The Second Christmas Megapack: 29 Modern and Classic Yuletide Stories

by Robert Reginald

  “As soon as the sun goes down, it gets dark here,” said Rosemary, regretfully. “Thank you very much, but I’d rather go home now. You see, I do so want you to be there already, waiting to surprise Angel when she comes in.”

  “No time even to buy a doll?”

  “I’d rather go home, thank you. Besides, though I should like to have a new doll, perhaps darling Evie would be sad if I played with another.”

  Hugh was obediently turning the car’s bonnet towards Monte Carlo, and for the fraction of a second he was foolish enough almost to lose control of it, on account of a start he gave. “Evie!” he echoed.

  It was years since he had spoken that name.

  “She’s my doll,” explained Rosemary.

  “Oh!” said Hugh.

  “But I don’t think she’d mind or be sad if you gave me a doll’s house,” went on the child, “if you should have time to get it for me by and bye; that is, if you really want to give me something for Christmas, you know.”

  “Of course I do. But tell me, why did you name your doll Evie?”

  He put the question in a low voice, as if he were half ashamed of asking it; and as at that instant a tram boomed by, Rosemary heard only the first words.

  “I ’sposed you would,” she replied. “Fathers do like to give their little girls Christmas presents, Jane says; maybe that’s why they’re obliged to come back always on Christmas Eve, if they’ve been lost. Do you know, even if there aren’t any fairies, it’s just like a fairy story having my father come back, and take me to Angel in a motor car on Christmas eve.”

  “Good gracious!” exclaimed Hugh Egerton. “Did you say—father?”

  “Yes,” replied Rosemary. “You’re almost like a fairy father, I said.”

  So, he was her father—her long lost father! Poor little lamb, he began to guess at the story now. There was a scamp of a father who had “not been very kind” to Angel, and had been lost, or had thoughtfully lost himself. For some extraordinary reason the child imagined that he—well, if it were not pathetic, it would be funny. But somehow he did not feel much inclined to laugh. Poor little thing! His heart yearned over her; but the situation was becoming strained. Unless he could think of some good way out of it, he might have a scene when he was obliged to rob the child of her father, on reaching the door of her house.

  “That’s it,” said he, calling all his tact to the rescue. “I am a fairy father. Just as you thought, it’s a mistake of Jane’s about there being no fairies; only the trouble is, fairies aren’t so powerful as they used to be in the old days. Now, I should love to be able to stay with you for a long, long time, but because I’m only a poor fairy father, I can’t. We’ve been very happy together, and I’m tremendously glad you found me. I shall think of you and of this day, often. But the cruel part is, that when I bring you to your door, I’m afraid I shall have to—vanish.”

  “Oh, how dreadful!” cried Rosemary, her voice quivering. “Must I lose you again?”

  “Perhaps I can write to you,” Hugh tried to console her, feeling horribly guilty and helpless.

  “That won’t be the same. I do love you so much. Please don’t vanish.”

  “I shall send you things. A doll’s house for Evie. By the way, you didn’t tell me why you named her that.”

  “After Angel, of course,” returned the child absent-mindedly. “But when you’ve vanished, I—”

  “Is your mother’s name Evie?”

  “Evelyn. But that’s too long for a doll.”

  “Evelyn—what? You—you haven’t told me your name yet.”

  “Rosemary Evelyn Clifford.”

  “Great Heavens!”

  “How strange your voice sounds,” said Rosemary. “Are you ill?”

  “No—no! I—feel a little odd, that’s all.”

  “Oh, it isn’t the vanishing coming on already? We’re a long way from our hotel yet.”

  Hugh drove mechanically, though sky and sea and mountains seemed to be seething together, as if in the convulsions of an earthquake.

  Her child! And her husband—what of him? The little one said he was lost; that he had not been kind. Hugh gritted his teeth together, and heard only the singing of his blood in his ears. Was the man dead, or had he but disappeared? In any case, she was here, alone in Monte Carlo, with her child; poor, unhappy, working by day, crying by night. He must see her, at once—at once.

  Yet—what if it were not she, after all? If the name were a coincidence? There might be other Evelyn Cliffords in the world. It must be that this was another. His Evelyn had married a rich and titled Englishman. She was Lady Clifford. The things that had happened to Rosemary’s Angel could not have happened to her. Still, he must know, and know quickly.

  “Where do you live, little Rosemary?” he asked, grimly schooling his voice, when he felt that he could trust himself to speak.

  “The Hôtel Pensior Beau Soleil, Rue Girasole, in the Condamine, Monte Carlo,” answered the child, as if she were repeating a lesson she had been taught to rattle off by heart.

  Lost as he was to most external things, Hugh roused himself to some surprise at the name of the hotel.

  “Why, that is where Mademoiselle de Lavalette and her mother live!” he exclaimed.

  “They’re the ladies Angel lent the money to, because she was so sorry for them,” said Rosemary. “I’ve heard them talking about it with her, and saying they can’t pay it back. They’re angry with her for asking, but she had to, you see. When they go past us in the dining-room they turn their backs.”

  Hugh’s attention was arrested now.

  “Do they dine?” he asked. “Every night?”

  “Oh yes, always. Mademoiselle has lovely dresses. She is pretty, but the Comtesse is such an ugly old lady; like Red Riding Hood’s grandmother, I think. I’m afraid of her. Jane says her Madame and Monsieur don’t believe she’s really a Comtesse. I had to knock at her door with a letter from Angel today, for Angel doesn’t know I’m afraid. I couldn’t help being glad Madame wouldn’t let me in, for it seemed as if she might eat me up. I knocked and knocked, and when I was going away, I saw Mademoiselle coming in, in a pink dress with a rosy hat.”

  “I think she’ll pay your mother back tomorrow,” said Hugh, remembering the fatness of the pink bag.

  “She didn’t say she would. She was so cross with me that she called me a petit bête, and snatched the letter out of my hand.”

  At this, Hugh’s face grew suddenly hot and red, and he muttered something under his breath. But it was not a word which Rosemary would have understood, even if she had heard.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: THE WHITE FIGURE AT THE DOOR

  Rosemary had tears in her eyes and voice, when the fairy father stopped his car at the door of the hotel. He had driven so very quickly since he’d broken it to her that they must part!

  “Now, have you to vanish this very minute?” she asked, choking back a sob, as he lifted her to the ground. Vanish? He had forgotten all about vanishing. To vanish now was the last thing he wished to do.

  “Something tells me that I shan’t have to—quite yet, anyhow,” he said hastily. “I—want to see your mother. Has she a sitting-room where I could call upon her, or wait till she comes in?”

  “We haven’t one of our own,” said Rosemary. “But there’s a nice old lady who lives next door to us, on the top floor, and is very good to Angel and me. She writes stories, and things for the papers, and Angel types them, sometimes. When she’s away she lets us use the sitting-room where she writes; and she’s away now. Angel and I are going to be there this evening till it’s my bedtime; and you can come up with me if you will. Oh, I’m so thankful you don’t need to vanish for a little while.”

  His heart pounding as it had not pounded for six years and more—(not since the days when he had gone up other stairs, in another land, to see an Evelyn)—Hugh followed the flitting figure of the child.

  The stairs and corridors were not lighted yet. One economises with electric light and
many other little things at a hotel pension, where the prices are “from five francs a day, vin compris.”

  Rosemary opened a door on the fourth floor, and for a moment the twilight on the other side was shot for Hugh with red and purple spots. But the colors faded when the childish voice said, “Angel isn’t here. If you’ll come in, I’ll go and see if she’s in our room.”

  “Don’t tell her—don’t say—anything about a fairy father,” he stammered.

  “Oh no, that’s to be the surprise,” Rosemary reassured him, as she pattered away.

  It was deep twilight in the room, and rather cold, for the eucalyptus and olive logs in the fireplace still awaited the match. Hugh could see the blurred outlines of a few pieces of cheap furniture; a sofa, three or four chairs, a table, and a clumsy writing desk. But the window was still a square of pale bluish light, cut out of the violet dusk, and as the young man’s eyes accustomed themselves to the dimness, the room did not seem dark.

  He was not left alone for long. In two or three minutes Rosemary appeared once more, without her hat and coat, to say that “Angel” had not yet come back. “But she’ll soon be here now,” went on the child. “Do you mind waiting in the twilight, fairy father? The electric light doesn’t come on till after five, and I’ve just heard the clock downstairs strike five.”

  “I shall like it,” answered Hugh, glad that his face should be hidden by the dusk, in these moments of waiting.

  “Angel tells me stories in the twilight,” said Rosemary, as he sat down on the sofa by the cold fireplace, and she let him lift her light little body to his knee. “Would you tell me one, about when you were lost?”

  “I’ll try,” Hugh said. “Let me think, what story shall I tell?”

  “I won’t speak while you’re remembering,” Rosemary promised, leaning her head confidingly against his shoulder. “I always keep quiet, while Angel puts on her thinking cap.”

  Hugh laughed, and was silent. But his head was too hot to wear a thinking cap, and no story would come at his half-hearted call.

  Rosemary waited in patience for him to begin. “One, two, three,” she counted under her breath; for she had learned to count up to fifty, and it was good practice when one wished to make the time pass. She had just come to forty-nine, and was wondering if she might remind the fairy father of his duty, when the door opened.

  It was Angel, of course; but Angel did not come in. She stopped on the threshold, talking to somebody, or rather somebody was talking to her. Rosemary could not see the person, but she recognised the voice. It was that of Mademoiselle de Lavalette.

  “You are not to write my mother letters, and trouble us about that money, madame,” said the voice, as shrill now as it could be sweet. “Once for all, I will not have it. I have followed you to tell you this. You will be paid soon; that is enough. I am engaged to be married to a rich man, an American. He will be glad to pay all our debts by and by; but meantime, madame, you are to let us alone.”

  “I have done nothing, except to write and say that I needed the money—which you promised to return weeks ago, or I couldn’t possibly have spared it,” protested a voice which Hugh had heard in dreams three nights out of every six, in as many years.

  “Well, if you write any more letters, we shall burn them unread, so it is no use to trouble us; and we will pay when we choose.”

  With the last words, the other voice died into distance. Mademoiselle had said what she came to say, and was retreating with dignity down the corridor.

  Now the figure of a slender woman was silhouetted in the doorway. Hugh heard a sigh, and saw a hand that glimmered white in the dusk against the dark paper on the wall, as it groped for the button of the electric light. Then, suddenly the room was filled with a white radiance, and she stood in the midst of it, young and beautiful, the woman he had loved for seven years.

  Putting Rosemary away he sprang up, and her eyes, dazzled at first by the sudden flood of light, opened wide in startled recognition. “Hugh—Hugh Egerton!” she stammered, whispering as one whispers in a dream.

  She was pale as a lily, but the whiteness of her face was like light, shining from within; and there was a light in her great eyes, too, such as had never shone for Hugh on sea or land. Once, a long time ago, he had hoped that she cared, or would come to care. But she had chosen another man, and Hugh had gone away; that had been the end. Yet now—what stars her eyes were! One might almost think that she had not forgotten; that sometimes she had wished for him, that she was glad to see him now.

  “Lady Clifford,” he stammered. “I—will you forgive my being here—my frightening you like this?”

  The brightness died out of her face. “Lady Clifford!” she echoed. “Don’t call me that, unless—I’m to call you Mr. Egerton? And besides, I’m only Madame Clifford here. It is better; the other would seem like ostentation in a woman who works.”

  “Evelyn,” he said. “Thank you for letting it be Evelyn.” Then, his voice breaking a little, “Oh, say you’re a tiny bit glad to see me, just a tiny bit glad.”

  She did not answer in words; but her eyes spoke, as she held out both hands.

  He crushed them in his, then bent his head and kissed them; first the girlish right hand, then the left. But she saw his face contract as he caught the gleam of her wedding ring. As he looked up, their eyes met again, and each knew what was in the other’s mind.

  “Angel, dearest,” said Rosemary, “do tell the fairy father you’re glad to see him.”

  Evelyn started. “Why do you call him that?”

  “Because he said he was a fairy, and would have to vanish soon. But you’ll beg him not to, won’t you?”

  “I—I should be sorry to lose him again. We haven’t many friends, in these days.” The bright head was bowed over the child’s, as Rosemary clung to her mother’s dress.

  “You never lost me,” said Hugh Egerton. “It was I who lost you. Evie, you don’t know what black years these have been. I loved you so.”

  “But that—was—long ago.”

  “It was always.”

  “Hugh! I thought you must have learned to hate me.”

  “Hate you, because I couldn’t make you care for me as—I hoped you would, and because you cared for someone else? No, I—”

  “But—I did care for you. It was for my father’s sake that—that—ah, I can’t talk of it, Hugh. You know, we were so poor after father lost his money, I tried with all my heart to forget, and to do my best for—my husband. Perhaps it was my punishment that he—oh, Hugh, I was so miserable. And then—then he went away. He was tired of me. He was on a yacht, and there was a great storm. But you must have read in the papers—”

  “Never. I never knew till this day.”

  “It was more than three years ago.”

  Hugh was very pale. Three years ago—three long years in which he had worked, and tried not to think of her! And if he had known—“You see, I’ve had a queer life, knocking about in strange places,” he said, trying to speak calmly. “Often I didn’t see any newspapers for weeks together. I thought of you always as rich and happy, living in England, the wife of Sir Edward Clifford—”

  “Rich and happy,” she repeated, bitterly. “How little one knows of another’s life. After his death, there was nothing—there had been some wild speculations; and the estates went with the title, of course, to his cousin. But, yes—in a way you were right. I was rich and happy because I had Rosemary.”

  “And Rosemary had you, Angel,” cried the child, who had been listening, puzzled and bewildered, not knowing that they had forgotten her presence until this moment. “Rosemary had you. And now we’ve all got each other—till the fairy father vanishes.”

  “But I shan’t have to vanish after all,” said Hugh.

  * * * *

  After that, it seemed they had been together but for a moment, when a wild wail went moaning through the house; the first gong for the pensionnaires’ dinner.

  So loud it was that it hushed their voice
s for a long minute. And when cool silence came again, Hugh begged that the two would have their Christmas Eve dinner with him, at his hotel. “There’s so much to plan for tomorrow, and all the days,” he pleaded. “And just for once Rosemary shall have a late dinner like the grown-ups. Do say yes.”

  So Evelyn said yes. And it was not until they were all three seated in the restaurant of the Hôtel de Paris, that he remembered he had been engaged to dine at the Beau Soleil with Mademoiselle and the Comtesse, her mother.

  But he did not even blush because he had forgotten.

  CHAPTER EIGHT: WHEN A MAN GOES SHOPPING

  Many of Hugh Egerton’s best moments during the last six years had been spent in dreams. In those dreams the past had lived again; for he had seen the future as once he had hoped it might be for him.

  But all through this night of Christmas Eve he lay awake; and no dreams had ever been as half as sweet as the thoughts that came to him then. It would have been a hideous waste of time to sleep, when he could lie there and live over again each moment of his evening, beginning at the beginning, when She had come into the room, and going on to the end when he had brought her and Rosemary to the door of the Hôtel Pension Beau Soleil, to say “goodbye until tomorrow.” When he came to the end, he went back to the beginning again with renewed zest, trying to call up some word, some look of hers which he might have neglected to count among his treasured jewels.

  Then, when he was sure that he had each pearl and ruby and diamond duly polished and strung on the fine gold chain of loving memory, he would let his mind run ahead of time, to the next day.

  What a Christmas it was going to be! There never had been one like it before, in the history of the world; but—the best of it was—there was reason to hope that there would be many others to come just as exquisite, if not more perfect.

  Evelyn Clifford had loved him, even when she had let him go. She loved him now; and she had promised to make up for the long gray years of the past by marrying him almost at once.

  There was nothing to wait for. He was lonely and rich. She was lonely and poor. Both were young, and starving for happiness. In a week they would be married, for she had promised to begin the New Year as his wife. Meanwhile, there would be a great deal to do (so she said, though he could not see why) in getting ready. But Christmas was to be a holiday. They were going on that picnic to Éze, all three. That was already planned; but Hugh had mentally made an addition to the plan, of which he had said not a word.