Part 4

Late the next afternoon, when he arrived at the house behind the evergreens, a large, mysterious parcel under his arm, Albert greeted him in the hall with shouts of delight, demanding to know if the parcel was for him.

“For you? What an idea!” said Wallace. “I met Santa Claus just now flying over the church, and he dropped this down to me, telling me to give it to the best boy in North Topsville. You don’t get it unless you can prove you’re the best boy. My! I had a hard time catching it, for Santa was up nearly as high as the top of the steeple when he dropped it. Lucky I’m a ball player!”

“I’m the bestest boy,” said Albert. “My mother said so yesterday to Mrs. Perkins, ’cause I heard her.”

“What does Auntie Nora say? The law requires two witnesses, you know.”

“Auntie Nora says it will depend on how Albert behaves tonight,” said a voice on the landing.

Wallace looked up. The girl he had seen only in rough short skirt and outing woollens, with rebellious hair, was descending toward him in silks, a jeweled pendant at her bare throat, her shoulders gleaming. She was very beautiful, and the hand she extended toward him might, he thought, have been the hand of a princess which he should stoop and kiss.

“Hi, Auntie Nora’s all dressed up!” cried Albert. “Why’d you all dress up, Auntie?”

The princess blushed and laughed, and said, “Now Auntie Nora thinks you’re _not_ the best boy in town, because good boys don’t make personal remarks.”

“But I think you’re very beautiful,” said Albert, suddenly throwing his arms about her. “Isn’t she, Mr. Miller?”

“She is, indeed, Albert, she is the loveliest lady in the world!” Wallace answered, his voice intense, his eyes looking over Albert, fascinated.

The girl hid her face on Albert’s shoulder, while that young person added the further comment, “Why, your cheek’s orful hot, Auntie.”

“Now you’re the _worst_ boy in town,” she said, “and you won’t get Santa’s box, for certain!”

“I’m not so sure,” said the man, as Albert freed himself from his aunt and rushed off with the box to the sitting room.

The girl had scarce lifted her rosy face to Wallace, their eyes meeting in silence, when her mother and sister descended the stairs, and the cord was snapped. But it was at the girl’s side that Wallace entered the sitting room, and as they passed through the door together their hands brushed, and he knew that she, too, felt the spark.

In the middle of the sitting room lay Albert’s tree, mingling its odor with the odor of burning apple wood. Albert was hovering about it. “How’s it going to stand up?” he demanded.

“Maybe we’ll bore a hole in the floor,” Wallace suggested.

Albert regarded him gravely. “No, I don’t think Grandmother would approve,” said he, lapsing as he sometimes did into a quaint adult vocabulary.

“When I was little, we used a tub of furnace coal,” Wallace laughed.

“Come on!” cried Albert. “I know where the tub is!”

His mother grabbed his flying coat tails, and diverted him to the dining room. The excitement of dining with the family, of candles and turkey, of a big tinsel star suspended over the centre of the table, made him quite forget what he was about, and he was talking rapidly as he pulled up his chair.

“Albert!” said his grandmother.

The three women bowed their heads, and Wallace bowed his.

Albert drew in his breath, expelled it in a grace, had just enough left for the “Amen,” and instantly resumed his interrupted chatter. The elders exchanged smiles, but Wallace was thinking how at that moment five members of the To-Hell-with-the-Merry-Yule-Tide Association were on their way toward Delmonico’s, and of what a contrast to this little act of old-fashioned devotion the preliminaries of that feast would be. He grinned to himself at the irony of it.

Wallace’s attention during dinner was divided between the girl at his side and the boy opposite, between efforts to talk sense and nonsense, for Albert loved his nonsense, and demanded minute details of Santa Claus’s appearance as he drove over the church steeple, which he accepted with the paradoxically trustful unbelief of small boyhood. Wallace finally got into a considerable argument with the old lady regarding the number of reindeer in Santa’s team, she insisting that in her day, at any rate, there used to be twelve. In the excitement of the debate, the plum pudding was forgotten, and suddenly it appeared, burning merrily, and then everybody stopped talking to cheer.

After dinner, Albert was permitted to stay up long enough to see the tree mounted. He went for a tub, while his aunt took Wallace to the cellar for a big hod of furnace coal. One must make all the preparations one’s self on Christmas Eve! She held her skirts high as they went laughing over the dusty, uncemented floor, and her silk-clad ankles shone in the dim light. In the far corners of the cellar dark shadows seemed to crouch and stir. She gave a mocking little shiver.

“I used to be so terrified down here when I was a child!” she said. “I don’t remember whether it was rats or ghosts.”

Wallace filled the hod, and on the way back from the bin stopped in front of the furnace.

“I want to look into a furnace,” he said. “I haven’t been down in a cellar and looked into a furnace since I was a boy and had to do it every night and morning. It is so homey!”

He opened the door, and the warm red glow came out and fell full on the girl’s face and bare shoulders, as she stood close beside him, peering in. He turned from the fire to look at her.

“You _are_ so beautiful!” he whispered.

“Sh--, you mustn’t,” she answered. But her color rose and her eyes softened.

“I must, I must!” he exclaimed. “I cannot help it any longer! You are so beautiful, and so good! If I’d stayed in New York I should be at the dinner of the To-Hell-with-the-Merry-Yule-Tide Association. Now I’m gazing into Heaven with the most wonderful woman in the world!”

“It doesn’t look exactly like Heaven,” she twinkled, pointing to the wallowing little spits of flame above the bed of coals, and moving a little from his side. “Come, we must go back!”

He followed her reluctantly up the stairs, into the rear hallway. There, for a brief second, she faced him soberly.

“I’m--I’m glad you are not at that horrid association you spoke of,” she whispered, and ran ahead swiftly into the sitting room.

It was not long before the tree stood erect in the centre of the room, its top just bent against the ceiling; and poor Albert was ordered off to bed, refusing, however, to go unless Wallace carried him up on his shoulder and his aunt undressed him.

“Auntie Nora lets me kick my shoes,” he explained.

Wallace swung him up and marched up the stairs with him, Auntie Nora following behind. There was an open fire in the little chap’s nursery, and his stocking hung from the mantle. There were toys on the floor. When, a few moments later, he came dashing out from the bathroom in a long flannel nightie, followed by the girl, he ran to the fireplace and pinched the toe of the stocking. Then, instinctively, he held his hands out toward the blaze, and Wallace saw his Christmas card--saw the warm red firelight reflected on the little figure, the dangling stocking, the cold moonlight on a whitened world through the window beyond. He almost held his breath, whispering to the girl what it was that held him so in the picture.

They stood side by side a moment, watching Albert, who was gazing in silence into the fire, his chatter suddenly stilled.

“What are you thinking about, son?” said Wallace, presently.

“I was thinking maybe Santa’d get his feet burnt if the fire didn’t go out,” Albert replied.

“Well, you say good night to Mr. Miller now, and go to bed,” his aunt laughed, “and we’ll put it out.”

The boy ran over and flung his arms about Wallace’s neck, giving him a soft, dabby kiss on the cheek. “Good night!” he cried. Then he dashed into his chamber.

When the girl came back, she found Wallace standing in front of the fire, looking into the coals. She came over and stood beside him.

“Come,” she said softly, “we must go down and decorate the tree.”

He put out his hand and took hers, drawing her closer to his side.

“That present,” he said, “I have not told you what it was. It was the gift of Christmas, it was the gift of a new spirit, it was the gift of my lost childhood--it was the gift of love.”

She did not speak, but her hand lay warm in his, and her fingers closed a little tighter about his own.

“When I suddenly saw my Christmas card right here in flesh and blood tonight,” he went on, “I was not surprised. It is but a symbol. Once I was the little boy on that card. Now I am my own father and mother looking at him. Last night I stood out there a long while before your windows, realizing that hearth and home are the altars of Christmas, alike its foundation and the flower of its spirit. I realized that, because love had entered my heart, because you had entered my heart. I have been so selfish these many years! I have not helped others, I have not liked children, I have been far away from all the deep, natural instincts. But you have brought me back. You have given me the present of a new spirit, the Christmas spirit.”

“You were not really so selfish as you thought,” she whispered, “and you always loved children, only you didn’t have a chance to find it out. I knew that as soon as I saw you.”

He put his arm about her waist and felt the perfume of her hair beneath his face, as her head rested on his shoulder.

“It is so short a time,” he said, “and I am so unworthy. Why should you care for me?”

“It has been a very long time,” she answered softly. “I am not a child. I have known the man whom I should love, and only waited for him till he came, and till he, too, knew. That is what those intervening years were for--that we might learn.”

She lifted her face, then, and he bent down his head and kissed her, while his eyes closed with the wonder of it.

“Auntie Nora, I want a drink of water,” came the voice of Albert suddenly. “What are you whispering about in there?”

“Maybe we were talking to Santa,” she answered, as she slipped from her lover’s arms and ran to get the water.

Hand in hand, they moved down the stairway, and her eyes flashed back at him like two pools of happiness as she went ahead through the sitting-room door.

The three women and Wallace spent a gay and busy hour hanging the tree with tinsel and candles and stars and presents. When it was nearly finished, Nora disappeared. Presently she came back with a parcel.

“This is for you, from Mother and Albert,” she said to the man. “You ask Santa to put it in your stocking tonight.”

“Yes, and come tomorrow morning and let me see what I’ve given you!” chuckled the old lady.

Both Albert’s mother and grandmother had bidden him a Merry Christmas and gone upstairs to tie up the presents hidden away from the prying eyes of the youngster, when Wallace rose to leave. The girl stood in front of him, between the glittering tree and the fireplace. The red glow threw her beautiful body into high relief. She put her hand into the bodice of her gown and drew out a tiny parcel.

“This is something for your stocking, too,” she said, “not from Albert nor Mother.”

He took it tenderly. “And I have nothing for you,” he answered, “for you who have given me everything--who have given me life anew!”

“I have given you nothing which I haven’t received back again,” she whispered, suddenly coming into his arms.

Her lips were close to his ear in the doorway. “Merry Christmas, dear,” they said.

He kissed her hair. “Those words mean more than I can utter now,” he answered. “I--I’m not used to saying them so. Oh, may the Author of Christmas guard and keep you!”

He went down the path between the evergreens, and the moonlight poured a soft, golden glory on the white world, which had never seemed to him so beautiful.

He hung up his stocking when he reached the hotel, and put his two presents into it. When morning came, he sprang out of bed, shut the window, turned on the steam, grabbed his stocking, and climbed back under the covers. He opened the parcel from Albert and the old lady first, and drew forth a large barley sugar elephant, which he gave a slow, contemplative lick with his tongue, reviving memories of his childhood. Then he opened the other present, with fingers that bungled in their eagerness. It was a quaint and valuable old scarf pin, a ruby set in seed pearls, and wrapped around it was a tiny note.

“This was my father’s. I have been keeping it for you, Dearest, on our first Christmas.”

Wallace smoothed out the bit of paper and read it again and again, foolishly happy. Then he rose, beaming on the world in general, pinned an extravagant present for the chambermaid on his pillow, in an envelope labeled “Merry Christmas,” and went down to breakfast. As soon as the meal was over, he hastened out to the telegraph office, chuckling to himself, and sent five telegrams to the five members of the To-Hell-with-the-Merry-Yule-Tide Association. He wished that he had thought to send them the night before, to the dinner. But it was not too late even now. The five telegrams were alike. They all read--

Merry Christmas!

“You can have eight more words for your money,” said the operator.

“I don’t need ’em,” he answered. “Those two will do the trick.” Then he hastened, almost running, up the street.

Albert was already out in the front yard, pursuing his aeroplane over the snow, while the three women stood in the windows, watching him. He rushed at Wallace to give him a hug and a “Merry Christmas,” and then dashed back to wind up the propeller again. The door opened as Wallace stepped upon the porch, and in the hall he felt, like a man in a dream, two arms about his neck, and another “Merry Christmas” whispered in his ear.

In the sitting room the old lady came forward to greet him, regarding his face sharply. She took his hand in one of hers, and put the other on his shoulder.

“If my daughter hasn’t said it, I will say it for her,” she remarked--“this is so sudden! But I am too old a woman to be surprised at anything young folks will do. I believe you are a good man, for I have known many of both sorts and have never been fooled yet. Are you?”

“Only negatively,” he answered, “till you showed me Christmas.”

“Well, Christmas is a very good time to begin,” said the old lady. “Here is a present for you.”

She brought him a token from the tree, while the younger women stood near him, the widow with her arm about Nora’s waist. He opened the package, and found within a beautiful old-fashioned watch fob, and a card, “From your new mother.” He knew instinctively that it had been her husband’s, and that its gift to him was a sacrifice not lightly made. In his eyes it linked him with the past, in hers it bound him with the future. He held this link of amethyst and gold in his hand, touched to silence, and then walked over and kissed the old lady on the cheek, while she patted his hair with a little laugh that was suddenly half a sob, and the two younger women watched the scene tenderly, the one with soft, happy laughter, the other in silence and with a furtive glance through the window toward her son.

He felt a great, heart-warming, new instinct to protect and guard them all, to keep inviolate the gentle atmosphere of this old room, to watch over the little chap who was playing and shouting out there in the snow. The mother presently went to the rear of the house to attend to her housekeeping, and as Wallace and Nora sat talking softly before the fire, he was aware of the elder sister looking wistfully at them from her seat at the window, where she could also keep an eye on Albert.

“This is only her second Christmas without John,” the girl whispered. “Poor Marion! I feel almost selfish today in my new happiness.”

Wallace watched the other woman steal softly from the room, and he saw that she was clenching her handkerchief in her hand, and biting her under lip. When she had gone, Nora slipped to a footstool, her hands crossed over her knees. He laid his hand gently on her hair.

“All the deep mysteries of love and death and sorrow seem opening to me on this Christmas morning,” he said. “I don’t quite know whether to laugh or to cry.”

The girl raised her face to his, and her own eyes were misty now.

“Poor, poor Marion!” she said. “Oh, now I know what she has lost!”

Her hands suddenly clasped him hard, as if he were about to slip away.

Just then the front door opened, and Albert dashed into the room. The girl did not rise. He came over to them as if there were nothing unusual in their attitude, crying that his aeroplane had stuck in a tree out of his reach.

“We’ll get it in a minute,” said Wallace, drawing the boy to him. As he held the little body close against his side, he looked down again at the girl.

“And now I know, also, what she has found,” he whispered.

The girl’s eyes looked into his for a reply, and Albert, awed by the silence, gazed from one to the other without speaking a word.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.