conscious that the
position was not a dignified one for a stout gentleman of sixty with
an exalted position in the scientific world. He pictured to himself
the happy smiles of those who were looking on, and he realized that
his conception of their hearty enjoyment had not been exaggerated when
he glanced back at them after a friendly brakeman had dragged him “on
board.” Dr. Van Valkenberg smiled a little ruefully as he thanked the
man and rubbed the aching surface of his hand, which not even his thick
kid gloves had protected. Then he pulled himself together, picked
up the books and newspapers he had dropped and which the bystanders
had enthusiastically hurled after him, and sought his haven in the
sleeping-car. When he reached his section he stood for a moment, with
his back to the passengers, to put some of his belongings in the rack
above his head. As he was trying to arrange them properly he heard a
voice behind him.
“O-oh! Were you hurt?” it said. “I was so ’fraid you were going to
fall.”
Dr. Van Valkenberg, who was a tall man, turned and looked down from
his great height. At his feet stood a baby; at least she seemed a baby
to him, although she was very dignified and wholly self-possessed and
fully four years old. She was looking up at him with dark brown eyes,
which wore an absurdly anxious expression. In that instant of quick
observation he noticed that her wraps had been removed and that she
wore a white dress and had yellow curls, among which, on one side of
her head, a small black bow lay sombrely.
She was so delicious in her almost maternal solicitude that he smiled
irrepressibly, though he answered with the ceremoniousness she seemed
to expect.
“Why, no, thank you,” he said. “I am not hurt. Didn’t you see the kind
man help me onto the car?”
There was a subdivided titter from the other passengers over this
touching admission of helplessness, but the human atom below drew a
long, audible sigh of relief.
“I’m very glad,” she said, with dignity. “I was ’fraid he hurt you.”
She turned as she spoke, and toddled into the section opposite his,
where a plain but kindly faced elderly woman was sitting. She lifted
her charge to the seat beside her, and the child rose to her knees,
pressed her pink face against the window-pane, and looked out at the
snow that was falling heavily.
Dr. Van Valkenberg settled back in his seat and tried to read his
newspaper, but for some reason the slight incident in which he and
the little girl had figured moved him strangely. It had been a long
time since any one had looked at him like that! He was not a person
who aroused sympathy. He conscientiously endeavored to follow the
President’s latest oracular utterances on the Trust problem, but his
eyes turned often to the curly head at the window opposite. They were
well-trained, observant eyes, and they read the woman as not the
mother, but a paid attendant—a trained nurse, probably, with fifteen
years of admirable, cold, scientific service behind her. Why was she
with the child, he wondered.
It was Christmas eve—not the time for a baby girl to be travelling.
Then his glance fell again on the black bow among the yellow curls and
on the white dress with its black shoulder-knots, and the explanation
came to him. An orphan, of course, on her way West to a new home, in
charge of the matter-of-fact nurse who was dozing comfortably in the
corner of her seat. To whom was she going? Perhaps to grandparents,
where she would be spoiled and wholly happy; or quite possibly to
more distant relatives where she might find a grudging welcome. Dear
little embryo woman, with her sympathetic heart already attuned to the
world’s gamut of pain. She should have been dancing under a Christmas
tree, or hanging up her tiny stocking in the warm chimney-corner of
some cozy nursery. The heart of the man swelled at the thought, and he
recognized the sensation with a feeling of surprised annoyance. What
was all this to him—to an old bachelor who knew nothing of children
except their infantile ailments, and who had supposed that he cared for
them as little as he understood them? Still, it was Christmas. His mind
swung back to that. He himself had rebelled at the unwelcome prospect
of Christmas eve and Christmas day in a sleeping-car—he, without even
nephews and nieces to lighten the gloom of his lonely house. The warm
human sympathy of the man and the sweet traditions of his youth rose in
protest against this spectacle of a lonely child, travelling through
the night toward some distant home which she had never seen, and where
coldness, even neglect, might await her. Then he reminded himself that
this was all imagination, and that he might be wholly wrong in his
theory of the journey, and he called himself a fool for his pains.
Still, the teasing interest and an elusive but equally teasing memory
held his thoughts.
Darkness was falling, but the porter had not begun to light the lamps,
and heavy shadows were rising from the corners of the car. Dr. Van
Valkenberg’s little neighbor turned from the gloom without to the
gloom within, and made an impulsive movement toward the drowsy woman
opposite her. The nurse did not stir, and the little girl sat silent,
her brown eyes shining in the half-light and her dimpled hands folded
in her lap. The physician leaned across the aisle.
“Won’t you come over and visit me?” he asked. “I am very lonely, and I
have no one to take care of me.”
She slid off the seat at once, with great alacrity.
“I’d like to,” she said, “but I must ask Nana. I must always ask Nana
now,” she added, with dutiful emphasis, “’fore I do anyfing.”
She laid her hand on the gloved fingers of the nurse as she spoke,
and the woman opened her eyes, shot a quick glance at the man, and
nodded. She had not been asleep. Dr. Van Valkenberg rose and lifted
his visitor to the seat beside him, where her short legs stuck out in
uncompromising rigidity, and her tiny hands returned demurely to their
former position in her lap. She took up the conversation where it had
been interrupted.
“I can take care of you,” she said, brightly. “I taked care of mamma a
great deal, and I gave her her med’cin’.”
He replied by placing a cushion behind her back and forming a
resting-place for her feet by building an imposing pyramid, of which
his dressing-case was the base. Then he turned to her with the smile
women loved.
“Very well,” he said. “If you really are going to take care of me I
must know your name. You see,” he explained, “I might need you in
the night to get me a glass of water or something. Just think how
disappointing it would be if I should call you by the wrong name and
some other little girl came!”
She laughed.
“You say funny things,” she said, contentedly. “But there isn’t any
other little girl in the car. I looked, soon as I came on, ’cos I
wanted one to play with. I like little girls. I like little boys, too,”
she added, with innocent expansiveness.
“Then we’ll play I’m a little boy. You’d never believe it, but I used
to be. You haven’t told me your name,” he reminded her.
“Hope,” she said, promptly. “Do you think it is a nice name?” She made
the inquiry with an anxious interest which seemed to promise immediate
change if the name displeased him. He reassured her.
“I think Hope is the nicest name a little girl could have, except one,”
he said. “The nicest little girl I ever knew was named Katharine. She
grew to be a nice big girl, too,—and has little girls of her own now,
no doubt,” he added, half to himself.
“Were you a little boy when she was a little girl?” asked his visitor,
with flattering interest.
“Oh, no; I was a big man, just as I am now. Her father was my friend,
and she lived in a white house with an old garden where there were all
kinds of flowers. She used to play there when she was a tiny baby, just
big enough to crawl along the paths. Later she learned to walk there,
and then the gardener had to follow her to see that she didn’t pick
_all_ the flowers. I used to carry her around and hold her high up so
she could pull the apples and pears off the trees. When she grew larger
I gave her a horse and taught her to ride. She seemed like my very
own little girl. But by-and-by she grew up and became a young lady,
and—well, she went away from me, and I never had another little girl.”
He had begun the story to interest the child. He found, as he went on,
that it still interested him.
“Did she go to heaven?” asked the little girl, softly.
“Oh, dear, no,” answered the doctor, with brisk cheerfulness.
“Then why didn’t she keep on being your little girl always?” was the
next leading question.
The doctor hesitated a moment. He was making the discovery that after
many years old wounds can reopen and throb. No one had ever been brave
enough to broach to him the subject of this single love-affair, which
he was now discussing, he told himself, like a garrulous old woman. He
was anxious to direct the conversation into other channels, but there
was a certain compelling demand in the brown eyes upturned to his.
“Well, you see,” he explained, “other boys liked her, too. And when she
became a young lady other men liked her. So finally—one of them took
her away from me.”
He uttered the last words wearily, and the sensitive atom at his side
seemed to understand why. Her little hand slipped into his.
“Why didn’t you ask her to please stay with you?” she persisted,
pityingly.
“I did,” he told her. “But, you see, she liked the other man better.”
“Oh-h-h.” The word came out long-drawn and breathless. “I don’t see how
she possedly could!”
There was such sorrow for the victim and scorn for the offender in
the tone, that, combined with the none too subtle compliment, it was
too much for Dr. Van Valkenberg’s self-control. He threw back his
gray head, and burst into an almost boyish shout of laughter, which
effectually cleaned the atmosphere of sentimental memories. He suddenly
realized, too, that he had not been giving the child the cheerful
holiday evening he had intended.
“Where are you going to hang up your stockings to-night?” he asked. A
shade fell over her sensitive face.
“I can’t hang them up,” she answered, soberly. “Santa Claus doesn’t
travel on trains, Nana says. But p’r’aps he’ll have something
waiting for me when I get to Cousin Gertie’s,” she added, with sweet
hopefulness.
“Nana is always right,” said the doctor, oracularly, “and of course you
must do exactly as she says. But I heard that Santa Claus was going to
get on the train to-night at Buffalo, and I believe,” he added, slowly
and impressively, “that if he found a pair of small black stockings
hanging from that section he’d fill them!”
Her eyes sparkled.
“Then I’ll ask Nana,” she said. “An’ if she says I may hang them, I
will. But one,” she added, conscientiously, “has a teeny, weeny hole
in the toe. Do you think he would mind that?”
He reassured her on this point, and turned to the nurse, who was now
wide awake and absorbed in a novel. The car was brilliantly lighted,
and the passengers were beginning to respond to the first dinner call.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I’ve taken a great fancy to your little
charge, and I want your help to carry out a plan of mine. I have
suggested to Hope that she hang up her stockings tonight. I have every
reason to believe that Santa Claus will get on this train at Buffalo.
In fact,” he added, smiling, “I mean to telegraph him.”
The nurse hesitated a moment. He drew his card-case from his pocket and
handed her one of the bits of pasteboard it contained.
“I have no evil designs,” he added, cheerfully. “If you are a
New-Yorker you may possibly know who I am.”
The woman’s face lit up as she read the name. She turned toward him
impulsively, with a very pleasant smile.
“Indeed I do, doctor,” she said. “Who does not? Dr. Abbey sent for
you last week,” she added, “for a consultation over the last case I
had—this child’s mother. But you were out of town. We were all so
disappointed. It seems strange that we should meet now.”
“Patient died?” asked the physician, with professional brevity.
“Yes, doctor.”
He rose from his seat.
“Now that you have my credentials,” he added, cordially, “I want you
and Hope to dine with me. You will, won’t you?”
The upholstered cheerfulness of the dining-car found favor in the sight
of Hope. She conducted herself, however, with her usual dignity, broken
only occasionally by an ecstatic wriggle as the prospective visit of
Santa Claus crossed her mind. Her dinner, superintended by an eminent
physician and a trained nurse, was naturally a simple and severely
hygienic one, but here, too, her admirable training was evident. She
ate cheerfully her bowl of bread and milk, and wasted no longing
glances on the plum-pudding.
Later, in the feverish excitement of hanging up her stockings, going to
bed, and peeping through the curtains to catch Santa Claus, a little of
her extraordinary repose of manner deserted her; but she fell asleep at
last, with great reluctance.
When the curtains round her berth had ceased trembling, a most unusual
procession wended its silent way toward Dr. Van Valkenberg’s section.
In some occult manner the news had gone from one end to the other of
the “Special” that a little girl in section nine, car _Floradora_, had
hung up her stockings for Santa Claus. The hearts of fathers, mothers,
and doting uncles responded at once. Dressing-cases were unlocked,
great valises were opened, mysterious bundles were unwrapped, and from
all these sources came gifts of surprising fitness. Small daughters
and nieces, sleeping in Western cities, might well have turned
restlessly in their beds had they seen the presents designed for them
drop into a pair of tiny stockings and pile up on the floor below these.
A succession of long-drawn, ecstatic breaths and happy gurgles awoke
the passengers on car _Floradora_ at an unseemly hour Christmas
morning, and a small white figure, clad informally in a single garment,
danced up and down the aisle, dragging carts and woolly lambs behind
it. Occasionally there was the squeak of a talking doll, and always
there was the patter of small feet and the soft cooing of a child’s
voice, punctuated by the exquisite music of a child’s laughter. Dawn
was just approaching, and the lamps, still burning, flared pale in
the gray light. But in the length of that car there was no soul so
base as to long for silence and the pillow. Crabbed old faces looked
out between the curtains and smiled; eyes long unused to tears felt
a sudden, strange moisture. Dr. Van Valkenberg had risen almost as
early as Hope, and possibly the immaculate freshness of his attire,
contrasted with the scantiness of her own, induced that young lady to
retire from observation for a short time and emerge clothed for general
society. Even during this brief retreat in the dressing-room the
passengers heard her breathless voice, high-pitched in her excitement,
chattering incessantly to the responsive Nana.
Throughout the day the snow still fell, and the outside world seemed
far away and dreamlike to Dr. Van Valkenberg. The real things were
this train, cutting its way through the snow, and this little child,
growing deeper into his heart with each moment that passed. The
situation was unique, but easy enough to understand, he told himself.
He had merely gone back twenty-five years to that other child, whom
he had petted in infancy and loved and lost in womanhood. He had been
very lonely—how lonely he had only recently begun to realize, and he
was becoming an old man whose life lay behind him. He crossed the aisle
suddenly and sat down beside the nurse, leaving Hope singing her doll
to sleep in his section. There was something almost diffident in his
manner as he spoke.
“Will you tell me all you know about the child?” he asked. “She
interests me greatly and appeals to me very strongly, probably because
she’s so much like some one I used to know.”
The nurse closed her book and looked at him curiously. She had heard
much of him, but nothing that would explain this interest in a strange
child. He himself could not have explained it. He knew only that he
felt it, powerfully and compellingly.
“Her name is Hope Armitage,” she said, quietly. “Her mother, who has
just died, was a widow—Mrs. Katharine Armitage. They were poor, and
Mrs. Armitage seemed to have no relations. She had saved a little,
enough to pay most of her expenses at the hospital, and—” She hesitated
a moment, and then went on: “I am telling you everything very frankly,
because you are you, but it was done quietly enough. We all loved the
woman. She was very unusual, and patient, and charming. All the nurses
who had had anything to do with her cried when she died. We felt that
she might have been saved if she had come in time, but she was worked
out. She had earned her living by sewing, after her husband’s death,
three years ago, and she kept at it day and night. She hadn’t much
constitution to begin with, and none when she came to us. She was so
sweet, so brave, yet so desperately miserable over leaving her little
girl alone in the world——”
Dr. Van Valkenberg sat silent. It was true, then. This was Katharine’s
child. Had he not known it? Could he have failed to know it, whenever
or wherever they had met? He had not known of the death of Armitage nor
of the subsequent poverty of his widow, but he had known Katharine’s
baby, he now told himself, the moment he saw her.
“Well,” the nurse resumed, “after she died we raised a small fund to
buy some clothes for Hope, and take her to Chicago to her new home.
Mrs. Armitage has a cousin there, who has agreed to take her in. None
of the relatives came to the funeral; there are not many of them, and
the Chicago people haven’t much money, I fancy. They offered to send
Hope’s fare, or even to come for her if it was absolutely necessary;
but they seemed very much relieved when we wrote that I would bring her
out.”
Dr. Van Valkenberg did not speak at once. He was hardly surprised. Life
was full of extraordinary situations, and his profession had brought
him face to face with many of them. Nevertheless, a deep solemnity
filled him and a strange peace settled over him. He turned to the nurse
with something of this in his face and voice.
“I want her,” he said, briefly. “Her mother and father were old friends
of mine, and this thing looks like fate. Will they give her to me—these
Chicago people—do you think?”
Tears filled the woman’s eyes.
“Indeed they will,” she said, “and gladly. There was”—she
hesitated—“there was even some talk of sending her to an institution
before they finally decided to take her. Dear little Hope—how happy she
will be with you!”
He left her, and went back to the seat where Hope sat, crooning to the
doll. Sitting down, he gathered them both up in his arms, and a thrill
shot through him as he looked at the yellow curls resting against his
breast. Her child—her little helpless baby—now his child, to love
and care for. He was not a religious man; nevertheless a prayer rose
spontaneously in his heart. But there was a plea to be made—a second
plea, like the one he had made the mother; this time he felt that he
knew the answer.
“Hope,” he said, gently, “once, long ago, I asked a little girl to come
and live with me, and she would not come. Now I want to ask you to
come, and stay with me always, and be my own little girl, and let me
take care of you and make you happy. Will you come?”
The radiance of June sunshine broke out upon her face and shone in the
brown eyes upturned to his. How well he knew that look! Hope did not
turn toward Nana, and that significant omission touched him deeply. She
seemed to feel that here was a question she alone must decide. She drew
a long breath as she looked up at him.
“Really, truly?” she asked. Then, as he nodded without speaking, she
saw something in his face that was new to her. It was nothing to
frighten a little girl, for it was very sweet and tender; but for
one second she thought her new friend was going to cry! She put both
arms around his neck, and replied softly, with the exquisite maternal
cadences her voice had taken on in her first words to him when he
entered the car:
“I’ll be your own little girl, and I’ll take care of you, too. You
know, you said I could.”
Dr. Van Valkenberg turned to the nurse.
“I shall go with you to her cousin’s, from the train,” he announced.
“I’m ready to give them all the proofs they need that I’m a suitable
guardian for the child, but,” he added, with a touch of the boyishness
that had never left him, “I want this matter settled now.”
The long train pounded its way into the station at Chicago, and the
nurse hurriedly put on Hope’s coat and gloves and fastened the ribbons
of her hood under her chin. Dr. Van Valkenberg summoned a porter.
“Take care of all these things,” he said, indicating both sets of
possessions with a sweep of the arm. “I shall have my hands full with
my little daughter.”
He gathered her into his arms as he spoke, and she nestled against his
broad chest with a child’s unconscious satisfaction in the strength
and firmness of his clasp. The lights of the great station were
twinkling in the early dusk as he stepped off the train, and the place
was noisy with the greetings exchanged between the passengers and their
waiting friends.
“Merry Christmas,” “Merry Christmas,” sounded on every side. Everybody
was absorbed and excited, yet there were few who did not find time to
turn a last look on a singularly attractive little child, held above
the crowd in the arms of a tall man. She was laughing triumphantly as
he bore her through the throng, and his heart was in his eyes as he
smiled back at her.
[11]By special permission of the author.
A BEGGAR’S CHRISTMAS[12]
A FABLE
_Edith Wyatt_
Once upon a time there was a beggar-maid named Anitra, who lived in a
cellar in the largest city of a wealthy and fabulous nation.
In spite of the fact that the country was passing through an era
of great commercial prosperity, it contained such large numbers of
beggars, and the competition among them was so keen, that on Christmas
Eve at midnight, Anitra found herself without a single cent.
She turned away from the street-corner, where she had been standing
with her little stack of fortune-cards, and hurried through the alleys
to the shelter of her cellar. These fortune-cards of hers were printed
in all languages; and, had the public but known, it could not go wrong
among them, for every single card promised good-luck to the chooser.
But, in spite of all this tact on Anitra’s part, and her complete
dependence upon universal chivalry, qualities which are woman’s surest
methods of success in the real world, in the wealthy and fabulous
kingdom she now found herself not only hungry, ragged, and penniless,
but also without a roof over her head. For when she reached her
cellar-door it was nailed shut: and, as she had not paid her rent for
a long time, she knew she could not persuade her fabulous landlord to
open it for her.
She walked away, holding her little torn shawl fast around her, and
shaking her loose black hair around her cheeks to try to keep them
warm. But the cold and the damp struck to her very bones. Her little
feet in their ragged shoes and stockings were as numb as clubs; and
she limped along, scarcely able to direct them, to know where she was
going, or to know anything in fact, except that she would freeze to
death if she stood still.
Soon she reached a large dark building with a broad flight of steps and
a pillared entrance. Nobody seemed to be guarding it, and she managed
to creep up the steps and in between the pillars out of the snow.
Behind the pillars rose enormous closed doors. Under the doors shone
a chink of light. Anitra stooped down and put her hand against the
crack. There was a little warmth in the air sifting through. She laid
her whole body close against the opening. That pushed the doors inward
slightly, and she slipped inside the entrance.
She was in a tremendous gilded, carven, and pillared hall of great
tiers of empty seats and far dark galleries, all dimly lighted and all
garlanded with wreaths of mistletoe and holly. For a long time she
sat on the floor with her head thrown back against the door, staring
quietly about her, without moving a hair for fear of being driven away.
But no one came. The whole place was silent.
After about an hour, she rose softly, and stepped without a sound along
the dark velvet carpet of the centre aisle and up a flight of steps
at the end, to a great gold throne with cushions of purple velvet and
ermine. She rested her wrists on the gold ledge of the seat, and with
a little vault she jumped up on the cushions. They were warm and soft.
She curled up among them, and pulled her little shawl over her, meaning
to jump down the instant she heard the least noise. And while she was
listening she fell fast asleep.
She was awakened by the cool gray light of the December daybreak
falling through the long windows, over all the gold-carven pillars and
high beams and arches, all the empty seats and dark velvet cushions and
high garlands of holly.
She held her breath. Three men, who had plainly not seen her, had
entered at a side-door. She recognized them all from their pictures in
the papers. They were the aged Minister, the middle-aged Chancellor,
and the young King of the kingdom. The King carried a roll of parchment
in his hand and seemed very nervous, and the Chancellor was speaking to
him about “throwing the voice,” as they all came up the centre aisle,
and then straight up the steps, toward the throne.
Dumb with fright, Anitra raised her head from the cushions. The three
men suddenly saw her. The young King started and dropped the parchment,
the Chancellor stumbled and nearly fell, and the aged Minister darted
toward her.
“What are you doing here?” he cried angrily.
“Nothing,” said Anitra, sitting up, with her shawl held tightly around
her, and her little ragged shoes dangling from the throne.
“Who are you?” said the Chancellor suspiciously, staring at her. He was
very short-sighted.
“Nobody,” said Anitra.
“She is just a stray who has got in here somehow,” said the Minister
rather kindly. “Run away, my child,” he added, giving her a coin.
“Can’t you see the King wants to practice his speech here, now?”
But the Chancellor seemed to be considering. “Do you know,” he said
softly to the Minister, as the King, who had picked up the parchment,
stood absorbed, whispering his speech over to himself, “an idea has
struck me. I don’t know but that we might let her stay there till the
reporters come to photograph the new hall. It would look rather well,
you know, if something like this should get into the papers, ‘Mighty
Monarch Finding Stray Asleep on Throne, on Christmas Morn, Refuses to
Break Slumbers.’”
The old Minister looked a little doubtful. “You can’t tell what she
might say afterwards,” he said.
“We can easily arrange that,” replied the Chancellor; and he turned
towards Anitra and said sternly, “If we let you stay here will you
promise not to say one word to anyone about the matter or about
anything you see or hear in this hall, without our permission?”
“Yes,” said Anitra readily.
“Consider what you are saying, my child,” said the Minister mildly.
“Do you know this means that if you say one word the administration
dislikes you will be hung?”
“No, indeed,” said Anitra in misery. “How could I know that?”
“You should not have promised so rashly,” said the Chancellor. “But now
that it is done, we will trust that everything will fall out so that it
will not be necessary to hang you.”
“What do you want me to do?” said Anitra.
“Simply remain here now, just as you were when we came in, except with
your eyes shut,” said the Chancellor, “and then when we tell you to
do so, go down and sit on the throne-steps until the audience-hall
is filled with all the populace who are coming to see the new
audience-chamber, and to listen to the judgments of the King, on
Christmas Day. If anybody asks you how you came to be here, you might
mention the fact that you had strayed in from the cold, and tell about
the royal clemency shown in permitting you to remain. Then, at the end
of the day, if you have done as you should, you can go out with the
rest of the people.”
“Go to sleep again, now,” said the aged Minister, “just as you were
when we came in.”
Anitra put her head down on the cushion again, but she could not sleep,
for the King began to read his proclamation at the top of his lungs, so
that it could be heard in the furthest galleries, where the Chancellor
stood and kept calling, “Louder! Louder!” The speech was all about the
wealth and prosperity and happiness and good fortune of the kingdom,
and how no one needed to be hungry or cold or poor in any way, because
there was such plenty.
When the King had finished, he said rather crossly to the Chancellor,
“Well, are you suited?”
The Chancellor expressed his content, and they talked over the
prisoners who were to be judged, which ones were to be hanged, and
which ones were to be pardoned, till the Chancellor had to hurry away
to attend to some other matters. The King left moodily soon afterwards.
The Chancellor’s opinions and methods were often obnoxious to him; but
he disliked greatly to wound or oppose him in any way. He had been an
old and intimate friend of the King’s father, and besides he was very
powerful in the country.
All this time Anitra had kept her eyes closed; and she now lay still,
while strange footsteps sounded on the marble floors and she heard the
reporters coming to photograph the new audience-hall, heard them asking
the aged Minister why she was there, and heard him telling them about
the early visit of the King to inspect the new audience-chamber, and
his wish that the slumber of the beggar-girl should not be disturbed
till the arrival of the audience made it absolutely necessary. Then
she heard them tiptoeing away to a little distance, heard their
fountain-pens scratching and their cameras clicking through the empty
galleries, and at last she heard them going away.
“Now you can jump down, and run around for a little while,” said
the Minister, waiting a minute before following them. “Some of
the Democratic papers will have extras out, by three o’clock this
afternoon, with photographs of you asleep on the throne, and there will
be editorials in the Republican papers about the King’s tact and grace
in the matter.”
Although Anitra wished to answer that she was too faint from hunger to
jump down and run around, she made no reply for fear of being hung. But
she slipped down from the throne, and sat on the throne-step, on the
tread nearest the floor, in the hope of not being seen and questioned
by the entering audience, for some time at least.
For it was ten o’clock now. The great doors had swung wide open
and a tremendous crowd of people surged into the hall,—men, women,
and children, laughing, talking, exclaiming over the beauty of
the new audience-chamber, and wondering what would happen to the
three murderers the King would judge that day. It was a prosperous,
well-dressed city crowd, and it poured in till it had filled the hall,
the galleries, the aisles, and the staircases, and till the latest
comers had even climbed upon the shoulders of the others, to the
window-sills and the ledges of the wainscoting. With the rest came two
old, wrinkled, clumsy shepherds from the country, with staffs in their
hands and sheepskins on their backs, and sharp, aged eyes looking out
from under their shaggy eyebrows, as though they could watch well for
wolves. Although they came among the last, they somehow made their way
up to the very front of the hall. Except for these old shepherds and
Anitra, all the people wore their very best clothes. The sun sparkled
over everything. Outside, the Christmas bells rang, and Anitra looked
at it all, and listened to it all, and hoped she would not faint with
hunger, and wondered whether she could go through the day without
saying something the Chancellor would dislike and being hung for it.
The people in the first row stared hard at her, and one usher wished
to put her out because she was sitting inside the red velvet cordon
intended to separate the royal platform from the populace. But another
usher came hurrying up to say that he had received official orders to
the effect that she was to be permitted to remain just where she was.
Before any one in the first row had time to ask her how she came to be
there inside the red velvet cordon, the heralds blew on the trumpets,
and everybody turned to see the entrance of the prisoners.
They were a man, a woman, and a boy. The woman was a cotton-spinner,
Elizabeth, a poor neighbor of Anitra’s, who had left a fatherless child
of hers upon a doorstep where it died. The boy was a Moorish merchant’s
son, Joseph, who had stabbed another boy in a street-brawl. The man
was a noble, Bernardino, who had killed his adversary in a duel. The
turnkeys marched on either side of the prisoners and marshaled them
into their seats on the platform.
No one in the court knew about Elizabeth or the Moorish boy Joseph,
or paid any attention to them, except that Joseph’s father stood with
haggard eyes close to the cordon, and he looked at his son and his son
looked back at him with a deep glance of devotion when the prisoners
marched by to judgment. Six or seven rows back in the audience sat
Elizabeth’s little sister, and when the prisoners were standing at the
bar, she leaned far forward and threw a little sprig of holly down at
Elizabeth’s feet, and Elizabeth stooped and picked it up.
But there was a great buzz in the crowd when Bernardino, the nobleman,
marched by. He was well known at court. His best friends sat together,
and they cheered, and there was constant applause as he passed, and he
bowed grandly to everybody.
Then there was another flourish of trumpets, and the pages and
ladies-and-lords-in-waiting and knights and chamberlains came in, and
the Minister and the Chancellor, and last of all the young King. The
whole room rang with applause and cheers. All the heralds blew on
the bugles. The bells rang and the young King took his seat on the
throne between the Minister and the Chancellor, and waited till the
audience-chamber was still.
The herald came forward and cried, “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Bernardino,
Duke of Urba, Lord of Rustica, come into the Court!” Bernardino, with
his fur cape swinging from his broad shoulders and his plume tossing,
stepped forward from the bar, and his trial began. The King heard
evidence upon one side and heard evidence upon the other for a long,
long time: and at last he pardoned Bernardino. The bells rang, and
the trumpets sounded again, and Bernardino’s friends went nearly wild
with joy. And Bernardino kissed the King’s hand and walked down the
throne-steps a free man.
Only, the two aged clumsy shepherds turned and looked at each other,
as if they felt some contempt for what was happening. And while Anitra
watched them, as she thought how hungry she was, it seemed to her that
they were far younger than she had noticed at first. They appeared to
be about fifty years old.
Bernardino’s trial had occupied a great length of time; and just after
it was over, and the applause and tumult after the decision had died
down, and the herald had called, “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Joseph, son of the
merchant Joseph, come into the Court!” then Anitra noticed that every
one was looking at her, and whispering. She saw papers passed from hand
to hand, and knew that the extras the King had spoken of must have come
out.
Everybody was so entertained and preoccupied with comparing the
newspaper pictures of Anitra with Anitra herself, and with reading,
“Mighty Monarch Finding Stray on Throne on Christmas Morn Refuses to
Break Slumbers,” that Joseph’s trial seemed to slip by almost without
public notice.
Only, Joseph’s father hung on every word. The King heard evidence upon
one side and heard evidence upon the other for a long, long time,
and every few minutes, on account of the buzz about Anitra’s being
permitted to sleep on the throne, the herald would be obliged to ask
for silence in the audience-chamber. For no one knew Joseph, and no one
cared about his fate except in so far as there was a general feeling
that a murder committed by a Moor was more dangerous than a murder
committed by anybody else. So that toward the end, when the evidence
seemed to show more and more that Joseph had fought only to defend
himself, the court was more silent, and there was a certain tenseness
in the air. The King turned white. He condemned Joseph to death; but he
did not look at him, he looked away. Joseph stood proudly before him,
without moving an eyelash, without moving a muscle. Joseph’s father
looked as proud as his son. But his face had changed to the face of an
old man, and in his eyes burned the painful glance of a soul enduring
an injustice.
Every one else seemed to be satisfied, however. Only, the two aged,
clumsy shepherds turned and looked at each other as though they felt
a certain contempt for what was happening. And while Anitra watched,
as she thought how hungry she was, it seemed to her that they were not
aged at all. They appeared to be about forty years old.
Then the herald called, “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Elizabeth, spinner of
cotton, come into the Court!” And everything turned so black before
Anitra that she could hardly see Elizabeth come out and stand before
the King. For she loved Elizabeth and Elizabeth’s sister, and she knew
that Elizabeth had deserted her baby when she was beside herself with
sickness and disgrace and poverty, and she knew that the father who
had deserted her and deserted the baby was one of those trumpeters of
the King, who had just been blowing the blasts of triumph for him, to
the admiration of the whole court.
Then the King heard evidence upon one side, and heard evidence upon the
other. But almost everything was against Elizabeth; though the King in
his mercy changed her sentence from death to imprisonment and disgrace
for her whole life. Every one applauded his clemency. But the little
sister sobbed and cried like a crazy thing, though Elizabeth raised her
chin and smiled bravely at her, to comfort her.
The shepherds turned and looked at each other with a glance of contempt
for what was happening. And now they were not aged or clumsy at all.
They were strong, straight young men, more beautiful than anything else
Anitra had seen in her whole life; and they looked at her beautifully
as though they were her brothers.
Then the heralds all came out and blew upon the trumpets to announce
the King’s proclamation; and the King read about all the wealth and
prosperity and peace and good fortune and happiness and plenty of the
nation; and every minute Anitra grew more and more faint with hunger.
When the proclamation was done the people screamed and shouted. The
Christmas bells rang. The fifes and bugles sounded. Everybody cheered
the King, and the King rose and responded. Then everybody cheered the
Chancellor, and he bowed and responded. Then there were cries of
“Long Live Bernardino!” and the bugles were sounded for him; and he
bowed and responded. And then some one called “Long Live Anitra, the
Beggar-girl!” And there was an uproar of cheers and bugles and applause
and excitement.
Anitra rose and stood upon the throne-steps. But she looked only at the
shepherds, who were more beautiful than anything else she had ever seen
in her whole life, and who looked at her beautifully as though they
were her brothers. She thought, “I must have died some day at any rate.
So I will die to-day and speak the truth.”
When the audience-chamber was still she said, “I am Anitra the
Beggar-girl. But I do not praise the King for his kindness, for though
he let me stay on his throne he is letting me die of hunger. And I
do not praise the King for his justice, for in his court the man who
deserts his child and his child’s mother walks free, and the woman who
deserts her child must die in prison. And in his court the King pardons
one man and condemns another for exactly the same fault.”
Then the two shepherds walked up the steps of the throne. Everything
was still. Not a bell rang. Not a trumpet blew. But as the shepherds
walked, the audience-chamber seemed to vanish away; and all around,
beyond the pillared arches, and beyond the prosperous people, stood
all the poor people, all the hungry people, all the unjustly-paid and
overworked and sick and struggling people in the nation. And in the
judges and judged, and the prosperous people and the poor people, there
rose like the first quiver of dawn a sense simply of what was really
true for each one and for every one.
The younger shepherd said, “In this Court to-day stand those who are
more strong than all the triumphs of the world. We are the Truth and
Death.”
And as he spoke, all thought of judgment and of condemnation and pardon
and patronage vanished away; and in everybody’s soul the thought simply
of what was really true for each one and for every one opened like the
clear flower of daybreak.
Not a bell rang. Not a trumpet blew. “We are the Truth and Death,”
repeated the older shepherd.
And the thought simply of what was really true for each one and for
every one, and the thought that all were common fellow mortals thrilled
through everybody’s soul more keenly and more fully than the light of
morning and the tones of all the trumpets of the world.
After that, the shepherds did not again turn and glance at each other
as though they felt a contempt for what was happening. For from that
time on, everything was done in the Court only with the thought of what
was really true for each one and for every one, and the thought that
all were fellow mortals; and before the next Christmas, there were no
beggars at all in the fabulous nation. And the Truth and Death, there,
always looked at everybody beautifully, as though they were their
brothers.
[12]By permission of the author and the “Atlantic Monthly.”
A CHRISTMAS MYSTERY[13]
THE STORY OF THREE WISE MEN
_William J. Locke_
I cannot tell how the truth may be;
I say the tale as ’twas said to me.
Three men who had gained great fame and honor throughout the world met
unexpectedly in front of the bookstall at Paddington Station. Like most
of the great ones of the earth they were personally acquainted, and
they exchanged surprised greetings.
Sir Angus McCurdie, the eminent physicist, scowled at the two others
beneath his heavy black eyebrows.
“I’m going to a God-forsaken place in Cornwall called Trehenna,” said
he.
“That’s odd; so am I,” croaked Professor Biggleswade. He was a little,
untidy man with round spectacles, a fringe of grayish beard and a weak,
rasping voice, and he knew more of Assyriology than any man, living
or dead. A flippant pupil once remarked that the Professor’s face was
furnished with a Babylonic cuneiform in lieu of features.
“People called Deverill, at Foullis Castle?” asked Sir Angus.
“Yes,” replied Professor Biggleswade.
“How curious! I am going to the Deverills, too,” said the third man.
This man was the Right Honorable Viscount Boyne, the renowned Empire
Builder and Administrator, around whose solitary and remote life
popular imagination had woven many legends. He looked at the world
through tired gray eyes, and the heavy drooping blonde mustache seemed
tired, too, and had dragged down the tired face into deep furrows. He
was smoking a long black cigar.
“I suppose we may as well travel down together,” said Sir Angus, not
very cordially.
Lord Boyne said courteously: “I have a reserved carriage. The railway
company is always good enough to place one at my disposal. It would
give me great pleasure if you would share it.”
The invitation was accepted, and the three men crossed the busy,
crowded platform to take their seats in the great express train. A
porter laden with an incredible load of paraphernalia, trying to make
his way through the press, happened to jostle Sir Angus McCurdie. He
rubbed his shoulder fretfully.
“Why the whole land should be turned into a bear garden on account of
this exploded superstition of Christmas is one of the anomalies of
modern civilization. Look at this insensate welter of fools traveling
in wild herds to disgusting places merely because it’s Christmas!”
“You seem to be traveling yourself, McCurdie,” said Lord Boyne.
“Yes—and why the devil I’m doing it, I’ve not the faintest notion,”
replied Sir Angus.
“It’s going to be a beast of a journey,” he remarked some moments
later, as the train carried them slowly out of the station. “The whole
country is under snow—and as far as I can understand we have to change
twice and wind up with a twenty-mile motor drive.”
He was an iron-faced, beetle-browed, stern man, and this morning he did
not seem to be in the best of tempers. Finding his companions inclined
to be sympathetic, he continued his lamentation.
“And merely because it’s Christmas I’ve had to shut up my laboratory
and give my young fools a holiday—just when I was in the midst of a
most important series of experiments.”
Professor Biggleswade, who had heard vaguely of and rather looked
down upon such new-fangled toys as radium and thorium and helium
and argon—for the latest astonishing developments in the theory of
radio-activity had brought Sir Angus McCurdie his worldwide fame—said
somewhat ironically:
“If the experiments were so important, why didn’t you lock yourself up
with your test tubes and electric batteries and finish them alone?”
“Man!” said McCurdie, bending across the carriage, and speaking with a
curious intensity of voice, “d’ye know I’d give a hundred pounds to be
able to answer that question.”
“What do you mean?” asked the Professor, startled.
“I should like to know why I’m sitting in this damned train and going
to visit a couple of addle-headed society people whom I’m scarcely
acquainted with, when I might be at home in my own good company
furthering the progress of science.”
“I myself,” said the Professor, “am not acquainted with them at all.”
It was Sir Angus McCurdie’s turn to look surprised.
“Then why are you spending Christmas with them?”
“I reviewed a ridiculous blank-verse tragedy written by Deverill on
the Death of Sennacherib. Historically it was puerile. I said so in
no measured terms. He wrote a letter claiming to be a poet and not an
archæologist. I replied that the day had passed when poets could with
impunity commit the abominable crime of distorting history. He retorted
with some futile argument, and we went on exchanging letters, until his
invitation and my acceptance concluded the correspondence.”
McCurdie, still bending his black brows on him, asked him why he had
not declined. The Professor screwed up his face till it looked more
like a cuneiform than ever. He, too, found the question difficult to
answer; but he showed a bold front.
“I felt it my duty,” said he, “to teach that preposterous ignoramus
something worth knowing about Sennacherib. Besides I am a bachelor and
would sooner spend Christmas, as to whose irritating and meaningless
annoyance I cordially agree with you, among strangers than among my
married sisters’ numerous and nerve-racking families.”
Sir Angus McCurdie, the hard, metallic apostle of radio-activity,
glanced for a moment out of the window at the gray, frost-bitten
fields. Then he said:
“I’m a widower. My wife died many years ago and, thank God, we had no
children. I generally spend Christmas alone.”
He looked out of the window again. Professor Biggleswade suddenly
remembered the popular story of the great scientist’s antecedents, and
reflected that as McCurdie had once run, a barefoot urchin, through
the Glasgow mud, he was likely to have little kith or kin. He himself
envied McCurdie. He was always praying to be delivered from his sisters
and nephews and nieces, whose embarrassing demands no calculated
coldness could repress.
“Children are the root of all evil,” said he. “Happy the man who has
his quiver empty.”
Sir Angus McCurdie did not reply at once; when he spoke again it was
with reference to their prospective host.
“I met Deverill,” said he, “at the Royal Society’s Soirée this year.
One of my assistants was demonstrating a peculiar property of thorium
and Deverill seemed interested. I asked him to come to my laboratory
the next day, and found he didn’t know a damned thing about anything.
That’s all the acquaintance I have with him.”
Lord Boyne, the great administrator, who had been wearily turning over
the pages of an illustrated weekly chiefly filled with flamboyant
photographs of obscure actresses, took his gold glasses from his nose
and the black cigar from his lips, and addressed his companions.
“I’ve been considerably interested in your conversation,” said he, “and
as you’ve been frank, I’ll be frank too. I knew Mrs. Deverill’s mother,
Lady Carstairs, very well years ago, and of course Mrs. Deverill when
she was a child. Deverill I came across once in Egypt—he had been sent
on a diplomatic mission to Teheran. As for our being invited on such
slight acquaintance, little Mrs. Deverill has the reputation of being
the only really successful celebrity hunter in England. She inherited
the faculty from her mother, who entertained the whole world. We’re
sure to find archbishops, and eminent actors, and illustrious divorcées
asked to meet us. That’s one thing. But why I, who loathe country house
parties and children and Christmas as much as Biggleswade, am going
down there to-day, I can no more explain than you can. It’s a devilish
odd coincidence.”
The three men looked at one another. Suddenly McCurdie shivered and
drew his fur coat around him.
“I’ll thank you,” said he, “to shut that window.”
“It’s shut,” said Boyne.
“It’s just uncanny,” said McCurdie, looking from one to the other.
“What?” asked Boyne.
“Nothing if you didn’t feel it.”
“There did seem to be a sudden draught,” said Professor Biggleswade.
“But as both window and door are shut, it could only be imaginary.”
“It wasn’t imaginary,” muttered McCurdie.
Then he laughed harshly. “My father and mother came from Cromarty,” he
said with apparent irrelevance.
“That’s the Highlands,” said the Professor.
“Ay,” said McCurdie.
Lord Boyne said nothing, but tugged at his mustache and looked out of
the window as the frozen meadows and bits of river and willows raced
past. A dead silence fell on them. McCurdie broke it with another laugh
and took a whisky flask from his handbag.
“Have a nip?”
“Thanks, no,” said the Professor. “I have to keep to a strict dietary,
and I only drink hot milk and water—and of that sparingly. I have some
in a thermos bottle.”
Lord Boyne also declining the whisky, McCurdie swallowed a dram and
declared himself to be better. The professor took from his bag a
foreign review in which a German sciolist had dared to question his
interpretation of a Hittite inscription. Over the man’s ineptitude he
fell asleep and snored loudly.
To escape from his immediate neighborhood McCurdie went to the other
end of the seat and faced Lord Boyne, who had resumed his gold glasses
and his listless contemplation of obscure actresses. McCurdie lit a
pipe, Boyne another black cigar. The train thundered on.
Presently they all lunched together in the restaurant car. The windows
steamed, but here and there through a wiped patch of pane a white world
was revealed. The snow was falling. As they passed through Westbury,
McCurdie looked mechanically for the famous white horse carved into the
chalk of the down; but it was not visible beneath the thick covering of
snow.
“It’ll be just like this all the way to Gehenna—Trehenna, I mean,” said
McCurdie.
Boyne nodded. He had done his life’s work amid all extreme fiercenesses
of heat and cold, in burning draughts, in simoons and in icy
wildernesses, and a ray or two more of the pale sun or a flake or
two more of the gentle snow of England mattered to him but little.
But Biggleswade rubbed the pane with his table-napkin and gazed
apprehensively at the prospect.
“If only this wretched train would stop,” said he, “I would go back
again.”
And he thought how comfortable it would be to sneak home again to
his books and thus elude not only the Deverills, but the Christmas
jollities of his sisters’ families, who would think him miles away.
But the train was timed not to stop till Plymouth, two hundred and
thirty-five miles from London, and thither was he being relentlessly
carried. Then he quarreled with his food, which brought a certain
consolation.
The train did stop, however, before Plymouth—indeed, before Exeter.
An accident on the line had dislocated the traffic. The express was
held up for an hour, and when it was permitted to proceed, instead of
thundering on, it went cautiously, subject to continual stoppings. It
arrived at Plymouth two hours late. The travelers learned that they had
missed the connection on which they had counted and that they could not
reach Trehenna till nearly ten o’clock. After weary waiting at Plymouth
they took their seats in the little, cold local train that was to carry
them another stage on their journey. Hot-water cans put in at Plymouth
mitigated to some extent the iciness of the compartment. But that only
lasted a comparatively short time, for soon they were set down at a
desolate, shelterless wayside junction, dumped in the midst of a hilly
snow-covered waste, where they went through another weary wait for
another dismal local train that was to carry them to Trehenna. And in
this train there were no hot-water cans, so that the compartment was as
cold as death. McCurdie fretted and shook his fist in the direction of
Trehenna.
“And when we get there we have still a twenty miles’ motor-drive to
Foullis Castle. It’s a fool name and we’re fools to be going there.”
“I shall die of bronchitis,” wailed Professor Biggleswade.
“A man dies when it is appointed for him to die,” said Lord Boyne, in
his tired way; and he went on smoking long black cigars.
“It’s not the dying that worries me,” said McCurdie. “That’s a mere
mechanical process which every organic being from a king to a
cauliflower has to pass through. It’s the being forced against my will
and my reason to come on this accursed journey, which something tells
me will become more and more accursed as we go on, that is driving me
to distraction.”
“What will be, will be,” said Boyne.
“I can’t see where the comfort of that reflection comes in,” said
Biggleswade.
“And yet you’ve traveled in the East,” said Boyne. “I suppose you know
the Valley of the Tigris as well as any man living.”
“Yes,” said the Professor, “I can say I dug my way from Tekrit to
Bagdad and left not a stone unexamined.”
“Perhaps, after all,” Boyne remarked, “that’s not quite the way to know
the East.”
“I never wanted to know the modern East,” returned the Professor. “What
is there in it of interest compared with the mighty civilizations that
have gone before?”
McCurdie took a pull from his flask.
“I’m glad I thought of having a refill at Plymouth,” said he.
At last, after many stops at little lonely stations they arrived at
Trehenna. The guard opened the door and they stepped out on to the
snow-covered platform. An oil lamp hung from the tiny pent-house roof
that, structurally, was Trehenna Station. They looked around at the
silent gloom of white undulating moorland, and it seemed a place where
no man lived and only ghosts could have a bleak and unsheltered being.
A porter came up and helped the guard with the luggage. Then they
realized that the station was built on a small embankment, for, looking
over the railing, they saw below the two great lamps of a motor car.
A fur-clad chauffeur met them at the bottom of the stairs. He clapped
his hands together and informed them cheerily that he had been waiting
for four hours. It was the bitterest winter in these parts within the
memory of man, said he, and he himself had not seen snow there for five
years. Then he settled the three travelers in the great roomy touring
car covered with a Cape cart hood, wrapped them up in many rugs and
started.
After a few moments, the huddling together of their bodies—for, the
Professor being a spare man, there was room for them all on the back
seat—the pile of rugs, the serviceable and all but air-tight hood,
induced a pleasant warmth and a pleasant drowsiness. Where they were
being driven they knew not. The perfectly upholstered seat eased their
limbs, the easy swinging motion of the car soothed their spirits. They
felt that already they had reached the luxuriously appointed home
which, after all, they knew awaited them. McCurdie no longer railed,
Professor Biggleswade forgot the dangers of bronchitis, and Lord Boyne
twisted the stump of a black cigar between his lips without any desire
to relight it. A tiny electric lamp inside the hood made the darkness
of the world to right and left and in front of the talc windows still
darker. McCurdie and Biggleswade fell into a doze. Lord Boyne chewed
the end of his cigar. The car sped on through an unseen wilderness.
Suddenly there was a horrid jolt and a lurch and a leap and a rebound
and then the car stood still, quivering like a ship that has been
struck by a heavy sea. The three men were pitched and tossed and thrown
sprawling over one another onto the bottom of the car. Biggleswade
screamed. McCurdie cursed. Boyne scrambled from the confusion of rugs
and limbs and, tearing open the side of the Cape cart hood, jumped
out. The chauffeur had also just leaped from his seat. It was pitch
dark save for the great shaft of light down the snowy road cast by the
acetylene lamps. The snow had ceased falling.
“What’s gone wrong?”
“It sounds like the axle,” said the chauffeur ruefully.
He unshipped a lamp and examined the car, which had wedged itself
against a great drift of snow on the off side. Meanwhile McCurdie and
Biggleswade had alighted.
“Yes, it’s the axle,” said the chauffeur.
“Then we’re done,” remarked Boyne.
“I’m afraid so, my lord.”
“What’s the matter? Can’t we get on?” asked Biggleswade in his
querulous voice.
McCurdie laughed. “How can we get on with a broken axle? The thing’s as
useless as a man with a broken back. Gad, I was right. I said it was
going to be an infernal journey.”
The little Professor wrung his hands. “But what’s to be done?” he cried.
“Tramp it,” said Lord Boyne, lighting a fresh cigar.
“It’s ten miles,” said the chauffeur.
“It would be the death of me,” the Professor wailed.
“I utterly refuse to walk ten miles through a Polar waste with a gouty
foot,” McCurdie declared wrathfully.
The chauffeur offered a solution of the difficulty. He would set out
alone for Foullis Castle—five miles further on was an inn where he
could obtain a horse and trap—and would return for the three gentlemen
with another car. In the meanwhile they could take shelter in a little
house which they had just passed, some half mile up the road. This
was agreed to. The chauffeur went on cheerily enough with a lamp, and
the three travelers with another lamp started off in the opposite
direction. As far as they could see they were in a long, desolate
valley, a sort of No Man’s Land, deathly silent. The eastern sky had
cleared somewhat, and they faced a loose rack through which one pale
star was dimly visible.
“I’m a man of science,” said McCurdie as they trudged through the snow,
“and I dismiss the supernatural as contrary to reason; but I have
Highland blood in my veins that plays me exasperating tricks. My reason
tells me that this place is only a commonplace moor, yet it seems
like a Valley of Bones haunted by malignant spirits who have lured us
here to our destruction. There’s something guiding us now. It’s just
uncanny.”
“Why on earth did we ever come?” croaked Biggleswade.
Lord Boyne answered: “The Koran says, ‘Nothing can befall us but what
God hath destined for us.’ So why worry?”
“Because I’m not a Mohammedan,” retorted Biggleswade.
“You might be worse,” said Boyne.
Presently the dim outline of the little house grew perceptible. A faint
light shone from the window. It stood unfenced by any kind of hedge or
railing a few feet away from the road in a little hollow beneath some
rising ground. As far as they could discern in the darkness when they
drew near, the house was a mean, dilapidated hovel. A guttering candle
stood on the inner sill of the small window and afforded a vague view
into a mean interior. Boyne held up the lamp so that its rays fell
full on the door. As he did so, an exclamation broke from his lips and
he hurried forward, followed by the others. A man’s body lay huddled
together on the snow by the threshold. He was dressed like a peasant,
in old corduroy trousers and rough coat, and a handkerchief was knotted
round his neck. In his hand he grasped the neck of a broken bottle.
Boyne set the lamp on the ground and the three bent down together over
the man. Close by the neck lay the rest of the broken bottle, whose
contents had evidently run out into the snow.
“Drunk?” asked Biggleswade.
Boyne felt the man and laid his hand on his heart.
“No,” said he, “dead.”
McCurdie leaped to his full height. “I told you the place was uncanny!”
he cried. “It’s fey.” Then he hammered wildly at the door.
There was no response. He hammered again till it rattled. This time
a faint prolonged sound like the wailing of a strange sea-creature
was heard from within the house. McCurdie turned round, his teeth
chattering.
“Did ye hear that, Boyne?”
“Perhaps it’s a dog,” said the Professor.
Lord Boyne, the man of action, pushed them aside and tried the
door-handle. It yielded, the door stood open, and the gust of cold wind
entering the house extinguished the candle within. They entered and
found themselves in a miserable stone-paved kitchen, furnished with
poverty-stricken meagerness—a wooden chair or two, a dirty table, some
broken crockery, old cooking utensils, a flyblown missionary society
almanac, and a fireless grate. Boyne set the lamp on the table.
“We must bring him in,” said he.