a christmas story.
it was the afternoon of the 24th of december, a dull, gray afternoon, with a sky frowning over it which was all one cloud, but from which neither rain nor snow fell. a certain insinuating breath of cold was in the air, more penetrating than the crisp, keen wind of the sharpest january day.
olive haygarth shivered as she walked along the bleakest side of harrison avenue, down town. she was making her way to dock square, to carry home to a clothing store some vests which she and her mother had just completed.
after a while she turned and walked across into washington street, for an impulse came over her to see all the bright christmas things in the shop[pg 129] windows, and the gay, glad people, getting ready to keep holiday.
she had meant, when she set out on her walk, to avoid them, for she knew that her mood was bitter enough already. she had left no brightness behind her at home. there were but two of them, herself and her mother, and they were poor people, with only their needles between them and want.
they had never known actual suffering, however, for mrs. haygarth had worked in a tailor's shop in her youth, and had taught olive so much of the intricacies of the business as sufficed to make her a good workwoman.
accordingly they did their sewing so well as to command constant employment and fair prices. but after all it was ceaseless drudging, just to keep body and soul together. what was the use of it all? not enjoyment enough in any one day to pay for living,—why not as well lie down and die at once?
she walked on sullenly, thinking of these things. an elegant carriage stopped just in front[pg 130] of her, and a girl no older than herself got out, trailing her rich silk across the sidewalk, and went into a fashionable jeweller's.
olive stopped, and looking in at the window, ostensibly at the vases and bronzes, watched the girl with her dainty, high-bred air. she noted every separate item of her loveliness,—the delicate coloring, the hair so tastefully arranged, the pure, regular features. then she looked at the lustrous silk, the soft furs, the bonnet, which was a pink and white miracle of blonde and rosebuds. how much of the beauty was the girl's very self, and how much did she owe to this splendid setting? olive had seen cheeks and lips as bright and hair as shining when she tied on her own unbecoming dark straw bonnet before her own dingy looking-glass.
she went on with renewed bitterness, asking herself, over and over again, why? why? why? did not the bible say that god was no respecter of persons? but why did he make some, like that girl in there, to feed on the roses and lie in the lilies of life,—to wear silks, and[pg 131] furs, and jewels, and laces, and then make her to work buttonholes in butler & co.'s vests? was there any god at all? or, if there was, did he not make some people and forget them altogether, while he was heaping good things on others whom he liked better? she could not understand it. and then to be told to love god after all; and that he pitied her as a father pitied his children! why! that girl in the silk dress could love god, easily,—that command must have been meant for her.
going on she caught a glimpse of an illumination in the window of a print shop.
"peace on earth and good-will toward men" was the legend set forth by the brilliantly colored letters.
what a mockery those words seemed to be! there had never been peace or good-will in their house, even in the old days when they were tolerably prosperous, before her father went away.
she walked very slowly now, for she was thinking of that old time. she had loved her father more than she had ever loved any one else.[pg 132] to her he had always been kind; he had never found fault with her, and had smoothed all the rough places out of her life. her mother had been neat and smart and capable, as the new england phrase is. higher praise than this mrs. haygarth did not covet. but like many capable women, she had acquired a habit of small faultfinding, a perpetual dropping, which would have worn even a stone, and george haygarth was no stone.
the woman loved her husband, doubtless, in some fashion of her own, but to save her life she could not have kept from "nagging" him. she fretted if he brought mud upon his shoes over her clean floor, if he spent money on any pleasure for himself, any extra indulgence for olive; above all, if he ever took a fancy to keep holiday.
just five years ago things had come to a climax. olive was thirteen years old then, and he had brought her home for christmas some ornaments,—a pin and earrings, not very expensive, but in mrs. haygarth's eyes useless and unnecessary. she assailed him bitterly, and for a[pg 133] marvel he heard her out in dumb silence. when she was all through, he only said,—
"i think i can spare the eight dollars they cost me, since i am not likely to give the girl any thing again for some time. it will be too far to send christmas gifts from colorado."
mrs. haygarth's temper was up, and she answered him with an evil sneer,—
"colorado, indeed! colorado is peopled with wide-awake men. it's no place for you out there."
he made no reply, only got up and went out; and, going by olive, he stooped and kissed her. how well she remembered that kiss!
through the week afterward he went to his work as usual, but he spent scarcely any time at home, and when there made little talk. all his wife's accustomed flings and innuendoes fell on his ears apparently unheeded. the night before new year's he was busy a long time in his own room. when he came out he handed mrs. haygarth a folded paper.
"there," he said, "is the receipt for the next[pg 134] year's house rent, and before that time is out i shall send you the money, if i am prospered, to pay for another year. i have taken from the savings-bank enough to carry me to colorado and keep me a little while after i get there; and the bank book, with the rest of the five hundred dollars, i have transferred to you. if i have any luck you shall never want,—you and olive. you'll be better off without me. i think i've always been an aggravation to you, martha,—only an aggravation."
he went back again into his room, and came out with a valise packed full.
"i think i'll go away now," he said. "the train starts in an hour, and there is no need of my troubling you any longer."
then he had taken olive into his arms, and she had felt some sudden kisses on her cheek, some hot tears on her face; but he had said nothing to her, only the one sentence, gasped out like a groan,— "father's little one! father's little one!"
olive shivered and then grew hot again, as she remembered it; and remembered how wistfully he[pg 135] had looked afterwards at his wife, reading no encouragement in her sharp, contemptuous face.
"i guess you'll see colorado about as much as i shall," said martha haygarth, sneeringly. "your courage may last fifty miles."
he did not answer. he just shut the door behind him and went out into the night,—and she had never seen him since, never heard his voice since that last cry,—"father's little one!"
she felt the thick-coming tears blinding her eyes, but she brushed them resolutely away, and looked up at the old south clock just before her.
almost five. the sun had set nearly half an hour ago, and the night was falling fast. how long a time she had spent in walking the short distance since she came into washington street! how late home she should be! she quickened her steps almost to a run, went to the clothing store, where she had to wait a little while for her work to be looked over and paid for, and heard the clocks strike six just as she reached the corner of essex street, on her homeward way. the dense, hurrying crowd jostled and pressed her, and she turned[pg 136] the corner. she would find more room on the avenue, she thought.
she had not noticed that two young men were following her closely. they would have been gentlemen if they had obeyed the laws of god and man. as it was, there was about them the look which nothing expresses so well as the word "fast." their very features had become coarse and lowered in tone by the lives they led; and yet they were the descendants of men whose names were honored in the state, and made glorious by traditions of true christian knighthood.
on the other side of the way, alike unnoticed by olive and her pursuers, a man walked on steadily, never losing sight of them for a moment. at last, as she came into a quiet portion of the street, the two young men drew near her. they were simply what i have said, "fast." they perhaps meant no real harm, and thought it would be good fun to frighten her.
"'where are you going, my pretty maid?'" said one, the bolder and handsomer of the two.
"'my face is my fortune, sir, she said,'" [pg 137]responded the other, in a voice which the wine he had taken for dinner made a little thick and unsteady.
"you ought not to be out alone," the first began again. "you are quite too young and too pretty."
"that she is," a loud, stern voice answered, "when there are such vile hounds as you ready to insult an unprotected girl."
surely it was a voice olive knew, only stronger and more resolute than she had ever heard it before.
she turned suddenly, and the gas light struck full on her flushed, frightened, pretty face, which the drooping hair shaded. the man, who had crossed the street to come to her rescue, looked at her a moment, and then, as if involuntarily, came to his lips the old, fond words, the last she had ever heard him speak,—
"father's little one!"
he opened his arms, and she, poor tired girl crept into their shelter. the two young men stood by waiting, enough of the nobility of the old blood in them to keep them from running away, though[pg 138] their nerves tingled with shame. george haygarth spoke to them with quiet, manly dignity.
"when i saw you following this girl i had no idea she was my girl, whom i had not seen for five years. it was enough for me that she was a woman. to my thinking it's a poor manhood that insults women instead of protecting them. i meant to look out for her, and, be she who she might, you should not have harmed her."
"we never meant her any real harm," the elder of the two said humbly; "but we have learned our lesson, and i think we shall neither of us forget it. young lady, we beg your pardon."
then they lifted their hats and went away; and george haygarth drew his daughter's hand through his arm and walked on, telling his story as he walked.
he had been unsuccessful at first. for more than eighteen months he had scarcely been able to keep himself alive. fever had wasted him, plans had failed him, hope had deserted him. the very first money he could possibly spare he had sent home, with a long loving letter to the absent, over[pg 139] whom his heart yearned. but money and letter had both come back to him after a while, from the dead-letter office.
"yes," olive said, "we were too poor to keep on there after the year for which you paid was out, and we have moved two or three times since then. the postman did not know where to find us, and after the first year we gave up asking for letters at the office."
her father's hand clasped hers tighter, in sympathy, and then he told the rest of his story.
he had never been very prosperous, never seen any such golden chances as the mining legends picture, but he had come home better off than he ever should have been if he had stayed in the east.
for a whole week he had been in boston searching for them everywhere, and no knowing how much longer he might have had to wait but for this accident.
"don't say accident, father," olive answered, softly. "it was god's way of bringing us together. i begin to see now what it means when the bible says, 'he is touched by our infirmities, and pities[pg 140] our necessities.' and yet, only this afternoon i was losing all my faith, and thinking that if he cared for all the rest of the world. he had forgotten me. here we are,—the next house is home."
"your mother—how will she receive me, olive?"
olive's heart seemed to stand still. her mother had been so bitter through all these years; had said such cruel things about this man, whom she accused of deserting his family and leaving them to starve, of caring only for himself. she did not speak,—she did not know what to say.
"you must go in and break it to her," george haygarth said, as they climbed the stairs of the humble tenement house, the third story of which the mother and daughter occupied. "i will stay outside and wait. it won't be coming home at all if martha doesn't bid me welcome."
olive went in, trembling.
"here is the money, mother."
mrs. haygarth reached out her hand for it and looked at it.
"yes, it's all right; but i thought you were never coming home. what kept you?"
[pg 141]
"i looked into the windows a good deal as i went down, and then i had to wait at the store, and i've been thinking, mother. it will be five years next week since father went away. what if we could see him again?"
she paused, expecting to hear some of the old bitter words about her father; but, instead, her mother's voice fell softly upon her ear.
"i've been thinking too, olive, and i believe he is dead. i don't think i used to be patient enough with him, and perhaps i wore his love out. but he did care for you, and seems to me nothing short of death could have kept him away so long."
"but if you could see him, mother?" olive persisted, with trembling voice.
some new thought pierced martha haygarth's brain. a strange thrill shook her. she looked an instant into olive's eyes. then, without a word, she sprang to the door and threw it open. olive heard a low, passionate cry.
"george! george! if i was cross i did love you!" and olive saw a figure come out of the shadow and take her mother close in its arms. and[pg 142] then she hid her eyes, and said a little prayer, she never knew what.
so, after all, god had not forgotten them. just when their want was sorest their help had come. and they needed all they had suffered, perhaps, to teach her mother what love was worth, and what forbearance signified.
"peace on earth and good-will toward men!"
from the very sky the words seemed to drop down to her, like an angelic blessing; and now to their home the reign of peace had come, and she understood what the benediction meant.
