Leona Dalrymple - When the Yule Log Burns
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Leona Dalrymple >> When the Yule Log Burns
Muggs emitted one blood-curdling shriek of delight, clapped his hand
over his mouth and began to swell about the cheeks. Then he stepped on
the hem of his night-gown and fell sprawling at Annie's feet.
"Dear me," said Annie vexedly, though she righted him with kindly hands,
"I can't for the life of me make out what ails that child. He acts so
mortal queer at times, an' he's ready to swell up over nothing at all."
With the advent of Aunt Ellen, Christmas packages began to lose twine
and paper, and what the packages lost the sitting-room speedily gained
in disorder. For here were warm suits and overcoats, shoes and stockings
and sweaters and caps, skates and horns and whistles and drums,
home-made pop-corn and candy, oranges--ah! well, sensible gifts in
plenty, and foolish gifts that were wiser than Solomon for they included
a boy's heart as well as his body.
In a lull all eyes turned to Muggs. His pockets were crammed with
pop-corn and candy. One arm was quite as full of toys as he could pack
it--the other had begun the day's conveyance of food from hand to mouth,
but he was regarding a very small, warm suit of clothes and substantial
boots with dangerously quivering lips. Nor could one misinterpret his
disapproval. For a moment the startled Doctor fancied he heard Mike hiss
the astonishing words "Mom Murphy!" but by the time he had wheeled
about, Muggs, with circular eyes of terror, had begun to swell.
"That child," said Annie, "has something on his mind. Don't tell me! I
know it."
The inevitable blare of racket came all too soon. Horns and whistles and
drums united in a deafening blast, and if thanks did not come easily to
the lips of boys, noise did. Nor could Muggs at any time thereafter be
separated from a shoulder drum upon which he had beaten with insane and
single-minded concentration even after the din was past and a hungry
hint of breakfast in the air. Lacking one outlet of expression he had
seized upon another. He drummed his way fiercely upstairs, to dress, and
he drummed his way down to breakfast, a ridiculous self-consciousness in
his small face whenever he glanced at his new suit of clothes. Small as
it was it engulfed him utterly.
"Jim!" said the Doctor suddenly. "You're not limping!"
Jim hung his head and glanced at his shining new shoes.
"No, sir!" he said and gulped.
"Bless me," said the Doctor, adjusting his spectacles, "I thought you
were lame and if I hadn't forgotten it last night you'd have had no
skates this morning."
"I didn't have no heel on one shoe," blurted Jim in confusion, and
Roger, in relief, hoorayed himself into hoarseness.
But Jim, like Muggs, was something of a mystery, and after a time the
Doctor, with a sigh, abandoned his effort to break through the boy's
sullen shyness. Still Jim was the first at the chopping block when Annie
wanted wood, and when the task took on something of the charm of Tom
Sawyer's fence by reason of a winter wren, so tame from overfeeding that
he perched himself now and then upon the handle of the ax, Jim fell back
with resentment and resigned the ax to Marty Fay who spat upon his
hands, doubled up his fists, sparred, in an excess of good spirits, with
an invisible antagonist, and thereafter made the chips fly so fast that
the little wren departed.
Already there were great Christmas bunches of oats upon glistening trees
and fences, but, while Asher was carrying double portions of food to
cattle and horses, to Toby, the cat, and Rover, the dog, the Doctor went
about, with an eager pack of boys at his heels, distributing further
Christmas largess for his feathered friends--suet and crumbs and seed.
For there were chickadees in the clump of red cedars by the barn, and
juncos and nuthatches, white-throated sparrows and winter wrens, all so
frank in their overtures to the Doctor that the boys with one accord
closed threateningly around Muggs to keep him from drumming the birds
into flight. Jim fastened a great chunk of suet to a tree-trunk and very
soon a red-breasted nuthatch was busy with his Christmas breakfast.
Altogether Roger's bang-up Christmas began with terrific bustle, with
Annie, from whose kitchen already floated odors that set the insatiable
Muggs to sniffing, by far the busiest of them all.
The grandfather's clock struck ten. It found the old farmhouse deserted
save for Annie in the kitchen and Aunt Ellen in her rocking chair by the
sitting-room window. The Doctor was guiding his guests to the Deacon's
pond.
New skates, new sweaters, and a pond as smooth as glass! What wonder
then that Roger's trembling fingers bungled his straps, and Jim,
kneeling, fastened them on with nimble fingers.
"Ain't ye never skated?"
"No--I--I been lame. Oh, hurry, Jim! See, Mike's flyin' down the pond
like wind!"
Jim's eyes softened.
"I'll teach ye," he said.
As for the Doctor he had disinterred an ancient pair of skates from the
attic, and presently he began to perform pedal convolutions of such
startling design and eccentricity that the boys gathered about him and
cheered until, seating himself unexpectedly in the center of a
particularly wide and airy flourish, he flatly told the boys to run
about their business.
Now Muggs, though he carried upon his shoulder a ridiculous pair of
elfin skates, was much too small a boy, his brother thought, to embark
upon the ice, wherefore he stood like a sentinel upon the shore and
drummed and ate incessantly, until an orange catapulted from an
overcrowded pocket, when he pursued it with a roar.
The peal of the village town-clock striking twelve came all too soon,
but homing was no task with a turkey at the end. Muggs, still wrapped in
mysterious silence, knew the very spot where Christmas odors began to
permeate the frosty air and redoubled the speed in his drumming arm, but
when after a vigorous scrubbing his glistening eye fell upon the
holly-bright table and an enormous turkey by the Doctor's plate, only a
frosty menace in Mike's eye, it seemed, restrained another
blood-curdling shriek of delight. There was paralyzing apology in his
eyes as Mike's lips formed the soundless threat--"Mom Murphy!"
"He's holdin' himself in," said Annie, "Mister Muggs, give me the drum!
Ye'll not crowd into the chair with that upon your shoulder!"
It seemed that Mister Muggs would. He began to swell. He began to drum.
He carried his point and crammed himself and his drum into his chair at
the table. He did not speak. Neither, from that time on, did he permit
any lapse in his industry. What Muggs did, from drum to drum-sticks, he
did well.
Muggs ate turkey and mashed turnips. Muggs ate potatoes, cranberry
sauce, boiled onions, and quite a little celery. He glinted ahead at a
pie on the sideboard, seemed to make hurried structural calculations,
and pushed his plate again toward the turkey. Aunt Ellen looked at the
Doctor and the Doctor looked at Muggs.
"If the child eats any more," said Annie bluntly from the kitchen door,
"he must have a pill. 'Tis enough for him to drum away the peace of the
Christmas day without stuffin' himself that hard and round ye fear for
his buttons. An' to my mind, if he'd talk more and eat less, he'd not be
in such danger o' burstin'."
Mike looked slightly agitated.
"Muggs," said the Doctor firmly, "it comes to this. More turkey--one
pill. No turkey--no pill."
Muggs exhibited a capacity for instant decision. With stubby forefinger
rigid, he shoved his plate a little closer to the turkey.
IV
The Log at Twilight
There was a straw-ride in the farm sleigh after dinner, a story or two
by the Yule log when the twilight closed in and Annie had lit the
Christmas candles on the tree, and then as the boys were romping in a
game of Roger's the Doctor slipped away to his study for a quiet hour
with a book. His lamp was barely lighted and the book upon his knee when
the door opened and Jim stood before him, his face so white and strained
that the Doctor laid aside his book, thinking instantly, of course, that
here again was too much turkey.
Jim hung his head, one toe burrowing in the carpet.
"Doctor John!" he burst forth hoarsely.
"Yes?"
Jim gulped.
"I--I been in _jail_!"
The Doctor looked once at Jim's face, quivering in an agony of shame,
and hastily wiped his glasses. In the quiet came the laughter of romping
boys.
"Why," said the Doctor very gently, "did you tell me?"
Something in the kindly voice opened the flood-gates of a boy's sore
heart. Jim's mouth quivered piteously, then he broke down and hid his
face behind his elbow, sobbing wildly.
"I wanta be square," he cried passionately, "I wanta be square like
you've been to us, an'--an Luke said ye might not want a jail-bird here
for Christmas. I--stole--coal--for mom--"
It was the old tale, one boy caught, paying for the petty thievery of
the score who ran away. The Doctor heard the mumbled tale to the end and
cleared his throat.
"And so," he said slowly, "you wanted to be square. That's the finest
thing I've heard this Christmas day. Wanted to be square. Well, well!"
His hand was on Jim's shoulder now. "Jim, I wonder if you could come
back to me next Christmas and tell me you'd been absolutely straight--"
"Here!" said Jim in a choking whisper, his eyes blazing through his
tears, "again--for _Christmas_!"
Somewhere on a snowy page a Christmas angel wrote: "One boy saved by the
spirit of a country Christmas!"
"Here," repeated the Doctor, "again--for Christmas." He opened the
door. "Run along, now, Jim," he said kindly, "or the boys will miss
you."
Jim's final words were very queer.
"Doctor John," he blurted, "I--I'm a goin' to send poor little Muggs."
The Doctor was devoutly hoping that Muggs had never been in jail for
stealing food or drums, when Muggs himself appeared clinging desperately
to the hand of Mike. He seemed on the verge of a lachrymose explosion.
Mike's face was very red but it was also very hopeful.
"Jim said to tell ye," he mumbled. "She ain't never had no Christmas an'
the minister he said the order was all boys an'--an' she cried, so Mom
said bring her anyway in my ol' suit--you'd never know,
an'--an'--an'--Oh, my gosh!" finished Mike tragically, "Muggs is a girl.
Her--her name's C-c-c-c-clara!"
The Doctor jumped. So did Muggs. The lachrymose explosion came and the
drum slipped down from the shoulder of Muggs with a clatter.
"Don't wanta go home!" came the heartbroken wail, "don't wanta go home.
Mom Murphy'll git me."
"I--I tol' her," explained Mike uncomfortably, "that she mustn't open
her mouth once--jus' act deaf an' dumb or you'd guess maybe an' send
her home an' Mom Murphy'd git her. An'--an'--she must take a drum like a
boy--"
Literal Muggs! Heaven alone knew by what other blood-thirsty threats
than Mom Murphy Mike had encompassed the stony silence and frenzied
drumming of the little sister who had never had a Christmas.
"But why," burst forth the despairing Doctor. "In heaven's
name--why--Muggs?"
"She makes such awful faces," said Mike apologetically. "Mom don't know
what makes her that way." And then as Muggs was at the climax of one of
the spasms that had won her her name, the Doctor suddenly lifted her in
gentle arms and tossed her to the ceiling.
"Poor, poor little kiddy!" he said huskily. "What a price she's paid for
her Christmas."
But Muggs had forgotten the price. Though it had been a hard day the
Doctor's eyes were kind and twinkly. Muggs buried her flushed and
tearful little face on his shoulder with a sigh of content. He saw now
that one knot of ribbon on the tousled, sunny curls would have told the
story, then he glanced at the bagging suit and opened the door. Muggs
went forth upon the Doctor's shoulder.
"Asher," cried the Doctor, "hitch old Polly to the sleigh and telephone
Sam Remsen that he can oblige me for once and open his store."
"Ye--ye ain't goin' to send her home, are ye?" faltered Mike.
"I'm going," cried the Doctor, "to buy Clara Muggs a dress and a doll.
It's her night."
The boys cheered.
