Christmas gold, p.880
Christmas Gold, page 880
About a quarter of a mile past Mr. Lurgan’s house the trail curved suddenly about a bluff of poplars. As Theodora rounded the turn she halted in amazement. Almost at her feet the body of a man was lying across the road. He was clad in a big fur coat, and had a fur cap pulled well down over his forehead and ears. Almost all of him that could be seen was a full bushy beard. Theodora had no idea who he was, or where he had come from. But she realized that he was unconscious, and that he would speedily freeze to death if help were not brought. The footprints of a horse galloping across the prairie suggested a fall and a runaway, but Theodora did not waste time in speculation. She ran back at full speed to Mr. Lurgan’s, and roused the household. In a few minutes Mr. Lurgan and his son had hitched a horse to a wood-sleigh, and hurried down the trail to the unfortunate man.
Theodora, knowing that her assistance was not needed, and that she ought to get home as quickly as possible, went on her way as soon as she had seen the stranger in safe keeping. When she reached the little log house she crept in, cautiously put the children’s gifts in their stockings, placed the turkey on the table where Aunt Elizabeth would see it the first thing in the morning, and then slipped off to bed, a very weary but very happy girl.
The joy that reigned in the little log house the next day more than repaid Theodora for her sacrifice.
“Whoopee, didn’t I tell you that Santa Claus would come all right!” shouted the delighted Jimmy. “Oh, what splendid skates!”
The twins hugged their dolls in silent rapture, but Aunt Elizabeth’s face was the best of all.
Then the dinner had to be prepared, and everybody had a hand in that. Just as Theodora, after a grave peep into the oven, had announced that the turkey was done, a sleigh dashed around the house. Theodora flew to answer the knock at the door, and there stood Mr. Lurgan and a big, bewhiskered, fur-coated fellow whom Theodora recognized as the stranger she had found on the trail. But — was he a stranger? There was something oddly familiar in those merry brown eyes. Theodora felt herself growing dizzy.
“Donald!” she gasped. “Oh, Donald!”
And then she was in the big fellow’s arms, laughing and crying at the same time.
Donald it was indeed. And then followed half an hour during which everybody talked at once, and the turkey would have been burned to a crisp had it not been for the presence of mind of Mr. Lurgan who, being the least excited of them all, took it out of the oven, and set it on the back of the stove.
“To think that it was you last night, and that I never dreamed it,” exclaimed Theodora. “Oh, Donald, if I hadn’t gone to town!”
“I’d have frozen to death, I’m afraid,” said Donald soberly. “I got into Spencer on the last train last night. I felt that I must come right out — I couldn’t wait till morning. But there wasn’t a team to be got for love or money — it was Christmas Eve and all the livery rigs were out. So I came on horseback. Just by that bluff something frightened my horse, and he shied violently. I was half asleep and thinking of my little sister, and I went off like a shot. I suppose I struck my head against a tree. Anyway, I knew nothing more until I came to in Mr. Lurgan’s kitchen. I wasn’t much hurt — feel none the worse of it except for a sore head and shoulder. But, oh, Gift o’ God, how you have grown! I can’t realize that you are the little sister I left four years ago. I suppose you have been thinking I was dead?”
“Yes, and, oh, Donald, where have you been?”
“Well, I went way up north with a prospecting party. We had a tough time the first year, I can tell you, and some of us never came back. We weren’t in a country where post offices were lying round loose either, you see. Then at last, just as we were about giving up in despair, we struck it rich. I’ve brought a snug little pile home with me, and things are going to look up in this log house, Gift o’ God. There’ll be no more worrying for you dear people over mortgages.”
“I’m so glad — for Auntie’s sake,” said Theodora, with shining eyes. “But, oh, Donald, it’s best of all just to have you back. I’m so perfectly happy that I don’t know what to do or say.”
“Well, I think you might have dinner,” said Jimmy in an injured tone. “The turkey’s getting stone cold, and I’m most starving. I just can’t stand it another minute.”
So, with a laugh, they all sat down to the table and ate the merriest Christmas dinner the little log house had ever known.
A Christmas Mistake
Table of Contents
“Tomorrow is Christmas,” announced Teddy Grant exultantly, as he sat on the floor struggling manfully with a refractory bootlace that was knotted and tagless and stubbornly refused to go into the eyelets of Teddy’s patched boots. “Ain’t I glad, though. Hurrah!”
His mother was washing the breakfast dishes in a dreary, listless sort of way. She looked tired and broken-spirited. Ted’s enthusiasm seemed to grate on her, for she answered sharply:
“Christmas, indeed. I can’t see that it is anything for us to rejoice over. Other people may be glad enough, but what with winter coming on I’d sooner it was spring than Christmas. Mary Alice, do lift that child out of the ashes and put its shoes and stockings on. Everything seems to be at sixes and sevens here this morning.”
Keith, the oldest boy, was coiled up on the sofa calmly working out some algebra problems, quite oblivious to the noise around him. But he looked up from his slate, with his pencil suspended above an obstinate equation, to declaim with a flourish:
“Christmas comes but once a year, And then Mother wishes it wasn’t here.”
“I don’t, then,” said Gordon, son number two, who was preparing his own noon lunch of bread and molasses at the table, and making an atrocious mess of crumbs and sugary syrup over everything. “I know one thing to be thankful for, and that is that there’ll be no school. We’ll have a whole week of holidays.”
Gordon was noted for his aversion to school and his affection for holidays.
“And we’re going to have turkey for dinner,” declared Teddy, getting up off the floor and rushing to secure his share of bread and molasses, “and cranb’ry sauce and — and — pound cake! Ain’t we, Ma?”
“No, you are not,” said Mrs. Grant desperately, dropping the dishcloth and snatching the baby on her knee to wipe the crust of cinders and molasses from the chubby pink-and-white face. “You may as well know it now, children, I’ve kept it from you so far in hopes that something would turn up, but nothing has. We can’t have any Christmas dinner tomorrow — we can’t afford it. I’ve pinched and saved every way I could for the last month, hoping that I’d be able to get a turkey for you anyhow, but you’ll have to do without it. There’s that doctor’s bill to pay and a dozen other bills coming in — and people say they can’t wait. I suppose they can’t, but it’s kind of hard, I must say.”
The little Grants stood with open mouths and horrified eyes. No turkey for Christmas! Was the world coming to an end? Wouldn’t the government interfere if anyone ventured to dispense with a Christmas celebration?
The gluttonous Teddy stuffed his fists into his eyes and lifted up his voice. Keith, who understood better than the others the look on his mother’s face, took his blubbering young brother by the collar and marched him into the porch. The twins, seeing the summary proceeding, swallowed the outcries they had intended to make, although they couldn’t keep a few big tears from running down their fat cheeks.
Mrs. Grant looked pityingly at the disappointed faces about her.
“Don’t cry, children, you make me feel worse. We are not the only ones who will have to do without a Christmas turkey. We ought to be very thankful that we have anything to eat at all. I hate to disappoint you, but it can’t be helped.”
“Never mind, Mother,” said Keith, comfortingly, relaxing his hold upon the porch door, whereupon it suddenly flew open and precipitated Teddy, who had been tugging at the handle, heels over head backwards. “We know you’ve done your best. It’s been a hard year for you. Just wait, though. I’ll soon be grown up, and then you and these greedy youngsters shall feast on turkey every day of the year. Hello, Teddy, have you got on your feet again? Mind, sir, no more blubbering!”
“When I’m a man,” announced Teddy with dignity, “I’d just like to see you put me in the porch. And I mean to have turkey all the time and I won’t give you any, either.”
“All right, you greedy small boy. Only take yourself off to school now, and let us hear no more squeaks out of you. Tramp, all of you, and give Mother a chance to get her work done.”
Mrs. Grant got up and fell to work at her dishes with a brighter face.
“Well, we mustn’t give in; perhaps things will be better after a while. I’ll make a famous bread pudding, and you can boil some molasses taffy and ask those little Smithsons next door to help you pull it. They won’t whine for turkey, I’ll be bound. I don’t suppose they ever tasted such a thing in all their lives. If I could afford it, I’d have had them all in to dinner with us. That sermon Mr. Evans preached last Sunday kind of stirred me up. He said we ought always to try and share our Christmas joy with some poor souls who had never learned the meaning of the word. I can’t do as much as I’d like to. It was different when your father was alive.”
The noisy group grew silent as they always did when their father was spoken of. He had died the year before, and since his death the little family had had a hard time. Keith, to hide his feelings, began to hector the rest.
“Mary Alice, do hurry up. Here, you twin nuisances, get off to school. If you don’t you’ll be late and then the master will give you a whipping.”
“He won’t,” answered the irrepressible Teddy. “He never whips us, he doesn’t. He stands us on the floor sometimes, though,” he added, remembering the many times his own chubby legs had been seen to better advantage on the school platform.
“That man,” said Mrs. Grant, alluding to the teacher, “makes me nervous. He is the most abstracted creature I ever saw in my life. It is a wonder to me he doesn’t walk straight into the river some day. You’ll meet him meandering along the street, gazing into vacancy, and he’ll never see you nor hear a word you say half the time.”
“Yesterday,” said Gordon, chuckling over the remembrance, “he came in with a big piece of paper he’d picked up on the entry floor in one hand and his hat in the other — and he stuffed his hat into the coalscuttle and hung up the paper on a nail as grave as you please. Never knew the difference till Ned Slocum went and told him. He’s always doing things like that.”
Keith had collected his books and now marched his brothers and sisters off to school. Left alone with the baby, Mrs. Grant betook herself to her work with a heavy heart. But a second interruption broke the progress of her dishwashing.
“I declare,” she said, with a surprised glance through the window, “if there isn’t that absentminded schoolteacher coming through the yard! What can he want? Dear me, I do hope Teddy hasn’t been cutting capers in school again.”
For the teacher’s last call had been in October and had been occasioned by the fact that the irrepressible Teddy would persist in going to school with his pockets filled with live crickets and in driving them harnessed to strings up and down the aisle when the teacher’s back was turned. All mild methods of punishment having failed, the teacher had called to talk it over with Mrs. Grant, with the happy result that Teddy’s behaviour had improved — in the matter of crickets at least.
But it was about time for another outbreak. Teddy had been unnaturally good for too long a time. Poor Mrs. Grant feared that it was the calm before a storm, and it was with nervous haste that she went to the door and greeted the young teacher.
He was a slight, pale, boyish-looking fellow, with an abstracted, musing look in his large dark eyes. Mrs. Grant noticed with amusement that he wore a white straw hat in spite of the season. His eyes were directed to her face with his usual unseeing gaze.
“Just as though he was looking through me at something a thousand miles away,” said Mrs. Grant afterwards. “I believe he was, too. His body was right there on the step before me, but where his soul was is more than you or I or anybody can tell.”
“Good morning,” he said absently. “I have just called on my way to school with a message from Miss Millar. She wants you all to come up and have Christmas dinner with her tomorrow.”
“For the land’s sake!” said Mrs. Grant blankly. “I don’t understand.” To herself she thought, “I wish I dared take him and shake him to find if he’s walking in his sleep or not.”
“You and all the children — every one,” went on the teacher dreamily, as if he were reciting a lesson learned beforehand. “She told me to tell you to be sure and come. Shall I say that you will?”
“Oh, yes, that is — I suppose — I don’t know,” said Mrs. Grant incoherently. “I never expected — yes, you may tell her we’ll come,” she concluded abruptly.
“Thank you,” said the abstracted messenger, gravely lifting his hat and looking squarely through Mrs. Grant into unknown regions. When he had gone Mrs. Grant went in and sat down, laughing in a sort of hysterical way.
“I wonder if it is all right. Could Cornelia really have told him? She must, I suppose, but it is enough to take one’s breath.”
Mrs. Grant and Cornelia Millar were cousins, and had once been the closest of friends, but that was years ago, before some spiteful reports and ill-natured gossip had come between them, making only a little rift at first that soon widened into a chasm of coldness and alienation. Therefore this invitation surprised Mrs. Grant greatly.
Miss Cornelia was a maiden lady of certain years, with a comfortable bank account and a handsome, old-fashioned house on the hill behind the village. She always boarded the schoolteachers and looked after them maternally; she was an active church worker and a tower of strength to struggling ministers and their families.
“If Cornelia has seen fit at last to hold out the hand of reconciliation I’m glad enough to take it. Dear knows, I’ve wanted to make up often enough, but I didn’t think she ever would. We’ve both of us got too much pride and stubbornness. It’s the Turner blood in us that does it. The Turners were all so set. But I mean to do my part now she has done hers.”
And Mrs. Grant made a final attack on the dishes with a beaming face.
When the little Grants came home and heard the news, Teddy stood on his head to express his delight, the twins kissed each other, and Mary Alice and Gordon danced around the kitchen.
Keith thought himself too big to betray any joy over a Christmas dinner, but he whistled while doing the chores until the bare welkin in the yard rang, and Teddy, in spite of unheard of misdemeanours, was not collared off into the porch once.
When the young teacher got home from school that evening he found the yellow house full of all sorts of delectable odours. Miss Cornelia herself was concocting mince pies after the famous family recipe, while her ancient and faithful handmaiden, Hannah, was straining into moulds the cranberry jelly. The open pantry door revealed a tempting array of Christmas delicacies.
“Did you call and invite the Smithsons up to dinner as I told you?” asked Miss Cornelia anxiously.
“Yes,” was the dreamy response as he glided through the kitchen and vanished into the hall.
Miss Cornelia crimped the edges of her pies delicately with a relieved air. “I made certain he’d forget it,” she said. “You just have to watch him as if he were a mere child. Didn’t I catch him yesterday starting off to school in his carpet slippers? And in spite of me he got away today in that ridiculous summer hat. You’d better set that jelly in the out-pantry to cool, Hannah; it looks good. We’ll give those poor little Smithsons a feast for once in their lives if they never get another.”
At this juncture the hall door flew open and Mr. Palmer appeared on the threshold. He seemed considerably agitated and for once his eyes had lost their look of space-searching.
“Miss Millar, I am afraid I did make a mistake this morning — it has just dawned on me. I am almost sure that I called at Mrs. Grant’s and invited her and her family instead of the Smithsons. And she said they would come.”
Miss Cornelia’s face was a study.
“Mr. Palmer,” she said, flourishing her crimping fork tragically, “do you mean to say you went and invited Linda Grant here tomorrow? Linda Grant, of all women in this world!”
“I did,” said the teacher with penitent wretchedness. “It was very careless of me — I am very sorry. What can I do? I’ll go down and tell them I made a mistake if you like.”
“You can’t do that,” groaned Miss Cornelia, sitting down and wrinkling up her forehead in dire perplexity. “It would never do in the world. For pity’s sake, let me think for a minute.”
Miss Cornelia did think — to good purpose evidently, for her forehead smoothed out as her meditations proceeded and her face brightened. Then she got up briskly. “Well, you’ve done it and no mistake. I don’t know that I’m sorry, either. Anyhow, we’ll leave it as it is. But you must go straight down now and invite the Smithsons too. And for pity’s sake, don’t make any more mistakes.”
When he had gone Miss Cornelia opened her heart to Hannah. “I never could have done it myself — never; the Turner is too strong in me. But I’m glad it is done. I’ve been wanting for years to make up with Linda. And now the chance has come, thanks to that blessed blundering boy, I mean to make the most of it. Mind, Hannah, you never whisper a word about its being a mistake. Linda must never know. Poor Linda! She’s had a hard time. Hannah, we must make some more pies, and I must go straight down to the store and get some more Santa Claus stuff; I’ve only got enough to go around the Smithsons.”
When Mrs. Grant and her family arrived at the yellow house next morning Miss Cornelia herself ran out bareheaded to meet them. The two women shook hands a little stiffly and then a rill of long-repressed affection trickled out from some secret spring in Miss Cornelia’s heart and she kissed her new-found old friend tenderly. Linda returned the kiss warmly, and both felt that the old-time friendship was theirs again.
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