he time intervening before his return to help with the tree was spent by Van Landing in a certain establishment where jewels were kept and in telephoning Peterkin; and the orders to Peterkin were many. At four o'clock he was back at Mother McNeil's.
In the double parlor of the old-fashioned house, once the home of wealth and power, the tree was already in place, and around it, in crowded confusion, were boxes and barrels, and bundles and toys, and clothes and shoes, and articles of unknown name and purpose, and for a moment he hesitated. Hands in his pockets, he looked first at Mother McNeil and then at a little lame boy on the floor beside an open trunk, out of which he was taking gaily-colored ornaments and untangling yards of tinsel; and then he looked at Frances, who, with a big apron over her black dress, with its soft white collar open at the throat, was holding a pile of empty stockings in her hands.
"You are just in time, my son." Mother McNeil beamed warmly at the uninvited visitor. "When a man can be of service, it's let him serve, I say, and if you will get that step-ladder over there and fix this angel on the top of the tree it will save time. Jenkins has gone for more tinsel and more bread. We didn't intend at first to have sandwiches and chocolate—just candy and nuts and things like that—but it's so cold and snowy Frances thought something good and hot would taste well. You can slice the bread, Mr. Van Landing. Four sandwiches apiece for the boys and three for the girls are what we allow." She looked around. "Hand him that angel, Frances, and show him where to put it. I've got to see about the cakes."
Never having fastened an angel to the top of a tree, for a half-moment Van Landing was uncertain how to go about it, fearing exposure of ignorance and awkwardness; then with a quick movement he was up the ladder and looking down at the girl who was handing him a huge paper doll dressed in the garments supposedly worn by the dwellers of mansions in the sky, and as he took it he laughed.
"This is a very worldly-looking angel. She apparently enjoys the blowing of her trumpet. Stand off, will you, and see if that's right?" Van Landing fastened the doll firmly to the top of the tree. "Does she show well down there?"
It was perfectly natural that he should be here and helping. True, he had never heard of Mother McNeil and her home until two nights before, never had dressed a Christmas tree before, or before gone where he was not asked, but things of that sort no longer mattered. What mattered was that he had found Frances, that it was the Christmas season, and he was at last learning the secret of its hold on human hearts and sympathies. There was no time to talk, but as he looked he watched, with eyes that missed no movement that she made, the fine, fair face that to him was like no other on earth, and, watching, he wondered if she, too, wondered at the naturalness of it all.
The years that had passed since he had seen her had left their imprint. She had known great sorrow, also she had traveled much, and, though about her were the grace and courage of old, there was something else, something of nameless and compelling appeal, and he knew that she, too, knew the loneliness of life.
Quickly they worked, and greater and greater grew the confusion of the continually appearing boxes and bundles, and, knee-deep, Mother McNeil surveyed them, hands on her hips, and once or twice she brushed her eyes.
"It's always the way, my son. If you trust people they will not fail you. When we learn how to understand there will be less hate and more help in the world. Jenkins, bring that barrel of apples and box of oranges over here and get a knife for Mr. Van Landing to cut the bread for the sandwiches. It's time to make them. Matilda, call Abraham in. He can slice the ham and cheese. There must be plenty. Boys are hollow. Frances, have you seen my scissors?"
Out of what seemed hopeless confusion and chaotic jumbling, out of excited coming and going, and unanswered questions, and slamming of doors, and hurried searchings, order at last evolved, and, feeling very much as if he'd been in a football match, Van Landing surveyed the rooms with a sense of personal pride in their completeness. Around the tree, placed between the two front windows, were piled countless packages, each marked, and from the mantelpiece hung a row of bulging stockings, reinforced by huge mounds of the same on the floor, guarded already by old Fetch-It. Holly and cedar gave color and fragrance, and at the uncurtained windows wreaths, hung by crimson ribbons, sent a welcome to the waiting crowd outside.
If he were not here he would be alone, with nothing to do. And Christmas eve alone! He drew in his breath and looked at Frances. In her face was warm, rich color, and her eyes were gay and bright, but she was tired. She would deny it if asked. He did not have to ask. If only he could take her away and let her rest!
She was going up-stairs to change her dress. Half-way up the steps he called her, and, leaning against the rail of the banisters, he looked up at her.
"When you come down I must see you, Frances—and alone. I shall wait here for you."
"I cannot see you alone. There will be no time."
"Then we must make time. I tell you I must see you." Something in her eyes made him hesitate. He must try another way. "Listen, Frances. I want you to do me a favor. There's a young girl in my office, my stenographer, who is to be married to-morrow to my head clerk. She is from a little town very far from here and has no relatives, no intimate friends near enough to go to. She lives in a boarding-house, and she can't afford to go home to be married. I have asked Herrick to bring her to my apartment to-morrow and marry her there. I would like her to have—Carmencita and her father are coming, and I want you to come, too. It would make things nicer for her. Will you come—you and Mother McNeil?"
Over the banisters the beautiful eyes looked down into Van Landing's. Out of them had gone guarding. In them was that which sent the blood in hot surge through his heart. "I would love to come, but I am going out of town to-morrow—going—"
"Home?" In Van Landing's voice was unconcealed dismay. The glow of Christmas, new and warm and sweet, died sharply, leaving him cold and full of fear. "Are you going home?"
She shook her head. "I have no home. That is why I am going away to-morrow. Mother McNeil will have her family here, and I'd be—I'd be an outsider. It's everybody's home day—and when you haven't a home—"
She turned and went a few steps farther on to where the stairs curved, then suddenly she sat down and crumpled up and turned her face to the wall. With leaps that took the steps two at a time Van Landing was beside her.
"Frances!" he said, "Frances!" and in his arms he held her close. "You've found out, too! Thank God, you've found out, too!"
Below, a door opened and some one was in the hall. Quickly Frances was on her feet. "You must not, must not, Stephen—not here!"
"Goodness gracious! they've done made up."
At the foot of the steps Carmencita, as if paralyzed with delight, stood for a moment, then, shutting tight her eyes, ran back whence she came; at the door she stopped.
"Carmencita! Carmencita!" It was Van Landing's voice. She turned her head. "Come here, Carmencita. I have something to tell you."
Eyes awed and shining, Carmencita came slowly up the steps. Reaching them, with a spring she threw her arms around her dear friend's neck and kissed her lips again and again and again, then held out her hands to the man beside her. "Is—is it to be to-morrow, Mr. Van?"
"It is to be to-morrow, Carmencita."
For a half-moment there was quivering silence; then Van Landing spoke again. "There are some things I must attend to to-night. Early to-morrow I will come for you, Frances, and in Dr. Pierson's church we will be married. Herrick and Miss Davis are coming at one o'clock, and my—wife must be there to receive them. And you, too, Carmencita—you and your father. We are going to have—" Van Landing's voice was unsteady. "We are going to have Christmas at home, Frances. Christmas at home!"
CHAPTER XVI
ifting herself on her elbow, Carmencita listened. There was no sound save the ticking of the little clock on the mantel. For a moment she waited, then with a swift movement of her hand threw back the covering on the cot, slipped from it, and stood, barefooted, in her nightgown, in the middle of the floor. Head on the side, one hand to her mouth, the other outstretched as if for silence from some one unseen, she raised herself on tiptoe and softly, lightly, crossed the room to the door opening into the smaller room wherein her father slept. Hand on the knob, she listened, and, the soft breathing assuring her he was asleep, she closed the door, gave a deep sigh of satisfaction, and hurried back to the cot, close to which she sat down, put on her stockings, and tied on her feet a pair of worn woolen slippers, once the property of her prudent and practical friend, Miss Cattie Burns. Slipping on her big coat over her gown, she tiptoed to the mantel, lighted the candle upon it, and looked at the clock.
"Half past twelve," she said, "and Father's stocking not filled yet!"
As she got down from the chair on which she had stood to see the hour her foot caught in the ripped hem of her coat. She tripped, and would have fallen had she not steadied herself against the table close to the stove, and as she did so she laughed under her breath.
"Really this kimono is much too long." She looked down on the loosened hem. "And I oughtn't to wear my best accordion-pleated pale-blue crêpe de Chine and shadow lace when I am so busy. But dark-gray things are so unbecoming, and, besides, I may have a good deal of company to-night. The King of Love and the Queen of Hearts may drop in, and I wouldn't have time to change. Miss Lucrecia Beck says I'm going to write a book when I'm big, I'm so fond of making up and of love-things. She don't know I've written one already. If he hadn't happened to be standing on that corner looking so—so—I don't know what, exactly, but so something I couldn't help running down and asking him to come up—I never would have had the day I've had to-day and am going to have to-morrow."
Stooping, she pinned the hem of her coat carefully, then, stretching out her arms, stood on her tiptoes and spun noiselessly round and round. "Can't help it!" she said, as if to some one who objected. "I'm so glad I'm living, so glad I spoke to him, and know him, that I'm bound to let it out. Father says I mustn't speak to strangers; but I'd have to be dead not to talk, and I didn't think about his being a man. He looked so lonely."
With quick movements a big gingham apron was tied over the bulky coat, and, putting the candle on the table in the middle of the room, Carmencita began to move swiftly from cot to cupboard, from chairs to book-shelves, and from behind and under each bundles and boxes of varying sizes were brought forth and arrayed in rows on the little table near the stove. As the pile grew bigger so did her eyes, and in her cheeks, usually without color, two spots burned deep and red. Presently she stood off and surveyed her work and, hands clasped behind, began to count, her head nodding with each number.
"Thirteen big ones and nineteen little ones," she said, "and I don't know a thing that's in one of them. Gracious! this is a nice world to live in! I wonder what makes people so good to me? Mrs. Robinsky brought up those six biggest ones to-night." Lightly her finger was laid on each. "She said they were left with her to be sent up to-morrow morning, but there wouldn't be a thing to send if she waited, as the children kept pinching and poking so to see what was in them. I'd like to punch myself. Noodles gave me that." Her head nodded at a queer-shaped package wrapped in brown paper and tied with green cord. "He paid nineteen cents for it. He told me so. I didn't pay but five for what I gave him. He won't brush his teeth or clean his finger-nails, and I told him I wasn't going to give him a thing if he didn't, but I haven't a bit of hold-out-ness at Christmas. I wonder what's in that?"
Cautiously her hand was laid on a box wrapped in white tissue-paper and tied with red ribbons. "I'll hate to open it and see, it looks so lovely and Christmasy, but if I don't see soon I'll die from wanting to know. It rattled a little when I put it on the table. It's Miss Frances's present, and I know it isn't practical. She's like I am. She don't think Christmas is for plain and useful things. She thinks it's for pleasure and pretty ones. I wonder—" Her hands were pressed to her breast, and on tiptoes she leaned quiveringly toward the table. "I wonder if it could be a new tambourine with silver bells on it! If it is I'll die for joy, I'll be so glad! I broke mine to-night. I shook it so hard when I was dancing after I got home from the tree that—Good gracious! I've caught my foot again! These diamond buckles on my satin slippers are always catching the chiffon ruffles on my petticoats. I oughtn't to wear my best things when I'm busy, but I can't stand ugly ones, even to work in. Mercy! it's one o'clock, and the things for Father's stocking aren't out yet."
Out of the bottom drawer of the old-fashioned chest at the end of the room a box was taken and laid on the floor near the stove, into which a small stick of wood was put noiselessly, and carefully Carmencita sat down beside it. Taking off the top of the box, she lifted first a large-size stocking and held it up.
"I wish I was one hundred children's mother at Christmas and had a hundred stockings to fill! I mean, if I had things to fill them with. But as I'm not a mother, just a daughter, I'm thankful glad I've got a father to fill a stocking for. He's the only child I've got. If he could just see how beautiful and red this apple is, and how yellow this orange, and what a darling little candy harp this is, I'd be thankfuler still. But he won't ever see. The doctor said so—said I must be his eyes."
One by one the articles were taken out of the box and laid on the floor; and carefully, critically, each was examined.
"This cravat is an awful color." Carmencita's voice made an effort to be polite and failed. "Mr. Robinsky bought it for father himself and asked me to put it in his stocking, but I hate to put. I'll have to do it, of course, and father won't know the colors, but what on earth made him get a green-and-red plaid? Now listen at me! I'm doing just what Miss Lucrecia does to everything that's sent her. The only pleasure she gets out of her presents is making fun of them and snapping at the people who send them. She's an awful snapper. The Damanarkist sent these cigars. They smell good. He don't believe in Christmas, but he sent Father and me both a present. I hope he'll like the picture-frame I made for his mother's picture. His mother's dead, but he believed in her. She was the only thing he did believe in. A man who don't believe in his mother—Oh, my precious mother!"
With a trembling movement the little locket was taken from the box and opened and the picture in it kissed passionately; then, without warning, the child crumpled up and hot tears fell fast over the quivering face. "I do want you, my mother! Everybody wants a mother at Christmas, and I haven't had one since I was seven. Father tries to fill my stocking, but it isn't a mother-stocking, and I just ache and ache to—to have one like you'd fix. I want—" The words came tremblingly, and presently she sat up.
"Carmencita Bell, you are a baby. Behave—your—self!" With the end of the gingham apron the big blue eyes were wiped. "You can't do much in this world, but you can keep from crying. Suppose Father was to know." Her back straightened and her head went up. "Father isn't ever going to know, and if I don't fill this stocking it won't be hanging on the end of the mantelpiece when he wakes up. The locket must go in the toe."
CHAPTER XVII
n half an hour the stocking, big and bulging, was hung in its accustomed place, the packages for her father put on a chair by themselves, and those for her left on the table, and as she rearranged the latter something about the largest one arrested her attention, and, stopping, she gazed at it with eyes puzzled and uncertain.
It looked—Cautiously her fingers were laid upon it. Undoubtedly it looked like the box in which had been put the beautiful dark-blue coat she had bought for the little friend of her friend. And that other box was the size of the one the two dresses had been put in; and that was a hat-box, and that a shoe-box, and the sash and beads and gloves and ribbons, all the little things, had been put in a box that size. Every drop of blood surged hotly, tremblingly, and with eyes staring and lips half parted her breath came unsteadily.
In the confusion of their coming she had not noticed when Mrs. Robinsky had brought them up and put them under the cot, with the injunction that they were not to be opened until the morning, and for the first time their familiarity was dawning on her. Could it be—could she be the little friend he had said was rich? She wasn't rich. He didn't mean money-rich, but she wasn't any kind of rich; and she had been so piggy.
Hot color swept over her face, and her hands twitched. She had told him again and again she was getting too much, but he had insisted on her buying more, and made her tell him what little girls liked, until she would tell nothing more. And they had all been for her. For her, Carmencita Bell, who had never heard of him three days before.
In the shock of revelation, the amazement of discovery, the little figure at the table stood rigid and upright, then it relaxed and with a stifled sob Carmencita crossed the room and, by the side of her cot, twisted herself into a little knot and buried her face in her arms and her arms in the covering.
"I didn't believe! I didn't believe!"
Over and over the words came tremblingly. "I prayed and prayed, but I didn't believe! He let it happen, and I didn't believe!"
For some moments there were queer movements of twitching hands and twisting feet by the side of the cot, but after a while a tear-stained, awed, and shy-illumined face looked up from the arms in which it had been hidden and ten slender fingers intertwined around the knees of a hunched-up little body, which on the floor drew itself closer to the fire.
It was a wonderful world, this world in which she lived. Carmencita's eyes were looking toward the window, through which she could see the shining stars. Wonderful things happened in it, and quite beyond explaining were these things, and there was no use trying to understand. Two days ago she was just a little girl who lived in a place she hated and was too young to go to work, and who had a blind father and no rich friends or relations, and there was nothing nice that could happen just so.
"But things don't happen just so. They happen—don't anybody know how, I guess." Carmencita nodded at the stars. "I've prayed a good many times before and nothing happened, and I don't know why all this beautifulness should have come to me, and Mrs. Beckwith, who is good as gold, though a poor manager with babies, shouldn't ever have any luck. I don't understand, but I'm awful thankful. I wish I could let God know, and the Christ-child know, how thankful I am. Maybe the way they'd like me to tell is by doing something nice for somebody else. I know. I'll ask Miss Parker to supper Christmas night. She's an awful poky person and needs new teeth, but she says she's so sick of mending pants, she wishes some days she was dead. And I'll ask the Damanarkist. He hasn't anywhere to go, and he hates rich people so it's ruined his stomach. Hate is an awful ruiner."
For some moments longer Carmencita sat in huddled silence, then presently she spoke again.
"I didn't intend to give Miss Cattie Burns anything. I've tried to like Miss Cattie and I can't. But it was very good in her to send us a quarter of a cord of wood for a Christmas present. She can't help being practical. I'll take her that red geranium to-morrow. I raised it from a slip, and I hate to see it go, but it's all I've got to give. It will have to go.
"And to-morrow. I mean to-day—this is Christmas day! Oh, a happy Christmas, everybody!" Carmencita's arms swung out, then circled swiftly back to her heart. "For everybody in all the world I'd make it happy if I could! And I'm going to a wedding to-day—a wedding! I don't wonder you're thrilly, Carmencita Bell!"
For a half-moment breath came quiveringly from the parted lips, then again at the window and the stars beyond the little head nodded.
"But I'll never wonder at things happening any more. I'll just wonder at there being so many nice people on this earth. All are not nice. The Damanarkist says there is a lot of rot in them, a lot of meanness and cheatingness, and nasty people who don't want other people to do well or to get in their way; but there's bound to be more niceness than nastiness, or the world couldn't go on. It couldn't without a lot of love. It takes a lot of love to stand life. I read that in a book. Maybe that's why we have Christmas—why the Christ-child came."
Shyly the curly head was bent on the upraised knees, and the palms of two little hands were uplifted. "O God, all I've got to give is love. Help me never to forget, and put a lot in my heart so I'll always have it ready. And I thank You and thank You for letting such grand things happen. I didn't dream there'd really be a marriage when I asked You please to let it be if you could manage it; but there's going to be two, and I'm going to both. I've got a new dress to wear, and slippers with buckles, and amber beads, and lots of other things. And most of all I thank You for Mr. Van and Miss Frances finding each other. And please don't let them ever lose each other again. They might, even if they are married, if they don't take care. Please help them to take care, for Christ's sake. Amen."
On her feet, Carmencita patted the stocking hanging from the mantel, took off the big coat, kicked the large, loose slippers across the room, blew out the candle, and stood for a moment poised on the tip of her toes.
"If I could"—the words came breathlessly—"if I could I'd dance like the lady I was named for, but it might wake Father. I mustn't wake Father. Good night, everybody—and a merry Christmas to all this nice, big world!"
With a spring that carried her across the room Carmencita was on her cot and beneath its covering, which she drew up to her face. Under her breath she laughed joyously, and her arms were hugged to her heart.
"To-morrow—I mean to-day—I am going to tell them. They don't understand yet. They think it was just an accident." She shook her head. "It wasn't an accident. After they're married I'm going to tell them. Tell them how it happened."