The Christmas Megapack

by Reginald Robert

  “So do I.” Carmencita’s hands came together fervently. “I’m bound to make some money, and this is the only way I can think of until I’m fourteen and can go to work. I’m just thirteen and two months, and I can’t go yet. The law won’t let me. I used to think it took a lot of sense to write a book, but the Damanarkist says it don’t, and that anybody who is fool enough to waste time could write the truck people read nowadays. He don’t read it, but I do, all I can get—I like it.”

  “I’ve never tried to write.” Van Landing again glanced at the clock. Noodles was staying an interminably long time. “Like you, I imagined it took some measure of ability—”

  “Oh, but it don’t. I mean it doesn’t take any to write things like that.” Carmencita’s finger pointed to several backless magazines and a couple of paper-bound books on the table behind her. “I read once that people like to read things that make them laugh and cry and—and forget about the rent money, and tell all about love-dovies and villains and beautiful maidens, and my book’s got some of all those kinds of things in it. It hasn’t got any—What did you say you thought it took to write a book?”

  “Ability—that is, a little of it.”

  “I guess that depends on the kind of book it is. I put something of everything I could think of in mine, but I didn’t put any ability in. I didn’t have any to put, and, besides, I wanted it to sell. That’s the chapter I love best.” A large piece of brown paper was waved in the air. “It’s the one in which the Princess Patricia gets ready to die because she hears her sweetheart making love to some one else, and then she comes to her senses and makes him marry the other girl so they can live miserable ever after, and the Princess goes about doing good like Miss Frances. But I’m going to marry her to somebody before I’m through—I’m—”

  “You believe in marriage, then.” Van Landing smiled, and, stooping, picked up several sheets of paper evidently torn from a blank-book. “This must be the courtship chapter. It seems rather sentimental.”

  “It is. Regular mush slush. It’s the kind of courting a man who isn’t much does—that is, I guess it’s the kind, but the Princess understands. She’s been fooled once. Tell me”—Carmencita leaned forward and, arms again crossed on Van Landing’s knees, looked anxiously in his face—“what does a man say when he’s really and truly courting? I mean a nice man. When the Real one comes, the Right one—what will he say? I’m just about there, and I don’t know how to go on.”

  “I wish I could tell you.” Van Landing leaned back in his chair and, taking out his watch again, looked at it. “I shouldn’t dare to try to write a novel, consequently—”

  “I’ll try anything while I’m waiting to go to work.” Carmencita sat back dejectedly. “Is a book a novel because it has love in it?”

  “It is generally supposed to be. When you are older you may write your love scenes with greater knowledge and—”

  “No, I won’t. I don’t expect to have any love scenes when I get married. I’ve read a lot of that, and it don’t last. All I want my husband to say is, ‘Will you marry me, Carmencita?’ and I will say, ‘Yes,’ and I hope we’ll keep on liking each other. Some don’t.” Her face changed, and she sat upright, her hands pressed to her breast. “This is a novel—tonight is! We’re living one, and you’re the Prince and Miss Frances is the Princess, and I found you! Oh, my goodness! what is that?”

  With a swift movement she was on her feet and at the door. Van Landing, too, rose quickly. Below could be heard loud voices, the moving of furniture, and the cries of frightened children, and cautiously Carmencita turned the knob and went into the hall.

  “Old Beer-Barrel is drunk again.” Tiptoeing to the banister, she leaned over it. “When he gets like this he’s crazy as a loon, and some day he’ll kill somebody. Goodness gracious! he’s coming up here!”

  Before Van Landing could reach her she was inside and at the wash-stand. Taking up the pitcher filled with water, she again ran into the hall, and as the cursing, stumbling man began to mount the stairs she leaned over the banister and poured the contents of the pitcher on his head. As if shot, the man stood still, face upturned, hair drenched, hands trembling, then he sat down on the steps.

  Giving the pitcher to Van Landing, she told him to fill it and pointed to a faucet in the hall. “I don’t think he’ll need another; one is generally enough. I’ve seen him like this before. His wife won’t throw water in his face, but I throw.” She leaned farther over the railing. “If you’ll be quiet and go back quick I won’t put any more water on you; it’s awful cold, but if you don’t—”

  Slowly, and as if dazed, the man on the steps got up, and as he disappeared Carmencita nodded to her visitor to go back to her Father, now standing by the table. Closing the door, she came toward him and pushed him again in his chair, smoothing lightly the snow-white hair and kissing the trembling fingers, then at his feet she took her seat.

  “I’m so sorry he waked you. It was just old Beer-Barrel. He oughtn’t to drink”—she raised her eyes to Van Landing’s—“but a man who’s got a wife like his is bound to do something, and sometimes I wish I could put the water on her instead of him.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  For a moment Van Landing walked up and down the room, hands in his pockets and heart pounding in a way of which he was ashamed. Ordinarily the sight of a drunken man would have awakened little emotion save disgust, but the realization of the helplessness of the two people before him filled him with inward rage, and for some time he could not trust himself to speak. A sickening horror of this hideous side of life filled him with strange protest. Yesterday he had not known and had not cared that such things could be, and now—

  On Carmencita’s face was none of the alarm that had come into his. Her father, too, was getting over his fright. For this helpless old man and fair, frail child, whose wit and courage were equal to situations of which she had the right of childhood to be ignorant, the scene just witnessed had the familiarity of frequent repetition, but for him it was horribly new, and if the Damanarkist of whom Carmencita so often spoke should come in he would be glad to shake his hand.

  A noise at the door made him start. They were coming. The boy and Frances. He dug his hands deeper in his pockets to hide their trembling, and his face went white.

  But it was not Noodles. It was Mr. Robinsky, who had brought the harp, and, though he evidently intended to sit down and talk, with consummate skill and grace he was led into the hall by Carmencita and told good night with sweetness and decision. It was wonderfully managed. No man could have done it, and in his heart Van Landing thanked her; but before he could speak there was a loud pounding on the door, and both he and Carmencita started nervously toward it.

  “It’s Noodles. I know his knock.” Carmencita’s hands clasped tightly, and in her voice was eager trembling. “I’m so excited I can’t breathe good! It’s like being in a book. Go in the room over there quick, Mr. Van. Come in!”

  With inward as well as outward rigidity Van Landing waited. To the movements of Carmencita’s hand waving him away he paid no attention. In thick, heavy throbs his heart sent the blood to his face, then it receded, and for a moment the room was dark and he saw nothing. To the “come in” of Carmencita the door opened, and he looked in its direction. Noodles was alone.

  “Where is she?” Carmencita’s voice was high and shrill in excitement and dismay. “I told you to wait for her! You know I told you to wait for her!”

  Cap in hand, Noodles looked first at Van Landing and then at the child. “Warn’t no her to wait for,” he said, presently. “She ain’t there, and she didn’t go to the class tonight. Miss James went for her. Some of her kin-folks is in town staying with some their kin-folks, and she is spending the night with ’em.” The now soiled and crumpled note was held toward Carmencita. “She won’t be back till day after tomorrow, what’s Christmas eve, though she might come back tomorrow night, Fetch-It said. Warn’t nobody there but Fetch-It—leastways warn’t nobody else I seen.”<
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  Van Landing looked at Carmencita, then turned sharply and went over toward the window. A choking, stifling sensation made breathing difficult, and, the tension of the past few hours relaxed, he felt as one on the edge of a precipice from which at any moment he might topple over. It was too cold to open the window, but he must have air. Going to the couch, he took up his hat and coat, then came back and held out his hand.

  “Give him this”—he nodded at Noodles, “and tell your father good night. And thank you, Carmencita, thank you for letting me come. Tomorrow—” The room was getting black. “I will see you tomorrow.”

  A moment later he was out of the room and down the steps and on the street, and in the darkness he walked as one who feels something in his way he cannot see; and then he laughed, and the laugh was hard and bitter, and in it was a sound that was not good to hear.

  The cold air stung his face, made breathing better, and after a while he looked up. For many blocks he had walked unheedingly, but, hearing a church-bell strike the hour, he took out his watch and glanced at it. To go home was impossible. Turning into a side-street, he walked rapidly in a direction that led he knew not whither, and for a while let the stinging sensation of disappointment and rebellion possess him without restraint. It was pretty cruel, this sudden shutting of the door of hope in his face. The discovery of Frances’s presence in the city had brought again in full tumultuous surge the old love and longing, and the hours of waiting had been well-nigh unendurable. And now he would have to wait until day after tomorrow. He would go tomorrow night to this Mother Somebody. What was her name? He could remember nothing, was, indeed, as stupid as if he had been knocked in the head. Well, he had been. Where did this woman live? The child had refused to tell him. With a sudden stop he looked around. Where was he? He had walked miles in and out of streets as unknown to him as if part of a city he had never been in, and he had no idea where he was. A sudden fear gripped him. Where did Carmencita live? He had paid no attention to the streets they were on when she took him to the house she called home. He was full of other thought, but her address, of course, he would get before he left, and he had left without asking. What a fool he was! What a stupid fool! For half a moment he looked uncertainly up and down the street whose name he did not know. No policeman was in sight; no one was in sight except a woman on the opposite pavement, who was scurrying along with something under her shawl hugged close to her breast, and a young girl who was coming his way. Turning, he retraced his steps. He did not know in which direction to go. He only knew he must keep on. Perhaps he could find his way back to the place where Carmencita lived.

  He did not find it. Through the night he walked street after street, trying to recall some building he had passed, but he had walked as blind men walk, and nothing had been noticed. To ask of people what they could not tell was useless. He did not know the name of the street he wanted to find, and, moreover, a curious shrinking kept him from inquiring. In the morning he would find it, but he did not want to make demands upon the usual sources for help until he had exhausted all other means of redeeming his folly in not learning Carmencita’s full name and address before he left her. Was a man’s whole life to be changed, to be made or unmade, by whimsical chance or by stupid blunder? In the gray dawn of a new day he reached his home and went to bed for a few hours’ sleep.

  When, later, he left his house to renew his search for Carmencita the weather had changed. It had begun to snow, and tiny particles of ice stung his face as he walked, and the people who passed shivered as they hurried by. On every street that offered chance of being the one he sought he went up and down its length, and not until he felt he was being noticed did he take into partial confidence a good-natured policeman who had nodded to him on his third passing. The man was kindly, but for hay-stack needles there was no time and he was directed to headquarters. To find a house, number unknown, on a street, name unknown, of a party, full name again unknown, was too much of a puzzle for busy times like these. Any other time than Christmas—He was turned from that an inquiry from a woman with a child in her arms might be answered.

  “Any other time than Christmas!”

  With a sense of demoralization it was dawning on him that he might not find her, or Carmencita, in time for Christmas, and he must find them. A great hunger for the day to be to him what it seemed to be to others possessed him feverishly, and with eyes that saw what they had never seen before he watched, as he walked, the faces of the people who passed, and in his heart crept childish longing to buy something for somebody, something that was wanted very much, as these people seemed to be doing. He had made out the checks he usually sent to certain institutions and certain parties at this season of the year for his head clerk to mail. By this time they had been received, but with them had gone no word of greeting or good will; his card alone had been inclosed. A few orders had been left at various stores, but with them went no Christmas spirit. He wondered how it would feel to buy a thing that could make one’s face look as Carmencita’s had looked when she made her purchase of the night before. It was a locket she had bought—a gold locket.

  In a whispered confidence while in the car she had told him it was for her mother’s picture. The picture used to be in her father’s watch, but the watch had to be sold when he was sick, after her mother’s death, and he had missed the touch of the picture so. She knew, for often she had seen him holding his watch in his hand, open at the back, where the picture lay, with his fingers on it, and sometimes he would kiss it when he thought she was out of the room. After the watch was sold the picture had been folded up in one of her mother’s handkerchiefs, and her father kept it in the pocket of his coat; but once it had slipped out of the handkerchief, and once through a hole in the pocket, and they thought it was lost. Her father hadn’t slept any that night. And now he could sleep with the locket around his neck. She would put it on a ribbon. Wasn’t it grand? And Carmencita’s hands had clasped ecstatically.

  Up and down the streets he went, looking, looking, looking. The district in which he found himself was one of the poorest in the city, but the shops were crowded with buyers, and, though the goods for sale were cheap and common and of a quality that at other times would have repelled, today they interested. Carmencita might be among the shoppers. She had said she had a few things to get for some children—penny things—and she was possibly out, notwithstanding the snow which now was falling thick and fast.

  Some time after his usual lunch-hour he remembered he must have something to eat; and, going into a dingy-looking restaurant, he sat down at a table, the only one which had a vacant seat at it, and ordered coffee and oysters. His table companion was a half-grown boy with chapped hands and a thin white face; but his eyes were clear and happy, and the piece of pie he was eating was being swallowed in huge hunks. It was his sole order, a piece of awful-looking pie. As the coffee and oysters were brought him Van Landing saw the boy look at them hungrily and then turn his eyes away.

  “I beg your pardon.” Van Landing, whose well-regulated life permitted of few impulses, turned to the boy. “I ordered these things”—he pointed to the steaming food—“and I don’t want them. I want something else. Would you mind having them? It’s a pity to throw them away.”

  The boy hesitated, uncertain what was meant, then he laughed. “It sure is,” he said. “If you don’t want them I’ll help you out. I’m hollow as a hound what’s been on a hunt. Good thing Christmas don’t come but once a year. You can cut out lunch better’n anything else for a save-up, though. That girl over there”—he pointed his finger behind him—“ain’t had nothing but a glass of milk for a month. She’s got some kiddie brothers and sisters, and they’re bound to have Christmas, she says. Rough day, ain’t it?”

  Van Landing gave another order. Had it not been for the gnawing restlessness, the growing fear, which filled him, the scene would have interested. A few days ago he would have seen only the sordid side of it, the crudeness and coarseness; but the search he was on had humanized
what hitherto had only seemed a disagreeable and objectionable side of life, and the people before him were of an odd kinship. In their faces was hunger. There were so many kinds of hunger in the world. He got up, and with a nod to the boy paid his bill and went out.

  Through the afternoon hours he walked steadily. Dogged determination made him keep on, just as sensitive shrinking prevented his making inquiries of others. It was silly to ask what couldn’t be answered. He must have been mad the night before not to have noticed where he was going, not to have asked Carmencita her name.

  By four o’clock the street-lights had been turned on, making of the dark, dingy tenements a long lane with high, unbroken walls, and on a corner he stood for a moment wondering which was the best way to go. To his left were shops; he went toward them, and each face of the children coming in or going out was scanned intently. Seeing a group pressed close to a window in which was displayed an assortment of dolls of all sorts and sizes, with peculiar clothing of peculiar colors, he went toward them, stood for a moment by their side. One of the children was the size of Carmencita.

  “That’s mine—that one in the pink-silk dress”—a dirty little finger was pointed to a huge and highly decorated doll in the center of the window—“that and the blue beads, and that box of paints with the picture on it, and—”

  “You’re a pig, all right. Want the earth, don’t you? Well, you can’t have it.” And valiantly a child with a shawl on her head pushed closer to the window, now clouded by the steam from many little mouths. “I want that one—the one in long clothes with a cap on. What you want, Lizzie Lue? Look out there and keep your elbows where they belong”—this to the jostling, pushing crowd behind. “Come on, kid; kick if you have to; only way you can manage some folks. Which one you want, Lizzie Lue?” And a tiny scrap of a child was held up in arms but little bigger than her own.