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
In 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 tomorrow. 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 tomorrow. I mean today—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 today—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 whe
n 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.
“Tomorrow—I mean today—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.”
THE LITTLE CITY OF HOPE: A CHRISTMAS STORY, by F. Marion Crawford
I. HOW JOHN HENRY OVERHOLT SAT ON PANDORA’S BOX
“Hope is very cheap. There’s always plenty of it about.”
“Fortunately for poor men. Good morning.”
With this mild retort and civil salutation John Henry Overholt rose and went towards the door, quite forgetting to shake hands with Mr. Burnside, though the latter made a motion to do so. Mr. Burnside always gave his hand in a friendly way, even when he had flatly refused to do what people had asked of him. It was cheap; so he gave it.
But he was not pleased when they did not take it, for whatever he chose to give seemed of some value to him as soon as it was offered; even his hand. Therefore, when his visitor forgot to take it, out of pure absence of mind, he was offended, and spoke to him sharply before he had time to leave the private office.
“You need not go away like that, Mr. Overholt, without shaking hands.”
The visitor stopped and turned back at once. He was thin and rather shabbily dressed. I know many poor men who are fat, and some who dress very well; but this was not that kind of poor man.
“Excuse me,” he said mildly. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I quite forgot.”
He came back, and Mr. Burnside shook hands with becoming coldness, as having just given a lesson in manners. He was not a bad man, nor a miser, nor a Scrooge, but he was a great stickler for manners, especially with people who had nothing to give him. Besides, he had already lent Overholt money; or, to put it nicely, he had invested a little in his invention, and he did not see any reason why he should invest any more until it succeeded. Overholt called it selling shares, but Mr. Burnside called it borrowing money. Overholt was sure that if he could raise more funds, not much more, he could make a success of the “Air-Motor”; Mr. Burnside was equally sure that nothing would ever come of it. They had been explaining their respective points of view to each other, and in sheer absence of mind Overholt had forgotten to shake hands.
Mr. Burnside had no head for mechanics, but Overholt had already made an invention which was considered very successful, though he had got little or nothing for it. The mechanic who had helped him in its construction had stolen his principal idea before the device was patented, and had taken out a patent for a cheap little article which every one at once used, and which made a fortune for him. Overholt’s instrument took its place in every laboratory in the world; but the mechanic’s labor-saving utensil took its place in every house. It was on the strength of the valuable tool of science that Mr. Burnside had invested two thousand dollars in the Air-Motor without really having the smallest idea whether it was to be a machine that would move the air, or was to be moved by it. A number of business men had done the same thing.
Then, at a political dinner in a club, three of the investors had dined at the same small table, and in an interval between the dull speeches, one of the three told the others that he had looked into the invention and that there was nothing in Overholt’s motor after all. Overholt was crazy.
“It’s like this,” he had said. “You know how a low-pressure engine acts; the steam does a part of the work and the weight of the atmosphere does the rest. Now this man Overholt thinks he can make the atmosphere do both parts of the work with no steam at all, and as that’s absurd, of course, he won’t get any more of my money. It’s like getting into a basket and trying to lift yourself up by the handles.”
Each of the two hearers repeated this simple demonstration to at least a dozen acquaintances, who repeated it to dozens of others; and after that John Henry Overholt could not raise another dollar to complete the Air-Motor.
Mr. Burnside’s refusal had been definite and final, and he had been the last to whom the investor had applied, merely because he was undoubtedly the most close-fisted man of business of all who had invested in the invention.
Overholt saw failure before him at the very moment of success, with the not quite indifferent accompaniment of starvation. Many a man as good as he has been in the same straits, even more than once in life, and has succeeded after all, and Overholt knew this quite well, and therefore did not break down, nor despair, nor even show distinct outward signs of mental distress.
Metaphorically, he took Pandora’s box to the Park, put it in a sunny corner, and sat upon it, to keep the lid down, with Hope inside, while he thought over the situation.
It was not at all a pleasant one. It is one thing to have no money to spare, but it is quite another to have none at all, and he was not far from that. He had some small possessions, but those with which he was willing to part were worth nothing, and those which would bring a little money were the expensive tools and valuable materials with which he was working. For he worked alone, profiting by his experience with the mechanic who had robbed him of one of his most profitable patents. When the idea of the Air-Motor had occurred to him he had gone into a machine-shop and had spent nearly two years in learning the use of fine tools. Then he had bought what he needed out of the money invested in his idea, and had gone to work himself, sending models of such castings as he required to different parts of the United States, that the pieces might be made independently.
He was not an accomplished workman, and he made slow progress with only his little son to help him when the boy was not at school. Often, through lack of skill, he wasted good material, and more than once he spoiled an expensive casting, and was obliged to wait till it could be made again and sent to him. Besides, he and the boy had to live, and living is dear nowadays, even in a cottage in an out-of-the-way corner of Connecticut; and he needed fire and light in abundance for his work, besides something to eat and decent clothes to wear and somebody to cook the dinner; and when he took out his diary note-book and examined the figures on the page near the end, headed “Cash Account, November,” he made out that he had three hundred and eighteen dollars and twelve cents to his credit, and nothing to come after that, and he knew that the men who had believed in him had invested, amongst them, ten thousand dollars in shares, and had paid him the money in cash in the course of the past three years, but would invest no more; and it was all gone.
One thousand more, clear of living expenses, would do it. He was positively sure that it would be enough, and he and the boy could live on his little cash balance, by great economy, for four months, at the end of which time the Air-Motor would be perfected. But without the thousand the end of the four months would be the end of everything that was worth while in life. After that he would have to go back to teaching in order to live, and the invention would be lost, for the work needed all his time and thought.
He was a mathematician, and a very good
one, besides being otherwise a man of cultivated mind and wide reading. Unfortunately for himself, or the contrary, if the invention ever succeeded, he had given himself up to higher mathematics when a young man, instead of turning his talent to account in an architect’s office, a shipbuilding yard, or a locomotive shop. He could find the strain at any part of an iron frame building by the differential and integral calculus to the millionth of an ounce, but the everyday technical routine work with volumes of ready-made tables was unfamiliar and uncongenial to him; he would rather have calculated the tables themselves. The true science of mathematics is the most imaginative and creative of all sciences, but the mere application of mathematics to figures for the construction of engines, ships, or buildings is the dullest sort of drudgery.
Rather than that, he had chosen to teach what he knew and to dream of great problems at his leisure when teaching was over for the day or for the term. He had taught in a small college, and had known the rare delight of having one or two pupils who were really interested. It had been a good position, and he had married a clever New England girl, the daughter of his predecessor, who had died suddenly. They had been very happy together for years, and one boy had been born to them, whom his father insisted on christening Newton. Then Overholt had thrown up his employment for the sake of getting freedom to perfect his invention, though much against his wife’s advice, for she was a prudent little woman, besides being clever, and she thought of the future of the two beings she loved, and of her own, while her husband dreamed of hastening the progress of science.
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