Kate Douglas Wiggin - The Romance of a Christmas Card
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Kate Douglas Wiggin >> The Romance of a Christmas Card
Letty Boynton had an uncomfortable moment when she saw the first card,
but common sense assured her that outside of a handful of neighbors no
one would identify her home surroundings; meantime she was proud of
Reba's financial and artistic triumph in "The Folks Back Home" and
generously glad that she had no share in it.
Twice during the autumn David had broken his silence, but only to
send her a postal from some Western town, telling her that he should
have no regular address for a time; that he was traveling for a
publishing firm and felt ill-adapted to the business. He hoped that
she and the children were well, for he himself was not; etc., etc.
The twins had been photographed by Osh Popham, who was Jack of all
trades and master of many, and a sight of their dimpled charms, curly
heads, and straight little bodies would have gladdened any father's
heart, Letty thought. However, she scorned to win David back by any
such specious means. If he didn't care to know whether his children
were hump-backed, bow-legged, cross-eyed, club-footed, or
feeble-minded, why should she enlighten him? This was her usual frame
of mind, but in these last days of the year how she longed to pop the
bewitching photographs and Reba's Christmas cards into an envelope and
send them to David.
But where? No word at all for weeks and weeks, and then only a postal
from St. Joseph, saying that he had given up his position on account
of poor health. Nothing in all this to keep Christmas on, thought
Letty, and she knitted and crocheted and sewed with extra ardor that
the twins' stockings might be filled with bright things of her own
making.
[Illustration]
VI
On the afternoon before Christmas of that year, the North Station in
Boston was filled with hurrying throngs on the way home for the
holidays. Everybody looked tired and excited, but most of them had
happy faces, and men and women alike had as many bundles as they could
carry; bundles and boxes quite unlike the brown paper ones with which
commuters are laden on ordinary days. These were white packages,
beribboned and beflowered and behollied and bemistletoed, to be gently
carried and protected from crushing.
The train was filled to overflowing and many stood in the aisles until
Latham Junction was reached and the overflow alighted to change cars
for Greentown and way stations.
Among the crowd were two men with suit-cases who hurried into the way
train and, entering the smoking car from opposite ends, met in the
middle of the aisle, dropped their encumbrances, stretched out a hand
and ejaculated in the same breath:
"Dick Larrabee, upon my word!"
"Dave Gilman, by all that's great!--Here, let's turn over a seat for
our baggage and sit together. Going home, I s'pose?"
The men had not met for some years, but each knew something of the
other's circumstances and hoped that the other didn't know too much.
They scanned each other's faces, Dick thinking that David looked
pinched and pale, David half-heartedly registering the quick
impression that Dick was prosperous.
"Yes," David answered; "I'm going home for a couple of days. It's such
a confounded journey to that one-horse village that a business man
can't get there but once in a generation!"
"Awful hole!" confirmed Dick. "Simply awful hole! I didn't get it out
of my system for years."
"Married?" asked David.
"No; rather think I'm not the marrying kind, though the fact is I've
had no time for love affairs--too busy. Let's see, you have a child,
haven't you?"
"Yes; Letty has seen to all that business for me since my wife died."
(Wild horses couldn't have dragged the information from him that the
"child" was "twins," and Dick didn't need it anyway, for he had heard
the news the morning he left Beulah.) "Wonder if there have been many
changes in the village?"
"Don't know; there never used to be! Mrs. Popham has been ailing for
years,--she couldn't die; and Deacon Todd wouldn't!" Dick's old
animosities still lingered faintly in his memory, though his laughing
voice and the twinkle in his eyes showed plainly that no bitterness
was left. "How's business with you, David?"
"Only so-so. I've had the devil's own luck lately. Can't get anything
that suits me or that pays a decent income. I formed a new connection
the other day, but I can't say yet what there is in it. I'm just out
of hospital; operation; they cut out the wrong thing first, I believe,
sewed me up absent-mindedly, then remembered it was the other thing,
and did it over again. At any rate, that's the only way I can account
for their mewing me up there for two months."
"Well, well, that is hard luck! I'm sorry, old boy! Things didn't
begin to go my way either till within the last few months. I've always
made a fair living and saved a little money, but never gained any real
headway. Now I've got a first-rate start and the future looks pretty
favorable, and best of all, pretty safe.--No trouble at home calls you
back to Beulah? I hope Letty is all right?" Dick cast an anxious side
glance at David, though he spoke carelessly.
"Oh, no! Everything's serene, so far as I know. I'm a poor
correspondent, especially when I've no good news to tell; and anyway,
the mere sight of a pen ties my tongue. I'm just running down to
surprise Letty."
Dick looked at David again. He began to think he didn't like him. He
used to, when they were boys, but when he brought that unaccountable
wife home and foisted her and her babies on Letty, he rather turned
against him. David was younger than himself, four or five years
younger, but he looked as if he hadn't grown up. Surely his boyhood
chum hadn't used to be so pale and thin-chested or his mouth so
ladylike and pretty. A good face, though; straight and clean, with
honest eyes and a likable smile. Lack of will, perhaps, or a
persistent run of ill luck. Letty had always kept him stiffened up in
the old days. Dick recalled one of his father's phrases to the effect
that Dave Gilman would spin on a very small biscuit, and wondered if
it were still true.
"And you, Dick? Your father's still living? You see I haven't kept up
with Beulah lately."
"Keeping up with Beulah! It sounds like the title of a novel, but the
hero would have to be a snail or he'd pass Beulah in the first
chapter!--Yes, father's hale and hearty, I believe."
"You come home every Christmas, I s'pose?" inquired David.
"No; as a matter of fact this is my first visit since I left for
good."
"That's about my case." And David, hung his head a little,
unconsciously.
"That so? Well, I was a hot-headed fool when I said good-bye to
Beulah, and it's taken me all this time to cool off and make up my
mind to apologize to the dad. There's--there's rather a queer
coincidence about my visit just at this time."
"Speaking of coincidences," said David, "I can beat yours, whatever it
is. If the thought of your father brought you back, my mother drew
me--this way!" And he took something from his inside coat pocket.--"Do
you see that?"
Dick regarded the object blankly, then with a quick gesture dived into
his pocket and brought forth another of the same general character.
"How about this?" he asked.
Each had one of Reba Larrabee's Christmas cards but David had the
first unsuccessful one and Dick the popular one with the lonely
little gray house and the verse about the folks back home.
The men looked at each other in astonishment and Dick gave a low
whistle. Then they bent over the cards together.
"It was mother's picture that pulled me back to Beulah, I don't mind
telling you," said David, his mouth twitching. "Don't you see it?"
"Oh! Is that your mother?" And Dick scanned the card closely.
"Don't you remember her portrait that always hung there after she
died?"
"Yes, of course!" And Dick's tone was apologetic. "You see the face is
so small I didn't notice it, but I recognize it now and remember the
portrait."
"Then the old sitting-room!" exclaimed David. "Look at the rag carpet
and the blessed old andirons! Gracious! I've crawled round those
Hessian soldiers, burned my fingers and cracked my skull on 'em, often
enough when I was a kid! When I'd studied the card five minutes, I
bought a ticket and started for home."
David's eyes were suffused and his lip trembled.
"I don't wonder," said Dick. "I recognize the dear old room right
enough, and of course I should know Letty."
"It didn't occur to me that it _was_ Letty for some time," said her
brother. "There's just the glimpse of a face shown, and no real
likeness."
"Perhaps not," agreed Dick. "A stranger wouldn't have known it for
Letty, but if it had been only that cape I should have guessed. It's
as familiar as Mrs. Popham's bugle bonnet, and much prettier. She wore
it every winter, skating, you know,--and it's just the color of her
hair."
"Letty has a good-shaped head," said David judicially. "It shows, even
in the card."
"And a remarkable ear," added Dick, "so small and so close to her
head."
"I never notice people's ears," confessed David.
"Don't you? I do, and eyelashes, too. Mother's got Letty's eyelashes
down fine.--She's changed, Dave, Letty has! That hurts me. She was
always so gay and chirpy. In this picture she has a sad, far-away,
listening look, but mother may have put that in just to make it
interesting."
"Or perhaps I've had something to do with the change of expression!"
thought David. "What attracted me first," he added, "was your
mother's verses. She always had a knack of being pious without
cramming piety down your throat. I liked that open door. It meant
welcome, no matter how little you'd deserved it."
"Where'd you get your card, Dave?" asked Dick. "It's prettier than
mine."
"A nurse brought it to me in the hospital just because she took a
fancy to it. She didn't know it would mean anything to me, but it
did--a relapse!" And David laughed shamedfacedly. "I guess she'll
confine herself to beef tea after this!--Where'd you get yours?"
"Picked it up on a dentist's mantelpiece when I was waiting for an
appointment. I was traveling round the room, hands in my pockets, when
suddenly I saw this card standing up against an hour-glass. The color
caught me. I took it to the window, and at first I was puzzled. It
certainly was Letty's house. The door's open you see and there's
somebody in the window. I knew it was Letty, but how could any card
publisher have found the way to Beulah? Then I discovered mother's
initials snarled up in holly, and remembered that she was always
painting and illuminating."
"Queer job, life is!" said David, putting his card back in his pocket
and wishing there were a little more time, or that he had a little
more courage, so that he might confide in Dick Larrabee. He felt a
desire to tell him some of the wretchedness he had lived through. It
would be a comfort just to hint that his unhappiness had made him a
coward, so that the very responsibilities that serve as a spur to
some men had left him until now cold, unstirred, unvitalized.
"You're right!" Dick answered. "Life is a queer job and it doesn't do
to shirk it. And just as queer as anything in life is the way that
mother's Christmas cards brought us back to Beulah! They acted as a
sort of magic, didn't they?--Jiminy! I believe the next station is
Beulah. I hope the depot team will be hitched up."
"Yes, here we are; seven o'clock and the train only thirty-five
minutes late. It always made a point of that on holidays!"
"Never mind!" And Dick's tone was as gay as David's was sober. "The
bean-pot will have gone back to the cellarway and the doughnuts to the
crock, but the 'folks back home' 'll get 'em out for us, and a mince
pie, too, and a cut of sage cheese."
"There won't be any 'folks back home,' we're so late, I'm thinking.
There's always a Christmas Eve festival at the church, you know. They
never change--in Beulah."
"Then, by George, they can have me for Santa Claus!" said Dick as they
stepped out on the platform. "Why, it doesn't seem cold at all; yet
look at the ice on the river! What skating, and what a moon! My
blood's up, and if I find the parsonage closed, I'll follow on to the
church and make my peace with the members. There's a kind of spell on
me! For the first time in years I feel as though I could shake hands
with Deacon Todd."
"Well, Merry Christmas to you, Dick,--I'm going to walk. Good
gracious! Have you come to spend the winter?" For various bags and
parcels were being flung out on the platform with that indifference
and irresponsibility that bespeak the touch of the seasoned
baggage-handler.
"You didn't suppose I was coming back to Beulah empty-handed, on
Christmas Eve, did you? If I'm in time for the tree, I'm going to give
those blue-nosed, frost-bitten little youngsters something to
remember! Jump in, Dave, and ride as far as the turn of the road."
In a few minutes the tottering old sign-board that marked the way to
Beulah Center hove in sight, and David jumped from the sleigh to take
his homeward path.
"Merry Christmas again, Dick!" he waved.
"Same to you, Dave! I'll come myself to say it to Letty the first
minute I see smoke coming from your chimney to-morrow morning. Tell
her you met me, will you, and that my visit is partly for her, only
that father had to have his turn first. She'll know why. Tell her
mother's card had Christmas magic in it, tell--"
"Say, tell her the rest yourself, will you, Dick?" And Dave broke into
a run down the hill road that led to Letty.
"I will, indeed!" breathed Dick into his muffler.
[Illustration]
VII
Repeating history, Letty was again at her open window. She had been
half-ashamed to reproduce the card, as it were, but something impelled
her. She was safe from scrutiny, too, for everybody had gone to the
tree--the Pophams, Mr. Davis, Clarissa Perry, everybody for a quarter
of a mile up and down the street, and by now the company would be
gathered and the tree lighted. She could keep watch alone, the only
sound being that of the children's soft breathing in the next room.
Letty had longed to go to the festival herself, but old Clarissa
Perry, who cared for the twins now and then in Letty's few absences,
had a niece who was going to "speak a piece," and she yearned to be
present and share in the glory; so Letty was kept at home as she had
been numberless other times during the three years of her vicarious
motherhood.
The night was mild again, as in the year before. The snow lay like
white powder on the hard earth; the moon was full, and the street was
a length of dazzling silence. The lighted candle was in the parlor
window, shining toward the meeting-house, the fire burned brightly on
the hearth, the front door was ajar. Letty wrapped her old cape round
her shoulders, drew her hood over her head, and seating herself at
the window repeated under her breath:--
"My door is on the latch to-night,
The hearth-fire is aglow.
I seem to hear swift passing feet,
The Christ Child in the snow.
"My heart is open wide to-night
For stranger, kith, or kin;
I would not bar a single door
Where Love might enter in!"
And then a footstep, drawing ever nearer, sounded crunch, crunch, in
the snow. Letty pushed her chair back into the shadow. The footstep
halted at the gate, came falteringly up the path, turned aside, and
came nearer the window. Then a voice said: "Don't be frightened Letty,
it's David! Can I come in? I haven't any right to, except that it's
Christmas Eve."
That, indeed, was the magic, the all-comprehending phrase that swept
the past out of mind with one swift stroke: the acknowledgment of
unworthiness, the child-like claim on the forgiving love that should
be in every heart on such a night as this. Resentment melted away like
mist before the sun. Her deep grievance--where had it gone? How could
she speak anything but welcome? For what was the window open, the fire
lighted, the door ajar, the guiding candle-flame, but that Love, and
David, might enter in?
There were few words at first; nothing but close-locked hands and wet
cheeks pressed together. Then Letty sent David into the children's
room by himself. If the twins were bewitching when awake, they were
nothing short of angelic when asleep.
[Illustration: "I NEVER THOUGHT OF THEM AS MY CHILDREN BEFORE"]
David came out a little later, his eyes reddened with tears, his hair
rumpled, his face flushed. He seemed like a man awed by an entirely
new experience. He could not speak, he could only stammer brokenly:--
"As God is my witness, Letty, there's been something wrong with me up
to this moment. I never thought of them as my children before, and I
can't believe that such as they can belong to me. They were never
wanted, and I've never had any interest in them. I owe them to you,
Letty; you've made them what they are; you, and no one else."
"If there hadn't been something there to build on, my love and care
wouldn't have counted for much. They're just like dear mother's people
for good looks and brains and pretty manners: they're pure Shirley all
the way through, the twinnies are."
"It's lucky for me that they are!" said David humbly. "You see,
Letty, I married Eva to keep my promise. If I was old enough to make
it, I was old enough to keep it, so I thought. She never loved me, and
when she found out that I didn't love her any longer she turned
against me. Our life together was awful, from beginning to end, but
she's in her grave, and nobody'll ever hear my side, now that she
can't tell hers. When I looked at those two babies the day I left you,
I thought of them only as retribution; and the vision of them--ugly,
wrinkled, writhing little creatures--has been in my mind ever since."
"They were compensation, not retribution, David. I ought to have told
you how clever and beautiful they were, but you never asked and my
pride was up in arms. A man should stand by his own flesh and blood,
even if it isn't attractive; that's what I believe."
"I know, I know! But I've had no feeling for three years. I've been
like a frozen man, just drifting, trying to make both ends meet, my
heart dead and my body full of pain. I'm just out of a hospital--two
months in all."
"David! Why didn't you let me know, or send for me?"
"Oh, it was way out in Missouri. I was taken ill very suddenly at the
hotel in St. Joseph and they moved me at once. There were two
operations first and last, and I didn't know enough to feed myself
most of the time."
"Poor, poor Buddy! Did you have good care?"
"The best. I had more than care. Ruth Bentley, the nurse that brought
me back to life, made me see what a useless creature I was."
Some woman's instinct stirred in Letty at a new note in her brother's
voice and a new look in his face. She braced herself for his next
words, sure that they would open a fresh chapter. The door and the
window were closed now, the shades pulled down, the fire low; the hour
was ripe for confidences.
"You see, Letty,"--and David cleared his throat nervously, and looked
at the coals gleaming behind the Hessian soldiers,--"it's a time for a
thorough housecleaning, body, mind, and soul, a long illness is; and
Miss Bentley knew well enough that all was wrong with me. I mentioned
my unhappy marriage and told her all about you, but I said nothing
about the children."
"Why should you?" asked Letty, although her mind had leaped to the
reason already.
"Well, I was a poor patient in one of the cheapest rooms; broken in
health, without any present means of support. I wanted to stand well
with her, she had been so good to me, and I thought if she knew about
the twins she wouldn't believe I could ever make a living for three."
"Still less for _four_!" put in Letty, with an irrepressible note of
teasing in her tone.
She had broken the ice. Like a torrent set free, David dashed into the
story of the last two months and Ruth Bentley's wonderful influence.
How she had recreated him within as well as without. How she was the
best and noblest of women, willing to take a pauper by the hand and
brace him up for a new battle with life.
"Strength appeals to me," confessed David. "Perhaps it's because I am
weak; for I'm afraid I am, a little!"
"Be careful, Davy! Eva was strong!"
David shuddered. He remembered a strength that lashed and buffeted and
struck and overpowered.
"Ruth is different," he said. "'Out of the strong came forth
sweetness' used to be one of Parson Larrabee's texts. That's Ruth's
kind of strength.--Can I--will you let me bring her here to see you,
Letty,--say for New Year's? It's all so different from the last time I
asked you. Then I knew I was bringing you nothing but sorrow and pain,
but Ruth carries her welcome in her face."
The prop inside of Letty wavered unsteadily for a moment and then
stood in its accustomed upright position.
"Why not?" she asked. "It's the right thing to do; but you must tell
her about the children first."
"Oh! I did that long ago, after I found out that she cared. It was
only at first that I didn't dare. I haven't told you, but she went out
for her daily walk and brought me home a Christmas card, the prettiest
one she could find, she said. I was propped up on pillows, as weak as
a kitten. I looked at it and looked at it, and when I saw that it was
this room, the old fireplace and mother's picture, and the Hessian
soldier andirons, when I realized there was a face at the window and
that the door was ajar,--everything just swam before me and I fainted
dead away. I had a relapse, and when I was better again I told her
everything. She's fond of children. It didn't make any difference,
except for her to say that the more she had to do for me, the more she
wanted to do it."
"Well," said Letty with a break in her voice, "that's love, so far as
I can see, and if you've been lucky enough to win it, take it and be
thankful, and above all, nurse and keep it.--So one of Reba's cards,
the one the publisher thought would never sell, found you and brought
you back! How wonderful! We little thought of that, Reba and I!"
"Reba's work didn't stop there, Letty! There was so much that had to
be said between you and me, just now, that I couldn't let another
subject creep in till it was finished and we were friends;--but Dick
Larrabee saw Reba's card about 'the folks back home' in Chicago and
he bought a ticket for Beulah just as I did. We met in the train and
compared notes."
"Dick Larrabee home?"
The blood started in Letty's heart and sped hither and thither,
warming her from head to foot.
"Yes, looking as fit as a fiddle; the way a man looks when things are
coming his way."
"But what did the card mean to him? Did he seem to like Reba's
verses?"
"Yes, but I guess the card just spelled home to him; and he recognized
this house in a minute, of course. I showed him my card and he said:
'That's Letty fast enough: I know the cape.' He recognized you in a
minute, he said."
He knew the cape! Yes, the old cape had been close to his shoulder
many a time. He liked it and said it matched her hair.
"He was awfully funny about your ear, too! I told him I never noticed
women's ears, and he said he did, when they were pretty, and their
eyelashes, too.--Anything remarkable about your eyelashes, Letty?"
"Nothing that I'm aware of!" said Letty laughingly, although she was
fibbing and she knew it.
"And he said he'd call and say 'Merry Christmas' to you the first
thing to-morrow; that he would have been here to-night but you'd know
his father had to come first. You don't mind being second to the
parson, do you?"
No, Letty didn't mind. Her heart was unaccountably light and glad,
like a girl's heart. It was the Eve of Mary when all women are blest
because of one. The Wise Men brought gifts to the Child; Letty had
often brought hers timidly, devoutly, trustfully, and perhaps to-night
they were coming back to her!
[Illustration]
VIII
"Put the things down on the front steps," said Dick to the driver as
he neared the parsonage. "If there's nobody at home I'll go on up to
the church after I've got this stuff inside."
"Got a key?"
"No, don't need one. I've picked all the locks with a penknife many a
time. Besides, the key is sure to be under the doormat. Yes, here it
is! Of all the unaccountable customs I ever knew, that's the most
laughable!"
"Works all right for you!"
"Yes, and for all the other tramps,"--and Dick opened the door and
lifted in his belongings. "Good-night," he called to the driver; "I'll
walk up to the church after I've found out whether mother keeps the
mince pie and cider apple sauce in the same old place."
A few minutes later, his hunger partially stayed, Dick Larrabee locked
the parsonage door and took the well-trodden path across the church
common. It was his father's feet, he knew, that had worn the shoveled
path so smooth; his kind, faithful feet that had sped to and fro on
errands of mercy, never faltering in all the years.
It was nearly eight o'clock. The sound of the melodeon, with
children's voices, floated out from the white-painted meeting-house,
all ablaze with light; or as much ablaze as a kerosene chandelier and
six side lamps could make it. The horse sheds were crowded with teams
of various sorts, the horses well blanketed and standing comfortably
in straw; and the last straggler was entering the right-hand door of
the church as Dick neared the steps. Simultaneously the left-hand door
opened, and on the background of the light inside appeared the figure
of Mrs. Todd, the wife of his ancient enemy, the senior deacon. Dick
could see that a sort of dressing-room had been curtained off in the
little entry, as it had often been in former times of tableaux and
concerts and what not. Valor, not discretion, was the better policy,
and walking boldly up to the steps Dick took off his fur cap and
said, "Good-evening, Mrs. Todd!"