The Christmas ballad of the stoker, even though writ from the fiery
bowels of amidships and with a pen reeking with his own sweat, could
find no holiday sale; nor the story of the waiter who serves the wine he
dares only smell, and weary stands attendant into the joyous dawn.
Such social sores--the drayman, back bent to the Christmas box whose
mysteries he must never know; the salesgirl standing on her swollen feet
on into the midnight hour--such sores may run and fester, but not to
sicken public eyes.
For the Christmas spirit is the white flame of love burning in men's
hearts and may not be defiled. Shop-windows, magazine covers, and
post-cards proclaim good-will to all men; bedtime stories crooned when
little heads are drowsy are of Peace on Earth; corporations whose
draymen's backs are bent and whose salesgirls' feet are swollen plaster
each outgoing parcel with a Good-Will-Toward-Men stamp, and remove the
stools from behind the counters to give space to more of the glittering
merchandise.
In the Mammoth Store the stools have long since been removed and the
holiday hysteria of Peace on Earth rose to its Christmas Eve climax, as
a frenzied gale drives upward the sea into mountains of water, or scuds
through black-hearted forests, bending them double in wild salaam.
Shoppers pushed through aisles so packed that the tide flowed back upon
itself. A narrow-chested woman, caught in the whorl of one such vortex,
fainted back against the bundle-laden arms that pressed her on. Above
the thin orchestra of musical toys, the tramp of feet like an army
marching, voices raucous from straining to be heard, a clock over the
grand central stairway boomed nine, and the crowd pulled at its strength
for a last hour of bartering, tearing, pushing, haggling, sweating.
Behind the counters workers sobbed in their throats and shifted from one
swollen foot to the other. A cash-girl, her eyeballs glazed like
those of a wounded hare in the torture of the chase, found a pile of
pasteboard boxes behind a door, and with the indifference of exhaustion
dropped on to it asleep. The tide flowed on, and ever and again back
upon itself. A Santa Claus in a red canton-flannel coat lost his white
canton-flannel beard, nor troubled to recover it. A woman trembling with
the ague of terror drew an imitation bisque doll off a counter and into
the shallow recesses of her cape, and the cool hand of the law darted
after her and closed over her wrist and imitation bisque evidence. A
prayer, a moan, the crowd parting and closing again.
The mammoth Christmas tree beneath the grand central stairway loped
ever so slightly of its own gorgeousness, and the gold star at its
apex titillated to the tramp-tramp of the army. Across the novelty
leather-goods counter Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons leaned the blue-shaven,
predacious face that head waiters and underfed salesgirls know best over
a hot bird and a cold bottle. Men's hands involuntarily close into tight
fists when his well-pressed sleeve accidentally brushes their wives or
sisters. Six-dollar-a-week salesgirls scrape their luscious rare birds
to the bone, drink thin gold wine from thin, gold-edged glasses, and
curse their God when the reckoning comes.
Behind the novelty leather-goods counter Mrs. Violet Smith, whose eyes
were the woodland blue her name boasted, smiled back and leaned against
the stock-shelves, her face upturned and like a tired flower.
"If the rush hadn't quit right this minute I--I couldn't have lasted it
out till closing, honest I couldn't."
"Poor tired little filly!"
"Even them ten minutes I got leave to go up to old Ingram's office
they made up for when I came back, and put another batch of them
fifty-nine-cent leatherette purses out in the bin."
"Poor little filly! What you need is a little speed. I wanna blow you
to-night, Doll. You went once and you can make it twice. Come on, Doll,
it ain't every little girl I'd coax like this."
"I--Jimmie--I--"
"I wanna blow you to-night, Doll. A poor little blue-eyed queenie like
you, all froze up with nothing but a sick husband for a Christmas
tree--a poor little baby doll like you!"
"The kid, too, Jimmie, I--oughtn't!"
"Didn't you tell me yourself it sleeps through the night like a
whippersnapper? Don't be a quitter Doll, didn't you?"
"Yes, but--"
"A poor little baby doll like you! Why, there just ain't nothing too
good for you. Some little time I showed you last Tuesday night--eh,
Doll?"
"Yes--Jimmie!"
"Well, if you think that was some evening, you watch me to-night!"
"I--can't--go, Jimmie, him layin' there, and the kid and all!"
"Didn't I have to coax you last time just like to-night? And wasn't you
glad when you looked out and seen how blasted cold and icy it was that
you lemme blow you--wasn't you?"
"Yes, Jimmie, but--"
"Didn't I blow you to a bottle of bubble water to take home with you
even after the big show was over, and wouldn't I have blown you to
yellow instead of the red if you hadn't been a little cheap skate and
wanted the red? Didn't I pin a two-dollar bunch of hothouse grapes on
your hat right out of the fruit-bowl? Didn't I blow you for proper?"
"It was swell, Jimmie!"
"Well, I'm going to blow in my winnings on you to-night, Doll. It's
Christmas Eve and--"
"Yes, it's Christmas Eve, Jimmie, and he--he had one of his bad
hemorrhages last night, and the kid, she--she's too little to know she's
getting cheated out of her Christmas, but, gee--a--a kid oughtta have
something--a tree or something."
He leaned closer, hemmed in by the crowd. "It's _you_ oughtta have
something, Doll."
"I--I never oughtta gone with you last Tuesday night, Jimmie. When I got
home, he--he was laying there like a rag."
"I like you, Doll. I'm going to blow in the stack of my winnings on
you--that's how much I like you. There ain't nothing I wouldn't do for a
little filly like you."
"Jimmie!"
"There ain't!"
"Aw!"
"You wouldn't be in the hole you are now, Doll, if you hadn't sneaked
off two years ago and done it while I wasn't looking. Nearly two whole
years you lemme lose track of you! That ain't a nice way to treat a
fellow that likes you."
"We went boarding right away, Jimmie, and I only came back to the
department two months ago, after he got so bad. 'Ain't I told you how
things just kinda happened?"
"I liked you myself, Doll, but you fell for a pair of shoulders over in
the gents' furnishing that wasn't wide from nothing but padding. I could
have told you there was all cotton batting and no lungs there. I could
have told you."
"Jimmie, ain't you ashamed! Jimmie!"
"Aw, I was just kidding. But you ain't real on that true-blue stuff,
Doll. I can look into your eyes and see you're bustin' to lemme blow
you. That's what you get, sweetness, when you don't ask your Uncle
Fuller first. If you'd have asked me I could have told you he was weak
in the chest when you married him. I could have told you that you'd
be back here two years later selling leatherette vanity-cases and
supportin' a--"
"You! Jimmie Fitzgibbons, you--"
"Gad, Doll, go to it! When you color up like that you look like a
rose--a whole bouquet of them."
"You--you don't know nothing about him. He--he never knew he had a lung
till a month after the kid came, and they moved the gents' furnishing
over by the Broadway door where the draught caught him."
"Sure, he didn't, Doll; no harm meant. That's right, stand by him. I
like to see it. Why, a little queen across the counter from you tole me
you'd have married him if he'd had three bum lungs, that crazy you was!"
"Like fun! If me or him had dreamt he wasn't sound we--I wouldn't be in
this mess, I--we--I wouldn't!"
Her little face was pale as a spray of jessamine against a dark
background, and, try as she would to check them, tears sprang hot to her
eyes, dew trembled on her lashes.
"Poor little filly!"
More tears rushed to her eyes, as if he had touched the wellsprings of
her self-compassion. "You gotta excuse me, Jimmie. I ain't cryin', only
I'm dog tired from nursin' and drudgin', drudgin' and nursin'."
"Hard luck, little un!"
"Him layin' there and me tryin' to--to make things meet. You gotta
excuse me, Jimmie, I'm done up."
"That's why I wanna blow you, sweetness. I can't bear to see a little
filly like you runnin' with the odds dead agin her."
"You been swell to me, Jimmie."
"The sky's my limit, Doll."
"Maybe it wasn't right for me to go with you last Tuesday night, him
layin' there, and the kid and all, but a girl's gotta have something,
don't she, Jimmie? A girl that's got on her shoulders what I got has
gotta have something--a laugh now and then!"
"That's the goods, Doll. A little filly like you has got to."
"Honest, the way I laughed when you stuck them hothouse grapes on my
hat for trimming the other night, just like they didn't cost
nothing--honest, the way I laughed gimme enough strength for a whole
night's nursin'. Honest, I felt like in the old days before--before I
was married."
"Gad! if you had treated me white in them days, Doll--if you hadn't
pulled that saint stuff on me and treated me cold storage--there ain't
nothing I wouldn't have done for you."
"I--I didn't mean nothing, Jimmie."
"I ain't sore, Doll. I like you and I like your style. I always did,
even in the days when you turned me down, you great big beautiful doll,
you!"
"Aw--you!"
"If you're the real little sport I think you are, you're going to lemme
blow you to the liveliest Christmas a little queen like you ever seen.
I didn't make that winnin' down in Atlanta for nothing. When I got the
telegram I says to myself: 'Here goes! I'm goin' to make last Tuesday
night look like a prayer-meeting, I am.' Eh, Doll?"
"I--I can't, Jimmie. I--'S-s-s-s-h!"
A tide flowed in about the counter, separating them, and she was
suddenly the center of a human whorl, a battle of shoulders and elbows
and voices pitched high with gluttony. Mr. Fitzgibbons skirted its edge,
patient.
Outside a flake floated down out of the dark pocket of packed clouds,
then another and yet another, like timid kisses blown down upon the
clownish brow of Broadway. A motorman shielded his eyes from the right
merry whirl and swore in his throat. A fruit-cheeked girl paused in the
flare of a Mammoth Store show-window, looked up at her lover and the
flaky star that lit and died on his mustache, and laughed with the
musical glee of a bird. A beggar slid farther out from his doorway and
pushed his hat into the flux of the sidewalk. More flakes, dancing
upward like suds blown in merriment from the palm of a hand--light,
lighter, mad, madder, weaving a blanket from God's own loom, from God's
own fleece, whitening men's shoulders with the heavenly fabric.
Mrs. Violet Smith cast startled eyes upon the powdered shoulders and
snow-clumped shoes passing down the aisleway, and her hand flew to her
throat as if to choke its gasp.
"My! It ain't snowin', is it? It ain't snowin'?"
Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons wormed back to the counter. His voice was sunk to
the golden mezzo of an amorous whisper.
"Snowin' is right, Doll! A real dyed-in-the-wool white Christmas for you
and me!"
"Snowin'!"
"Don't you like snow, baby doll? Cheer up, I'm going to hire a taxicab
by the hour. I'm--"
"Snowin'!"
She breathed inward, shivering, stricken, and her mouth, no older than a
child's, trembled at the corners and would not be composed.
"He--he can't stand no snow-storm. That's why the doctor said if--if
we could get him South before the first one, if we could get him South
before the first one--South, where the sun shines and he could feel it
clear through him, he--Oh, ain't I--ain't I in a mess!"
"Poor little filly!" He focused his small eyes upon her plump and
throbbing throat. "Poor little filly, all winded!"
"I--oh, I--"
"There's the bell, Doll. Poor, tired little girlie, hurry and I'll buy
you a taxicab. Hear it--there's the closing bell! Merry Christmas, Doll!
Merry Christmas!"
A convulsion tore through the store, like the violent asthma of a
thirty-thousand-ton ocean liner breathing the last breath of her voyage
and slipping alongside her pier. On that first stroke of ten a girl
behind the candy-counter collapsed frankly, rocking her left foot in her
lap, pressing its blains, and blubbering through her lips salty with her
own bitter tears. A child, qualified by legislation and his fourteen
years to brace his soft-boned shoulder against the flank of life, bent
his young spine double to the weight of two iron exit doors that swung
outward and open. A gale of snow and whistling air danced in. The crowd
turned about, faced, thinned, died.