The Second Christmas Megapack

by Robert Reginald

  “She did!” My cousin stopped rocking, and fixed me with her glittering eye. “Well, of all!”

  “Is it so surprising?”

  The lady gave her boat to the waves again. “Ann Apperthwaite thinks about him still!” she said, with something like vindictiveness. “I’ve always suspected it. She thought you were new to the place and didn’t know anything about it all, or anybody to mention it to. That’s it!”

  “I’m still new to the place,” I urged, “and still don’t know anything about it all.”

  “They used to be engaged,” was her succinct and emphatic answer.

  I found it but too illuminating. “Oh, oh!” I cried. “I was an innocent, wasn’t I?”

  “I’m glad she does think of him,” said my cousin. “It serves her right. I only hope he won’t find it out, because he’s a poor, faithful creature; he’d jump at the chance to take her back—and she doesn’t deserve him.”

  “How long has it been,” I asked, “since they used to be engaged?”

  “Oh, a good while—five or six years ago, I think—maybe more; time skips along. Ann Apperthwaite’s no chicken, you know.” (Such was the lady’s expression.) “They got engaged just after she came home from college, and of all the idiotically romantic girls—”

  “But she’s a teacher,” I interrupted, “of mathematics.”

  “Yes.” She nodded wisely. “I always thought that explained it: the romance is a reaction from the algebra. I never knew a person connected with mathematics or astronomy or statistics, or any of those exact things, who didn’t have a crazy streak in ’em somewhere. They’ve got to blow off steam and be foolish to make up for putting in so much of their time at hard sense. But don’t you think that I dislike Ann Apperthwaite. She’s always been one of my best friends; that’s why I feel at liberty to abuse her—and I always will abuse her when I think how she treated poor David Beasley.”

  “How did she treat him?”

  “Threw him over out of a clear sky one night, that’s all. Just sent him home and broke his heart; that is, it would have been broken if he’d had any kind of disposition except the one the Lord blessed him with—just all optimism and cheerfulness and make-the-best-of-it-ness! He’s never cared for anybody else, and I guess he never will.”

  “What did she do it for?”

  “Nothing!” My cousin shot the indignant word from her lips. “Nothing in the wide world!”

  “But there must have been—”

  “Listen to me,” she interrupted, “and tell me if you ever heard anything queerer in your life. They’d been engaged—Heaven knows how long—over two years; probably nearer three—and always she kept putting it off; wouldn’t begin to get ready, wouldn’t set a day for the wedding. Then Mr. Apperthwaite died, and left her and her mother stranded high and dry with nothing to live on. David had everything in the world to give her—and still she wouldn’t! And then, one day, she came up here and told me she’d broken it off. Said she couldn’t stand it to be engaged to David Beasley another minute!”

  “But why?”

  “Because”—my cousin’s tone was shrill with her despair of expressing the satire she would have put into it—“because, she said he was a man of no imagination!”

  “She still says so,” I remarked, thoughtfully.

  “Then it’s time she got a little imagination herself!” snapped my companion. “David Beasley’s the quietest man God has made, but everybody knows what he is! There are some rare people in this world that aren’t all talk; there are some still rarer ones that scarcely ever talk at all—and David Beasley’s one of them. I don’t know whether it’s because he can’t talk, or if he can and hates to; I only know he doesn’t. And I’m glad of it, and thank the Lord he’s put a few like that into this talky world! David Beasley’s smile is better than acres of other people’s talk. My Providence! Wouldn’t anybody, just to look at him, know that he does better than talk? He thinks! The trouble with Ann Apperthwaite was that she was too young to see it. She was so full of novels and poetry and dreaminess and highfalutin nonsense she couldn’t see anything as it really was. She’d study her mirror, and see such a heroine of romance there that she just couldn’t bear to have a fiance who hadn’t any chance of turning out to be the crown-prince of Kenosha in disguise! At the very least, to suit her he’d have had to wear a ‘well-trimmed Vandyke’ and coo sonnets in the gloaming, or read On a Balcony to her by a red lamp.

  “Poor David! Outside of his law-books, I don’t believe he’s ever read anything but Robinson Crusoe and the Bible and Mark Twain. Oh, you should have heard her talk about it!—‘I couldn’t bear it another day,’ she said, ‘I couldn’t stand it! In all the time I’ve known him I don’t believe he’s ever asked me a single question—except when he asked if I’d marry him. He never says anything—never speaks at all!’ she said. ‘You don’t know a blessing when you see it,’ I told her. ‘Blessing!’ she said. ‘There’s nothing in the man! He has no depths! He hasn’t any more imagination than the chair he sits and sits and sits in! Half the time he answers what I say to him by nodding and saying ‘um-hum,’ with that same old foolish, contented smile of his. I’d have gone mad if it had lasted any longer!’ I asked her if she thought married life consisted very largely of conversations between husband and wife; and she answered that even married life ought to have some poetry in it. ‘Some romance,’ she said, ‘some soul! And he just comes and sits,’ she said, ‘and sits and sits and sits and sits! And I can’t bear it any longer, and I’ve told him so.’”

  “Poor Mr. Beasley,” I said.

  “I think, ‘Poor Ann Apperthwaite!’” retorted my cousin. “I’d like to know if there’s anything nicer than just to sit and sit and sit and sit with as lovely a man as that—a man who understands things, and thinks and listens and smiles—instead of everlastingly talking!”

  “As it happens,” I remarked, “I’ve heard Mr. Beasley talk.”

  “Why, of course he talks,” she returned, “when there’s any real use in it. And he talks to children; he’s that kind of man.”

  “I meant a particular instance,” I began; meaning to see if she could give me any clew to Bill Hammersley and Simpledoria, but at that moment the gate clicked under the hand of another caller. My cousin rose to greet him; and presently I took my leave without having been able to get back upon the subject of Beasley.

  Thus, once more baffled, I returned to Mrs. Apperthwaite’s—and within the hour came into full possession of the very heart of that dark and subtle mystery which overhung the house next door and so perplexed my soul.

  IV.

  Finding that I had still some leisure before me, I got a book from my room and repaired to the bench in the garden. But I did not read; I had but opened the book when my attention was arrested by sounds from the other side of the high fence—low and tremulous croonings of distinctly African derivation:

  “Ah met mah sistuh in a-mawnin’, She ’uz a-waggin’ up de hill so slow! ‘Sistuh, you mus’ git a rastle in doo time, B’fo de hevumly do’s cloze—iz!’” It was the voice of an aged negro; and the simultaneous slight creaking of a small hub and axle seemed to indicate that he was pushing or pulling a child’s wagon or perambulator up and down the walk from the kitchen door to the stable. Whiles, he proffered soothing music: over and over he repeated the chant, though with variations; encountering in turn his brother, his daughter, each of his parents, his uncle, his cousin, and his second-cousin, one after the other ascending the same slope with the same perilous leisure.

  “Lay still, honey.” He interrupted his injunctions to the second-cousin. “Des keep on a-nappin’ an’ a-breavin’ de f’esh air. Dass wha’s go’ mek you good an’ well agin.”

  Then there spoke the strangest voice that ever fell upon my ear; it was not like a child’s, neither was it like a very old person’s voice; it might have been a grasshopper’s, it was so thin and little, and made of such tiny wavers and quavers and creakings.

  “I—
want—” said this elfin voice, “I—want—Bill—Hammersley!”

  The shabby phaeton which had passed my cousin’s house was drawing up to the curb near Beasley’s gate. Evidently the old negro saw it.

  “Hi dar!” he exclaimed. “Look at dat! Hain’ Bill a comin’ yonnah des edzacly on de dot an’ to de vey spot an’ instink when you ’quiah fo’ ’im, honey? Dar come Mist’ Dave, right on de minute, an’ you kin bet yo’ las hunnud dollahs he got dat Bill Hammersley wif ’im! Come along, honey-chile! Ah’s go’ to pull you ’roun in de side yod fo’ to meet ’em.”

  The small wagon creaked away, the chant resuming as it went.

  Mr. Dowden jumped out of the phaeton with a wave of his hand to the driver, Beasley himself, who clucked to the horse and drove through his open carriage-gates and down the drive on the other side of the house, where he was lost to my view.

  Dowden, entering our own gate, nodded in a friendly fashion to me, and I advanced to meet him.

  “Some day I want to take you over next door,” he said, cordially, as I came up. “You ought to know Beasley, especially as I hear you’re doing some political reporting. Dave Beasley’s going to be the next governor of this state, you know.” He laughed, offered me a cigar, and we sat down together on the front steps.

  “From all I hear,” I rejoined, “You ought to know who’ll get it.” (It was said in town that Dowden would “come pretty near having the nomination in his pocket.”)

  “I expect you thought I shifted the subject pretty briskly the other day?” He glanced at me quizzically from under the brim of his black felt hat. “I meant to tell you about that, but the opportunity didn’t occur. You see—”

  “I understand,” I interrupted. “I’ve heard the story. You thought it might be embarrassing to Miss Apperthwaite.”

  “I expect I was pretty clumsy about it,” said Dowden, cheerfully. “Well, well—” he flicked his cigar with a smothered ejaculation that was half a sigh and half a laugh; “it’s a mighty strange case. Here they keep on living next door to each other, year after year, each going on alone when they might just as well—” He left the sentence unfinished, save for a vocal click of compassion. “They bow when they happen to meet, but they haven’t exchanged a word since the night she sent him away, long ago.” He shook his head, then his countenance cleared and he chuckled. “Well, sir, Dave’s got something at home to keep him busy enough, these days, I expect!”

  “Do you mind telling me?” I inquired. “Is its name ‘Simpledoria’?”

  Mr. Dowden threw back his head and laughed loudly. “Lord, no! What on earth made you think that?”

  I told him. It was my second success with this narrative; however, there was a difference: my former auditor listened with flushed and breathless excitement, whereas the present one laughed consumedly throughout. Especially he laughed with a great laughter at the picture of Beasley’s coming down at four in the morning to open the door for nothing on sea or land or in the waters under the earth. I gave account, also, of the miraculous jumping contest (though I did not mention Miss Apperthwaite’s having been with me), and of the elfin voice I had just now overheard demanding “Bill Hammersley.”

  “So I expect you must have decided,” he chuckled, when I concluded, “that David Beasley has gone just plain, plum insane.”

  “Not a bit of it. Nobody could look at him and not know better than that.”

  “You’re right there!” said Dowden, heartily. “And now I’ll tell you all there is to it. You see, Dave grew up with a cousin of his named Hamilton Swift; they were boys together; went to the same school, and then to college. I don’t believe there was ever a high word spoken between them. Nobody in this life ever got a quarrel out of Dave Beasley, and Hamilton Swift was a mighty good sort of a fellow, too. He went East to live, after they got out of college, yet they always managed to get together once a year, generally about Christmas-time; you couldn’t pass them on the street without hearing their laughter ringing out louder than the sleigh-bells, maybe over some old joke between them, or some fool thing they did, perhaps, when they were boys. But finally Hamilton Swift’s business took him over to the other side of the water to live; and he married an English girl, an orphan without any kin. That was about seven years ago. Well, sir, this last summer he and his wife were taking a trip down in Switzerland, and they were both drowned—tipped over out of a rowboat in Lake Lucerne—and word came that Hamilton Swift’s will appointed Dave guardian of the one child they had, a little boy—Hamilton Swift, Junior’s his name. He was sent across the ocean in charge of a doctor, and Dave went on to New York to meet him. He brought him home here the very day before you passed the house and saw poor Dave getting up at four in the morning to let that ghost in. And a mighty funny ghost Simpledoria is!”

  “I begin to understand,” I said, “and to feel pretty silly, too.”

  “Not at all,” he rejoined, heartily. “That little chap’s freaks would mystify anybody, especially with Dave humoring ’em the ridiculous way he does. Hamilton Swift, Junior, is the curiousest child I ever saw—and the good Lord knows He made all children powerful mysterious! This poor little cuss has a complication of infirmities that have kept him on his back most of his life, never knowing other children, never playing, or anything; and he’s got ideas and ways that I never saw the beat of! He was born sick, as I understand it—his bones and nerves and insides are all wrong, somehow—but it’s supposed he gets a little better from year to year. He wears a pretty elaborate set of braces, and he’s subject to attacks, too—I don’t know the name for ’em—and loses what little voice he has sometimes, all but a whisper. He had one, I know, the day after Beasley brought him home, and that was probably the reason you thought Dave was carrying on all to himself about that jumping-match out in the back-yard. The boy must have been lying there in the little wagon they have for him, while Dave cut up shines with ‘Bill Hammersley.’ Of course, most children have make-believe friends and companions, especially if they haven’t any brothers or sisters, but this lonely little feller’s got HIS people worked out in his mind and materialized beyond any I ever heard of. Dave got well acquainted with ’em on the train on the way home, and they certainly are giving him a lively time. Ho, ho! Getting him up at four in the morning—”

  Mr. Dowden’s mirth overcame him for a moment; when he had mastered it, he continued: “Simpledoria—now where do you suppose he got that name?—well, anyway, Simpledoria is supposed to be Hamilton Swift, Junior’s St. Bernard dog. Beasley had to bathe him the other day, he told me! And Bill Hammersley is supposed to be a boy of Hamilton Swift, Junior’s own age, but very big and strong; he has rosy cheeks, and he can do more in athletics than a whole college track-team. That’s the reason he outjumped Dave so far, you see.”

  V.

  Miss Apperthwaite was at home the following Saturday. I found her in the library with Les Misérables on her knee when I came down from my room a little before lunch-time; and she looked up and gave me a smile that made me feel sorry for any one she had ceased to smile upon.

  “I wanted to tell you,” I said, with a little awkwardness but plenty of truth, “I’ve found out that I’m an awful fool.”

  “But that’s something,” she returned, encouragingly—“at least the beginning of wisdom.”

  “I mean about Mr. Beasley—the mystery I was absurd enough to find in ‘Simpledoria.’ I want to tell you—”

  “Oh, I know,” she said; and although she laughed with an effect of carelessness, that look which I had thought “far away” returned to her eyes as she spoke. There was a certain inscrutability about Miss Apperthwaite sometimes, it should be added, as if she did not like to be too easily read. “I’ve heard all about it. Mr. Beasley’s been appointed trustee or something for poor Hamilton Swift’s son, a pitiful little invalid boy who invents all sorts of characters. The old darky from over there told our cook about Bill Hammersley and Simpledoria. So, you see, I understand.”

  “I’m glad you
do,” I said.

  A little hardness—one might even have thought it bitterness—became apparent in her expression. “And I’m glad there’s somebody in that house, at last, with a little imagination!”

  “From everything I have heard,” I returned, summoning sufficient boldness, “it would be difficult to say which has more—Mr. Beasley or the child.”

  Her glance fell from mine at this, but not quickly enough to conceal a sudden, half-startled look of trouble (I can think of no other way to express it) that leaped into it; and she rose, for the lunch-bell was ringing.

  “I’m just finishing the death of Jean Valjean, you know, in Les Misérables,” she said, as we moved to the door. “I’m always afraid I’ll cry over that. I try not to, because it makes my eyes red.”

  And, in truth, there was a vague rumor of tears about her eyes—not as if she had shed them, but more as if she were going to—though I had not noticed it when I came in.

  …That afternoon, when I reached the Despatch office, I was commissioned to obtain certain political information from the Honorable David Beasley, an assignment I accepted with eagerness, notwithstanding the commiseration it brought me from one or two of my fellows in the reporter’s room. “You won’t get anything out of him!” they said. And they were true prophets.

  I found him looking over some documents in his office; a reflective, unlighted cigar in the corner of his mouth; his chair tilted back and his feet on a window-sill. He nodded, upon my statement of the affair that brought me, and, without shifting his position, gave me a look of slow but wholly friendly scrutiny over his shoulder, and bade me sit down. I began at once to put the questions I was told to ask him—interrogations (he seemed to believe) satisfactorily answered by slowly and ruminatively stroking the left side of his chin with two long fingers of his right hand, the while he smiled in genial contemplation of a tarred roof beyond the window. Now and then he would give me a mild and drawling word or two, not brilliantly illuminative, it may be remarked. “Well—about that—” he began once, and came immediately to a full stop.