he woke to his first christmas. that is, he woke to find a chair drawn up beside his cot and stocked with little presents. he had never had presents before. it had not been his mother's custom to make them. since she gave him what she could afford, and they shared everything in common, presents would have seemed to her superfluous.
but here were half a dozen parcels done up in white paper and tied with red ribbon, and on them he could read his name. at least, he could read tom, while he guessed from the length of the word and initial w that the other name was whitelaw. so he was to be tom whitelaw now! the fact seemed to make a change in his identity. he stowed it away in the back of his mind for later meditation, in order to feast his soul on the mystic bounty of santa claus.
he knew who santa claus was. he had often seen him in the windows of the big stores, surrounded by tempting packages, and driving reindeer harnessed to a sleigh. he knew that he drove over the roofs of houses, down chimneys, and out through grates. somewhere, too, he harbored the suspicion that this was only childish talk, and that the real santa claus must be a father or a mother, or in this case mrs. crewdson; only both childish talk and fact simmered without conflict in his brain. it was easier to think
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that a supernatural goodwill had brought him this profusion than that commonplace hands, which had never done much for him hitherto, should all of a sudden be busy on his behalf.
raising himself on his elbow, his first thought came with the bubbling of a sob. "my mudda is in jail!" his second was in the nature of a corollary, "but she'll like it when i tell her that santa claus took care of her little boy." the deduction gave him permission to enjoy himself.
at first he only gazed in a rapture that hardly guessed at what was beneath these snowy coverings. what he was to get was secondary to the fact that he was getting something. for the first time in his life he was taken into that vast family of boys and girls for whom christmas has significance. up to this morning he had stood outside of it wistfully—yearning, hoping, and yet condemned to stand aloof. now, if his mudda hadn't been in jail....
the parcels were larger and smaller. beginning with the smallest, he arranged them according to size. merely to touch them sent a thrill through his frame. the smallest was round like an orange and yet yielded to pressure. he was almost sure it was a rubber ball. he could have been quite sure, only that he preferred the condition of suspense.
it was long before he could bring himself to untie the first red ribbon bow, his surprise on finding a rubber ball being no less keen than if he hadn't known it was a rubber ball on first taking it between his fingers. a handkerchief laid out flat, making the second parcel seem bigger than it was, sent him up in
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the scale of social promotion. by way of candies, nuts, a toothbrush with tooth paste, he came to the largest of all, a history of mankind, written in words of one syllable, and garnished with highly-colored pictures of various racial types. if only his mother hadn't been in jail....
that his mother was no longer in jail was a fact he learned later in the day. it was a day of extremes, of quick rushes of rapture out of which he would fall suddenly, to go away somewhere and moan. when he begged, as he begged every hour or two, to be taken to the jail, he could be distracted by rompings with the other children, most of them in some such case as his own, or by some novelty in the life. to eat turkey and plum pudding at the head of one of three long tables, each seating twelve or fourteen, was to be raised to a point of social eminence beyond which it seemed there could be nothing more to reach. but in the midst of this pride the hard facts would recur to him, and turkey and plum pudding choke him.
that something had happened he began to infer when his beloved policeman appeared at the home in the afternoon. having seen him enter, the boy ran up to him.
"oh, mister, are you going to take me to the jail?"
mister patted him on the head, though he answered, absently, "not just now, sonny. you know you're goin' to have a christmas tree. i've come to see miss honiton."
miss honiton, one of the day matrons, having appeared at the end of the hall, the policeman turned him about by the shoulders.
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"now be off with you and play. this has got to be private."
he took himself off but only to the end of the hall, where they didn't notice that he lingered. he lingered because he knew that, whatever the mystery, it had something to do with him.
he caught, however, no more than words which he couldn't understand. cyanide of potassium! only his quick ear and retentive memory enabled him to lay hold of syllables so difficult. his mother had taken something or hadn't taken something, he couldn't make out which. all he saw was that both of his friends looked grave, miss honiton summing up their consultation,
"i'll let him enjoy the christmas tree before saying anything about it."
the policeman answered, regretfully: "do you think you must?"
"i know i must. he ought to be told. he has a right to know. he might resent it later if we didn't tell him now."
"very well, sister. i leave it to you."
the door having closed on this friend, tom whitelaw, so to call him henceforth, made his way into the room where the christmas tree was presently to be lighted up. but he had no heart for the spectacle. there was something new. in the grip of the forces which controlled his life he felt helpless, small. even his companions in misfortune, as all these children were, could be relatively light-hearted. they could clap their hands when the tree began to burn with magic fires, and take pleasure in the presents handed
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out to them. he could not. he was waiting for something to be told to him—something he had a right to know.
one by one, the presents were cut from the tree; one by one the children went up to receive this addition to what santa claus had brought them in the morning. his own name was among the last. when it was called he went forward perfunctorily at first, and then with a sudden inspiration.
his package was handed him, not by one of the matrons but by a beaming young lady from outside. as she bent to deliver it he had his question ready.
"please, miss, what's cyanide of potassium?"
he had repeated the words to himself so often during the half hour since first hearing them that he pronounced them distinctly. the young lady laughed.
"why, i think it's a deadly poison." she turned to the matron nearest her. "what is cyanide of potassium? this dear little boy wants to know."
but the dear little boy had already walked soberly back to his seat. while the other children made merry with their presents he sat with his on his lap, and reflected. poison was something that killed people. he knew that. in one of the houses where they had lived a woman had taken poison, and two days later he had seen her carried out in a long black box. the impression had remained with him poignantly.
he had no inclination to cry. tears could bring little relief in this kind of cosmic catastrophe. if his mother had taken poison and was to be carried out in a long black box, everything that had made up his world would have collapsed. he could only wait sub
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missively till the thing he ought to know was told to him.
it was told when the giving of the presents was over, and the children flocked out of the room to get ready for their christmas supper. miss honiton was waiting near the door.
"come into my office, dear. i want to ask you a few questions."
miss honiton's office was a mixture of office and sitting room, in that it had business furniture offset by photographs and knicknacks. sitting at her desk, she turned to the lad, who stood as if to attention, a long thin sympathetic face, stamped with practical acumen.
"i wanted to ask you if besides your mother you have any relations."
his dark blue eyes, deep set beneath his bushy brows, she thought the most serious and earnest she had ever seen in any of the hundreds of homeless little boys she had had to deal with.
"no, miss."
"no brothers or sisters, no uncles or aunts?"
"no, miss."
"didn't your mother ever take you to see anyone?"
"no, miss."
"well, then, didn't anyone ever come to see her?"
"no, miss."
to the point she was trying to reach she went round by another way. where did they live? how long had they lived there? where had they lived before that? how long had they lived in that place? he answered to the best of his recollection, but when
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it came to their flittings from tenement to tenement, and from town to town, his recollection didn't take him very far. miss honiton soon understood that she might as well question a bird as to its migrations.
for a minute she said nothing, turning over in her mind the various ways of breaking her painful news, when he himself asked, suddenly:
"is my mudda dead?"
the question was so direct that she felt it deserved a direct answer.
"yes, dear."
"did she"—he pulled himself together for the big words—"did she take cyanide of potassium?"
"yes, dear; so i understand."
"will they take her away in a long black box?"
"she'll be buried, dear, of course. there'll have to be a funeral somewhere."
"can i go to it?"
"yes, dear, certainly. i'll go with you myself."
he said nothing more, and miss honiton felt the futility of trying to comfort him. there was no opening for comfort in that stony little face. all she could suggest to break the tension was to ask if he wouldn't like his supper.
he went to his supper and ate it. he ate it ruminantly, speechlessly. what had happened to him he could not measure; what was before him he could not probe. all he knew of himself was that he had become a clod of misery, with almost nothing to temper his desolation.
two big tears rolled down his cheeks without his
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being aware of it. they did not, however, escape the eyes of a little girl who sat near him.
"who's a cry-baby?" she shrieked, to the entertainment of the lookers-on. she pointed at him with her spoon. "a grea' big boy like that cryin' for his momma!"
he accepted the scorn as a tonic. "a grea' big boy like that cryin' for his momma," were the words with which he kept many a pang during the next few days from being more than a tearless anguish.
miss honiton was as good as her word as to going with him to the rooms which housed the long black box. this he understood to be all that now represented his mudda. she had tried to explain the place as an "undertaker's parlor," but the words were outside his vocabulary. in the same way the why and the wherefore of the ceremony were outside his intelligence. he and miss honiton went into the dim room, and stood near the thing he heard mentioned as "the body." after some mumbled reading they went out again, and back to the swindon street home.
back in the swindon street home he was still without a wherefore or a why. he got up, he washed, he dressed, he ate, he went to bed again. he was in a dormitory now with three other little boys, all of them too deep in the problems of parents in jail or in parts unknown to offer him much fellowship. they cried when they were left alone in bed, or they cried in their sleep; but they cried. it was his own pride, and in no small measure his strength, that he didn't cry, unless he cried in dreams.
everyone was good to him, mrs. crewdson and
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miss honiton especially, but no one could give him the clue to life which instinctively he clutched for. that one didn't stay forever in the swindon street home he could see from observation. the children he had found there went away; other children came. some of these stayed but a night or two. none of them stayed much longer. by those sixth and seventh senses which children develop when they are in trouble he divined that conferences were taking place on his behalf. now and then he detected glances shot toward him by the matrons in discussion which told him that he was being talked about. it was easy to deduce that he was in the swindon street home longer than was the custom because they didn't know what to do with him. he inferred that they didn't know what to do with him from the many questions which many people asked. sometimes it was a man, more times it was a woman, but the questions were always along the lines of those of miss honiton as he came out from the children's christmas tree. had he any relatives? had he any friends? if he had they ought to look after him. it was hard for these kindly people to believe that he had no claim whatever on any member of the human race.
he began to hear the words, a state ward. though they meant nothing to him at first, he strove, as he always did, with new words and expressions, to find their application. then one evening, as mrs. crewdson was putting him to bed, she told him that that was what he had become.
"you see, darling, now that your father and mother are both dead, the whole country is going to adopt
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you. isn't that nice? and it isn't everything. you're going to have a home—not a home like this—what we call an institution—but a real home—with a real father and mother in it, and real brothers and sisters."
he took this stolidly. he was not to be moved now by anything that could happen. a waif on the world, the world had the right to pitch him in any direction that it chose. all he could do with his own desires was to beat them into submission. he mustn't cry! his fears and his griefs alike focussed themselves into that resolve. it was the only way in which he could translate his stout-hearted will to endure.
