CHAPTER V

THE BLACK SHEEP'S CHRISTMAS

FIVE days before Christmas the school of the Misses Ryder emptied its pupils and teachers into the bosoms of more or less gratified families, and closed its doors for the holiday season.

The principals lingered for two days after the girls left, in order to see that the furniture was covered, the furnace fires were allowed to die, the gas was turned off, the shades were decorously drawn, the regular butcher's, baker's and milkman's supplies were stopped. Then they, too, went out into the world, for they always spent Christmas with the old aunt who lived upon the ancestral Ryder acres in New Hampshire.

Five of the servants had joined the exodus. Only Ellen, the fat cook, and Rosie, the laundress, were left in the basement, and in the back hall bedroom on the top floor was the Youngest Teacher, who had submitted to enthusiastic kisses from her departing girl adorers, had responded cheerfully to pleasant adieus from her employers, and had settled down to face a somewhat depressing situation. On Christmas Eve she was still facing it pluckily.

A storm of wind and sleet was beating at the windows, and the little hall bedroom, unheated for days past, had taken on the chill that seems to have body and substance.

In a wicker chair, beside the small table, Belinda, wrapped in blankets and with a hot-water bag under her feet, sat reading by the light of a kerosene lamp which threw weird, flickering shadows on the ugly gray walls.

As a particular vicious blast shrieked at the window the girl dropped her book into her lap, drew the blankets more closely about her, looked around the room, and made a heroic effort to smile.

Then she smiled spontaneously at the lamentable failure of the attempt, but the smile left the corners of her mouth drooping.

She was tired of being brave.

Somewhere out across the night there were love and laughter and friends. She wondered what the home folk were doing. Probably they missed her, but they were together and they had no idea how things were with her, for her letters had been framed to suggest festive plans and a school full of holiday sojourners.

She had written those letters with one eye upon the Recording Angel and the other upon her mother's loving, anxious face, and it had seemed to her that the Recording Angel's smile promised absolution.

She was glad she hadn't been frank, but--she wanted her mother.

The quivering face was buried in the rough folds of the blankets, and a queer, stifled sound mingled with the noise of the storm.

The Youngest Teacher was only twenty-two, and this was her first Christmas away from home.

But the surrender did not last long. Belinda sprang to her feet, hurled a remark that sounded like "maudlin idiot" at a dishevelled vision in the mirror, picked up the lamp, and went down to the gymnasium on the second floor. When she came back she was too warm to notice the chill of the room, too tired to think. She pulled down the folding bed, tumbled into it, and dreamed of home.

Christmas morning was clear and cold.

Belinda awoke late, and, as the realities crowded in upon her, shut her eyes and tried to dodge the fact that there was no one to wish her a merry Christmas.

She was crying softly into her pillow when the room door was opened cautiously and two ruddy Irish faces peered through the crack.

"A merry Christmas to ye, Miss!" shouted two voices rich in creamy brogue.

Belinda opened her eyes.

"Sure, Oi said to Rosie, 'It's a shame,' sez Oi, 'the young leddy up there wid divil a wan to wish her luck. Let's go up,' sez Oi. So we come."

Then Ellen, who was an excellent cook and a tough citizen, had the surprise of her life, for a slim, pretty girl sprang out of bed, threw her arms around the cook's portly form, and kissed the broad, red face. Rosie had her turn while Ellen was staggering under the shock.

"Bless you both," said Belinda, looking at them through wet eyes.

The cook opened and shut her mouth feebly, but her own eyes held a responsive moisture.

"Aarrah, now, was it ez bad ez that?" she asked with rough gentleness.

"We were thinkin' maybe we'd be so bold as to ask wud ye come down to the kitchen and have a drop av coffee and a bit av toast wid us. It's bitter cold the mornin' to be goin' out to an eatin'-house, and there's a grand foire in the stove."

The invitation was accepted, and the guest stayed in the warm kitchen until Rosie's young man materialised. Then Belinda retreated to her own room, made her bed, tucked herself up snugly in the big chair, and once more turned to the consolations of literature.

She was still grimly reading when, at eleven o'clock, Ellen tapped on the door.

"If ye plaze, Miss, there's a man wud loike to be spakin' wid yez."

Belinda looked blankly incredulous. Then a gleam of hope flashed across her face. By a miracle, Jack's boat might have come back--or somebody from home----

"Yis; he sez his name's Ryder."

"Ryder?" echoed Belinda.

"He wuz afther askin' fer Miss Ryder and Miss Emmiline furrst, and he luked queer loike when I told him they wuz gone away.

"'Who's here, onyway,' sez he, sort o' grinnin' as if it hurt him.

"'There's Miss Carewe,' sez Oi, 'wan av th' tachers.'

"'Ask her will she see me fer a minute,' sez he; an' wid that I come fer yez."

"What's he like, Ellen?"

"Well, he's bigger than most and kind av gruff spoken, as though he'd as lave hit ye if he didn't loike yer answers; but it's nice eyes and good clothes he has. He's a foine figger av a man, and he do be remindin' me some way av Miss Ryder. I doubt he's a relation."

Belinda was straightening her hair and putting cologne on her swollen eyelids.

"I'll have to go down. Where is he?"

"In the back parlour, Miss."

"Did you raise the shades?"

"Divil a bit. It's ez cheerful ez a buryin' vault in there."

It was. John Ryder had grasped that fact as he sat waiting, upon one of the shrouded chairs. He turned up his coat collar with a shiver.

"Lord, how natural it seems," he muttered. "They did the same sort of thing at home. Give me the ranch."

The portiere before the hall door was pushed aside and the man rose. He was prepared for a gaunt, forbidding, elderly spinster. He saw a girl in a dark blue frock that clung to the curves of the slender figure as though it loved them. He saw a waving mass of sunny brown hair that rippled into high lights even in the darkened room and framed a piquant face whose woeful brown eyes were shadow-circled.

"Merry Christmas!" he said abruptly.

"Merry Christmas!" Belinda replied before she realised the absurdity of it.

"You don't look it," commented John Ryder frankly.

Belinda crossed the room, threw up the shades, and turned to look at the amazing visitor, who stood the scrutiny with imperturbable calm.

"I am Miss Carewe. You wish to see me?"

The tone was frigid, but its temperature had no apparent effect.

"Yes. I'm John Ryder," the man announced tranquilly; then, seeing that she didn't look enlightened, he added, "I'm Miss Ryder's brother, you know."

Belinda thawed.

"Why, I didn't know----" she began, then stopped awkwardly.

"Didn't know the girls had a brother. No; I fancy they haven't talked about me much. You see, I'm the 'black sheep.'"

The statement was brusque, but the smile was disarming.

"I've been thoroughly bleached, Miss Carewe. Don't turn me out."

She had no intention of turning him out. His voice had an honest note, his eyes were very kind, and she lacked supreme confidence in her employers' sense of values; so she sat down upon an imposing chair swathed in brown Holland and looked at the "Black Sheep."

"What have they been doing to you?" he asked.

"I'm homesick." She essayed gay self-derision, but her lips trembled, and to John Ryder's surprise he found his blood boiling, despite the icy temperature of the room.

"Did they leave you here all alone?"

"Nobody left me. I stayed."

Belinda was conscious that the conversation had taken an amazing leap into intimacy, and clutched at her dignity, but she felt bewildered. There was something overpowering and masterful about this big, boyish man.

"Nobody else here?"

"Servants."

"House shut up like this?"

"Naturally."

"No heat?"

"I can't see that the matter concerns you, Mr. Ryder--unless----"

"Oh, no. I'm not thinking of staying."

Her attempt at rebuff had not the smallest effect.

"No gas, either, I suppose?"

She didn't answer.

He said something under his breath that appeared to afford him relief.

"No friends in town, evidently?"

Belinda rose with fine stateliness.

"If there's nothing I can do for you, Mr. Ryder----"

"Sit down."

She sat down involuntarily, and then felt egregiously foolish because she had done it; but John Ryder was leaning forward with his honest eyes holding hers and was talking earnestly.

"Please don't be angry. I've been out in the Australian bush so long that I've forgotten my parlour tricks. Men say what they think, and ask for what they want, and do pretty well as they please--or can--out there. I've hardly seen a woman. I suppose they'd cut down the independence if they entered into the game. But, see here, Miss Carewe, you're homesick. I'm homesick, too--and I'm worse off than you, for I'm homesick at home. It's rather dreadful being homesick at home."

There was a note, half bitter, half regretful, in the voice and a look in the eyes that was an appeal to generosity.

Belinda's conventionality crumpled up and her heart warmed toward the fellow-waif.

"I've been counting a good deal upon a home Christmas," he went on; "more than I realised; and this isn't exactly the real thing."

Belinda nodded comprehension.

The "Black Sheep" read the sympathy in her eyes.

"It's good of you to listen. You see, I've been away twenty years. It's a long time."

He sat silent for a moment staring straight before him, but seeing something that she could not see. Then he came back to her.

"Yes; it's a long time. One imagines the things one has left stand still, but they don't. I thought I'd find everything pretty much the same. Of course I might have known better, but--well, a fellow's memory and imagination play tricks upon his intelligence sometimes. I liked New York, you know. It's the only place, but I made the mistake of thinking I could fill it, and it was bigger than I had supposed. I swelled as much as I could, but I finally burst, like the ambitious frog in the fable. I'd made a good many different kinds of a fool of myself, Miss Carewe."

He hesitated, but her eyes encouraged him.

"I'd made an awful mess of things, and the family were down on me--right they were, too. The girls were pretty bitter. It was hard on them, you see, and I deserved all I got. Emmy would have forgiven me, but Lou was just rather than merciful. You know justice is Lou's long suit. Well, I cut away to Australia, and I didn't write--first because I hadn't anything good to tell, and then because I didn't believe anybody'd care to hear, and finally because it had got to be habit. It'd a' been different if mother had been alive. Probably I'd never have run--or if I had run I'd have written, but sisters--sisters are different. Mothers are----"

His voice stuck fast with a queer quaver, and Belinda nodded again. She knew that mothers were----

He found his voice.

"I struck it rich after a while and I was too busy making money to think much; but by-and-by, after the pile was pretty big, I got to thinking of ways of spending it, and then old New York began bobbing into my world again, and I thought about the girls and the things I could do to make up, and about the good times I could give some of the old crowd who had stood by me when I was good for nothing and didn't deserve a friend. And then I began planning and planning--but I didn't write. I used to go to sleep planning how I'd drop back into this little village and what I'd do to it. Finally I decided to get here for Christmas. The schoolgirls would be away then and I would walk in here and pick Emmy and Lou up, and give them the time of their lives during the holidays. All the way across the Pacific and the continent I was planning the surprise. I've got two ten-thousand-dollar checks made out to the girls here in my pocket, and I've got a list a mile long of other Christmas presents I was going to get for them. I even had the Christmas dinner menu fixed--and here I am."

He looked uncommonly like a disappointed child. Belinda found herself desperately sorry and figuratively feeling in her pocket for sugar-plums.

"Your friends----" she began.

He interrupted.

"I tried to hunt up five of the old crowd, over the 'phone. Two are dead. One's in Europe. One's living in San Francisco. The other didn't remember my name until I explained, and then he hoped he'd see me while I was in town. It's going to be a lively Christmas."

Suddenly he jumped up and walked to the window, then came back and stood looking down at the Youngest Teacher.

"Miss Carewe, we are both Christmas outcasts. Why can't we make the best of it together?"

Belinda flushed and sat up very straight, but he went on rapidly:

"What's the use of your moping here alone and my wandering around the big empty town alone? Why can't we spend the day together? You'll dine with me and go to a matinee, and we'll have an early supper somewhere, and then I'll bring you home and go away. We can cheer each other up."

"But it's so----"

"Yes, I know it's unconventional, but there's no harm in it--not a bit. You know my sisters, and nobody knows me here--and anyway, as I told you, I'm bleached. Word of honor, Miss Carewe, I'm a decent sort as men go--and I'm old enough to be your father. It would be awfully kind in you. A man has no right to be sentimental, but I'm blue. The heart's dropped out of my world. I'm not a drinker nowadays, but if I hadn't found you here I'm afraid I'd have gone out and played the fool by getting royally drunk. Babies we are, most of us. Please come. It will make a lot of difference to me, and it would be more cheerful for you than this sort of thing. Come! Do, won't you?"

And Belinda, doubting, wondering, hesitating, longing for good cheer and human friendliness, turned her back upon Dame Grundy and said yes.

Half an hour later a gay, dimpling girl, arrayed in holiday finery, and a stalwart, handsome man with iron-gray hair but an oddly boyish face, were whirling down Fifth Avenue, in a hansom, toward New York's most famous restaurant. The man stopped the cab in front of a florist's shop, disappeared for a moment, and came out carrying a bunch of violets so huge that the two little daintily gloved hands into which he gave the flowers could hardly hold them.

The restaurant table, reserved by telephone while Belinda was making a hasty toilette, was brave with orchids. An obsequious head waiter, impressed by the order delivered over the wire, conducted the couple to the flower-laden table and hovered near them with stern eyes for the attendant waiters and propitiatory eyes for the patron of magnificent ideas.

Even the invisible chef, spurred by the demand upon his skill, wrought mightily for the delectation of the Christmas outcasts--and the outcasts forgot that they were homesick, forgot that they were strangers, and remembered only that life was good.

John Ryder told stories of Australian mine and ranch to the girl with the sparkling eyes and the eager face: talked, as he had never within his memory talked to anyone, of his own experiences, ambitions, hopes, ideals; and Belinda, radiant, charming, beamed upon him across the flowers and urged him on.

Once she pinched herself softly under cover of the table. Surely it was too good to be true, after the gloom of the morning. It was a dream: a violet-scented, French-cookery-flavoured dream spun around a handsome man with frank, admiring eyes and a masterful way.

But the dream endured.

They were late for the theatre, but that made little difference. Neither was alone, forlorn, homesick. That was all that really counted.

After the theatre came a drive, fresh violets, despite all protest, an elaborate supper, which was only an excuse for comradeship.

As the time slipped by a shadow crept into John Ryder's eyes, his laugh became less frequent. He stopped telling stories and contented himself with asking occasional questions and watching the girl across the table, who took up the conversation as he let it fall and juggled merrily with it, although the colour crept into her cheeks as her eyes met the gray eyes that watched her with some vague problem stirring in their depths.

"We must go," she said at last.

John Ryder pushed his coffee-cup aside, rose, and wrapped her cloak around her, without a word. Still silent, he put her into the cab and took a seat beside her.

"I shall go to-night," he said after a little.

"Go? Where?"

Belinda's voice was surprised, regretful.

The man looked down at her.

"It's a good deal better. I belong out there. There's no place for me here, unless----"

He stopped and shook his head impatiently.

"I'd better go. I'd only make a fool of myself if I stayed. I'll run up and spend a day with the girls and then I'll hit the trail for the ranch again. I'll be contented out there--perhaps. There's something here that gets into a man's veins and makes him want things he can't have."

"I'm sorry," Belinda murmured vaguely. "It's been very nice, hasn't it?"

He laid a large hand over her small ones.

"Nice--that's a poor sort of a word, little girl."

The cab stopped before the school door. The two Christmas comrades went slowly up the steps and stood for a moment in the dark doorway.

"You are surely going?"

"Yes, I'm going."

"You've been very good to me. I shall remember to-day----"

"And I." He put a hand on each of her shoulders. "I'm forty-five and I'm--a fool. You've given me a happy day, little girl, but some way or other I'm more homesick than ever. I've had a vision--and I think I shall always be homesick now. Good-by. God bless you!"

Belinda climbed the stairs to her room with a definite sense of loss in her heart.

"Still," she admitted to herself, as she put the violets in water, "he was forty-five."