The Second Christmas Megapack: 29 Modern and Classic Yuletide Stories

by Robert Reginald

  He bowed to right and left, as to an audience politely applauding, and, lifting the table and its burden, withdrew; while old Bob again set his fiddle to his chin and scraped the preliminary measures of a quadrille.

  Beasley was back in an instant, shouting as he came: “Take your pardners! Balance all!”

  And then and there, and all by himself, he danced a quadrille, performing at one and the same time for four lively couples. Never in my life have I seen such gyrations and capers as were cut by that long-legged, loose-jointed, miraculously flying figure. He was in the wildest motion without cessation, never the fraction of an instant still; calling the figures at the top of his voice and dancing them simultaneously; his expression anxious but polite (as is the habit of other dancers); his hands extended as if to swing his partner or corner, or “opposite lady”; and his feet lifting high and flapping down in an old-fashioned step. “First four, forward and back!” he shouted. “Forward and salute! Balance to corners! Swing pardners! Gr-r-rand Right-and-Left!”

  I think the combination of abandon and decorum with which he performed that “Grand Right-and-Left” was the funniest thing I have ever seen. But I didn’t laugh at it.

  Neither did Miss Apperthwaite.

  “Now do you believe me?” Peck was arguing, fiercely, with Mr. Schulmeyer. “Is he crazy, or ain’t he?”

  “He is,” Grist agreed, hoarsely. “He is a stark, starin’, ravin’, roarin’ lunatic! And the nigger’s humorin’ him!”

  They were all staring, open-mouthed and aghast, into the lighted room.

  “Do you see where it puts us?” Simeon Peck’s rasping voice rose high.

  “I guess I do!” said Grist. “We come out to buy a barn, and got a house and lot fer the same money. It’s the greatest night’s work you ever done, Sim Peck!”

  “I guess it is!”

  “Shake on it, Sim.”

  They shook hands, exalted with triumph.

  “This’ll do the work,” giggled Peck. “It’s about two-thousand per cent. better than the story we started to git. Why, Dave Beasley’ll be in a padded cell in a month! It’ll be all over town tomorrow, and he’ll have as much chance fer governor as that nigger in there!” In his ecstasy he smote Dowden deliriously in the ribs. “What do you think of your candidate now?”

  “Wait,” said Dowden. “Who came in the hacks that Grist saw?”

  This staggered Mr. Peck. He rubbed his mitten over his woollen cap as if scratching his head. “Why,” he said, slowly—“who in Halifax did come in them hacks?”

  “The Hunchbergs,” said I.

  “Who’s the Hunchbergs? Where—”

  “Listen,” said Dowden.

  “First couple, face out!” shouted Beasley, facing out with an invisible lady on his akimboed arm, while old Bob sawed madly at A New Coon in Town.

  “Second couple, fall in!” Beasley wheeled about and enacted the second couple.

  “Third couple!” He fell in behind himself again.

  “Fourth couple, if you please! Balance—all!—I beg your pardon, Miss Molanna, I’m afraid I stepped on your train.—Sashay all!”

  After the “sashay”—the noblest and most dashing bit of gymnastics displayed in the whole quadrille—he bowed profoundly to his invisible partner and came to a pause, wiping his streaming face. Old Bob dexterously swung A New Coon into the stately measures of a triumphal march.

  “And now,” Beasley announced, in stentorian tones, “if the ladies will be so kind as to take the gentlemen’s arms, we will proceed to the dining-room and partake of a slight collation.”

  Thereupon came a slender piping of joy from that part of the room screened from us by the Tree.

  “Oh, Cousin David Beasley, that was the beautilfullest quadrille ever danced in the world! And, please, won’t you take Mrs. Hunchberg out to supper?”

  Then into the vision of our paralyzed and dumfounded watchers came the little wagon, pulled by the old colored woman, Bob’s wife, in her best, and there, propped upon pillows, lay Hamilton Swift, Junior, his soul shining rapture out of his great eyes, a bright spot of color on each of his thin cheeks. He lifted himself on one elbow, and for an instant something seemed to be wrong with the brace under his chin.

  Beasley sprang to him and adjusted it tenderly. Then he bowed elaborately toward the mantel-piece.

  “Mrs. Hunchberg,” he said, “may I have the honor?” And offered his arm.

  “And I must have Mister Hunchberg,” chirped Hamilton. “He must walk with me.”

  “He tells me,” said Beasley, “he’ll be mighty glad to. And there’s a plate of bones for Simpledoria.”

  “You lead the way,” cried the child; “you and Mrs. Hunchberg.”

  “Are we all in line?” Beasley glanced back over his shoulder. “Hoo-ray! Now, let us on. Ho! there!”

  “Br-r-ra-vo!” applauded Mister Swift.

  And Beasley, his head thrown back and his chest out, proudly led the way, stepping nobly and in time to the exhilarating measures. Hamilton Swift, Junior, towed by the beaming old mammy, followed in his wagon, his thin little arm uplifted and his fingers curled as if they held a trusted hand.

  When they reached the door, old Bob rose, turned in after them, and, still fiddling, played the procession and himself down the hall.

  And so they marched away, and we were left staring into the empty room.…

  “My soul!” said the Journal reporter, gasping. “And he did all that—just to please a little sick kid!”

  “I can’t figure it out,” murmured Sim Peck, piteously. “I can,” said the Journal reporter. “This story will be all over town tomorrow.” He glanced at me, and I nodded. “It’ll be all over town,” he continued, “though not in any of the papers—and I don’t believe it’s going to hurt Dave Beasley’s chances any.”

  Mr. Peck and his companions turned toward the street; they went silently.

  The young man from the Journal overtook them. “Thank you for sending for me,” he said, cordially. “You’ve given me a treat. I’m fer Beasley!”

  Dowden put his hand on my shoulder. He had not observed the third figure still remaining.

  “Well, sir,” he remarked, shaking the snow from his coat, “they were right about one thing: it certainly was mighty low down of Dave not to invite me—and you, too—to his Christmas party. Let him go to thunder with his old invitations, I’m going in, anyway! Come on. I’m plum froze.”

  There was a side door just beyond the bay-window, and Dowden went to it and rang, loud and long. It was Beasley himself who opened it.

  “What in the name—” he began, as the ruddy light fell upon Dowden’s face and upon me, standing a little way behind. “What are you two—snow-banks? What on earth are you fellows doing out here?”

  “We’ve come to your Christmas party, you old horse-thief!” Thus Mr. Dowden.

  “Hoo-ray!” said Beasley.

  Dowden turned to me. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “What are you waiting for, old fellow?” said Beasley.

  I waited a moment longer, and then it happened.

  She came out of the shadow and went to the foot of the steps, her cloak falling from her shoulders as she passed me. I picked it up.

  She lifted her arms pleadingly, though her head was bent with what seemed to me a beautiful sort of shame. She stood there with the snow driving against her and did not speak. Beasley drew his hand slowly across his eyes—to see if they were really there, I think.

  “David,” she said, at last. “You’ve got so many lovely people in your house tonight: isn’t there room for—for just one fool? It’s Christmas-time!”

  A CHRISTMAS MYSTERY: THE STORY OF THREE WISE MEN, by William John Locke

  Three men who had gained great fame and honor throughout the world met unexpectedly in front of the bookstall at Paddington Station. Like most of the great ones of the earth they were personally acquainted, and they exchanged surprised greetings.

  Sir Angus McCurdie, the
eminent physicist, scowled at the two others beneath his heavy black eyebrows.

  “I’m going to a God-forsaken place in Cornwall called Trehenna,” said he.

  “That’s odd; so am I,” croaked Professor Biggleswade. He was a little, untidy man with round spectacles, a fringe of greyish beard and a weak, rasping voice, and he knew more of Assyriology than any man, living or dead. A flippant pupil once remarked that the Professor’s face was furnished with a Babylonic cuneiform in lieu of features.

  “People called Deverill, at Foulis Castle?” asked Sir Angus.

  “Yes,” replied Professor Biggleswade.

  “How curious! I am going to the Deverills, too,” said the third man.

  This man was the Right Honorable Viscount Doyne, the renowned Empire Builder and Administrator, around whose solitary and remote life popular imagination had woven many legends. He looked at the world through tired gray eyes, and the heavy, drooping, blonde moustache seemed tired, too, and had dragged down the tired face into deep furrows. He was smoking a long black cigar.

  “I suppose we may as well travel down together,” said Sir Angus, not very cordially.

  Lord Doyne said courteously: “I have a reserved carriage. The railway company is always good enough to place one at my disposal. It would give me great pleasure if you would share it.”

  The invitation was accepted, and the three men crossed the busy, crowded platform to take their seats in the great express train. A porter, laden with an incredible load of paraphernalia, trying to make his way through the press, happened to jostle Sir Angus McCurdie. He rubbed his shoulder fretfully.

  “Why the whole land should be turned into a bear garden on account of this exploded superstition of Christmas is one of the anomalies of modern civilization. Look at this insensate welter of fools travelling in wild herds to disgusting places merely because it’s Christmas!”

  “You seem to be travelling yourself, McCurdie,” said Lord Doyne.

  “Yes—and why the devil I’m doing it, I’ve not the faintest notion,” replied Sir Angus.

  “It’s going to be a beast of a journey,” he remarked some moments later, as the train carried them slowly out of the station. “The whole country is under snow—and as far as I can understand we have to change twice and wind up with a twenty-mile motor drive.”

  He was an iron-faced, beetle-browed, stern man, and this morning he did not seem to be in the best of tempers. Finding his companions inclined to be sympathetic, he continued his lamentation.

  “And merely because it’s Christmas I’ve had to shut up my laboratory and give my young fools a holiday—just when I was in the midst of a most important series of experiments.”

  Professor Biggleswade, who had heard vaguely of and rather looked down upon such new-fangled toys as radium and thorium and helium and argon—for the latest astonishing developments in the theory of radio-activity had brought Sir Angus McCurdie his worldwide fame—said somewhat ironically:

  “If the experiments were so important, why didn’t you lock yourself up with your test tubes and electric batteries and finish them alone?”

  “Man!” said McCurdie, bending across the carriage, and speaking with a curious intensity of voice, “d’ye know I’d give a hundred pounds to be able to answer that question?”

  “What do you mean?” asked the Professor, startled.

  “I should like to know why I’m sitting in this damned train and going to visit a couple of addle-headed society people whom I’m scarcely acquainted with, when I might be at home in my own good company furthering the progress of science.”

  “I myself,” said the Professor, “am not acquainted with them at all.”

  It was Sir Angus McCurdie’s turn to look surprised.

  “Then why are you spending Christmas with them?”

  “I reviewed a ridiculous blank-verse tragedy written by Deverill on the Death of Sennacherib. Historically it was puerile. I said so in no measured terms. He wrote a letter claiming to be a poet and not an archæologist. I replied that the day had passed when poets could with impunity commit the abominable crime of distorting history. He retorted with some futile argument, and we went on exchanging letters, until his invitation and my acceptance concluded the correspondence.”

  McCurdie, still bending his black brows on him, asked him why he had not declined. The Professor screwed up his face till it looked more like a cuneiform than ever. He, too, found the question difficult to answer, but he showed a bold front.

  “I felt it my duty,” said he, “to teach that preposterous ignoramus something worth knowing about Sennacherib. Besides I am a bachelor and would sooner spend Christmas, as to whose irritating and meaningless annoyance I cordially agree with you, among strangers than among my married sisters’ numerous and nerve-racking families.”

  Sir Angus McCurdie, the hard, metallic apostle of radio-activity, glanced for a moment out of the window at the gray, frost-bitten fields. Then he said:

  “I’m a widower. My wife died many years ago and, thank God, we had no children. I generally spend Christmas alone.”

  He looked out of the window again. Professor Biggleswade suddenly remembered the popular story of the great scientist’s antecedents, and reflected that as McCurdie had once run, a barefoot urchin, through the Glasgow mud, he was likely to have little kith or kin. He himself envied McCurdie. He was always praying to be delivered from his sisters and nephews and nieces, whose embarrassing demands no calculated coldness could repress.

  “Children are the root of all evil,” said he. “Happy the man who has his quiver empty.”

  Sir Angus McCurdie did not reply at once; when he spoke again it was with reference to their prospective host.

  “I met Deverill,” said he, “at the Royal Society’s Soiré this year. One of my assistants was demonstrating a peculiar property of thorium and Deverill seemed interested. I asked him to come to my laboratory the next day, and found he didn’t know a damned thing about anything. That’s all the acquaintance I have with him.”

  Lord Doyne, the great administrator, who had been wearily turning over the pages of an illustrated weekly chiefly filled with flamboyant photographs of obscure actresses, took his gold glasses from his nose and the black cigar from his lips, and addressed his companions.

  “I’ve been considerably interested in your conversation,” said he, “and as you’ve been frank, I’ll be frank too. I knew Mrs. Deverill’s mother, Lady Carstairs, very well years ago, and of course Mrs. Deverill when she was a child. Deverill I came across once in Egypt—he had been sent on a diplomatic mission to Teheran. As for our being invited on such slight acquaintance, little Mrs. Deverill has the reputation of being the only really successful celebrity hunter in England. She inherited the faculty from her mother, who entertained the whole world. We’re sure to find archbishops, and eminent actors, and illustrious divorcées asked to meet us. That’s one thing. But why I, who loathe country house parties and children and Christmas as much as Biggleswade, am going down there today, I can no more explain than you can. It’s a devilish odd coincidence.”

  The three men looked at one another. Suddenly McCurdie shivered and drew his fur coat around him.

  “I’ll thank you,” said he, “to shut that window.”

  “It is shut,” said Doyne.

  “It’s just uncanny,” said McCurdie, looking from one to the other.

  “What?” asked Doyne.

  “Nothing, if you didn’t feel it.”

  “There did seem to be a sudden draught,” said Professor Biggleswade. “But as both window and door are shut, it could only be imaginary.”

  “It wasn’t imaginary,” muttered McCurdie.

  Then he laughed harshly. “My father and mother came from Cromarty,” he said with apparent irrelevance. “That’s the Highlands,” said the Professor.

  “Ay,” said McCurdie.

  Lord Doyne said nothing, but tugged at his moustache and looked out of the window as the frozen meadows and bi
ts of river and willows raced past. A dead silence fell on them. McCurdie broke it with another laugh and took a whiskey flask from his hand-bag.

  “Have a nip?”

  “Thanks, no,” said the Professor. “I have to keep to a strict dietary, and I only drink hot milk and water—and of that sparingly. I have some in a thermos bottle.”

  Lord Doyne also declining the whiskey, McCurdie swallowed a dram and declared himself to be better. The Professor took from his bag a foreign review in which a German sciolist had dared to question his interpretation of a Hittite inscription. Over the man’s ineptitude he fell asleep and snored loudly.

  To escape from his immediate neighborhood McCurdie went to the other end of the seat and faced Lord Doyne, who had resumed his gold glasses and his listless contemplation of obscure actresses. McCurdie lit a pipe, Doyne another black cigar. The train thundered on.

  Presently they all lunched together in the restaurant car. The windows steamed, but here and there through a wiped patch of pane a white world was revealed. The snow was falling. As they passed through Westbury, McCurdie looked mechanically for the famous white horse carved into the chalk of the down; but it was not visible beneath the thick covering of snow.

  “It’ll be just like this all the way to Gehenna—Trehenna, I mean,” said McCurdie.

  Doyne nodded. He had done his life’s work amid all extreme fiercenesses of heat and cold, in burning droughts, in simoons and in icy wildernesses, and a ray or two more of the pale sun or a flake or two more of the gentle snow of England mattered to him but little. But Biggleswade rubbed the pane with his table-napkin and gazed apprehensively at the prospect.