Part 7

Hastening to the mantel, he took down a small lamp, lighted it with trembling fingers, and dragging a chair to the wall beneath the aperture, climbed up to and into it. Yes, it was plainly a stone flight of steps. What bags of gold must lie at the bottom of that long-hidden passage?

He tested the stairway cautiously with his foot, and, finding it apparently secure, slowly descended, the space being barely wide enough for him to squeeze through.

Eight, nine, ten steps down. Then a sharp turn to the right! two more steps, and he emerged from the narrow passage into what once must have been a huge fireplace, having a hidden door in one side, some freak of the ancient builders, to allow a person to pass from one portion of the old house to the other without detection.

As Claus glanced about him his heart sank. There was no sign of a treasure. The chimney overhead had been stopped with stone slabs, and the original opening of the fireplace was closed by a wooden partition, one panel of which was hinged and bolted so as to form a small door. Doubtless the people in the next house were ignorant of this, and, probably, of the existence of the fireplace itself.

It was very cold, and the disappointed man shivered as he prepared to retrace his steps to his own quarters. Suddenly he heard a noise in the room beyond the fireboard. It was the sound of a child sobbing quietly to itself. In another moment a heavy, drunken step sounded on the bare floor.

“Are ye goin’ to stop cryin’, Moll, or will I give ye the stick agin?” demanded a woman’s harsh voice. “What’s the matter now?”

“I won’t--any--more,” he could hear the child answer. “I don’t--mean to. Only I was thinkin’ it was Christmas to-morrow, and I wouldn’t--get anything,--mother used to”--

“Stop that!” warningly.

It was evidently hard work to control the sobs, now. Old Claus clenched his fist, and resolved that if he heard the sound of a blow, that fireboard would go down.

There was silence for a minute. Then the woman staggered off, muttering: “Don’t let me hear any more from ye the night. Go to sleep, d’ ye hear? You must be off with yer basket agin in the mornin’.”

Five minutes later a singular sight might have been seen in front of the big house. It was nothing less than Old Claus himself, clad in his shaggy fur coat, setting forth through the darkness and snow, which was now falling fast.

Past liquor saloons ablaze with light and hung, alas! with holly and mistletoe; past the little Mission Church at the corner, where he lingered an instant to catch the notes of a glad Christmas carol; away from the wretched and squalid quarter of the city he marched, halting only when he reached a toy-shop, where there were multitudes of talking dolls and barking dogs and mewing cats and bleating sheep; where people tumbled over each other in their eagerness to buy, and blew into all the toy horns and jingled all the toy pianos and laughed from the pure joy of Christmastide, like God’s own little children.

It was a good half hour again before Old Claus dismissed at his own door the boy who had helped him bring home his bundles from that blessed toy-shop. The boy went off whistling, too, with a bright new silver dollar in his pocket.

It took the old man three trips to get his purchases down that secret stairway. I don’t know how he ever got the sled through anyway; nor the big doll with eyes that winked upside down, nor the sheep, nearly life-size, which _baa_-ed loudly in the passage; and the tricycle was the worst of all; but he did it and landed them safely in the old fireplace, which surely never contained such precious fuel before. Why, the very smell of the toys, a delicious painty, gluey, varnishy, woolly, sawdusty smell, was enough to set you wild with delight. It brought to Old Claus some dim remembrance of his childhood, and made him pause to wipe away a tear with his shaggy sleeve. For all this time he was in fur coat and cap, with snow lying thick upon them.

Now came the trying moment. Could he open that long-disused door without waking the child, who now was evidently sleeping soundly?

Dear old door--I believe it knew, as well as you do, what was wanted of it. Never a squeak it gave, as Claus, with infinite pains, drew back the rusty bolt and softly opened it.

He stepped inside the room, shading the lamp with his hand. It was a very small room indeed, with great holes in the bare plastering, and a broken pane of glass through which the keen wind was blowing. The room was even colder than the fireplace.

In one corner was a small bed, and in it lay a little girl of perhaps six years, her tangled hair scattered over the bundle of ragged clothes--evidently her own poor little gown--that served for a pillow; the dingy counterpane drawn tightly up around her neck to keep out the bitter cold. There was a broken chair and wooden table in the room besides; nothing else.

From the back of the chair, which was propped against the wall close by the bed, hung one small stocking; so small that it seemed better fitted for a doll than a living human child; only no self-respecting doll would have worn a stocking so ragged.

The old man set down his lamp and tiptoed back to the fireplace. He took out the toys one by one, and placed them on the floor. He filled the poor little stocking with candy; the first package of which came near betraying him by falling directly through a large hole in the heel. Luckily he caught it before it reached the floor, and squeezed in a good-sized rubber ball to replace it.

Last of all he took up the sheep, with a sigh of relief at his success in depositing all his gifts in the room without disturbing the small sleeper.

But alas for human calculations! In his excitement he gave that dreadful sheep an unlucky squeeze, and without the slightest warning it gave utterance to another prolonged _baa-a-a!_ even louder than before.

The child opened her eyes wide and sat up in bed. There stood, in front of a new and cavernous fireplace in the wall, an old man with shaggy coat and cap, and flowing white beard, his stooping back sprinkled with snow, with a lamb in his arms, and surrounded with such a glory of toys as she had never dreamed of in her little starved life.

One moment only she gazed; then leaped from her bed and sprang into his arms, crying: “O Santa Claus! Santa Claus! Have you come! Oh, take me away with you, do, do!”

At the child’s first cry of “Santa Claus!” the old man stood stupefied, shaking his head and muttering “Jonathan R.”; but when she came flying to him, he caught her up in his arms, wrapping his great fur coat about her and holding them close to his heart--God’s little lamb and the woolly one--without a word.

Before he could fairly collect his wits, he heard that heavy, irregular footfall coming up the stairs.

He had only one thought--to save the child. Backing hastily into the fireplace he closed and bolted the door behind him, groped his way up the stone steps, and sat down in front of his own fire, breathless, with his new-found treasure still in his arms. The faint sound of a cry came up from the room below, but whether it was of terror, or delight at finding such extraordinary personal property miraculously substituted for the late occupant, he could not tell.

The light of the fire, on which Claus had thrown fresh fuel, shone upon the child face upraised to his.

“What is your name, little one?” he asked in tones he hardly recognized as his own.

They called her Moll, she said, but that was not her real name, which she had forgotten.

“How would you like to be called ‘Agnes’?” said Claus, his old eyes growing misty over some long-buried memory.

“Oh, that’s a nice name, Santa Claus! And I’m _so_ sleepy!”

The old housekeeper was thereupon roused from her slumbers in a distant corner of the house, and the child put to bed in her own room in a couch hastily improvised from chairs and blankets.

Next morning Old Claus, feeling very much more like Young Claus than he had for years, put an end to the wonderful stories flying about the neighborhood by acknowledging his own agency in little Agnes’ disappearance. An arrangement was easily made with the dissipated woman who, it seemed, had taken charge of the child and ill-used her cruelly since her mother’s death. The proper papers having been drawn, Mr. Jonathan Claus became the legal guardian of the little waif, with whom he shortly afterward removed to a more cheerful quarter of the city.

Agnes lost all her Christmas presents, to be sure, for not one of them ever could be found--except the sheep which had brought her good fortune, and who was allowed to _baa_ to his heart’s content that Christmas day; but Santa Claus (as she persisted in calling her deliverer) replaced them, with interest.

That is the way Old Claus found his treasure; not only little Agnes, though she soon became dearer to him than all his wealth, but that most precious of treasures, Love.

X

CHARITY AND EVERGREEN

I

“Well, for my part, I could never, never forgive a man who did such a thing!”

It was late in the afternoon of a clear, cold day in December when Charity Holmes, sitting in the midst of a spicy mound of evergreen on Farmer Ralston’s kitchen floor, and looking up from her work with a bright flush on her pretty cheeks, made this severe remark. Of the three other women in the room, two, the farmer’s daughters, young girls like herself, were quite of her opinion; but the fourth, a white-haired old lady with lavender bows on her cap and sunshine in her motherly face, patted the nearest indignant girl’s shoulder reprovingly, and remarked:

“There, there, dears; don’t be so hard. We’re all of us human, and drink’s a terrible thing. Sometimes it don’t seem any more a man’s fault than tumbling into a hole in the road.”

“But if he has dug the hole himself, grandmother”--

Any further argument was interrupted at this point by the appearance of an immense bundle of evergreen at one of the windows, entirely blocking up its small, frosty panes. Presently an honest and merry face showed itself down at one corner.

“It’s Tom, with more green!” cried the two Ralston girls, jumping up and running to the porch door to let in the big brother.

Charity stayed behind with grandmother, but Tom’s eyes found her in a twinkling. How demurely she sat there, tying away with all her might, while the awkward fellow made a great to-do piling up his load beside her, and managed to get hold of somebody’s hand down among the princess-pines, and--then something happened behind grandmother’s back that made somebody’s fresh young cheeks pinker than ever.

“Tom, Tom!” cried Charity, shaking her head as soberly as if she hadn’t been the cause of his mischief.

“Yes, ma’am,” answered innocent Tom. “Want some more?”

“Now, Tom, if you’re really going to stay you must work in good earnest. Just pick out some good long strings of ‘creeping Jenny’ and lay them right beside me--so!”

Thereupon Tom, great, breezy, good-natured Tom, doubled himself up on the floor, boots and all, and pretended to immerse himself, body and mind, in the complicated task assigned him, meanwhile blundering in the most absurd manner, and continually mistaking that bewildering little hand for the delicate vines, and at the same time winking at grandmother, thereby confusing her and making her feel that she was an accomplice; and in fact conducting himself altogether so outrageously that the girls ended by pelting him with evergreens until he escaped to the woodshed, where the ringing blows of his axe soon gave notice that he was making ready for the blaze in the great fireplace that was to brighten the long winter evening before them.

Charity was the daughter of a neighbor. She and Tom Ralston had played together since they were babies; then, leaving the district school, and entering upon the heavier duties of life, they had grown bashful, and kept away from each other just long enough to find out that they could not possibly do so any longer. So they were engaged, to the quiet satisfaction of both families. The marriage was to be on New Year’s and the young folks were working hard on their evergreen trimming, which Tom had promised to take up to the city, a dozen miles away, and sell for them, the day before Christmas. Charity was to go with him, as she had a few little purchases to make; and besides, she had never seen the city at this “holiday season,” when it is at its merriest.

Swiftly the full, busy days flew by. The evening before they were to start, Tom was walking home with Charity. As they reached the little plot of ground before her house they looked up into the starlit, moonlit sky. At least Charity did. I am afraid Tom was finding moon and stars and no end of things more precious to him in the grave brown eyes so near his own.

“No, Tom,” said she, answering his look, “I’m just thinking about--up there! and all we can be to each other and the rest of the world.”

“My darling! I wish I were a good man, I wish I were stronger! If it were not for you!”--

He checked himself, and she could feel the brace of his muscles under the coatsleeve where her hand rested, as if he were even then fighting with some invisible foe. A light cloud came over the moon’s face, and the road and fields, covered with new-fallen snow, looked colder than before. She shivered, and drew more closely to his side. He was quick to read her thoughts, this big, clumsy fellow, and he spoke instantly.

“I know, Rita,” he said, softly, stroking her hand and using the pet name that he had made for her when they were children; “I know you’ll stand by me through everything. And, whatever evil things I have in me, with you at my side, I’ll try to put down. Heaven help me!”

He took off his cap, and Charity thought she never saw him look so noble and humble and manly as he did then. The moon, too, was out again, and its light rested like a benediction on his broad forehead, whose veins stood out strangely to-night.

A moment later and he was gone. Charity watched him striding away across the field until he was out of sight. As she turned to her own home she noticed his tracks and the dark blotches they made on the pure, white surface of the snow before her door. Somehow they troubled her, and, without thinking, she made a little futile brush at the nearest footprint with the corner of her shawl, thus only enlarging and making it more unsightly than before. Then, with a nervous laugh at her own foolish fancies, she entered the house.

II

The next morning, long before the rest of the family were astir, Charity was sitting at her window, hooded and wrapped for the long ride. How she had looked forward to this day! With refreshing sleep and the sweet hopefulness of morning, all her doubts of the preceding night had flapped away like bats into the darkness where they belonged; and she was as fair and rosy and bright-eyed as the dawn itself when she appeared at the door a few minutes later, in answer to a merry jingle of sleighbells. Tom’s mood was as happy as her own, and the sturdy little horse jogged along only too fast over the icy road when they had turned his head toward the city.

There was much to talk about. Tom had not been idle these last few days, and had a great deal to tell her about her room in the old Ralston house, where he was to take her on New Year’s day. She listened shyly, glancing up at him now and then with a happy face and starry eyes, as he described the improvements he hoped to make on the farm, and the hay he should take from the new meadow he had just bought, and the hammock he should put up for her under the elms for the long, quiet summer days.

“Only,” she broke in eagerly, “you know I must work, too, while you are in the field”--

Then she grew rosy again, and subsided into the great buffalo robes, while Tom wandered inconsequently from the subject, and the horse started ahead suddenly when he wasn’t by any means expected to, and the dark trees beside the road rustled as if they were singing softly, and--oh, dear! it was a wonderful ride altogether.

“See!” whispered Tom, pointing to the horizon just before them.

A very grave and sweet look came into the girlish face, as she followed his glance and saw the star in the east shining brightly through the swaying pine boughs.

“Christmas, Christmas,” he whispered. “Oh, my darling, what a gift He is giving me on his birthday--how much more precious than the gold and frankincense He received eighteen hundred years ago!”

So they glide along as blessed as if the poor old sleigh, with its odorous load of evergreen and holly, were a heavenly chariot bearing them away from everything low and bad and wretched in the world, until they draw near the city. The houses stand more and more closely together. A milkman passes at full trot, and, seeing the country team and its errand gives them the first jovial greeting of the day. Shutters come down, blinds fly open, boys emerge from side streets, blowing on their fingers and crying the morning papers.

“Mister, gimme some green?” one calls out now and then. And good-natured Tom turns round in his seat, pulls out a bunch of his merchandise and hands it to Charity, that she may have the pleasure of giving it away. Now they are fairly within the long, brick-walled streets, and the city is awake. Tom leaves Charity at the house of a friend and makes an engagement to call for her as soon as his load is sold (half of it has been ordered and engaged already), which will probably be at about four. He will come at five, anyway; if he should miss the hour--here he looks at her slyly and they both have a good laugh at the absurdity of the idea--she can come to the market and find him. Then they will have before them the beautiful Christmas-eve ride home: “When,” says Tom solemnly, “the little horse will probably be so tired that we will have to let him walk most of the way!”

III

Swiftly the hours of the happy day flew by. Charity completed her humble purchases, which, after all, were hardly more than an excuse for accompanying Tom to the city, and drank her fill of the joyous sights and sounds on every side. Early in the afternoon it occurred to her to surprise Tom at his post before the hour they had named. Accordingly she dressed herself for the walk, putting into her pocket a little purse she had bought as a Christmas gift for him, and planning to give it to him then and there, so that he might bring home in it the results of the day’s sales. With a little inquiry she found her way through the crowded streets to the market, which was like a huge beehive--except that the bees had no stings. For on everybody’s face was the starlight of Christmas, and good-will toward men reigned supreme. The sidewalks outside the market were simple avenues of evergreen. It hung in festoons from the sides of the buildings and overhead; it bubbled over from innumerable boxes and barrels, and ran along the snowy curbstone in a fragrant stream. Rows of trees leaned complacently against the posts and each other, meditating on glories to come; holly glistened and twinkled in the red winter sunlight at every window, and a few stout, jolly-looking marketmen had even procured sprays of real English mistletoe, which they hung proudly over their shop doors; but the full advantage of which, judging from the freedom with which they allowed no end of pretty girls to pass to and fro under it without molestation, they by no means appreciated. Charity was delighted with everything, and half expected to see the jovial “Ghost of Christmas Present” himself seated amidst the heaps of plenty, scattering good things right and left. Failing of him, the next best would certainly be Tom; whom, however, she sought in vain. It was just three o’clock when she started again, a little wearily, for the house.

“I must have just missed him,” she thought, “and he’ll be there waiting for me.”

No, Tom was not there, and had not been seen. Charity fingered the purse in her pocket a little nervously, and waited. How brightly the sun shone in the quiet street where her friends lived! The snow had begun to melt here and there, and children, finding it properly moist for their play, were tumbling about in it and making forts, men, and snowballs. One keen-eyed little fellow moulded a lot of large oblong-shaped balls, and came with an armful before the window where Charity sat, making a mocking bow to her, and calling out:

“Who wants to buy my nice melons! Here’s your fine fresh fruit; all ripe; all ripe!”

Still no Tom. Charity tried to talk with her hosts, but it was hard work, and she was glad when they left her to wait silently with her eyes on the distant street corner where she had last seen him and his evergreen. People came and went along the brick sidewalk. There were little icy spots just in front of her window, where the gutter had discharged the drip from the roof, and it had frozen in ridges the night before. She became dully interested in watching the passers-by get over this place. Some approached it cautiously and crept with timid steps across the treacherous surface; some did not see it at all until they were fairly upon it, and escaped with a slide and a bound; some avoided it altogether by making a wide circuit into the street; children slid fearlessly upon it, making sport of what was so dangerous to their elders. One strong, well-built man--a clergyman he appeared from his dress--started across it boldly but carefully, slipped midway, and fell with such a crash that the girl uttered an involuntary cry and started up from her chair; but the man regained his feet and limped away, with an ugly stain across his shoulder and a bit of red on his white hands.

While Charity gazed pityingly after him, a twinkling light appeared far down the street; then another, and another. It could not be that the lamps were being lighted! Yes, the short December day was over--it was Christmas Eve.

Charity turned to look at the clock, but was obliged to move across the room before she could see through the gathering dusk, that it was--six o’clock!

She resolutely but hurriedly drew on her cloak, as she had done a few hours before, in her own country home; and bidding good-bye to her friends with lips which she could not keep from quivering, declined all offer of escort and once more turned her face toward that busy center of the holiday, the market. To and fro she went among the kind-hearted dealers, with her one question repeated over and over until she was sick at heart. No one had seen Tom since morning, one or two looked at her a little curiously, and once a great burly fellow engaged her very closely in conversation as a tall man in helmet and brass buttons passed them, half carrying, half dragging a poor, battered creature over the slippery sidewalk. It was an old, white-haired man of whose wretched, drunken, despairing face she caught a glimpse, as the throng of idle spectators swept by. Something in the manner of her kind friend made her look up quickly at him. He grew redder than ever, and quickly turned away his head; but it was too late; she knew the truth at last. Tom was like--_that_!