A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others (28 page)

It had come, and--something else had come, too, for steps were heard on the stairs, followed by a knock on the door, on opening which, in came a company of newsboys headed by big Tom. They bore bundles and baskets, provisions and poultry, sunshine and sugar, toys and turnips, good-will and grapes, cheer and celery, and things that no one but those who had lacked for them, would ever have thought of. Big Tom was the spokesman for the happy company.

"If yer please, Mrs. Sandford," he said, "there's our banquet. We wasn't going to come until to-morrow morning, but when we got the things all together, we just couldn't wait any longer, so we've brought 'em to-night, and if it isn't too soon, ma'am, we wishes you, and Will, and Josie, and Maggie, and Tot a 'Merry Christmas,' doesn't we, boys?"

"Indeed we does!" responded the boys. The faces of that mother and her children were a sight to behold. Smiles and tears greeted the boys, and the mother and her three girls had a kiss for each of them. Then Tot said: "I knowed it. I knowed it! De star had Jesus in it, and I knowed He see Maggie and me looking up at it."

"Well, boys," said Mrs. Sandford, "you shall have your banquet, for I want you all to take Christmas dinner with us to-morrow."

"Yes, boys, you shall all take dinner with Mrs. Sandford and her children to-morrow, but it must be at the home of her parents and not here," said a gentleman who had not been noticed as he stood in the hallway.

Mrs. Sandford started as the owner of the voice entered the room, and little Josie sprang toward him at the same moment. She resembled her mother and was her namesake as well. The gentleman stretched out his arms toward Mrs. Sandford as he said to her:

"Josie, can you forgive me for the harshness with which I drove you years ago from my door? God only knows how I have suffered, and for years I have hunted high and low for you, and have advertised time and again. But all was in vain, until to-night I saw your face and heard your voice once more, as my grandchild, Josie, stood singing on the steps and gazing at the star. In her I found you again, and oh, how your mother and I have prayed for this time to come."

Long before he had finished, the daughter was in her father's arms once more, and the children were clinging to their new-found grandparent. The newsboys looked on in wonder, and suddenly little Tot ran to the window and then cried out--"Oh, grandpa, the star is here yet, and it shines brighter than before," and she threw a kiss up to the star.

Christmas morning came and found them all in a home of plenty. A chair that had long stood vacant at that table, was once more filled, and near it were four other chairs for the new-found grand-children. Was it a "Merry Christmas," did you inquire? Just ask those newsboys who came at two o'clock if they ever had such a banquet before or since, or whether they ever saw a home in which the "Star of Bethlehem" shone with greater splendor. And over the earth the star still shines, and will continue to shine until all mankind shall yet have a "Merry Christmas."

INDIAN PETE'S CHRISTMAS GIFT.

BY HERBERT W. COLLINGWOOD.

The moon was just peeping over the pines as Pete Shivershee slunk down the road from the lumber camp into the forest. Pete did not present a surpassingly dignified appearance as he skulked through the clearing, but he was not a very dignified person even at his best.

Most persons would have said, I think, that Pete's method of departure was hardly appropriate for one who had been selected by the citizens of Carter's Camp to go on an important mission. But Pete had his own reasons for his actions. He crept along behind the stumps and logs till he reached the forest. Then, as if the shadow gave him fresh courage and dignity, he drew himself upright, and started at a sharp trot down the road toward the village.

We have said that Pete had reasons for his conduct. They were good ones. In the first place, he was an Indian. Not a "noble son of the forest," such as Cooper loved to picture, but a mean, dirty, yellow-faced "
Injun
." Lazy and worthless, picking up a living about the lumber camps, working as little as he could, and eating and drinking as much as possible: such was the messenger. The mission was worse yet.

It was Christmas Eve. The snow covered the ground, and the ice had stilled for the time the mouth of the roaring river. It was Saturday night as well; and for some time past the lumbermen had been considering the advisability of keeping the good old holiday with some form of celebration suited to the occasion.

The citizens of Carter's Camp were not remarkably fastidious. They knew but one form of celebration, and they had no thought of hunting out new ones. The one thing needful to make a celebration completely successful was--liquor. This they must have in order to do justice to the day.

The temperance laws of Carter's were very strict. Not that the moral sentiment of the place was particularly high, but it had been noticed that the amounts of labor and whisky were in inverse proportion. The more whisky, the less labor. It was a pure question of political economy. The foreman had often stated that he would prosecute to the fullest extent of the law the first man caught bringing whisky into camp. The foreman did not attempt, perhaps, to deny that his knowledge of the law was somewhat crude. He had forcibly stated, however, that should a case be brought before him, he would himself act as judge and jury, while his fist and foot would take the place of witness and counsel. There was something so terrible in this statement, coming as it did from the largest man in camp, that very little whisky had thus far been brought in.

Christmas had come, and the drinking element in Carter's Camp proposed that Pete Shivershee--the "Injun"--be sent to town for a quantity of the liquid poison, that the drinkers might "enjoy" themselves.

Bill Gammon found Pete curled up by the stove. He took him out of doors and explained the business in hand. Bill prided himself somewhat on his ability to "git work out of Injuns." Pete muttered only "all right." He took the money Bill gave him, and then slunk away down the road for the forest, as we have seen him.

* * * * *

Bill felt so confident of the success of his experiment that he did not hesitate to inform the boys that Pete was "dead sure" to return. He would stake his reputation upon it.

Pete was in a hard position. If he loved anything in this world, it was whisky. If there was anything he feared, it was Bill's fist. The two were sure to go together. The money jingling in his pocket suggested unlimited pleasures, but over every one hung Bill's hard fist. He ran several miles through the forest, till, turning a corner of the road, he came upon a little clearing, in which stood a small log house. Pete knew the place well. Here lived Jeff Hunt with his wife, a French woman, and their troop of children.

Jeff was a person of little importance by the side of his wife, though, like all "lords of creation," he considered himself the legal and proper head of the family, as well as one of the mainstays of society. His part of the family government consisted, for the most part, in keeping the house supplied with wood and water, and in smoking his comfortable pipe in the corner, while his wife bent over her tub.

Mrs. Hunt was the only woman near the camp, and so all the laundry work fell to her. Laundry work in the pine woods implies mending and darning, as well as washing and ironing, and the poor little woman had her hands full of work surely. It was rub, rub, rub, day after day, over the steaming tub, with the children running about like little wolves, and Jeff kindly giving his advice from his comfortable corner. And even after the children were in bed at night, she must sit up and mend the clean clothes.

What a pack of children there were! How rough and strong they seemed, running about all day, all but poor little Marie, the oldest. She had never been strong, and now at last she was dying of consumption. She could not sit up at all, but lay all day on the little bed in the corner, watching her mother with sad, beautiful eyes.

The brave little Frenchwoman's heart almost failed her at times, as she saw how day by day the little form grew thinner, the eyes more beautiful, the cheeks more flushed. She knew the signs too well, but there was nothing she could do.

Pete was a regular visitor at Jeff's and always a welcome one. His work was to carry the washing to and from camp. He came nearer to feeling like a man at Jeff's house than at any other place he knew of. Everyone but Mrs. Hunt and little Marie called him only "Injun," but they always said "Mr. Shivershee." The "Meester Shivershee" of the little Frenchwoman was the nearest claim to respectability that Pete felt able to make. One night while carrying home the clothes, he dropped them in the mud. He never minded the whipping Bill Gammon gave him half as much as he did poor Mrs. Hunt's tears, to think how her work had gone for nothing.

As Pete came trotting down the road, Jeff stood in front of his house chopping stove-wood from a great log. A lantern, hung on a stump, provided light for his purpose. Pete stopped from sheer force of habit in front of the house, and Jeff, glad of any chance to interrupt his work, paused to talk with him.

"Walk in, Injun," said Jeff, hospitably. "Yer clo'es ain't quite ready, but the woman will hev 'em all up soon--walk in."

It suddenly came over Pete that this was his night for taking the clothes home, but his present errand was of far more importance than mere laundry work.

"Me no stop. I goin' ter town. Great work. Large bizness." By which vague hints he meant no doubt to impress Jeff with a sense of the dignity of his mission, and yet cunningly to keep its object concealed.

"Goin' to town, be ye? Great doin's ter camp ter-morrer, I s'pose. I'll be round ef I kin git away, but walk in, Injun, an' git yer supper, an' see the wimmin," and Jeff opened the door for Pete to pass in.

The thought of supper was too much for Pete and he slunk in after Jeff and stood in the corner by the door. The room was hardly an inviting one, and yet if Pete had been a white man some thoughts of "home, sweet home," must have passed through his mind. But he was only a despised "Injun."

A rough board table was laid for supper at one side of the room. In the corner little Marie lay with the firelight falling over her poor thin face. Pete must have felt, as he looked at her, like some hopeless convict gazing through his prison bars upon some fair saint passing before him. She seemed to be in another world than his; there seemed between them a gulf that could not be bridged. Three of the larger children were sobbing in the corner, while the rest formed a sorrowful group about an old box in which were two or three simple plants frozen and yellow. Mrs. Hunt was frying pork over the hot stove. As she looked up at Pete, he noticed that she had been crying.

Jeff was the very prince of hosts. He made haste to make Pete feel at home.

"Set by, Injun. So the boys is goin' ter kinder cellybrate ter-morrer, be they?"

But Pete felt that his mission must not be disclosed. "What matter is with kids?" he asked, to change the subject.

"Oh, they're jest a-yellin' about them flowers," explained Jeff. "Ye see they hev been a-trainin' some posies indoors against ter-morrer, ye know. Ter-morrer's Christmas, ye see, an' them kids they hed an idee they'd hev some flowers fer ter dekerate thet corner where the little gal is. Little gals, when they ain't well, like sech things, ye know."

Pete nodded. He was not aware of this love of diminutive females, but it would not show very good breeding to appear ignorant.

"Wall, ye see," continued Jeff, "they kep the flowers away from the little gal, meanin' ter s'prise her like. But jest this afternoon they gut ketched by the frost, an' now there they be stiffer'n stakes. It is kinder bad, ain't it--'specially ez it's Christmas, too?"

"What Crissmus?" put in Pete.

"Oh, Christmas? Wall, it's a sorter
day
like. It's somethin' like other days, an' yet it ain't. But then, Injun, I don't s'pose ye would understand ef I wuz ter tell ye." And Jeff concealed his own ignorance, as many wiser and better men have done, by assuming a tone too lofty for his audience.

But Mrs. Hunt could explain, even if Jeff could not. She paused on the way to the stove with a dish of pork in her hand.

"It eez the day of the good Lord, Meester Shivershee. It eez the day when the good Lord He was born, and when all people should be glad." But the little woman belied her own creed as she thought of little Marie and the dead flowers.

I hardly think Pete gained a very clear idea of the day, even from Mrs. Hunt's explanation. It was, I fear, all Greek to him.

"What flowers fer?" he asked, as, in response to Jeff's polite invitation, he "sat by" and began supper.

"Wall, it's a sorter idee of the wimmin," explained Jeff. "Looks kinder pooty to see flowers round; ye see, kinder slicks up a room like. All these things hez ter come inter keepin' house, ye see, Injun." With which broad explanation Jeff helped himself to a piece of pork.

But Mrs. Hunt was bound to explain too. Her explanation was certainly more poetic.

"It eez the way we show our love for the good Lord, Meester Shivershee. What is more beautiful than the flowers? We take the flowers, and with much love we place them upon the walls, and we make others happy with them, and the good Lord, who loves us all, He is pleased,"--but here, seeing the sobbing children and the frozen plants, she could not help wiping her eyes upon her apron.

The little sufferer on the bed saw this action. Her voice was almost gone. "Never mind, mamma," she whispered; but the beautiful eyes were filled with tears, for she knew that mamma
would
mind--that she could not help it.

Pete listened to all this attentively. "Injun" that he was, of course he could not understand it all, and yet he could hardly help seeing something of the sorrow that the loss of the flowers had brought upon the family. He finished his supper, and then slunk out at the door again. Jeff followed him out.

"Little gal ever git well?" asked Pete.

"No; I don't s'pose she will," answered Jeff. "There ain't no hopes held out fer her. Makes it kinder bad, ye see. Nice, clever little gal as ever lived, too. Stop in an' git yer clo'es when ye come back, will ye?"