The Second Christmas Megapack

by Robert Reginald

  It was Christmas, however, and Uncle Noah felt convinced that the Providence that had watched so well over his Christmas Eve would order a special dispensation for his new dilemma. While awaiting its manifestation he would studiously avoid the Colonel, and would slip across to Fernlands, once the pseudo Job was safe in the oven, and beg the gray-eyed lady to accept a dollar a week of the grocer’s money in his inspired scheme of self-redemption.

  With this in mind Uncle Noah served the breakfast, hurried his preparations for the midday feast, and at five minutes of eleven, the turkey safely roasting, set out across the fields for Major Verney’s.

  At Fernlands the eleven strokes of the grandfather’s clock in the great hall found the gray-eyed lady in the arms of a young fellow who had but that instant bounded lightly up the walk from the sleigh Major Verney had dispatched to Cotesville to meet the Northern Express. The Major, smilingly awaiting his opportunity to greet the newcomer, ran his eye approvingly over the lines of the well-knit figure and handsome face of the young man.

  “Well, Dick,” said the Major, advancing with outstretched hand as the girl flushed prettily and smoothed back the dark mist of hair from her forehead, “how are you, my boy? Busy, of course. We read fine things of you in the papers at times.” Then, as the young man took off his overcoat, “What, sir,” the Major inquired, “do you mean by falling in love with my only niece? Here my brother writes me that his daughter is engaged to a man who knows me, and will I pack off a carload of testimonials by special messenger indorsing the little rascal who used to steal my apples. What, sir, do you mean?”

  “Well, Major,” Dick answered as he was ushered into the big living-room, his laughing eyes alight with happiness, “she had the Verney eyes, and you remember I always liked them.” He sank into a chair by Ruth with a smiling glance at the Major. “It is unusually cold for down here. There’s a real bracing Northern sting in the air. And what a snow! It’s packed down so that the runners fairly flew. Major, do sit down!”

  The Major was still bustling about, urging Ruth into another chair by the fire that he himself might sit by Dick, poking energetically at the blazing logs, and firing a volley of directions at black Sam.

  “There!” he exclaimed, finally seating himself. “Now, sir, relative to this infatuated young person on my left, who has condescended to visit her uncle for the first time since she arrived on the planet. I met her last night according to telegraphed instructions, and she kept me waiting—let me see—”

  “Uncle!” protested Ruth, “you’ve added fifteen minutes to that wait every time you’ve mentioned it.”

  “My dear child, politeness alone has kept me from naming the full extent of my wait. If you please, sir,” he turned to Dick, “she was in the clutches of a beggar who obtained twenty-five dollars by a most extraordinary yarn.”

  “Twenty-five dollars!” Dick whistled, smiling at the flush that crept up to the gray eyes. “Was it an aged father this time or a hungry brood of motherless waifs, Ruthie?”

  “Dick, listen!” cried the girl. “Uncle misjudges him. It was a dear old colored man and he told me the strangest story.”

  “You don’t often find a grateful beggar who sends you violets in the morning purchased with some of your own shekels,” said the Major, pinching the flushed cheek. “Tell him, Ruthie; it was odd, and I believe I’d have done the same thing myself.”

  The girl flashed a grateful look at him and then told the story of her purchase of the night before so eloquently that the Major and Dick heard her through with sober faces, secretly touched by its pathos. “And he must have recognized Uncle,” she ended, “for the violets came this morning with the quaintest card.”

  For an instant she dreamily scanned the fire, seeing in its glowing embers the brown wrinkled negro face with its honest eyes, peering at her over his spectacles in troubled apprehension; then she sprang to her feet.

  “Uncle Edward,” she cried, “did you tell Uncle Neb to wait with the sleigh? Those sleigh-bells are beginning to sound hysterical.”

  “Merciful goodness!” cried the Major; “I certainly did. I had the strictest commands to drive in to church for Mother Verney at eleven o’clock. Hi, Sam, you black rascal, tell Uncle Neb I’ll be right out.”

  “I’ll tell him, Uncle,” called Ruth, flying swiftly up the long hall to the library window.

  But no clear call went ringing over the snow to Uncle Neb; instead, there was silence, broken at length by a voice that called softly in great excitement, “Dick! Uncle Edward! do come here. Look!” she cried as they quickly joined her. “You see, Uncle, he didn’t forget!”

  Smiling, the two men looked from the window. An old negro muffled in a threadbare overcoat was plodding up the walk, his eyes scanning the house with evident curiosity.

  The Major uttered a quick exclamation and the girl wheeled about.

  “Don’t you see?” she cried. “He’s come today, honest old fellow that he is! See, Dick—”

  She stopped abruptly, looking from one to the other. There was something in the two stern faces staring beyond her at the bent negro that struck a chill to her heart. Dick’s face had gone white, and the Majors hand had stolen to the younger man’s shoulder as if to steady him.

  There was a startled incredulity in the Major’s face as he said: “Brace up, old man! You didn’t know, neither did I.”

  “Ruth,” Dick asked unsteadily, “is that the old colored man whose—whose master—”

  “Yes!” cried the girl, the sharp pain of premonition in her voice. “Oh, Dick, who is he?”

  Dick’s miserable eyes sought hers as he answered, “It’s—it’s Dad’s Uncle Noah. Ruth, I—” He turned and sought the hall.

  Ruth’s face flamed at his words. Uncle Noah’s pathetic story came crowding over her again in the light of Dick’s revelation. His father and mother! The stern old Colonel, of whom Dick always spoke with such respectful loyalty in spite of their quarrel, and the dear mother, whose tender eyes gazing from the old-fashioned daguerreotype Dick always carried had made her choke with sudden tears—these two were Uncle Noah’s beloved “ol’ Massa an’ ol’ Mis’”!

  She turned; the Major had followed Dick to the hallway. A shuffling step sounded on the porch outside, and the girl hurried toward the door, a sudden light of daring in her eyes. Impulse had always ruled the Verneys, and Ruth was a Verney from the crown of her dark head to the tips of her small feet. Catching up Grandmother Verney’s long cloak hanging over a chair, she softly left the house.

  Dick, struggling into his overcoat, turned at the Major’s touch on his arm.

  “Just a minute, Dick.” Major Verney’s genial voice was sympathetic as a woman’s. “Remember that what the Colonel refused in prosperity he’s not likely to take in adversity. Sit down here by the fire until we talk it over.”

  “But, Major”—there was a note of anguish in the boy’s voice—“I must go to him. Think of Uncle Noah selling himself to help them, and I—”

  But the Major had already removed the overcoat and gently pushed his guest into a chair by the fire. “Yes, yes,” he said as he seated himself; “we know all about that, my boy; but I’m afraid, Dick,” he added regretfully, “that the Colonel wouldn’t let you in. He’s very bitter.”

  Dick groaned. He was calmer now. “You’re right, Major,” he said steadily; “it hurt so at first that I didn’t think. I can’t go now.” He leaned forward anxiously. “The Cotesville Bank—?” he questioned abruptly.

  “Crashed in the autumn—in September.” Dick bit his lip, and the Major added: “He was heavily interested?”

  Dick stared at the fire. “It was all he had,” he said.

  “I see.” The Major’s quiet voiced gave no hint of his own emotion. “I didn’t know. Of course I heard he had lost something; we all did; but I thought he had other money.”

  “No. Tell me, Major, you’ve been going to Brierwood this winter just as usual?”

  “Of course; every Wednesday night.
The Colonel and I are too old to alter the habit of a lifetime, and besides we both love that long evening playing chess. There’s always a roaring wood fire and a steaming pot of coffee, and your mother always plays Beethoven for us just before I go.”

  A look of relief shone in Dick’s eyes. “‘Always a fire,’” he repeated. “I’m glad of that. There was no suggestion of—of want?”

  “Heavens, no!” The Major’s deep voice was full of assurance. “Last week,” he added thoughtfully, “the coffee was pretty weak, but it never occurred to me that—” he stopped abruptly, rose from his chair with sudden energy, violently blew his nose, and tramped down to the end of the hall and back. “Damn the Fairfax pride!” he exclaimed fiercely. “Here Uncle Noah has been coming into the library Wednesday nights and telling the Colonel that the stock had all been bedded down for the night when all the time there’s been nothing left but this confounded old turkey gobbler we’ve been hearing about. He swore last week that somebody had stolen the silver teapot. Abominable old liar! He must have sold it.” The Major threw out his arms with a wrathful gesture. “All this comedy, if you please, for my benefit. Here I’ve been there every week, and never suspected, thanks to the infernal stratagems of that black fiend of an Uncle Noah. Damn the Fairfax pride!”

  The Major sat down as suddenly as he had risen, and, bending over, attacked the fire with vicious energy.

  “Tell me, Major,” Dick presently asked, “have you ever mentioned me to the Colonel since I went North?”

  “Once.” The Major made a wry face. “I never tried again.”

  Dick colored. “Does he know about Ruth?”

  “No, I dared not mention it.” The Major looked at the other intently. “Dick,” he said, “what was this quarrel all about, anyway?”

  “In the beginning, Major,” admitted the young man, flushing, “it was so childish—I’m ashamed to speak of it.”

  “Out with it!” commanded the Major. “I won’t be hoodwinked by a Fairfax any longer.”

  “Well, sir, if you must know, it was about—the War.”

  “The War!” exploded the Major. “By gad, sir, what about the War?”

  “Dad and I were talking it over, and—well, to be frank, Major, I said I thought the North had been right, and that, if I had been in the world at the time, I would have fought with them despite my kinsmen.”

  “Go on! Did you fight in any other post-mortem wars? The Revolution, or the fall of Rome?”

  Dick ignored the sarcasm. “My sympathy for the North made him furious,” he went on. “We quarreled terribly and both of us said things that I know we didn’t mean. It was the Fairfax temper, sir; I—”

  “Damn the Fairfax temper!” roared the Major. “Thank Heavens, the Verneys are mild!”

  Dick laughed, in spite of himself. “I apologized,” he continued soberly, “but he wouldn’t listen; told me to get out; said if I chose to change my opinions about the North, we’d talk it over, and I, of course, refused.”

  “Of course!” interpolated the Major trimly.

  “I’ve written since, suggesting that we forget it all and start anew, but he won’t listen, sir.”

  The Major stroked his beard ominously. “Did it ever occur to you, Dick,” he demanded, “that enough families were estranged by that War without carrying it over into the Twentieth Century? Let me see—how long after the War were you born? Twenty years, wasn’t it? I remember; your father and Ruth’s were married about the same time.”

  “Every man has a right to his opinions, Major,” Dick asserted with spirit. “Of course I’ve no personal knowledge of the War, but”—stubbornly—“the North was right.”

  “Fairfax to the core!” thought the Major in secret admiration. “The boy’s his father all over again. Well, Dick,” he said mildly, “we older men of the South feel a little differently about this War; but, my boy, these post-bellum disputes don’t pay, particularly when one participant was born long after the guns were quiet. In my opinion you didn’t know enough about the War to quarrel over it. Great Scott, quarreling over the War! Dick, you deserved to be spanked.”

  The jingle of sleigh-bells rang blithely through the silence that followed, and the Major sprang to his feet. “Merciful Heavens!” he exclaimed, staring at his watch, “it’s twelve o’clock. That must be Uncle Neb still waiting, and Grandmother Verney’s probably standing on the church porch yet, mad as a hornet.” He was at the door now, calling wildly to the negro: “Uncle Neb, why under the canopy didn’t you call me?”

  The darky scratched his head. “Massa Edward,” he confessed, “I ain’t been yere. I jus’ druv Missy Ruth over to Brierwood with Uncle Noah to see Colonel Fairfax.”

  The Major summoned Dick in great excitement. “Dick,” he exclaimed, “get into your overcoat as fast as you can and drive over to Brierwood with Uncle Neb. Ruth’s gone ahead of you, and you couldn’t have a better deputy short of an angel.”

  Dick wrung the Major’s hand and fled to the waiting sleigh, the color flooding his face.

  “And, Uncle Neb,” called the Major frantically, “hurry back, or Grandmother Verney will be tramping home in the snow, rheumatism or no rheumatism.”

  With a wild jingle of bells that seemed to Dick the hysterical echo of his own heartbeats the sleigh was off.

  VI. THE COLONEL’S CHRISTMAS

  At Brierwood the Colonel, wrought to a high tension of excitement by the mysterious flood of Christmas prosperity, of which the latest manifestation had been a fresh newspaper dated the night before, surmounted by a cigar of no mean label, had been vainly searching for Uncle Noah, bewildered by the darky’s odd vagaries which had culminated in the culprit’s disappearance. Just as the Colonel had returned to the library, drawn his favorite chair up to the cheerful blaze of the wood fire, and opened his favorite volume, a door in the rear of the house shut softly, and, convinced that Uncle Noah had returned, the Colonel closed his book and adjusted his glasses, determined to have an immediate reckoning with the author of all this Christmas cheer.

  A light step sounded behind his chair, and the Colonel turned, quite primed for an altercation. In an instant, however, the old man was on his feet, bowing grandly in spite of his astonishment. A girl stood in the doorway, her cloak falling loosely about her figure. Her cheeks were blazing scarlet from the cold, and the deep gray eyes, fringed in black, bore something in their warm depths that stirred familiar memories.

  “Colonel,” she said, stretching out a slim, white hand, “I’m Ruth Verney, Major Edward’s niece. I’ve just driven one of your servants” (rare tact was but one of the Verney charms) “over from Fernlands and I thought you wouldn’t mind if I ran in for an instant to enjoy your fire.”

  “Why, child,” the Colonel cried, forgetting all else in his delight, “you must be Walter Verney’s daughter.” Ruth smilingly nodded. “I knew it,” he went on; “you have his eyes. Sit down here. I knew your father well; when we were boys he and I were inseparable.” He paused and added simply:

  “That was before the War.”

  The dark lashes veiled for an instant, a certain excitement in the gray eyes. “I’m down for Christmas with Uncle Edward,” Ruth explained; and before the Colonel had fully realized it they were chatting happily together like old friends. Suddenly the girl exclaimed: “Colonel Fairfax, I know you’ll be glad to hear that Dad and the Major are friends again.”

  “Indeed I am!” agreed the Colonel heartily. “In the old days we would have laughed at the man who could possibly have suggested a quarrel for the Verney twins.”

  “Nothing but a cruel war could have done it,” said the girl quietly. “What does it matter now,” she demanded impetuously, “if Daddy did fight for the North and the Major for the South? It’s all so long ago that a quarrel about it is foolish.”

  The Colonel cleared his throat. “Yes, it is foolish,” he admitted.

  “You see,” Ruth leaned eagerly forward, “I met a man who knew the Major, and he praised him so highly tha
t I lay awake all one night thinking what a pity it was that two such splendid men as Daddy and his brother should still be enemies over an old bygone war. You know, Colonel, they would have been friends ages ago, only each was too proud to make the first advance. Wasn’t it foolish?”

  The Colonel nodded, carefully shading his eyes from the fire.

  “They were just wasting precious years of companionship,” went on the girl. “That thought came to me as I lay awake in bed, and the very next morning I wrote to the Major. You see, Colonel Fairfax, I feel this way,” she explained. “There’s no North and no South. Daddy and the Major are citizens of the United States.”

  The Colonel rose and busied himself about the fire. When he put back the tongs and reseated himself his cheeks were hot from its blazing warmth.

  “And that’s what I told Uncle Edward in the letter, and, Colonel, he wrote me such a glorious letter back that I had to show it to Daddy. He was delighted, and he said that any two men who fought over the battles of a dead war were ‘old fools.’”

  Colonel Fairfax winced.

  “So,” finished the girl with glowing eyes, “Uncle Edward came rushing North in a great state of excitement, and that’s how I came to be down here over Christmas.”

  In her impetuous criticism of the war-time quarrel that had separated the Verney twins for more than forty years, and the expression of her broad, impulsive patriotism. Colonel Fairfax had listened to certain truths which had long been subconsciously germinating in his own mind. Before he could recover from the surprise of finding that he agreed with her, Ruth, touched by the lines of care graven upon his fine old face, had caught her breath with a little sob, slipped from her place by the fire, and was kneeling, beside his chair, her eyes starry with light, her lovely face glorified with its tender appeal.

  “Colonel,” she cried, a catch in her voice, “I’m going to marry Dick! It was he who praised Uncle Edward so.”