POPULAR NOVELS.
BY
_MRS. MARY J. HOLMES_.
TEMPEST AND SUNSHINE.
ENGLISH ORPHANS.
HOMESTEAD ON HILLSIDE.
’LENA RIVERS.
MEADOW BROOK.
DORA DEANE.
COUSIN MAUDE.
MARIAN GREY.
EDITH LYLE.
DAISY THORNTON.
CHATEAU D’OR.
QUEENIE HETHERTON (_New_).
DARKNESS AND DAYLIGHT.
HUGH WORTHINGTON.
CAMERON PRIDE.
ROSE MATHER.
ETHELYN’S MISTAKE.
MILBANK.
EDNA BROWNING.
WEST LAWN.
MILDRED.
FORREST HOUSE.
MADELINE.
CHRISTMAS STORIES.
“Mrs. Holmes is a peculiarly pleasant and fascinating writer. Her books
are always entertaining, and she has the rare faculty of enlisting the
sympathy and affections of her readers, and of holding their attention
to her pages with deep and absorbing interest.”
All published uniform with this volume. Price $1.50 each. Sold
everywhere, and sent _free_ by mail on receipt of price,
BY
G. W. CARLETON & Co., Publishers,
New York.
[Illustration: Eng^d. by Geo E. Perine, N. York]
CHRISTMAS STORIES.
BY
MRS. MARY J. HOLMES,
AUTHOR OF
TEMPEST AND SUNSHINE.—DARKNESS AND DAYLIGHT.—MILBANK.—ENGLISH
ORPHANS.—’LENA RIVERS.—ETHELYN’S MISTAKE.—HUGH
WORTHINGTON.—MADELINE.—WEST LAWN—MARIAN GREY.—EDNA BROWNING, ETC.
_WITH A STEEL PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR._
[Illustration]
NEW YORK.
_G. W. Carleton & Co., Publishers._
LONDON: S. LOW, SON & CO.
MDCCCLXXXV.
COPYRIGHT, 1884,
BY DANIEL HOLMES,
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Stereotyped by
SAMUEL STODDER,
42 DEY STREET, N. Y.
TO
MISS MARY W. JEWETT,
(OF CLARKSON, N. Y.)
WHO HAS BEEN SO LONG IDENTIFIED
WITH THE
PARISH OF ST. LUKE’S,
AND WHO IS
ALMOST AS MUCH A PART OF THE CHRISTMAS FESTIVAL AS THE CHRISTMAS-TREE
ITSELF,
I DEDICATE THESE STORIES,
SOME OF WHICH HAVE IN THEM MORE OF FACT THAN OF FICTION.
CONTENTS.
Page
I. ALICE AND ADELAIDE. 9
II. RED-BIRD. 121
III. RUTH AND RENA. 172
IV. BENNY’S CHRISTMAS. 207
V. THE CHRISTMAS FONT. 236
VI. ADAM FLOYD. 271
VII. JOHN LOGAN. 325
VIII. THE PASSION PLAY AT OBERAMMERGAU. 342
ALICE AND ADELAIDE.
CHAPTER I.
CHRISTMAS EVE.
It was Christmas eve, and the parlors of No. 46 Shelby Street were
ablaze with light; rare flowers, in vases rarer still, filled the rooms
with a sweet perfume, bringing back, as it were, the summer glory which
had faded in the autumn light, and died in the chill December’s breath.
Costly pictures adorned the walls; carpets, which seemed to the eye like
a mossy bed inlaid with roses, covered the floors, while over all, the
gas-light fell, making a scene of brilliant beauty such as was seldom
witnessed in the quiet city of ——, where our story opens.
It was the night of Alice Warren’s first presentation to society, as a
young lady, and in her luxurious dressing-room she stood before her
mirror, bending her graceful head, while her mother placed among her
flowing curls a golden arrow, and then pronounced the toilet complete.
Alice Warren was very beautiful with her fair young face, her waving
hair, and lustrous eyes of blue, which shone with more than their wonted
brightness, as, smoothing down the folds of her dress, she glanced again
at the mirror opposite, and then turned toward her mother just as a
movement in the hall without attracted the attention of both. It was a
slow, uncertain step, and darting forward, Alice cried:
“It is father—come to see how I look on my eighteenth birthnight!”
“Not to _see_ you, my child,” the father answered; and in the tones of
his voice there was a note of sorrow, as if the struggle of nineteen
long years were not yet fully over.
To Hugo Warren the world was one dark, dreary night, and the gold so
many coveted would have been freely given, could he but once have looked
upon the face of his only child, who, bounding to his side, parted the
white hair from his forehead, and laying his hand upon her head, asked
him “to _feel_ if she were not beautiful.”
Very tenderly and caressingly the father’s hand moved over the shining
hair, the glowing cheek, and rounded arms of the graceful little figure
which stood before him, then dashing a tear away, the blind man said:
“My Alice must be beautiful if she is, as they tell me, like her
mother,” and the sightless eyes turned instinctively toward the mother,
who, coming to his side, replied:
“Alice is like me as I was when you last saw my face—but I have changed
since then—there are lines of silver in my hair, and lines of time upon
my face.”
The blind man shook his head. The picture of the fond girl-wife, who, in
his hour of bitter agony had whispered in his ear, “I will be sunlight,
moonlight, starlight—everything to you, my husband,” had never changed
to him—for faithfully and well that promise had been kept, and it was
better perhaps, that he could not see the shadows on her face—shadows
which foretold a darker hour than any he had ever known—an hour when the
sunlight of her love would set forever. But no such forebodings were
around him now. He held his wife and daughter both in his arms, and
holding them thus, forgot for a moment that he was blind.
“Did you invite Adelaide?” Alice asked at last; and Mr. Warren replied:
“Yes, but it is doubtful whether she will come. She is very proud, her
father says, and does not wish to put herself in a position to be
slighted.”
“Oh, father!” Alice cried, “Adelaide Huntington does not know me. I
could not slight her because she is poor, and if she comes I will treat
her like a royal princess,” and Alice’s face flushed with pleasure as
she thought how attentive she would be to the daughter of her father’s
“confidential clerk and authorized agent.”
Meanwhile, in a distant part of the city, in a dwelling far more humble
than that of Hugo Warren, another family group was assembled, father,
mother, daughter—all, save old Aunt Peggy, who, thankful for a home
which saved her from the almshouse, performed willingly a menial’s part,
bearing patiently the whims of the mother, and the caprices of the
daughter, the latter of whom proved a most tyrannical and exacting
mistress. Tall, dignified, and rather aristocratic in her bearing,
Adelaide Huntington was called handsome by many, and admired by those
who failed to see the treachery hidden in her large, dark eyes, or the
constant effort she made to seem what she was not. To be noticed by
those whose position in life was far above her own, was her aim, and
when the envied Alice Warren extended to her family an invitation to be
present at her birthday party, her delight was unbounded.
She would go, of course, she said, “and her father would go with her,
and she must have a new dress, too, even if it took every cent they
had.”
The dress was purchased, and though it was only a simple white muslin,
it well became the queenly form of the haughty Adelaide, who, when her
toilet was completed, asked her father if “he did not think she would
overshadow the diminutive Alice?”
“I don’t see why there should be this difference between us,” she
continued, as her father made no answer. “Here I must be poor all my
life, while she will be rich, unless Mr. Warren chances to fail——”
“Which he will do before three days are passed,” dropped involuntarily
from the lips of Mr. Huntington.
Then with a wild, startled look he grasped his daughter’s arm,
exclaiming:
“Forget what I just said—breathe not a word of it to any one, for Heaven
knows I would help it if I could. But it is too late—too late.”
It was in vain that Adelaide and her mother sought an explanation of
these strange words. Mr. Huntington would give none, and in unbroken
silence he accompanied his daughter to the house of Mr. Warren.
Very cordially Alice welcomed the young girl striving in various ways to
relieve her from the embarrassment she would naturally feel at finding
herself among so many strangers. And Adelaide _was_ ill at ease, for the
spirit of jealous envy in her heart whispered to her of slight and
insult where none were intended; whispered, too, that her muslin dress
which, at home with her mother and Aunt Peggy to admire, had been so
beautiful, was nothing, compared with the soft, flowing robes of Alice
Warren, whose polite attentions she construed into a kind of patronizing
pity exceedingly annoying to one of her proud nature. Then, as she
remembered her father’s words, she thought, “_We may be equals yet._ I
wonder what he meant? I mean to ask him again,” and passing through the
crowded apartments she came to the little ante-room, where all the
evening her father had been sitting—a hard, dark look upon his face, and
his eyes bent on the floor, as if for him that festive scene possessed
no interest.
“Father,” she said, but he made her no reply; he did not even know that
she was standing at his side.
Far back through the “past” his thoughts were straying, to the Christmas
Eve when penniless, friendless and alone he had come to the city, asking
employment from one whose hair was not as white then as it was now, and
whose eyes were not quenched in darkness, but looked kindly down upon
him, as the wealthy merchant said:
“I will give you work as long as you do well.”
Hugo Warren was older than William Huntington, and his station in life
had always been different, but over the mountain side the same Sunday
bell had once called them both to the house of God—the same tall tree on
the river bank bore on its bark their names—the same blue sky had bent
above their childhood’s home, and for this reason he had given the poor
young man a helping hand, aiding him step by step, until now, he was the
confidential clerk—the one trusted above all others—for when the
blindness first came upon him the helpless man had put his hand on
William’s head, saying, as he did so:
“I trust _you_, with my all, and as you hope for Heaven, do not be false
to the trust.”
How those words, spoken years before, rang in William Huntington’s ears,
as he sat thinking of the past, until the great drops of perspiration
gathered thickly around his lips and dropped upon the floor. He had
betrayed his trust—nay, more, he had ruined the man who had been so kind
to him, and before three days were passed his sin would find him out.
Heavy bank notes must be paid, and there was nothing with which to pay
them. The gambling table had been his ruin. Gradually he had gone down,
meaning always to replace what he had taken, and oftentimes doing so;
but fortune had deserted him at last, and rather than meet the glance of
those sightless eyes, when the truth should be known, he had resolved to
go away. The next day would be a holiday, and before the Christmas sun
set, he would be an outcast—a wanderer on the earth. Of all this he was
thinking when Adelaide came to his side.
The sound of her voice aroused him at last, and starting up, he
exclaimed:
“It is time we were at home. The atmosphere of these rooms is stifling.
Get your things at once.”
Rather unwillingly Adelaide obeyed, and ten minutes later she was saying
good night to Alice and her mother, both of whom expressed their
surprise that she should go so soon, as did Mr. Warren also.
“I meant to have talked with you more,” he said, as he stood in the hall
with Mr. Huntington, who, grasping his hand, looked earnestly into the
face which for all time to come would haunt him as the face of one whom
he had greatly wronged.
A few hours later, and all was still in the house where mirth and
revelry had so lately reigned. Flushed with excitement and the flattery
her youthful beauty had called forth, Alice Warren had sought her
pillow, and in the world of dreamland was living over again the
incidents of the evening. The blind man, too, was sleeping, and in his
dreams he saw again the forms of those he loved, but he did not see the
cloud hovering near, nor the crouching figure which, across the way, was
looking toward his window and bidding him farewell.
Mr. Huntington had accompanied Adelaide to his door, and then, making
some trivial excuse, had left her, and gone from his home forever,
leaving his wife to watch and wait for him as she had often done before.
Slowly the December night waned, and just as the morning was
breaking—the morn of the bright Christmas day—a train sped on its way to
the westward, bearing among its passengers one who fled from justice,
leaving to his wife and daughter grief and shame, and to the blind man
_darkness, ruin, and death_.