“Not quite.” Laine, who had finished the letter, handed it to her, then took out a note-book and pencil. “Are you sure you can remember the things? Hadn’t I better write them down?”
Claudia shook her head. “Not a bit of use. These are the last to get, and then I’m through. Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Through.”
“Through what?”
“With your Christmas things. I don’t suppose men have as much to do as women and don’t have to begin so early. Some people don’t love Christmas. It’s such a pity.”
“It’s a pity the old Christmas has given way to the new one. With many it’s a sort of hold-up. I don’t believe in it.”
Claudia’s arms were folded on the table, and her eyes were gravely looking into his. “What kind do you believe in?”
Into Laine’s face the color crept slowly, then he laughed. “I really don’t know. I only know the present kind is wrong.”
“You know a great many things that are wrong, don’t you?”
“I’m afraid I do.” With his handkerchief Laine wiped his glasses, put them back, and again tapped the table. “That is, I know a great many things that aren’t nice to know.”
“Most of us do. It isn’t difficult to see what isn’t nice in people or things.” She got up. “I’m sorry you don’t love Christmas.”
“Why should I love it? For the men at the office there are checks; for my brother’s widow and children are other checks; for Hope, another. A man makes a mess of buying presents. Cigars for men and flowers for women are the two orders telephoned in advance for the few so remembered. The employees at the clubs, the servants at the house, the–the associations which do things merely mean more money, and money–“
“I think I should hate Christmas, too, if it merely meant the writing of checks or the giving of gold. I wouldn’t want a million if there was no love with it.” Eyes on her muff, she smoothed it softly. “That is what Christmas is for. To take time to remember, and to let people know we do care–and to make somebody glad. Let me see.” On her fingers she enumerated the things desired by Mrs. Prosser. “Harmonicum, silk stockings, socks, yellow pipe, blue scarf-pin, bracelet (brass or gold), box of paper, sled, and–“
“A doll in pink tarleton.” Again in Laine’s face the color crept slowly. He hesitated. “In all my life I never bought a doll or a sled or anything except books for children. May I go with you? And would–would you mind if I got that doll?”
XII
CHRISTMAS SHOPPING
Five minutes later Laine and Claudia were caught in the crowd of Christmas shoppers and valiantly made their way to a counter on which were objects gay and glittering. With a seriousness and persistency that was comic to the girl watching him, Laine began with the blue scarf-pin and the bracelet, but not until he was giving an order did she touch him on the arm and draw him aside.
“We can’t get those, Mr. Laine, indeed we can’t.” She nodded in the direction of the counter. “There aren’t but six dollars and sixteen cents of the pig money, and a dozen things to buy yet.”
“Oh, blow the pig money! She won’t know the difference. That pin is only one dollar and ninety-eight cents and the bracelet two dollars and forty-eight cents. Nothing could be worse than that, could it?”
“It could. Johnnie is a lazy good-for-nothing, and twenty-five cents is all his pin is to cost. It will be big and blue, but not a penny over twenty-five can be spent on it. I think we’d better get the doll and the silk stockings and the sled first. I’ve already bought a doll for Rosy, but it’s in white, and we’ll have to get the pink one.”
“And is the pig money going to do all that?” Laine’s eyes were searching Claudia’s.
“It is.” She laughed and turned away as if to see some one who was passing. “It doesn’t matter whose pig.”
“Then I’ll play the pig to-night! I’ve played it the wrong way often enough. Why can’t we be sensible? I’ve got a spending jag on, and I’ve never been Christmas shopping before. Something is happening to my backbone, something that used to happen in the days when I hung up my stocking. Please be good and let me have a little Christmas!”
Claudia’s forehead wrinkled and for a moment she hesitated, then again her eyes sought his doubtfully. “I don’t know whether I ought to. You are very kind, but–“
“But nothing. I’m merely very selfish. Those things are all right. Come on and let’s go in the toy department. The doll is the most important of all, and don’t dolls have carriages or something? Here, this way to the elevator.”
To the joy of it, the surrender to inherent instinct, to the child that is dormant in all, Claudia and Laine yielded, went in and out among the sea of toys, and critically doll after doll was examined, compared, laid down and taken up, and finally decided upon; and as Laine gave the address he looked at Claudia for final confirmation and approval.
“You’re sure it’s pink? Her mother said pink, you know.”
“Pink! It’s the pinkest pink I ever saw. It is much too grand. But, oh, those patient little eyes! I didn’t think she’d be here this Christmas. You will make her so happy, Mr. Laine.”
“Not I.” He shook his head. “It is you. What does a man know about things like this? But what else does she want? I never had any opinion of a one-piece Santa Claus. These things would make a monk want children of his own. How about those youngsters that anything will please? and don’t you have to have things for stockings?”
With hurried decisions, as if afraid he might not be allowed to do what he chose, Laine went up and down and in and out among the many sections into which the department was divided, and made his selections with entire disregard of appropriateness; and Claudia, keeping near, countermanded with equal firmness all that was unwise. So warm at times did their dissensions wax that the sales-girl following would smile and point out something before unseen, hoping a mutual surrender would accept the compromise, and presently she brought up a cash register and held it toward Laine.
“Most children like these,” she said, “and as your wife doesn’t care for the mechanical toys–“
Laine turned away. With pitiless reality the play of it all came over him, and he walked off lest the sudden surging of his blood be heard.
“But I’m not his wife.” Claudia’s voice was cool and even. “He doesn’t know the children he is getting these things for, and I do. But Channing would like this register, Mr. Laine. And Dorothea told me she wanted a drawing-table like that one over there. Have you bought Dorothea’s present yet?”
Laine came back. “Only books. Her mother gets the other things for me. If she’d like that, get it.”
Out of his voice had gone all spirit, and Claudia, noticing, looked up. “You’re tired, aren’t you? I think we’d better stop.”
Laine laughed. “Tired? No, I’m not tired. I’m having a great time. Playing make-believe is a good game. I haven’t played it lately, and I was doing it rather hard. I wonder what that bunch of people are over there for? A number of children seem to be among them.”
The girl waiting on them looked around. It was Santa Claus, she explained, who was taking the names and addresses, with a list of the presents most wanted by the children, who were there to tell where they lived. “Some of them have been here all day. That little lame fellow was among the first to come, and Santa Claus hasn’t seen him yet. The crowd pushes him out so, and there’s no one to lift him up high enough to be seen. He’s held that piece of paper in his hand for hours.”
Laine looked closer. On the outskirts of the crowd, his thin little face still eagerly trying to peer between the shifting circles, his crutches held tightly by hands too thin to grasp them properly, he saw the boy pointed out by the girl, and, without a word, he walked toward him. As he drew nearer, the head of Santa Claus could be seen over those of the crowd, but to the child he was still invisible; and as Laine saw the pinched face he swore softly under his breath.
For half a minute he stood by the boy’s side, then touched him on the shoulder. “What is it, son? Can’t you make the old fellow see you?”
The child shook his head. “Somebody always gets in ahead. I ain’t tall enough.”
“Here, hold your crutches.” With a swift movement Laine swung the boy on his shoulders. “There, can you see him all right?”
“Yes, sir. And he can see me!” The thin little hand was held up, and Laine felt the quiver that ran over the frail body. “He sees me!”
“Well, my man”–Santa Claus was noticing at last–“what is it that you want?”
“A coat for mother. Black, please.” Soft and eager the words came quickly. “And a worsted skirt, and some shoes for Dick, and a muff for Katie.”
“Oh, I’m not bringing anything but toys this time. Only toys. Quick, what are they?”
On his shoulders again Laine felt a quiver, this time of sudden relaxation, and heard a sob that was quickly smothered. “Oh, I don’t need toys, and mother hasn’t got a piece of coat.”
Laine coughed and caught the eye of Santa Claus, and by telepathy made the latter understand his questions must continue. Two minutes and they were over, the child’s name and address taken, his desires made known, and as he put him down on the floor Laine took from the trembling fingers the piece of paper which for hours had been tightly held and put it in his pocket.
“All right, son.” He slipped some money in his hand. “Run down-stairs and get something to eat before you go home, and don’t worry about the things–they’ll be there Christmas. Scoot!” And with a pat Laine sent him off.
Coming back he turned to Claudia. “Are you through up here? The yellow pipe and the socks for the man who gets locked in the garret are down-stairs, I suppose.”
For answer Claudia looked in his face as if not hearing. “Merciful goodness!” she said. “I had forgotten all about this being Tuesday! I ought to be home this minute. A friend from Washington is coming to dinner to-night. What time is it?”
Laine looked at his watch. “A friend from Washington” was what he read. He turned the face toward her. “What is it? I can’t see it in this light.”
“Seven-twenty-five!” Claudia sat down dejectedly. “You don’t suppose they could be waiting, do you?”
“I don’t.” Laine smiled a twisted little smile. “Channing by nature is a train-despatcher. Dinner on the dot and served swiftly is his one household demand. They will be half through before we can get there.”
“And I’m starving.” She got up. “Well, I can’t help it. I had no business forgetting, but I’m always doing things I oughtn’t.”
“We’ll go up to Sherry’s. Dinner isn’t limited to Hope’s house. I’ll telephone and explain.”
“Oh, I mustn’t! It isn’t just dinner. I have an engagement. Do you think we could get there very quickly? I can’t understand how I forgot!”
XIII
MR. LAINE GOES SHOPPING ALONE
“Did you ring, sir?”
Moses, standing at the door, waited, and as he waited he talked to himself. “Something is the matter with Mr. Laine. He ain’t never call Gineral’s name since he done pass away, and I know the miss of him has been a-smartin’, but don’t seem like that would have made him so restless like he been. ‘Tain’t like him to come in and go right out, and come back and go out again. He got something on his mind, a kind of warfare like.” He coughed slightly and again spoke. “Did you ring, Mr. Laine?”
“I did. Five minutes ago. As a member of the leisure class you’d take a blue ribbon, Moses. Where in the devil are you? Why don’t you come in? I can’t talk to air.”
“I was waitin’ to see if I was mistook: about the bell.” Moses came inside the room.
“Where I come from folks don’t step so lively as they do up here, and old Colonel Tayloes, he used to say there ain’t nothin’ so inelegant as hurry, lessen ’tis worry. But of course I shouldn’t have had no discussion in my mind about that bell. I got a bad way of projectin’ when–“
“You don’t want to move. You have. Any day an affidavit is needed to that effect I’ll sign it. Did you go to that address I gave you yesterday?”
“Yes, sir. I went and I been a-tryin’ to forgit I went ever since I got back. It’s God’s truth the boy told you, I seen him and his ma, and all the other children ‘cept those at work, and the whole of ’em was livin’ in two rooms, and a closet where the biggest boy slept. Their pa he got kilt at the shops where he work, and the lawyer what undertook to get damages got ’em, and they ain’t seen him since.”
“Did you notice the size of the woman and the age of the children?”
“Yes, sir. The mother she come near ’bout up to my shoulder and was thin and wore-out lookin’. The two little ones was four and two years old. You saw the lame one. There’s a girl seven. She’s a puller-out of bastin’s, her ma said, and the oldest girl is fourteen. She’s a runner, or a cash, or somethin’ in a store. The biggest boy is in a foundry-shop and the lame one sells papers.”
“A mother and six children.” Laine made some notes in a book and put it back in his pocket. “I’m going out. Have a cab here at eight-thirty. The things I bring back will be put in the room at the end of the hall. On Christmas Eve you are to buy what I’ve mentioned in this”–he handed him an envelope–“and with them take the bundles in the room to the place you went to yesterday. You are not to know who sent them, and when you come back you are to forget you’ve been, and no one is to be told. You have a great habit of telling Dorothea things. I’m understood, am I?”
“Yes, sir. You is understood, I know about a left hand and a right hand. God knows I’ll be glad to go again if it’s to take some Christmas to them. That woman’s face kinder hant me ever sence I seen it. ‘Twasn’t mad or nothin’, but plum beat out. I had to make a little egg-nog for my stomach when I got home. ‘Tain’t time for egg-nog, but a disturbance in the stomach–“
“You’re having a disturbance in your stomach too often. Get that cab, will you, and tell them to hurry.”
Two hours later he was back. No doubt he had done foolishly, bought unwisely; but there had been no time for indecision, and the woman who waited on him had been a great help. As he was shown warm dresses and thick coats for the mother and little girls, suits and shoes and stockings for the boys, bedclothing, towels, soap, ribbons, and neckties, he had smiled at the absurdity of his opinion being asked concerning things of which he was as ignorant as a blind baby; but with determination he kept on until the woman told him he had gotten enough. With the toys he was more confident; and, remembering Claudia’s restrictions, he had exercised what he believed was excellent judgment and only bought what was probably appropriate.
When the bed in the end room had been piled with his purchases, the door locked, and the key in Moses’s pocket, Laine went into the library, turned off its brilliant lights, and, leaving only the lamp burning, closed the door, sat down in his high-back chair, and lighted a cigar. After the stir and glow of the store the silence of the room was oppressive, its emptiness chilled, and, unthinking, he put his hand down by the side of his chair and nipped his fingers as he was wont to do when calling General. With an indrawn breath he drew his hand back and put it in his pocket. His Christmas shopping was over. A very unexpected Christmas shopping it had been. In all that city of millions there were few personal purchases to be made for others. What had to be gotten Hope got. Not since the death of his mother had Christmas meant more than something to be dreaded and endured. And to Claudia it meant so much.
Why had she come into his life? Why was hers the divine gift of recognition which dispensed with the formal development of friendship and yielded, as a flower its fragrance, the warmth and gladness, the surety and genuineness, that so long he had looked for. Apparently she was as unconscious as Dorothea, and yet too many men had loved her for her not to understand. Not by the subtlest sign had she shown, however. Indifference or dislike would have been more encouraging, but her cordial frankness had been that of unstirred depths.
Suppose she was engaged to another man? Was that any reason why he should not tell her of his love, ask her to be his wife? Puritanic scruples such as his were beyond pardon. A sense of honor might go too far. Why didn’t he find out if it were true what Dorothea had told him? God! To have had a vision, only to go through life in darkness!
An hundred times in fancy he had heard the sweep of her skirts, the sound of her footsteps, the tones of her voice, and laughter gay and sweet and soft; an hundred times had seen the glad eyes grow grave, the forehead wrinkle in fine folds, the quick turn of her head; an hundred times had felt the touch of her hands; and he had never asked Hope to bring her to his home, lest her spirit should not come again.
The badinage of other days came to him, the days when women had rather bothered. They would be amused, these women, did they know his surrender to the god unknown at that time–the god he had sometimes smiled at because he had not known. Day after to-morrow she was going home. He had not seen her since the afternoon they had been shopping together. The man from Washington had claimed her time, and he had stayed away. Who was this man? To ask Hope or Channing had been impossible. Dorothea would be delighted to tell him. The instincts of her sex were well developed in Dorothea; and she missed no chance of letting him know of Claudia’s engagements, of what she did, and where she went, and from whom her flowers came. Doubtless she would be delighted to tell him even more.
He got up and began to walk the length and breadth of the room. The sound of his footsteps was lost in the heavy rugs, and only the ticking of the clock broke the stillness, and presently it struck the hour of midnight. He took out his watch and looked at it. “Tomorrow she is going home,” he said.
XIV
AN INFORMAL VISIT
At the door of what was still called the nursery Laine stood a moment, hesitating whether to go in or to go away. In a low rocking-chair Claudia was holding Channing, half-asleep in her arms; and at her feet Dorothea, on a footstool, elbows on knees and chin in the palms of her hands, was listening so intently to the story being told that for half a minute his presence was not noted.
Presently she looked up and saw him. “Come in.” Her voice was a high whisper. “It’s the grandest story. Wait a minute, Cousin Claudia.” She ran toward the door and drew him in. “You’ll have to stay with us,” she said, “because mother and father have gone out. Some kind of a relation is in town and they had to go. Channing’s got an awful cold, and mother said he could have anything he wanted, and he took Cousin Claudia to tell him stories. She’s been doing it ever since dinner. He’s asleep now, but–“
“I’m not asleep.” Channing’s eyes opened blinkingly. “She said they found the squirrel in a hollow down by the chestnut-tree, and the moonlight on the snow–the moonlight–on–the–snow.” His head fell back on Claudia’s bosom and, with a smile, she nodded to Laine and held out her hand.
“The spirit is valiant, but the flesh prevails. I’m so sorry Hope and Channing are out.”
“I’m not.” He drew a cushioned wicker chair close to the fire. “It’s been long since I heard a good fairy story. Please don’t stop.”
Dorothea pushed the stool aside and settled herself comfortably in her uncle’s lap. “It isn’t a fairy story. You don’t tell fairy stories at Christmas; they’re for summer, when the windows are open and they can hide in the flowers and ride on the wind–the fairies, I mean–but this is Christmas.” She twisted herself into a knot of quivering joy and hugged her arms with rapturous intensity. “It’s all in my bones, and I’m nothing but shivers. Isn’t it grand to have Christmas in your bones? Have you got it in yours?” She held Laine’s face between her hands and looked at it anxiously. “Cousin Claudia has it in hers. She and I are just alike. We’ve been filling stockings to-day for some children Timkins told us about. They live near him, and their mother is sick and their father is dead, and they haven’t a bit of money. Channing and I are going to hang our stockings up here before we go to grandmother’s, and we’re going to hang them up there again. I wish we were going to Cousin Claudia’s. Of course, I love to go to grandmother’s, but she lives in town and they don’t have snow in Savannah; and at Cousin Claudia’s they have everything. I mean everything Christmasy like I like. She’s been telling us about when she was a little girl.”
Dorothea’s feet twisted around each other and her hands were laid palm to palm as her body swayed backward and forward in rhythmic movement. “They go out in the woods and cut cart-loads of holly and mistletoe and pine and Christmas-trees, and dress the house, and the fires roar up all the chimneys, and they kill the pigs–“
Channing sat upright and rubbed his eyes. “They don’t kill the pigs at Christmas. She said they kill them when the persimmons get ripe.”
“Well, they’re killed and you eat them Christmas. They put a little one on the table with an apple in its mouth. And they pick out the fattest turkeys and ducks and geese and chickens; and they go to the smoke-house and punch and poke the hams and things; and the oysters come from the river; and Mammy Malaprop comes up from the gate, where she lives now, and helps make the cakes and the, pies and plum-puddings and beaten biscuits; and Cousin Claudia says when she was a little girl Mammy Malaprop always gave her some of the Christmas cake to bake in egg-shells. I wish I could see somebody make a cake. And Christmas Eve they make egg-nog, and Uncle Bushrod makes the apple toddy two weeks before.” She turned to her uncle. “Why don’t you go down there, Uncle Winthrop? I bet you’d get Christmas in your bones if you did.”
“I am very sure of it.” Laine fixed Dorothea more firmly on his lap. “There is only one reason in the world why I don’t go.”
“What’s that? We’re going away, and you will be all alone if you don’t. Can’t he come, Cousin Claudia? He’d love it. I know he would.”
“I don’t.” Claudia moved her chair farther from the firelight. “Christmas at Elmwood would be punishment for a city man. We are much too primitive and old-fashioned. He would prefer New York.”
“Would you?” Dorothea’s arms were around her uncle’s neck, and her head nodded at his. “Would you?”
“I would not.” Laine’s voice was a little queer. “The punishment is all at this end. I would rather spend Christmas at Elmwood than anywhere on earth. But your Cousin Claudia will not let me, Dorothea.”
“Won’t you really?” Dorothea slipped from his lap, and, with hands on the arms of Claudia’s chair, gazed anxiously in her eyes. “He’ll be all alone if you don’t. Please ask him, Cousin Claudia! You said yourself there was always so much company at Elmwood that one more never mattered and you managed to put them somewhere. Please–oh, please ask him, Cousin Claudia!”
Claudia kissed the lips held close to her own. “I think it is time for you to be in bed, Dorothea. You are making your uncle say things he doesn’t mean. He can come to Elmwood if he wishes, but–“
Dorothea sprang back and, with arms extended and fingers flipping, danced round and round the room. “How magnificent! Now I won’t have a thing on my mind!” With a last whirl she jumped in Laine’s lap and took his hands in hers. “That’s the only thing I hated about Christmas, your being here all by yourself.” She gave a deep breath. “And now you’ll be in that heavenly place with Cousin Claudia. When I get big I’m going there and hunt by the light of the moon, and hear the darkies sing when they’re having a party with possum and hoe-cake, and–” She sat upright. “Did you know Cousin Claudia was going home to-morrow?”
Laine nodded. Speech had suddenly left him. He did not know whether to take Dorothea in the next room and lock her up or hold her close to his heart. What had the child done and made Claudia do? Christmas at Elmwood! His blood surged thickly, and as Dorothea settled back in his arms he looked up and met Claudia’s eyes.
“I’m so scrumptious happy I feel like I’m in heaven!” Dorothea wriggled in sleepy content. “Please finish that story you were telling when Uncle Winthrop came in, Cousin Claudia. You had gotten to where the little boy and the little girl were knocking at the door of the big house with the wreaths in the windows, and it was snowing. I couldn’t sleep to save my life if I didn’t know whether they got in or not. Please finish it.”
Claudia hesitated, then, changing Channing’s position, finished the story and glanced at the clock. “It is time for you to be in bed, Dorothea. I have some notes to write and some packing to–“
“Just one more and that’s all.” Dorothea cuddled closer. “It’s so nice and home-y with just us in here. Please don’t make me go yet. Tell Uncle Winthrop a story”–she blinked bravely–“and then I’ll go–to–bed.”
Laine leaned back and turned off the light from the lamp on the table behind him, and as the firelight played on Claudia’s soft, blue dress, on the slippered feet tapping the stool on which they rested, ran up to the open throat and touched the brown hair, parted and brushed back in simple fashion, he held Dorothea close lest words he must not speak be spoken. Presently he looked toward her.
“I am waiting,” he said. “Will you tell me a story, Santa Claudia?”
“A story?” Her eyes were watching the curling flames. “What kind shall I tell you? I do not know the kind you like.”
“I would like any kind that you would tell me.”
She leaned her head back against the cushioned chair, and again her lashes seemed to touch her cheek. For a moment the soft silence was unbroken, then she turned her face toward him.
“Very well,” she said. “I will tell you a story. It will be about the man who did not know.”
XV
THE MAN WHO DID NOT KNOW
“Once upon a time there was a man who had to make a journey. He did not want very much to make it; and, not knowing whether it was to be a long journey or a short one, he did not feel a great deal of interest in it. Still it had to be made, and at its end he was to find out whether he had been a good traveler, or a bad one.
“For a long time he did not notice very closely the road he was on. He had been so busy getting ready, first at school, where he studied a great many books that he might be better prepared for traveling, and then in business, where money must be made to give him comfort and pleasure on the way, that he did not have time to look around very much; but after a while he saw that the road was getting very dull and dusty, that most of the flowers were faded and the fruits were not sweet and the birds did not sing as they had sung when first he started out.
“A great many people had been traveling the same way he had. Though they seemed to be having a good time, he had soon seen that most of it was make-believe, and that much of their energy was spent in trying to find something to play with, that they might forget what kind of journey they were on. He did not like these people very specially. He did not know any others, however, and he had kept up with them because they had started out together; but, little by little, he had slipped away from them, and after a while he found that he was walking most of the time by himself. At first he did not mind. The things his friends cared for and talked about did not greatly interest him, and then it was he began to remember that a good many things he had been passing were ugly and cruel, and bitter and unjust. He could not understand why some should travel in luxurious ease while others could hardly get along, their burdens were so great; why some rode in carriages, and others, sick and hungry and tired and cold, could never stop lest they die upon the road; and why some sang and others wept.
“In groups and pairs, and sometimes one by one, they passed him, and as they went by he would look into their faces to see why they were traveling; but, like him, they did not know, they only knew they must keep on. And then one day he saw he had come back to where his journey had begun. He had been on the road to Nowhere–the road that wound round and round.”
“Just like travelers in the desert.” Dorothea’s eyes made effort to open, but sleepily they closed again. “Why didn’t he ask somebody the way?”
“He didn’t think any one knew. He was much wiser than most of the people who passed him. To many who seemed to be in need he had given money; he was very generous, very kind, and he gave freely; but he always turned his head away when he gave. He did not like to see suffering and sorrow; and with sin of certain sorts he had no sympathy, and so he would not look. But after a while he had to look.
“He was standing at the place from which he had started, and, to his surprise, he saw what he had never seen before. Out from its center led all sorts of roads that stretched beyond sight, and on each of them people were traveling, all kinds of people, and he knew he could no longer stand still. He must take one of these roads, but which one he did not know. As he stood uncertain what to do, he felt some one touch him; and, looking down, he saw a child; and into his strong hand the child slipped his little one.
“‘I have been waiting for you,’ he said. ‘I have been waiting a long, long time.’
“‘For me?’ The man drew back. ‘You can’t have been waiting for me. I do not know you, child!’
“He heard a little sigh, as soft as the stir of wings, and again the boy smiled.
“‘But I know you. There is much for you to do.’
“Again the man held back. ‘There is nothing for me to do. I pay my taxes and give my tithes, and let the world alone.’
“‘You cannot let the world alone. It is your world.’ The boy looked up. ‘Come, they are waiting.’
“‘Who is waiting?’
“‘Your people.’
“‘I have no people. There is no one waiting for me.’
“The child shook his head. ‘You do not know your people, and they are waiting. We must hurry, the time is short. We will go on this road first, and then on that, and then on that and that and that. On each one they are waiting.’
“All through the night they traveled, uphill and down, and in and out of narrow paths and hidden places, and everywhere he saw them, the people he had never known. Into the darkness of pits and mines, into the fires of foundries and furnaces, into the factories where wheels turned night and day, and into the holds of the ships of the sea, the child led him to show him the people who were his. In cellars and garrets, in jails and prisons, in shops and stores, in hunger and cold, in the silence of sickness, the noise of sin, they were waiting for his coming; and in their faces was that which made him cover his, and he begged the child to take him where breath could come again.
“But the child held his hand still tighter. ‘You have traveled long and you have not known,’ he said. ‘You helped to make things as they are, and now you must see.’
“‘I helped to make things as they are? I have not even dreamed such things could be!’
“‘I know. And that is why I came. They are your people; and you did not know.’
“And then the child took him on another road, one that was smooth and soft, and the air that blew over it was warm and fragrant. On it the women wore jewels and laces and gorgeous gowns; and men threw gold away to see it shine in the sunlight, threw it that others might see them throw.
“‘Why do we come here?’ the man asked. ‘They are not waiting. They do not need.’
“The child looked up in his face. ‘They, too, are waiting–for some one to let them know. And they, too, need, for hearts hurt everywhere. Sometimes the loneliest ones are here.’
“Before answer could be made, the main road was left, and in a tiny by-path they heard the laughter of children’s voices; and, looking ahead, they saw a little house with wreaths in the windows through which the glow of firelight sent threads of dancing light upon the snow, and the door was open.
“‘We will go in,’ said the child, ‘for there is welcome.’
“Inside, the mother and the father and all the children were hanging holly on the walls and bringing bundles and boxes and queer-shaped packages from the other rooms and hiding them under chairs and tables and in out-of-the-way places; and presently a row of stockings was hung from the chimneypiece, and the children clapped their hands and danced round and round the room. And then they threw their arms around their father and mother and kissed them good night and left them that Kris Kringle might come in.
“‘They have no money, but are very rich,’ said the child. ‘They love much.’
“Over long roads and short ones, over some that were dark and some that were bright, they went their way, and presently they came to a shabby, snow-covered street where children were pressing their faces against shop-windows, and men and women were hurrying in and out of crowded stores; and the child loosened his hold upon the man’s hand. ‘I must go now,’ he said.
“‘Oh no, you must not go!’ Quickly the man reached for him. ‘You must not go. I do not even know your name!’
“The child shook his head. ‘I cannot stay. And some day you will know my name.’
“‘But why did you come? If you must leave me, why did you come?’
“‘Why did I come?’ In the crowd he was slipping away, but the light in his face streamed through it. ‘I came to bring Good-Will to men. I came that Men might Know.'”
XVI
A CHANGE OF PLANS
When Moses saw Mr. Laine hurrying from one side of his bedroom to the other, opening bureau drawers and closet doors and throwing things on floor and bed in an excited haste never seen before, he was convinced that something was the matter with his master’s mind. It had happened very suddenly. He had eaten his dinner, but eaten so little that Caddie, the cook, was in angry tears. For days her finest efforts had been ignored, and temptation after temptation, triumphs of skill on her part, had come back barely tasted, and, what was worse, with no comment made upon them. Praise had hitherto never been withheld, and to please him no labor was too great, no time too precious to be expended; but if this was what she was to get– Caddie was Irish, and she threw birds and sweetbreads in the slop-can and slammed the door in Moses’s face.
“No, siree! I ain’t a-goin’ to let white folks’ eatin’s go in black folks’ stomachs, that I ain’t!” she said, and shook both fists up at the ceiling. “Pigs can have it first; there’s some reason for pigs, but that nigger man Moses!” Her nose went up, her head went back, and she wept aloud. The work of her hands was as naught. She would die and be buried before Moses should have it!
At his coffee Laine had asked for his mail, asked it to get Moses out of the room. A creature who smiled always was not always to be endured, and to-night he was in no mood for smiles.
Moses brought two letters. “These is all,” he said.
Laine waved him out and opened the top one, which was from Dorothea. What a queer propensity the child had for writing! Elbow on the table and cigar in hand, he began to read indifferently; but in a moment his hand stiffened and his face whitened to the lips, and, half aloud, he read it again.
DEAR UNCLE WINTHROP,–I forgot to tell you something the other night. I told you once that Cousin Claudia’s sweetheart was that Washington man. He isn’t. I asked her and she said he wasn’t. I asked her if she was going to marry him and she said she was not. I don’t like to say things that aren’t true and that’s why I’m telling you. Miss Robin French thinks she knows everything. We are going away to-morrow.
Your loving niece,
DOROTHEA.
P. S.–When a lady gets married she has to go away with a man, don’t she? That’s why she isn’t going to get married. She says she loves Elmwood better than any kind of man she’s seen yet. I’m so glad, aren’t you?
D.
For half a moment longer Laine stared at the paper in his hand, then, with the cigar, it fell to the floor, and he lifted his head as if for breath. Something had snapped, something that had been tense and tight, and his throat seemed closing. Presently his face dropped in his arms. What a fool he had been! He had let the prattle of a child torture and torment him and keep him silent, and now she was gone. After a while he raised his head and wiped his hands, which were moist; and, as he saw the writing on the letter beside him, his heart gave a click so queer that he looked around to see if the door was shut. Quickly he opened the envelope and tried to read: he couldn’t see; the words ran into each other, and, going over to a side light, he held the paper close to it.
DEAR MR. LAINE,–Ours is a very old-fashioned, country Christmas, but we will be glad to have you spend it with us if you have not made other arrangements. Uncle Bushrod and I will be at the wharf Wednesday to meet the boat from Fredericksburg, and if you are on it we will bring you home with us, and if not we will be sorry, so come if you can. One or two other friends are coming that day, but most of our guests are here. All the trains from the North stop at Fredericksburg, and the boat that goes down the river leaves any time after 2 P.M., the hour of leaving depending upon the amount of freight, the convenience of the passengers, and the readiness of the captain. As there’s a boat only three times a week you can’t get here in time for Christmas unless you make the Tuesday boat which should reach Brooke Bank, that’s our landing, by ten o’clock Wednesday morning. Do come if you can.
Sincerely, CLAUDIA KEITH.
“If I can! If I can!” With a sudden movement of his hand the letter was put in one pocket, his watch taken out of another, and the button under the light pressed violently. It was eight-forty-five. The last train for Washington left at twelve-thirty, and a local from there reached Fredericksburg at nine-twenty-four the next morning. He knew the schedules well. “I have three hours and forty-five minutes,” he said, under his breath. “I’d make it if there were but the forty-five minutes–if there were but ten.”
And then it was that Moses, coming in answer to the bell, concluded that his master was not himself. He had left him a few minutes before, unapproachable in his silence, unappreciative of his efforts to please and provide, and now he was giving so many orders at once, calling for this and for that, pulling out clothes and pushing them back, that Moses, who hated to be hurried as only his race can hate, stood helpless, knowing only that something had happened, something he did not understand.
“Did you say your riding-clothes, sir?” he asked, holding a dress-shirt in his hand. “Or did you say–“
“I don’t know what I said.” Laine knocked over a box of handkerchiefs and threw a white vest on the bed. “Where are my shaving things? I told you I didn’t want a trunk. Take the durned thing away. I’ll break my neck over it! Where is that English bag–the big one? Get it, will you, and put in my riding-clothes, evening clothes, and one other suit; put in the things I need. You’ve packed it often enough. Call up Jerdone’s private number, and tell him I want all the flowers he’s got. Get a move on you, Moses. If you’re paralyzed tell me; if not–“
“No, sir. I ain’t paralyzed. I just demoralized. Suddenness always did upset me. At dinner you look like you just as lief be dead as livin’, and now–“
“You or I will be dead if I miss that twelve-thirty train. Have you called the cab?”
“No, sir. I ain’t called no cab. You ain’t never call the word cab. You mean–” Moses’s hands dropped limply at his side. “You mean you’re goin’ away for Christmas?”
“That’s what I mean!” Laine’s voice was exultant, revealing, and he coughed to hide its ring. “By the way, Moses, why don’t you go home for Christmas? Didn’t you tell me once you came from Virginia? What part?”
“Palmyra, sir. In Fluvanna County, that’s where I come from. Excuse me, but I bound to set down. Go _home_? Me go _home_? I couldn’t git there and back not to save my life for lessen than twenty-five dollars, and till I git that farm paid for what I been buyin’ to go back to and die on I can’t go nowhere. That I can’t.”
Laine looked up from the collection of collars, cravats, and cuffs he was sorting. “Is it the money that’s keeping you back, or is it you don’t want to go?”
“Don’t want to go!” The palms of Moses’s hands came together, opened, and came back. “Yesterday I near ’bout bus’ open with wantin’ to go. My mother she’s near ’bout eighty, and she got Miss Lizzie to write me and beg me to come for this here Christmas. Miss Lizzie is old Major Pleasants’s youngest old-maid daughter. He’s got three of ’em. He was my mother’s marster, old Major Pleasants was, and he sold me the land my mother’s livin’ on now. He didn’t charge nothin’ much for it, but I had to have a house built, and buy some pigs and some furniture and git a cow, and I bought two of them street-car mules what was in Richmond when they put the ‘lectric cars on down there. ‘T’was the first city in the United States to have ’em, Richmond was. They thought them mules was wore out, but there ain’t no friskier ones in the county than they is, I tell you now. I ain’t been home for four years–“
“And your mother is eighty?”
“Yes, sir, that’s what they tell me, though she say she don’t know herself ‘ceptin’ she had four chillern which was good size when the war broke out. I belong to the second crop. My mother done had nineteen chillern, the triflinest, good-for-nothin’est lot the Lord ever let live on this earth, if I do say it, and ain’t a one of ’em what does a thing for her, savin’ ’tis me and Eliza–Eliza she’s my sister and lives with her.”
“And you’d like to spend Christmas with your mother, you say?”
In the years of his service Moses had never before mentioned family matters, but, having started, he was not likely to stop, and Laine was forced to interrupt,
“Yes, sir. This Christmas I would. Some other Christmases I wouldn’t, ‘count of a yaller girl what lived on the next place. It was in the summer-time, the last time I was home, and, she bein’ a likely-lookin’ girl, I seen right much of her every now and then, and I just talk along and tell her ’bout New York and what a grand, lonely place it was, and how my heart got hongry for my own people, and–things like that, you know, but I didn’t mean nothin’ serious or have any matrimony ideas, and first thing I know she done had me engaged to her. She chase me near ’bout to death, that girl did, but Miss Lizzie say she gone away now and I can come in peace.”
Laine took out his pocket-book, put some notes in an envelope, and handed it to Moses. “This is for your ticket and to get some things to take to your mother,” he said. “Be back by the thirtieth, and hurry and call that cab for the twelve-thirty train. I’ve some letters to write before I leave, and there’s no time to lose. Tell Caddie I want to see her, and don’t forget about that Reilley family, and see that everything gets to them in good shape–a good dinner and all the bundles and plenty for the stockings. Tell Caddie I’m waiting.”
Later on, in the library, Laine sealed his last letter and put it on the pile Moses was to mail in the morning. Perhaps he had been a little rash this Christmas. Well, suppose he had. The boys in the office had done well through the year and ought to be told so. By itself a check was a pretty cold thing, and the words he had written to each had been honestly meant. And Miss Button, his stenographer, needed a little trip. Ten days at Atlantic City with her mother would pull her up. She had been looking badly lately–worried about her mother, Weeks had told him. Pity she was so homely. It was pretty unfair the way women had to work at both ends of the line. Weeks, too, could get his wife that fur coat he’d been wanting her to have for three years. What an honest old duck Weeks was!–and who would ever believe him as full of sentiment as a boy of twenty? He had overheard him talking to Miss Dutton about the coat that morning. Fifteen years Weeks had been his secretary, but to-night was the first time he had ever told him in actual words of his appreciation of his faithful service. “I wouldn’t want a million if it didn’t have some love with it,” Claudia had said to him, and before his half-closed eyes she seemed to stand in front of him.
“They are her gifts,” he said. “I was blind, and she has made me see.”
XVII
A VISIT TO VIRGINIA
Not until he was settled in the car did Laine let himself take in the meaning of the journey he was taking. The past few hours had been too hurried to think; but as he sat in the smoking-compartment thought was no longer to be held in abeyance, and he yielded to it with no effort at restraint.
Sleep was impossible. The train, due at Washington at seven-twelve, would there have to be changed to a local for Fredericksburg, but the early rising was no hardship. To sit up all night would have been none. Each turn of the wheel was taking him nearer and nearer, and to listen to them was strange joy. Only that morning he had wished Christmas was over, had indeed counted the days before business could again absorb, and now every hour would be priceless, every moment to be held back hungrily.
One by one, the days in which he had seen Claudia passed in review before him. The turn of her head, the light on her hair, the poise of her body on her horse, bits of gay talk, the few long quiet ones, the look of eyes unafraid of life, light laughter, and sometimes quick frown and quicker speech, and, clearest of all, the evening in which she had told him the story, with Channing in her arms and Dorothea in his. There had been few waking moments in which it had not repeated itself to him, and in his dreams the scene would change and the home would be theirs–his home and hers–and she would be telling him again what life should mean.
He had long known the name of the land in which he lived. It was, indeed, a Lonely Land; but that it was of his own choosing he had not understood, nor had he cared to think all people were his people. There was much that he must know. He needed help, needed it infinitely. If she would give it– A man, reeling slightly, came in the compartment, and, getting up, Laine went out quickly. For a few moments he stood in the vestibule and let the air from a partly open door blow over him, then, with a glance at the stars, turned and came inside.
At Fredericksburg the next morning Laine turned to the negro hackman, who, with Chesterfieldian bows, was hovering over his baggage and boxes, and made inquiries of the boat, the time of leaving, of a hotel, of what there was to see during the hours of waiting; and before he understood how it happened he found himself and his paraphernalia in the shabby old hack and was told he would be taken to the boat at once. He had never been to Virginia, had never seen a specimen of human nature such as now flourished a whip in one hand and with the other waved a battered and bruised silk hat toward the muddy street that led from the station to the town above, and with puzzled eyes he looked at the one before him.
“Yas, suh! I knows jes’ exactly what ’tis you want to be doin’, suh. You jes’ set yourself right back in the carridge and I’ll take you and the baggige right down to the boat and put ’em in for you, and then me and you’ll go round and see this heah town. I reckon you ain’t never been to this place before. Is you all right now, suh?” The once shiny hat was put on the back of the grizzled gray head, a worn and torn robe was tucked around Laine’s knees, and before answer could be made the driver was on the box, the whip was cracked, and two sleepy old horses began the slight incline of the long street out of which they presently turned to go to the wharf and the boat tied loosely to it.
Half an hour later, bags and boxes having been stored in a state-room, a hasty survey of the boat made, and a few words exchanged with a blue-coated man of friendly manners concerning the hour of departure, Laine again got in the old ramshackle hack and for two hours was shown the honors and glories of the little town which had hitherto been but a name and forever after was to be a smiling memory. Snow and slush covered its sidewalks, mud was deep in the middle of the streets, but the air went to the head with its stinging freshness, the sun shone brilliantly, and in the faces of the people was happy content.
Reins dropped loosely in his lap, Beauregarde, the driver, sat sideways on the box and emitted information in terms of his own; and Laine looked and listened in silent joy to statements made and the manner of their making.
“Yas, suh, this heah town am second only in historic con-se-quence to Williamsburg, suh, though folks don’t know it till they come and find it out from me. I been a-drivin’ this heah hack and a-studyin’ of history for more’n forty years, and I ain’t hardly scratch the skin of what done happen heah before a Yankee man was ever thought of. They didn’t use to have no Yankees ‘fore the war, but they done propogate themselves so all over the land that they clean got possession of ‘most all of it. They’s worse than them little English sparrows, they tell me. Marse George Washington he used to walk these streets on his way to school. He had to cross the river from Ferry Farm over yonder”–the whip was waved vaguely in the air–“and he wore long trousers till he got to be a man. Young folks didn’t use to show their legs in those days, suh, jes’ gentlemen. That place we’re comin’ to is Swan Tavern, and if it could talk it could tell things that big men said, that it could. This heah house is where Mis’ Mary, the mother of Marse George Washington, used to live when she got too old to boss the farm. Some society owns it what was originated to preserve our Virginia iniquities, and they done put up a monument to her that’s the onliest one ever put up to a woman for being the mother of a man. They was bus head people, the Washingtons was, but so was a lot of others who didn’t do nothin’ to prove it, and so is now forgot, and quality folks in them days was so thick there warn’t enough other kind to do ’em reverence. Governor Spottswood and his Horse-Shoe gentlemen took dinner once in this heah town, and President James Monroe used to live heah. I’m a-goin’ to show you his home and his office, presently, and the house where Marse Paul Jones used to live in. I reckon you done heard tell of Marse John Paul Jones, ain’t you?”
Laine admitted having heard of him, but historic personages did not interest as much as present-day ones. The occupants of certain quaint and charming old houses, with servants’ quarters in the rear and flower-filled gardens in the front, the rose-bushes of which were now bent and burdened with snow, appealed, as the other places of famous associations failed to do, and he wondered in which of them Claudia’s relatives lived.
At Marye’s Heights Beauregarde waxed eloquent. Half of what he said was unheard, however, and as Laine’s eyes swept the famous battle-fields his forehead wrinkled in fine folds. Could they have been settled in any other way–those questions which had torn a nation’s heart from its bosom? Would the spilling of blood be forever necessary? He ordered Beauregarde to drive to the hotel. There was just time for lunch, and then the boat which would take him down the river to where Claudia would be waiting.
As the boat swung off from the wharf and slowly made its way down the narrow river, curving like a horse-shoe around its ice-bound banks, Laine, standing in the bow, scanned the scene closely, and wondered if it were but yesterday that he had been in the rush and stir of city life. Straight up from the water the bluff rose boldly. Rays of pale sunlight sent threads of rainbow colors on the snow which covered it, and through the crystal-coated trees, here and there, a stately mansion could be seen overlooking the river. Skimming the water, a sea-gull would now and then dip and splash and rise again in the clear, cold air, and, save for the throb of the engine, there was no sound.
Until the sun had set and darkness made farther scanning of banks and bluff and winding river impossible, Laine walked the deck, hands in pockets, and thought of the morrow and the days ahead. The boat would tie up for the night at Pratt’s Wharf and was due at ten the next morning at Brooke Bank if there was no unusual delay. Suddenly he remembered she had said other friends would be on the boat. Most of the passengers were obviously returning home from a shopping trip to the city, package-laden and bundle-burdened, but two city men he had noticed and then forgotten in the thought of other things. Who were they? He opened the door of the stuffy little cabin and went in. Five minutes later he was at the supper-table and next to the two men who were talking in undertones of former Christmases at Elmwood. They were young, good-looking, and of Claudia’s world. He got up and again went out.
XVIII
ELMWOOD
For some time Laine had seen Claudia. Walking up and down the little wharf at the end of the long bridge, railless and narrow, which ran far out into the river, her hands in her muff, the collar of her fur coat turned up, her face unprotected by the brown veil which tied down securely the close-fitting hat, he had seen her a long way off, and as she waved her hand in greeting he lifted his hat and waved it in return.
A few minutes later he was shaking hands with her, with her uncle, with his two fellow-passengers, with a number of other people, and everybody was talking at once. Those on the wharf were calling out to those on the boat, and those on the boat were making inquiries of, or sending messages by those on the wharf, and not until Laine’s hands were again shaken well by Claudia’s uncle as the Essex drew off, did he understand just who was his host.
“A hearty welcome to Virginia, sir! A hearty welcome! We’re happy to have you in our home! Here, Claudia, you drive Mr. Laine in the small sleigh, and I’ll take the boys in the big one. Are you ready? Look at that rascal Jim dancing a horn-pipe instead of filling that wagon! We’re glad to know you, sir, glad to have you!” And for the third time Laine’s hands were shaken well by the ruddy-faced, white-haired old gentleman, with the twinkling, faded blue eyes, and old-fashioned clothes; shaken until they hurt. He was no longer a stranger. The touch of hands, the sound of voice, and a something without name had made him one of them, and that of which he had once been doubtful he knew was true.
Ahead of them his fellow-travelers, one a Keith cousin and the other a friend, waved back and disappeared in a bend of the road; and as Claudia took up the reins he turned toward her.
“Have you been waiting long? Are you sure you are not cold?” he asked.
“Cold! On a day like this?” The color in her face was brilliant. “We don’t often have weather of this sort, and to stay indoors is impossible. I love it! It’s so Christmasy, if it isn’t Southern. Did you have a very dreadful trip down? It takes courage to make it.”
“Courage!” He laughed and tucked the robe closer around her. “It was the most interesting trip I ever took. This is a very beautiful country.”
“We think it is.” She turned slightly and looked around her. The road from the boat-landing wound gradually up the incline to the ridge above the river; and as they reached its top the view of the latter was unbroken, and broad and blue it stretched between its snow-clad banks, serene and silent.
Laine’s eyes swept the scene before him. The brilliant sunshine on field and river and winding road for a moment was blinding. The biting air stung his face, and life seemed suddenly a splendid, joyous thing. The girl beside him was looking ahead, as if at something to be seen there; and again he turned to her.
“You love it here?”
“Love it?” Her eyes were raised to his. “Everything in it, of it, about it!” With her left hand she brushed away the strands of hair the wind had blown across her eyes. “It is my home.”
“A woman can make a home anywhere. A man–“
“No, she can’t–that is, I couldn’t. I’d smother in New York. It is wonderful to go to. I love its stir and color and the splendid things it is doing; but you can’t listen to the wind in the trees, or watch the stars come out, or let your other self have a chance.” She turned to him. “We’re very slow and queer down here. Are you sure you won’t mind coming for Christmas?”
Laine leaned forward and straightened the robe, and out of his face the color faded. He was only one of the several guests. “You are very good to let me come,” he said, quietly. “I have not thanked you. I don’t know how to thank you. Christmas by one’s self–“
“Is unrighteous!” She nodded gaily and touched the horse with the whip. “There’s Elmwood! There’s my home! Please like Virginia, Mr. Vermont man!”
Before he could answer, the sleigh stopped at the entrance to the road leading to the big house, and at the door of the little lodge by the always-open gate stood a short, stout colored woman, hands on her hips, and on her head a gaily colored kerchief.
Laine was introduced. Mammy Malaprop was known by reputation, but no words could make of Malaprop a picture, and in deep delight Laine watched her as she curtsied in a manner all her own.
“How you do, suh! How you do! A superfluous Christmas to you, suh! I’m sorry you didn’t git heah ‘fore de war. Livin’ nowadays ain’t more’n shucks from de corn of what it used to be. Is dey all heah now, Miss Claudia?”
“I believe so. I am going to bring Mr. Laine down for some hoe-cakes and buttermilk after Christmas, and you might tell him some of the stories you used to tell us when we were children. He lives in New York, and–“
“He do! I hope he got himself petrified on the way down, for they tell me ’tis a den of promiscuity, and all the nations of the earth done took their seats in it. I knowed a woman who lived there once. She near ’bout work herself to death, and she say she couldn’t have stood it if it hadn’t been for the hopes of a glorious immorality what was awaitin’ her when she died–” And Mammy Malaprop’s hands waved cheerfully until the sleigh was lost to sight.
From the public road skirting the Elmwood land the private one, tree-bordered by century-old elms, leading to the terraced lawn, wound for some three-quarters of a mile, and as they approached the house Laine saw it was architecturally of a type unseen before. The central building, broad, two stories high, with sloping roof and deep-pillared portico, by itself would not have been unusual; but the slightly semi-circular corridors connecting it with the two wings gave it a grace and beauty seldom found in the straight lines of the period in which it had been built, and the effect was impressive. At the foot of the terrace a little colored boy was blowing ardently a little trumpet, giving shrill greeting to the stranger guest, and as they came closer he took off his hat and held it in his hand.
“All right, Gabriel.” Claudia nodded to the boy. “Run on, now, and tell Jeptha to come for the horse.” She laughed in Laine’s puzzled eyes. “He’s Mammy Malaprop’s grandson. He thinks he’s the real Gabriel and it’s his duty to blow. He sings like an angel, but can’t learn to spell his name. There they are!” She waved her hand gaily to the group on the porch.
As he saw them Laine thought of Claudia’s arrival in New York, and his face flushed. The men came down the steps, and a moment later he was presented to Claudia’s mother, gracious, gentle, and of a dignity fine and sweet; to her sister, home for the holidays with her husband and children; to an engineer cousin from the West, and a girl from Philadelphia; and once more his hands were shaken by Colonel Bushrod Ball. It was a Christmas guest who was being welcomed, not Winthrop Laine alone, and he wondered if he were indeed himself.
More than once he wondered before the day was done. Under the leadership of the Colonel the men were shown their rooms, by way of the dining-room, for, like Moses, Uncle Bushrod believed inward cheer essential after outdoor chill; and, moreover, the apple toddy must be tested. It was an old world he was in, but to him a very new one. The happy stir of Christmas preparations, the coming and going of friends and neighbors, the informality and absence of pretense, the gay chatter and genuine interest, was warm and sweet; and as one who watches a play he wondered at it, and something long thought dead thrilled and throbbed and stirred within him.
In former days the house had doubtless been the scene of lavish living, he thought from time to time, and he would have liked to explore the many rooms with their polished floors and deep window-seats, their carved paneling and marble mantels; and when, in the afternoon, he found himself alone for a few minutes in the vast hall, he paced off its sixty feet of length and its twenty of width to know their number, studied the winding staircase with its white pilasters and mahogany rails, scanned hurriedly the portraits in their tarnished frames, some with the signatures of Sir Joshua Reynolds, some with Stuart, and others of lesser fame, which hung above the wainscoted walls; and as he looked he did not wonder at Claudia’s love for her home.
“You care for these things, too, do you?”
The voice behind made him turn quickly. The girl from Philadelphia nodded to him and hugged her crossed arms closely to her bosom. “I don’t. That is, not in weather like this, I don’t. Ancestral halls sound well, but, unheated, they’re horrors. I’m frozen, and the doors are open, of course. Have you been in the big parlors? Some pretty things are in them, but faded and rather shabby now. Why don’t you go in the library? There’s a roaring fire in there, and a chair you can sit on. Every other one in the house has something in it.”
Laine followed the girl into the library, and as she held her hands to the blaze she motioned him to sit down. “I don’t believe anybody in the world is as crazy about Christmas as Claudia. She gets the whole county on the jump, and to-morrow night everything in it will be here. Giving is all right, but Claudia takes it too far. The house needs painting, and a furnace would make it a different place, but she will do nothing until she has the money in the bank to pay for it; and yet she will give everybody within miles a Christmas present. When she took hold of things the place was dreadfully mortgaged, and she’s paid off every dollar; but, for chance, stock-markets aren’t in it with farming. Isn’t that a pretty old desk? I could sell lots of this furniture for them and get big money for it, but I don’t dare say so. They never talk money here. My room hasn’t a piece of carpet on it, and one of those old Joshua Reynoldses in the hall would get so many things the house needs. I’m a Philistine, I guess, as well as a Philadelphian, and I like new things: plenty of bath-rooms and electric lights and steam heat. I don’t blame them for not selling the old silver and china or the dining-room furniture, though it needs doing over pretty badly; but some of those old periwigged pictures I’d sell in a minute. Plenty of people would pay well for ancestors, and it’s about all they’ve got down here. Hello, Claudia; we were just talking about you!”
Claudia put down the armful of red roses she was carrying and began to fill a tall vase with them. “Did you say anything that wasn’t nice?” She bit a piece of stem off. “If you did, it wasn’t so.” She turned to Laine. “You ought to see mother. She rarely has such flowers as you brought down–You have made her so happy. It was very good of you.”
“Good!” The girl from Philadelphia went out of the room. “If only–” In his eyes no longer was restraint, and Claudia turned her head as if listening to something outside.
“I believe mother is calling me,” she said. “Would you mind telling her, Mr. Laine, I am coming right away?”
XIX
CHRISTMAS
Laine looked at his watch. Twenty minutes past twelve. Christmas was over. Two days after were over also, and in the morning most of the guests were going away.
From the basket by the hearth he threw a fresh log on the smoldering fire, lifted it with his foot farther back on the hot ashes, drew the old-fashioned arm-chair closer to the fender, and, turning down the light from the lamp on the pie-crust table near the mantel, sat down and lighted a fresh cigar.
It had been very beautiful, very wonderful, this Christmas in the country. Its memories would go with him through life, and yet he must go away and say no word of what he had meant to say to Claudia.
Very definitely he had understood, from the day of his arrival, that to tell her of his love would be a violation of a code to which the directness of his nature had given little thought in the reaction of feeling which had possessed him when he read her note. He was a guest by invitation, and to speak now would be beyond pardon. In his heart was no room for humor, and yet a comic side of the situation in which he found himself was undeniable. The contrast it afforded to former opportunities was absurdly sharp and determined, and the irony of the little god’s way of doing things was irritatingly manifest.
If in Claudia’s heart was knowledge of the secret in his, she masked it well. Warmly cordial, coolly impersonal, frankly unconscious, she had never avoided him, and still had so managed that they were never alone together. Hands clasped loosely, he leaned forward and stared into the heart of the blazing logs. Of course she knew. All women know when they are loved. No. The log fell apart, and its burning flame glowed rich and red. She had not known, or she would not have asked him to Elmwood. Merely as she would ask any other lonely man in whom she felt a kindly interest, she had asked him, and, thus far, her home was the love of her life. In a thousand ways he had felt it, seen it, understood it; and the man who would take her from it must awaken within her that which as yet was still asleep.
The days just past had been miserably happy. Before others light laughter and gay speech. In his heart surrender and suppliance, and before him always the necessity of silence until he could come again, and he must go that he might come again.
One by one, pictures of recent experiences passed before him, experiences of simple, happy, homelike living; and things he had almost forgotten to believe in seemed real and true once more. A new sense of values, a new understanding of the essentials of life, had been born again; and something growing cold and cynical had warmed and softened.
In the big hall he had helped the others put up the fragrant spruce pine-tree which reached to the ceiling, helped to dress it midst jolly chatter and joyous confusion, helped to hide the innumerable presents for the morrow’s findings; and on Christmas morning had as eagerly dumped the contents of his stocking as had Jack and Janet, or the men who had come from busy city lives to be boys again, or as Claudia herself, who could not see with what her own was filled, for the constant demand that she should come here and there, and see this and that, or do what no one else was able to.
Slipping down farther in his chair, Laine put his feet on the fender and with half-shut eyes saw other pictures in the fire. The gray dawn of Christmas morning came again, and he seemed to hear the clear, childish voice below his window. Half asleep, he had stirred and wondered what it was, then sat up to listen. The quaint words of the old carols he knew well, but never had he heard them sung as Gabriel was singing them. Shrill and sweet in the crisp, cold air, the voice sounded first as if far away and then very near, and he knew the boy was walking up and down below each window that all might hear alike.
As Joseph was a-walking
He heard the angels sing,
This night there shall be born
Our heavenly King.
Here and there, in a verse from one carol joined almost in the same breath to another he went from:
God rest you, merry gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay.
Remember Christ, our Saviour,
Was born on Christmas Day.
to
We are not daily beggars,
That beg from door to door,
But we are neighbor’s children
Whom you have seen before.
He had smiled at the mixture of verses and jumped up, for Jim had come in to light the fire, and from his broadly grinning face “Christmas Gif” was radiating, if from his lips, in obedience to orders, their utterance was withheld. On his door a half-hour later came the pounding of childish fists, and Janet’s lisping voice was calling sturdily:
“Oh, Mither Laine, Santa Clauth hath come and your stocking ith down-stairs. Pleath, thir, hurry! Mother said I could kiss you a happy Chrithmath if you were drethed.”
Hand in hand they had gone into the dining-room, with its lavishly spread table and mantel-hung stockings, and the chorus of hearty greetings and warm hand-shaking had made his heart beat like a boy’s.
The day had passed quickly. The gay breakfast; the unwrapping of bundles; the sleigh-ride to church, where the service was not so long as was the seemingly social meeting afterward; the bountiful dinner with its table laden as in days of old rather than in the modern fashion of elegant emptiness; the short afternoon–it was all soon over, and the evening had gone even more rapidly.
The crackling logs and dancing flames in the huge old-fashioned fireplace in the hall, the tree with its myriad of lighted candles, the many guests from county’s end to county’s end, the delicious supper and foaming egg-nog, and, last of all, the Virginia reel danced in the vast parlors and led by Colonel Bushrod Ball and Madam Beverly, who had not missed a Christmas night at Elmwood since she was a bride some sixty years ago, made a memory to last through life, a memory more than beautiful if– He drew in a deep breath. There should be no “if.”
Through the days and the evenings of the days that followed there had been no word alone with Claudia, however. She had taken him to see the Prossers, but Jack and Janet had gone with them, and out-of-doors and indoors there was always some one else. Was this done purposely?
He leaned forward and threw a couple of logs on the fire. The room was cold. As the wood caught and the names curled around the rough bark, the big tester bed, with its carved posts and valance of white muslin, threw long shadows across the room, and in their brass candlesticks the candle-light flared fitfully from the mantel, touching lightly the bowl of holly with its scarlet berries, and throwing pale gleams of color on the polished panels of the old mahogany wardrobe on the opposite wall. For a moment he watched the play of fire and candle, then got up and began to walk backward and forward the length of the uncarpeted floor. Writing was a poor weapon with which to win a woman’s heart. Rather would he tell her of his love, ask her to be his wife, and, if she would marry him, compel her to say when; but he could not come as quickly as he could write. He must go away that he might tell her what no longer was to be withheld. Indecision had ever been unendurable, and uncertainty was not in him to stand. Without her, life would be–again he looked in the fire–without her, life would not be life.
XX
CLAUDIA
Claudia parted the curtains of her bedroom window and, holding them aside, looked out upon the scene before her with eyes love-filled at its wonder and beauty.
Across the broad, terraced lawn the fresh-fallen snow was unbroken, and every crystal-coated branch and twig of the great trees upon it gleamed in the moonlight as though made of glass. In the distance the river between its low hills seemed a shining, winding path of silver, and over it the moon hung white and clear and passionless. The mystery of silence, the majesty of things eternal, brooded softly; and with a sudden movement of her hands Claudia held them as though in prayer.
“In all the world there is no place like this–for me. It is my place. My work is here. I could not–could not!”
With a slight indrawing breath that was half sigh, half shiver, she left the window and drew her chair close to the fire. For a long time she looked into its dancing depths, and gradually her eyes so narrowed that their long lashes touched her flame-flushed cheeks. After a while she got up, went over to her desk, took from it several letters locked in a small drawer, came back to the fire, and again looked into it.
The girlish grace of her figure in its simple dress of soft blue, open at the neck and showing the curves of the beautiful throat, was emphasized by the unconscious relaxation of her body as she leaned for a moment against the mantel; and the Claudia to whom all looked for direction, the Claudia who had small patience with hesitating indecisions, and none for morbid self-questionings, searched the leaping flames with eyes uncertain and afraid.
A slight noise in the hall made her start uneasily. She did not want to be disturbed to-night. Turning her head, she listened. The corners of the large, high-ceilinged room, with its old-fashioned mahogany furniture, its shelves of books, its carved desk of quaint pattern, and its many touches of feminine occupancy, were lost in shadow, and only here and there on chair or table or bit of wall the firelight darted, but to dance off again, and the stillness was unbroken save by the crackling logs upon the hearth.
Drawing the lamp on the table closer, she sat down and took out of their opened envelopes two letters, one addressed to her mother and one to her Uncle Bushrod Ball; and as she read them the flush in her face deepened, then paled, and she bit her lip to hide its quivering. Putting them aside, she held for a moment, in hands that trembled slightly, another letter, and presently she began to read it:
“_December 30th_.
“I can wait no longer, Claudia. Words are not for love like mine; but you, who gave it life, will understand it without words. I believed I had put it from me–the thought of marriage–for almost I had lost my faith in the love for which I looked, and with compromise I could not be content. Perhaps I had no right to ask for what few find in life, but I did ask it, and when you came I knew my dreaming had come true. Will you marry me, Claudia? So infinitely I love you, want you, need you, that the days ahead until I win you–for I shall win you–are dark and dreaded. All of your love, its supremest best, I want; but if for mine, which is beyond all measure, you can give me now but little, give it and let me come to you. I must come. I am coming. And believe me always Yours,
“WINTHROP LAINE.”
The pages dropped slowly in her lap, and, leaning back in her chair, Claudia closed her eyes and pressed her hands against them tightly. For some time she sat thus, then took up the last letter and read that also.
“_December 31st_.
“It is within an hour of midnight, Claudia. Soon the new year will be with us and the old one gone–the one that brought you to me. Almost the year had gone before I met you, but time is more than days and weeks, and that of ours together has been the real living of my life. In the stillness of my room I drop my book and dream that you are with me. On the street I hurry home to you; and once I stopped and bought you flowers–and in the darkness threw them away. To have you really here, to know that you are waiting–
“The new year has come, Claudia. The bells are striking the hour. It must, it shall bring you to me. I am asking much when I ask you to marry me, to leave your home to make a home for me. Your infinite love for Elmwood is understood well. Its old-world air of dignity and charm, of gracious courtesy and fine friendships, of proud memories and gentle peace, could scarce find counterpart elsewhere on earth, and yet in the days to come would it content alone, Claudia? For my great need of you might there not be some little need of me? Tell me I may come; but, whether you tell me or not, I am coming.
“WINTHROP LAINE.”
Claudia put the pages back in their envelope. On the hearth the fire burned low, and, slipping out of her chair, she sat upon the rug and held her hands out shiveringly to the red ashes slowly turning gray. The habit of childhood was upon her, and quiveringly she talked to herself:
“You shouldn’t have asked him to come Christmas! But how could I have known? I only thought he would be lonely. He cares for so few people and with all his wisdom has so little understanding of many things in life. He is so intolerant of weakness and meanness, of sham and show and pretence and make-believe that–that that’s why you like him, and you know it, Claudia Keith! You shouldn’t have asked him. You didn’t know–but you knew before he went away. And he is coming back.” Slowly she got up. “No. He is not coming back. That is, not yet, he isn’t. You are not sure. Are you glad?” In the mirror over the mantel she met her eyes unshrinkingly. “Yes, I am glad,” she said, and her lips whitened. “I am glad, but I am not sure.” In her eyes was strange appeal. “Vermont and Virginia! Could we be happy? We are so different–and yet– Perhaps in the spring. . . . The winter months are very long. Oh, Winthrop Laine!” She pressed her hands to her heart as if to still its sudden throbbing, then reached for his letter and kissed it. “I wonder if I am going to know what Lonely Land can mean!”
XXI
A VISIT FROM DOROTHEA
Dorothea settled herself more comfortably in her uncle’s lap. “You certainly ought to be thankful you’ve never had it,” she said. “It’s worse than being a leper. I’ve never been a leper, but when you’re that you can go out, the Bible says so, and people just pass you by on the other side and let you alone. With diphtheria they don’t let you alone. Lepers are just outcasts, but diphtherias–what are people who have diphtheria?–well, whatever they are, they’re cast in and nobody can see them except the nurses and the doctor and your mother and father. The doctor said father mustn’t come in my room, as he had to go to his business, and father told him to go to the devil–I heard him. I just love the way father talks when he’s mad. I couldn’t have stood the long days if it hadn’t been for you and father coming in every evening. They certainly do a lot of things when you’re sick with contagiousness. Everything you eat out of and drink out of has to be boiled and stewed, and the things you spit in burned up, and the walls washed, and more foolishness!” Dorothea’s eyes rolled and her voice was emphatic. “I don’t believe in a lot of things, Uncle Winthrop. I wasn’t really sick, and just had a teensy, weensy bit of pain in my throat; and if I’d known what they were going to do to me I’d have been one of those Science Christians and kept it to myself.”
“But suppose you had given it to Channing?” Dorothea’s uncle settled Dorothea more steadily on his lap. “The foolishness of wisdom is all some see of it, but if Channing had taken diphtheria from you–“
“I don’t believe there was any diphtheria for him to take. If I’d been a poor person it would have been plain sore throat, and I’d had some peace. Timkins says his little girl was a heap sicker than I was, and her mother nursed her all the time, and she got well long before I did. Are we very rich, Uncle Winthrop?”
“You are not billionaires. Your father has been fortunate and made some money–“
“Is making money fortunate? Of course, I like nice things; but a whole lot of us children feel like”–Dorothea’s arms waved as if to free herself from unseen strappings–“feel like Chinese children. Our feet aren’t really bound, sure enough, but we can’t do like we like. Sometimes I just want to run as fast as a racehorse, and holler as loud as the poor children do in the park. I hate regulations and proper things. If father were to lose his money, do you suppose we would have to have a special time for everything we do? Go to bed, and get up, and eat, and say lessons, and study lessons, and take lessons, and go out, and come in, and lie down in a dark room, and go again to drive or walk, and in between everything you do dress over again, and never, _never_ run or climb trees or tear your clothes and have just plain fun? I love dirt. I do! I have to be so careful with my finger nails and my clothes that if ever I have children I am going to let them get right down in the dirt and roll in it and make all the noise they want. Mother says a loud voice is so inelegant. So is affectatiousness, I think, and I wasn’t born with a soft voice. I just bawl at Channing sometimes. I do it on purpose. I’m like father. I get tired of being elegant. Haven’t you any kind of candy anywhere, Uncle Winthrop? Mother said I could have a few pieces if it didn’t have nuts in it.”
Laine reached for a drawer in the book-piled table near which he sat. “If I had known I was to have the honor of a visit from you this afternoon I would have been better prepared for entertainment. I’m afraid this candy isn’t very good. It’s been here since your last visit, and–“
“That’s been two months ago. We didn’t get back from Florida until February, and in March I was taken sick, and then we went to Lakewood, and now it’s May. Mother can’t understand how I got sick. She says she tries so hard to keep us from diseases and they come anyhow. I wish I didn’t have to be educated and find out things–mother knows a lot; but it makes her so nervous. I’d rather be sick sometimes than afraid of being all the time. This certainly is poor candy. I promised mother I wouldn’t eat a thing Caddie gave me if she’d let me come to see you; but I don’t think she’d mind if I took home some of those little cakes Caddie makes with almonds in them. Do you suppose she has any?”
“I couldn’t guess. I’ll ring and find out.”
“I’ll ask her.” Dorothea slipped from her uncle’s lap. “I’ll be back in a minute,” and before Laine could press the button which would bring Moses she had disappeared. Five minutes later she was back, in her hands a good-sized paper box, tied clumsily with red string, and as she put it on the table she patted it with satisfaction.
“That’s for Channing,” she said, half leaning against the table and drumming on it with the tips of her fingers. “Caddie didn’t have any cakes. She says you used to like sweet things, and it was once a pleasure to cook for you; but if you enjoy anything you eat now you never confess it to her. She says you eat, but you don’t know the name of what you’re eating, and one thing is the same as another. I think her feelings are getting hurt, Uncle Winthrop.”
“Are they? I’m sorry. Caddie is a spoiled creature. I long ago exhausted the English language in commendation of her efforts. Nothing is so wearing on one as continual demand for praise, and Caddie’s capacity is exhaustless. I’m sorry she didn’t have the little cakes.”
“She’s going to make some to-morrow and send them to me. It’s pop-corn in this box.” Dorothea held up the latter and shook it. “Moses brought it from Virginia. They are the cunningest little ears you’ve ever saw. Wasn’t it nice of Moses to think about us and bring it? Of course, he didn’t know we would be away so long and that I was going to be sick and he wouldn’t see me until spring; but it’s a thing that keeps, and the drier it is the prettier it pops, he says. What is that picture over there, Uncle Winthrop? It is very ugly.”
Laine glanced at the picture to which Dorothea pointed. “That is a Jan Steen–‘The Village Fair.’ Sorry you don’t like it. You think that Botticelli is ugly also. A little later in life it may meet with your approval. The original is priceless.”
“A lot of priceless things aren’t pretty. I don’t ever expect to be a culturated person. Mother makes me go to all those old galleries and museums, when we’re in Europe, and look at a lot of cracked pictures and broken statues and carved things, and wants me to think they’re beautiful, but I don’t. Some of them are hideous, and I get so tired of being told I must admire them that I make a face inside at most of them as I walk along, though, of course, outside, for mother’s sake, I don’t make any signs. I’m a great disappointment to mother. We had a lady artist guide the last time we were in Italy. She used to get so mad with me that once she shook me. Father would have killed her if she hadn’t been a lady, and after that he and I used to go out by ourselves and have the grandest times. He’d show me just a few pictures at the time, and tell me all about them, and some of them I just loved. Mother says you have so many beautiful things, Uncle Winthrop, and that it’s a shame for a man to have them all by himself.” She looked around the large room, and again took her seat in her uncle’s lap. “Some things I like in here, and some I don’t. You’ve got an awful lot of books, haven’t you?”
“Too many, I’m afraid. Would you mind if I smoked?” Laine reached for a cigar from the box on the table and held it between his fingers.
“May I?”
“Of course. I hope I won’t forget, though, and kiss you. I’m so apt to when I’m talking, if I like a person. Tobacco is so bitter. I’ll tell you what I think is the matter with this room. It’s–it’s–” She looked around carefully. “It’s something that isn’t in it. I don’t know what it is. Why don’t you get married, Uncle Winthrop? Maybe your wife would know.”
Laine put the unlighted cigar back on the table, and Dorothea’s hands, which were stroking one of his, were gripped by it and held tightly.
“I do not doubt it. The trouble is in getting the wife.”
Dorothea sat upright. “The idea! I heard Miss Robin French say the other day the way unmarried men were run after was outrageous, and all they had to do was to stand still and crow a little, and up would come a-clucking all kinds of hens, little ones and big ones, and young ones and old ones, and– Don’t you tell anybody, but I think she’d come, too!” Dorothea’s hands came together, and she laughed gleefully. “Father says if Miss Robin would give up hoping she’d be happier.” Suddenly her face sobered. “Do all ladies try to marry a man, Uncle Winthrop?”
“They most certainly do not.” Laine smiled in Dorothea’s face, and before the child’s clear eyes his own, full of weary pain, turned away. “Many of them take very long to make up their minds to marry at all.”
“Have you ever asked one to marry you?”
Laine did not answer. Dorothea’s question was unheard. His thoughts were elsewhere.
“Have you?”
“Have I what?”
“Ever asked a lady to many you?”
“I have.”
The hand which Dorothea had been stroking was dropped. She sprang to her feet and stood in front of him, her hands clasped in rigid excitement on her breast.
“When”–her voice curled upward in quivering delight–“when is she going to do it, Uncle Winthrop?”
“I do not know. She has not said she would do it at all.”
“Not said–she would–marry–you!” Delight had changed to indignation high and shrill, and Dorothea’s eyes blazed brilliantly. “Is she a crazy lady?”
“She is not.”
“Then why?”
“She is not quite sure she– It is not a thing to talk about, Dorothea.” He drew her again on his lap and unclasped the clenched fingers. “We are good friends, you and I, and I have told you what I have told no one else. So far as I am concerned, it does not matter who knows, but until she decides we will not talk of this again. You understand, don’t you, Dorothea?”
“I understand she must have very little sense. I don’t see how you could want to marry a lady who didn’t know right off, the very first minute, that she wanted to marry you. Do–do I know her, Uncle Winthrop?”
“You do.”
For a moment there was silence, broken only by the ticking of the clock on the mantel; and slowly Dorothea turned to her uncle, her big brown eyes troubled and uncertain. For half a moment she looked at him, then, without warning, threw her arms around his neck and hid her face against his.
“Is–is–it Claudia, Uncle Winthrop?” she whispered. “Is–it–my cousin Claudia?”
“It is–your cousin Claudia.”
The quiver in Laine’s voice was beyond control, and, lifting the child’s face, he kissed it. “I have asked her to marry me, Dorothea, but not yet has she promised to do so.”
In Dorothea’s cheeks two burning spots of red glowed brilliantly. Slipping down from her uncle’s lap, she drew a long breath. “I knew she must be queer about something,” she said, and her fingers interlocked in trembling excitement. “She was too nice not to be, but I didn’t think she’d be this kind of queer. The idea of not promising right away! I know what’s the matter. It’s her home and her mother, and all the things she is doing in the country that she don’t want to give up. Why don’t you go down there and make her, Uncle Winthrop?”
“She asks me not to come–yet. There is no hotel, and–“
“Does she write to you?”
Laine smiled in the eager eyes. “Yes, she writes to me.”
Again there was silence, and presently a queer sound from Dorothea. “I can’t help it, Uncle Winthrop! They’re coming! Won’t it be grand, because she will, I know she will, and I’m so glad I can’t–can’t help–” And big, happy tears rolled down Dorothea’s face, which was pressed close to Laine’s as he held her close to his heart.
That night, when all the house was still and every one asleep, Dorothea slipped out of bed and, kneeling down beside it, folded her hands and began to pray.
“O Lord”–her voice was a high whisper–“please make my cousin Claudia come to her senses and promise my uncle Winthrop that she will marry him right away. She lives in Virginia. Her post-office is Brooke Bank, and she’s an awfully nice person, but father says even You don’t know why women do like they do sometimes, and of course a man don’t. Please make her love him so hard she’d just die without him, and make her write him to come quick. Give her plenteous sense from on high, and fill her with heavenly thankfulness and make her my aunt for ever and ever. Amen.”
She got up and scrambled into bed and closed her eyes tightly. “French prayers aren’t worth a cent when you want something and want it quick,” she said, half aloud. “And when you’re in dead earnest you have to get right down on your knees. I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t talk in plain English to the Lord. I hope He will answer, for if He don’t I certainly couldn’t say right off, ‘Thy will be done.’ I’d say I thought my cousin Claudia had mighty little sense.”
XXII
SPRINGTIME
Winthrop Laine lifted the tangled vines which overhung the shrub-bordered path leading down the sloping lawn at the back of the house to the rose-garden at its foot, and held them so that Claudia could pass under.
“They ought to be cut.” She stopped and unfastened a long tendril of intertwined honeysuckle and bridal-wreath which had caught her hair. “Everything ought to be cut and fixed, only–“
“It would be beyond pardon. If any one should attempt to change this garden, death should be the penalty. One rarely sees such old-fashioned flowers as are here, never in modern places.”
“No one knows when many of them were planted, and nothing hurts them.” Stooping, Claudia picked from the ground a few violets and lilies-of-the-valley growing around the trunk of an immense elm-tree at the end of the path, then looked up.
“Don’t let’s go to the roses yet. I want to see what the sun-dial says. This is the way my great-grandmother used to come to meet my great-grandfather when she was a girl. Her parents wanted her to marry some one else. She would slip out of the house and down this path to that big magnolia-tree, from where she could see and not be seen, and it was there they made their plans to run away.”
“We will go there. It looks like a very nice place at which to make plans.”
Into Claudia’s face color sprang quickly, and for a moment she drew back. “Oh no! It is too beautiful to-day to make plans of any kind. It is enough to just–live. You haven’t seen half of Elmwood yet, and you want to talk of–other things.”
“I certainly do.” Laine stepped back that Claudia might lead the way down the path, box-bordered so high that those within could not be seen outside, and smiled in the protesting face. A few moments more and they had come out to the front lawn on the left of the house and some distance below the terrace on which it overlooked the river, and as they reached a group of spreading magnolias he drew in his breath.
“I do not wonder that you love it. And I am asking you to leave it!”
She looked up. “Come, I want to show you some of the old things, the dear things, and then–“
“We will come back, and you will tell me what I must know, Claudia?”
She nodded and pulled the bells from the lily-of-the-valley she held in her hands. “We will come back and–I will tell you.”
For an hour, in the soft glow of the sun now, sinking in the heavens, they wandered through the grounds and separate gardens of the old estate, now walking the length of the long avenue, shaded by great elms of more than century age, now around the lawn with its beds of bleeding-hearts and snowdrops, of wall-flowers and sweet-William, of hyacinths and tulips, with their borders of violets and cowslips, of candytuft and verbenas, and at the old sun-dial they stopped and read the hour. Picking an armful of lilacs and calicanthus and snowballs and blue flags, planted in the days when the great trees were tiny saplings, they sent them in by Gabriel, who was following at a distance, blowing softly on his trumpet, and for some minutes stood in front of the house and watched the sun touch, here and there, the old brick laid in Flemish bond; then went back and sat down on the low seat under the big magnolia, from which the river could be glimpsed, and over which every now and then a white sail could be seen.
Behind them the sun sank. The mass of shifting gold and blue and crimson and pale purple lost little by little its brilliant splendor, and slowly over land and sky soft twilight fell, and only here and there was heard the song and twitter of birds as they made ready for the night.
For a few moments there was silence, and then in his Laine held the hands of Claudia.
“It is a wonder world, this old, old world of yours with its many things we have forgotten. And yet–you will come to me? You are sure at last, Claudia?”
“I am sure–at last.” She raised her eyes to his. “I could not let you come until I knew that–all the homes in all the world would not be home without–“
“Without what, Claudia?”
“Without– Why do you make me tell you when you know? You make me tell too much.”
“You cannot tell too much. Claudia! Claudia!”
Overhead the birds chirped sleepily and one by one the stars came out. Presently Claudia drew herself away and smoothed her kissed and wind-blown hair. “I am such a queer person. I think you ought to know,” she said, and again her shining eyes were raised to his. “There are a great many things I don’t care for, and I don’t think the way some people do about a good many other things. I had to take long to be sure.”
“It was very cruel, Claudia.” He lifted her face to his and smiled in the confessing eyes. “My forgiveness proves the measure of my love. As proof of penitence, will you marry me in June?”
“I certainly–will–not!” Again she drew away. “Jacqueline will not get here until July. I told you she was coming home to live. You don’t suppose I’d leave my mother before Jacqueline comes home?”
“Then when?”
“In October, perhaps.” Slowly the color crept to her temples. “It is so beautiful here in October. There isn’t a month in all the year it will not hurt to leave.” Sudden tears were in her eyes. “But it would hurt worse not to be–with–you. They were very long, Winthrop, the winter months that followed Christmas. You have very poor manners. You should have written first and told me you had enjoyed yourself instead of telling–“
“What I could no longer keep back? There was no time for manners. I had to know.”
“But you didn’t, and because I couldn’t tell you. Before, I have