by Van Reid
At the back of the room Colin Kinross lifted his head, as if only now realizing where he was. He was used to quieter surroundings when the game grew serious and the players had been whittled down to a single table and the moneyed few. To the surprise of the other participants, he gathered in his winnings and retrieved the homburg from the back of his chair.
“Calling it already?” wondered one of the men at the table.
Colin did not reply. Some deed or feat at the other end of the room brought a roar from the crowd. He put the newly acquired hat on his head for the first time and was pleased to find that it fitted him perfectly.
“That’s a fine hat,” said somebody.
“What do you plan to do with it?” asked Eddy.
“What do you do with a hat?” returned Colin, but never waited for a reply. He threw his coat over his shoulders and snatched up the hat he had worn into the Weary Sailor. The crowd parted for him as he made his way to the door.
“Merry Christmas, Colin!” shouted someone. Again he did not respond but stepped out into the winter night and weighed upon the moon, which, diminished to its last quarter, floated a degree or so above the house across the way.
Alone, Colin Kinross moved west down Madison Street, and he had not gone very far before he was almost startled by a figure standing beneath an oak in the yard of a boardinghouse. It was not the presence of the form but its inhuman silence, and as he drew near to the figure, he realized that it was also a cold silence.
Colin stood for a bit and considered the stony eyes and the frozen mouth, the odd red nose. The stick arms were pitiful and thin compared with the rounded abundance of the white body. The cardsharp peered up at the darkened windows of the boardinghouse and wondered what humble dreams of Christmas played therein.
He laid his old hat on the cold pate, then stopped, his arm outstretched, his hand still gripping the crown. He could hear the sound of revelry even here, though the Weary Sailor was gone from his line of sight. a lonely breeze wandered among the bare branches of the oak.
The gambler made a strange low sound, almost a laugh, and he took back his old hat and laid upon the snowman’s head the newly acquired homburg. There wasn’t a better-decked-out snowman in the city, he was sure. He thought of the kids when they came down and found such a fine bit of headgear decorating their frosty companion. He brushed the snow from the band of his own hat. He settled the hat on his head and walked back to the street.
Soon the snowman was alone again, if better dressed.
The children who had made him, however, would never see the hat, as a wind came up with the morning and took the homburg from its cold resting place and danced it down the street in fits and starts, till it reached Anderson Street, where a contrary current took it up like a kite.
66. Spheres in Transit
Look at you, thought Daniel Plainway. He sat on the edge of the bed and watched the little boy sleep as he pulled on his shoes. Christmas morning shone through the windows, cold and clear, the night’s snow dusting the roofs and surfaces of the O’Hearn farm.
The boy stirred in his sleep, and Daniel wondered if you could wake somebody by watching him. He had been given Wyck’s bed and had slept, against his own expectations, like a child himself. There had been something exhausting about the evening, though the O’Hearns couldn’t have made him feel more at home and though he had reached a satisfying end to an otherwise tragic business.
In fact, Bird (Daniel had begun to think of the boy as Bird) was that satisfying end, and the lawyer sat on the edge of the bed and watched the child stir so that he might revel a little bit in something so unexpected and fortunate.
How will he think of himself? Daniel wondered. Will he be Bird or Bertram? a Linnett, a Willum, or an O’Hearn perhaps?
The sound of pots on a stove rang from the kitchen below. Bird’s eyes came open, and Daniel watched him watch the ceiling. The little boy frowned slightly and fished around beneath the covers till he produced a figure of yarn and scrap cloth that was supposed to represent a cat. Bird then realized that Daniel was there, and he sat up.
“Merry Christmas,” said Daniel.
“Merry Christmas,” said the child. Life at the O’Hearn farm might still seem a little unreal for Bird, after growing from one to four years in the ragged company of Eustace Pembleton, and certainly he did not know what to think or expect of Christmas Day. He caught sight of the stocking at the foot of his bed and leaned near it cautiously.
“St. Nick’s been here,” said Daniel.
Bird’s mouth hung open in astonishment. Daniel had delighted in adding some items to the stocking the night before and been pleased and warmed at the generous offerings from the other adults in the house, particularly Wyck’s brother-in-law, Ephias.
There were footsteps on the stairs and a knock at the door. Wyckford stuck his head in and wished them a Merry Christmas. “What have you there?” he wondered.
“St. Nick,” said Bird simply, holding up the bulging stocking, and a bright smile lit the little fellow’s face with such energy that Wyck was a little taken aback. He was not accustomed to seeing Bird look so very much like a kid.
“Well, dump it out and see what he brought!” declared Wyck, and he and Daniel sat by and watched as the boy sifted through the toys and trinkets and sweets.
Bird often exhibited an understanding of what others might be feeling, and Daniel was startled and moved when the boy took his hand on the way downstairs for breakfast. Greetings of the day went all around, and even Ephias, looking unconvinced, mumbled a Merry Christmas when they arrived. Breakfast was a large affair, and coffee was had in the parlor where small gifts were exchanged. Daniel was not forgotten, nor had he come unprepared. It was quiet and pleasing, and the greatest gift to Bird was without a doubt the scene itself with Lydia and her family taking up the warm parlor and a full stomach and a crackling hearth. Daniel watched Emmy disappear into the kitchen, and he wondered if she was herself with child. Then he turned to Lydia, and from her expression of love and concern, he knew it was so.
Daniel was satisfied. By the goodness and courage of others, his duty to Eleanor Linnett was fulfilled. I his heart he was finally saying good-bye, and some portion of him that had remained dormant was ready to look for new life and new cares.
The day went swiftly enough, and he stepped into the yard of the O’Hearn farm weighted down with boxes and bags of Christmas goose and squash and apple pies and canned mincemeat and assorted gifts for his sister and himself. The air was filled with sincere directives to visit anytime and promises to bring Bird to Hiram. Bird and Wyck took him to the station and helped him juggle his things out of the sleigh.
“Well, you’re a big fellow,” said the porter when the boy handed him a particularly heavy box. “What’s your name?”
The little fellow said something that was difficult to hear.
Smiling, the porter glanced up at Wyckford. “Bird?” he said.
“Bert,” said the boy.
“Well there,” said the porter as he pushed his loaded dolly toward the baggage car, “Merry Christmas, Bert.”
The train was not leaving the station for some minutes, and Daniel insisted that Wyckford and the boy not wait. “You must get back to your family, this being Christmas.” He shook Wyck’s hand and hoped he hadn’t given it too hard a pump. “Thank you,” he added simply.
“Good luck to you, Mr. Plainway,” said Wyck. He felt inadequate to the moment, sensing that the spheres of two worlds had briefly grazed one another and that those two worlds were once more drifting apart into the uncertainty of the future. He would have liked to be Daniel Plainway’s friend and didn’t know how to bring that about.
Daniel nodded awkwardly a couple of times and said good-bye. The two from the farm-the big redheaded man and the little brown-haired boy who looked so much like his mother and so much like his uncleted as awkwardly away and climbed into the sleigh. When they were gone, Daniel was regretful that he had pressed them to leave
. He didn’t know why he’d made such a fuss about it. He stood at the platform, worn out and unnerved; he hadn’t expected to be on this end of the matter so suddenly. It’s been a long haul, he thought, and I haven’t had the opportunitto think what it means.
What it meant, he knew, was that he was back to his life as he had been living it since he came to Hiram.
The train made sounds that indicated it would be leaving soon. The conductor appeared, looking at his watch. The porter who had taken his bags nodded to Daniel as he passed. Some people were coming out of the station house, having been warming themselves by the stove there. One of them, a lovely woman of about Daniel’s years, paused at the top step and surveyed the yard till she caught sight of the lawyer standing by himself. She smiled. Daniel was astonished and looked it, and her smile grew.
Charlotte stepped down from the station, preceded by her outstretched hand, which Daniel took. “Mr. Moss said you would be coming back today,” she said.
“He did?” said Daniel.
“After all you’ve told me,” she explained, “I thought that seeing the boy might be difficult, in its way, and that you might care for some company on the train.”
Look at you! he was thinking. Her gloved hand was still in his, and he said, “I can’t express, Miss Burnbrake, how very thoughtful you are.”
Charlotte’s head was spinning a little, she couldn’t believe that she was forging ahead with such courage. She did not let go of his hand but said a little playfully and a little pointedly, “I will be Charlotte, Mr. Plainway, if you will be Daniel.”
And she dropped her hand from his only when he said, “Charlotte.”
“I’m not so very thoughtful, Daniel,” she said, taking his arm. “As you will see, I am in need of company myself.”
As they passed the conductor, Daniel felt as if he were walking on air. He tipped his hat to the man.
The conductor smiled at them, saying, “I hope you and your wife have a very Merry Christmas, sir.”
There was a hesitation in Daniel’s step, and he was about to turn and say something when Charlotte gave his arm a squeeze and gently pulled him toward the boarding platform.
67. Number Six in an Ongoing Series
Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump had been thinking.
It was Ephram who instigated this activity, for it was he who first announced that he was thinking. “I have been thinking,” he said, and Eagleton could believe it, for the expression on Ephram’s face was reflective.
“Have you, my friend?” said Eagleton.
“Yes,” said Ephram.
They were on their way to Thump’s, and that worthy was not long in the cab before Eagleton passed on this intelligence. “Ephram has been thinking,” he said.
“Has he?” replied Thump.
“Yes,” said Ephram.
Ephram’s rumination, and as soon as he told them, they were thinking as Naturally, Eagleton and Thump were curious regarding the subject of well.
“I have never thought of it!” said Eagleton.
“It has only just come to me,” admitted Ephram.
“It is troublesome,” said Thump.
“But must it be?” wondered Ephram.
“That, I think, is what makes it troublesome,” thought Thump aloud.
“Good heavens,” said Eagleton. It would never have occurred to him.
“I wouldn’t have thought,” said Ephram, but there it was.
“Christmas!” said Eagleton, suddenly. “Merry Christmas!” And this put an entirely new light upon all matters.
“Of course, of course!” said Ephram. “Merry Christmas!”
“Merry Christmas!” said Thump. “High tide at forty-five minutes past the hour of two.”
“Continued fair and cold,” said Eagleton. “Wind in the northwest. Expected to break above freezing this afternoon.”
“It’s twelve past nine,” said Ephram. They were going to pick up Mister Walton now, then head for breakfast at the City Hotel with Miss McCannon and (they thought) Miss Bumbrake and her uncle.
“Ephram has been thinking,” said Eagleton when Mister Walton entered the cab, but no fer elucidation was tendered, and Mister Walton nodded and smiled his approval.
“Merry Christmas!” said Thump.
Sundry Moss, had he been in Portland on Christmas Day, might have discouraged anyone (himself included) from accompanying Miss McCannon and Mister Walton to breakfast and their subsequent walk, but he would probably have been mistaken in his reasoning, for Phileda and Toby had no notion of shutting the door behind their newfound affinity and, on the contrary, were eager to share each other with the world.
With as much resolution between them as they dared presently to ask for, Mister Walton and Miss McCannon were able to lend their thoughts to other things for a time, and this morning they found themselves most interested in Charlotte Burnbrake’s absence from their circle at breakfast. Ezra Burnbrake had been pleased to profess ignorance in the matter, and coupled with the light of humor in his eyes, this served only to add to their curiosity. It was the topic of some conversation as they commenced their walk.
The day was clear and brisk; the dusting of the night before skirled in the streets and glistened in the sun as it took the air, and those gemlike sparks of reflected light seemed almost as bright as their happy faces. The smiles of the people they met were in concordance, and the livelier denizens of the city accompanied them along Congress Street in the direction of Munjoy Hill and the Eastern Promenade, where many new sleds and toboggans and vehicles unnamable of every shape and size were making their maiden runs.
As it happened, Miss McCannon and Mister Walton enjoyed a certain degree of privacy on their walk; the members of the club were not used to sustaining such brisk movement and were besides slowed down by the sights, prone to stop and engage fellow pedestrians with more than a “Merry Christmas” or “Season’s Greetings.” The subject raised by Ephram’s earlier thought processes also gave the members cause for continued cogitation, and deliberate thought is not generally conducive to a swift pace.
“I have been thinking,” said Thump, and his friends were glad to hear lem without divining a clear and cheerful solution. it. Seldom did it fall out that Thump bent his cognitive powers to a prob“I sincerely hope that I did not complicate the day by raising such a question,” said Ephram, who had been the first among them to think this morning.
“Not at all,” said Eagleton, but with a frown of concentration upon his brow. (Up ahead of them Mister Walton and Miss McCannon, arm in arm, were laughing happily about something.)
“I have been thinking,” began Thump again, “that instead of”-and here he shrugged elaborately-“we might,” upon which two words he made a very generous and all-encompassing gesture.
“Good heavens!” said Eagleton.
“My thoughts, exactly, Eagleton!” said Ephram.
Thump made some inarticulate sounds, fearing that he had overstepped in the realm of imaginative possibilities.
“It’s brilliant!” declared Eagleton.
“My ver thought!” agreed Ephram.
“Do you think?” said an astonished Thump.
“Can we do that?” wondered Eagleton.
Thump raised a single eyebrow.
“Is it in the rules?” wondered Ephram.
“There are no rules!” Thump reminded them.
“We are writing the rules!” added Eagleton aloud.
“It is rather like saying there is no rule,” thought Ephram aloud and with some astonishment.
“We have been very good at avoiding rules altogether,” said Eagleton, and his hair almost stood on end when he said it.
“My good man!” shouted Ephram and Eagleton to Thump, loud enough to arrest the attention of their friends ahead of them. Mister Walton and Miss McCannon turned to see Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump shaking hands with one another.
“Is it unanimous then?” wondered Ephram.
“We are yet shy by two votes, but
I can nearly guarantee them,” said Eagleton. “Brilliant!” he said again, and Thump looked abashed.
By this time they had reached Mister Walton and Miss McCannon. Other folk, out for a walk on Christmas Day, or heading toward the Eastern Promenade, looked with interest as they passed. “I believe we have missed something of importance,” said Mister Walton, whose eyes glinted with humor behind his spectacles.
“We have had a vote,” explained Eagleton, and he took his hat off to bow to Miss McCannon. “A vote that has been unanimous among the three of us, and I daresay will be approbated by the remainder of our club.” (Eagleton did not mention that the “remainder” of the club consisted solely of Mister Walton and Sundry Moss.)
Ephram doffed his hat and bowed. “If we are not presumptuous,” he hastened to add.
“If you will do us the honor,” said Thump, and he too lifted his top hat and bowed.
The absolute truth was that they were fearful of losing their chairman, and Thump had hit upon the happiest of solutions.
“We would be very pleased, Miss McCannon,” said Ephram.
Phileda, who was already pleased without knowing about what, only smiled delightedly.
“If you would accept our invitation,” said Eagleton.
When this did not seem to clear things up, Thump said, “To join our membership in…the Moosepath League!”
Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump were a little confounded since Miss McCannon put her hand to her mouth, even as tears came to her eyes. She seemed, however, to be laughing. Mister Walton was most definitely laughing.
“Is it too much?” wondered Ephram. He felt very responsible, since he had been the first to think that morning.
