Mr. Griffin had occupied the s.p.a.ce between the folding-doors as the company arrived and suavely--as suavely, by the way, as his wincing at the cost of it all would admit of--received, introduced, and seated them. The first arrival was a single gentleman, whom he saluted as Fred.
He was short, and bald, and spasmodic,--so much so that his pantaloons were never straight, and his collar, through much moistening of its raspy edges, was soiled. After him, a lady and gentleman drove up to the gate in a carriage, and, alighting, the lady swept up the path, in a double sense, while her husband upbraided the driver for the muddy condition of the carriage, and then, loudly, "At ten, William!" To which William as loudly replied, "Can"t do it, sir. Got another order; but I"ll send you another man."
The gentleman answered more quietly, with a careful look at the house, where Mr. Griffin awaited him on the porch,--
"Very well, driver;" and also swept in, and was introduced to Fred as Mr. Abbert.
Now came a pair who walked, and were addressed and handed around by the host as "My dear friends, Mr. and Mrs. Dripps;" and then the volume of new-comers became quite abundant; so much so that a number of gentlemen with no apparent use for their hands were forced to lean about the hall and sit on the stairs, which they did up to the very top one. When the company had simmered down a good deal, and only a few very bold gentlemen ventured to launch remarks into the unanswering silence, and when everybody was wondering what everybody else was going to do next, and all were, as they reported the next day, "enjoying themselves immensely," there was a stir above stairs, a rustling of dresses, and then the gentlemen on the stairs, like a row of falling bricks, were driven down before the gracious smiles and bows of the transformed hostess.
Tripping down after them and falling at last into the extended arms of her husband--rather unsteady under the weight--while the stiffly polite gentlemen formed a compact crowd out to the door. Mrs. Griffin was led, with no little difficulty, through the seated guests, bestowing bows, and smiles, and "Glad to see you, my dear Mr. Dripps," and "How well you"re looking, my dear Mrs. Abbert," and "Welcome, gentlemen," (whereat a murmur ran through the crowd and all shook their heads and tried to turn round and bow, but utterly failed,) and "Oh! here"s my old Fred,"
and sundry other bewitching remarks that led the crowd of gentlemen to murmur again something like "Charming, be Gad!" and grow uneasy.
But now the bell was rung by Superannuated, who had duly inserted the chair, and Mr. Abbert, receiving the hostess from the arm of her husband and in turn delivering his smiling wife to Mr. Griffin, led off the throng to dinner.
When they arrived at the protruding table, by a preconcerted arrangement Mrs. Griffin handed Mr. Abbert to the one side and squeezed herself through the other--an action which was imitated by the rest of the company, who were finally seated close up to the door--all but Mr.
Griffin, who was to occupy the extra chair, and, as he was already inside, and there was no other means of exit, he was obliged to pa.s.s through the kitchen and around the house. He soon appeared again through the front door and the dinner began.
Mrs. Griffin, who had long before left Superannuated to finish while she perfected her toilet, now rang the bell and, on her appearance, whispered in her ear. Superannuated whispered in her mistress"s ear.
Mrs. Griffin thereupon uttered a little cry and looked at Mr. Griffin.
Mr. Griffin, in consternation, cried, "My dear!" and attempted to squeeze between the chairs, but failed. Then he looked wildly about him, and at last ran through the front door. He soon reappeared at the side of his fainting wife, who revived enough to say,--
"I shall never, never forgive you! Oh, the humiliation! the agony!" then fainted again.
"What is it?" "What"s the matter?" "She"s fainted!" and confused screams of the ladies came from all sides. Mrs. Dripps pa.s.sed along her salts bottle. Mrs. Abbert held Mrs. Griffin"s head, and Fred applied water.
Under the strong influence of these restoratives she soon revived, and whispered to her husband something which caused him also to start and look despairingly at her.
She then said to him, loud enough for all to hear, "You must tell them it was your fault. Oh, the humiliation!" Here she burst out again, with her handkerchief to her eyes, and Mrs. Abbert soothingly said, "Oh, never mind him, my dear. I wouldn"t mind him!" This was growing invidious, and all the gentlemen at the bottom of the table were looking scornfully at him.
He therefore said, in a loud voice,--
"The turkey has not arrived,--that is all."
"That is all," whimpered Mrs. Griffin, mockingly. "That is all, he says; and isn"t it enough, sir, to have all your domestic failings exposed to the world?"
Mrs. Griffin alluded to cooking facilities, and grew very bitter, while "the world" simpered and exchanged looks.
Mr. Griffin then, in desperation, explained the whole matter,--how he had left the card for David Dubbs, and paid for the turkey, and come unsuspectingly home. "As," he added, "I have done year after year, for----"
Here Mrs. Griffin checked him with symptoms of another faint, and he stopped short.
Mr. Abbert then said it was all that rascally clerk, and he ought to be discharged at once.
"I know "em," he added violently and with deeply implied wisdom, which, by the way, was the only species of wisdom he ever attained to. "I know "em, Griffin!"
Mr. Fred was of a similar opinion, and even more violent in his denunciation of David, as he had set his heart on turkey, and the appet.i.te died painfully within him.
All the ladies and gentlemen were of various opinions, but all concentrated their rage on the poor, innocent little clerk, and panted for his clerkly death. In the midst of all this commotion the door-bell rang, and intensified it twofold, for n.o.body could get through to the door but by going around the house. This Superannuated finally did, and brought back with her the identical little clerk,--the poor, agitated, and bowing little clerk who had unconsciously aroused all the indignation and tumult, whom sundry gentlemen at the lower end of the table had threatened with severe punishment if they ever caught sight of him, and who, now catching sight of him, were more than usually silent.
Mr. Griffin looked threateningly at him as, hat in hand, he walked up to him, presented a letter, and, in his faint voice, said,--
"A letter for you, sir, left for me to deliver."
He took it, and David continued tremulously to say,--
"And how can I thank you, sir, and madam," turning to Mrs. Griffin, "for the bounteous gift----"
"Gift?" exclaimed both in a breath; "what gift? Where is the turkey you brought? What gift? What gift?"
"Why, a splendid turkey, with your card kindly----"
This was received by the company with a volley of cries and calls, by a relapse on the part of Mrs. Griffin, and by the descent of Mr. Griffin"s hand upon David"s coat-collar, and finally by poor, frightened David"s ejectment from the kitchen-door, harshly reproached by his employer as a thief and vagabond, and warned never to show his face in his store again.
"Be off, now!" he cried after him, "you ungrateful, deceitful old villain!" and then he slammed the door, and joined the hungry guests, to whom he declaimed at some length on the thanklessness of the lower cla.s.ses.
Mrs. Griffin was quickly re-restored, this time to a state of injured perfection, and after the united apologies of herself and husband, and more abuse of poor, luckless David Dubbs, the company concluded with pretty bad grace to make the most of what had been prepared in the way of vegetables and side dishes, long ago cold. Mr. Griffin was mad, insulted, and hungry, and the contents of the letter he had received seemed to add very little warmth to the food, but a great deal to his anger, for he tore it up into very small pieces, as if it were David himself he was torturing, and, with a look the company did not consider very sociable, scattered it on the floor.
V.
The sky, as if presaging David Dubbs"s misfortune, had grown overcast, and flung down spiteful little sallies of snow as he crossed the river on his way to Mr. Griffin"s. The creaking of the bridge"s huge timbers and the splitting ice below it made him shiver and pull his threadbare coat close about him and sacrifice his old hands to the wind to save his freezing ears. The same scarf bound them as the night before, but an icy gale like that which swept from the open river would have frozen through arctic furs. Notwithstanding all this, his spirits were lighter than usual. The scene he had left at home floated on before his eyes, and transfused itself with the black, sketchy trees against the sky and blent with the ragged barbs of smoke that depended from cottage chimneys. The wind had been boisterous enough, and would have torn it away on a cantering jaunt not many minutes ago, but, surcharged as it was now with blinding snow, it had its own liberty to look after, and paid little heed to anything else.
The snow came on thicker and thicker, and had begun to whiten the streets by the time David reached Mr. Griffin"s house, and now, as he stood shocked and bewildered in the garden again, it lay deep and dreadfully silent as far as the eye could reach. Had he heard truly? Had he, for the first time in a long, and honest, and reputable life, been called a thief? And by the man whom his heart had overflowed in grat.i.tude to but a moment before! David Dubbs a thief! And what of? What had he stolen? Oh, it was cruel to his poor old heart! "And the girls so merry, even now," he thought. How; how could he go to them with these bitter tidings? To be deprived of even the poor means his pen had faithfully and honestly earned for them; to toil so long, so wearily for the meed of a thief, for the name of a thief! and he wept in his utter woe.
His hat was still on his head, his coat was undone, his scarf had fallen back on his shoulders; his poor old eyes were wide apart again, now, and the wind tugged at his scanty hair, and the snow, no whiter than itself, sifted through it and drifted into the folds of his clothes. But, stunned, and tortured, and despairing though he was, the old clerk staggered on insensibly homeward. Back through the dreary trees; back through the drifted streets; back to the bridge, where he stopped by some fatal impulse and leaned near a bleak abutment that overlooked the river--gazing, gazing, gazing in a blank stare at the driving channel below. The thought, the lurking purpose was shadowed dimly on his distraught mind. The cold, rolling river once pa.s.sed, the seething cakes of ice once pa.s.sed, and it would soon be over, soon be over. Life had been a worthless gift to him. His youth had been falsely colored by the visions of childhood; his age had been falsely colored by the ambitions of youth. Nothing he had looked to in the distance ever had grown into reality. Why should he survive his good name! And he clutched the stones and raised himself up and quivered at the top of the stone wall.
But now his hand relaxed, and his face, clouded and suffering before, fell into a calmer look of attention, almost a smile broke over it, and he gazed out against the sky as if transfixed.
It was the vision that had, like the pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, preceded and gladdened him on his way; the scene of his happy, unsuspecting girls; of the pale Little Scout--whose simple touch would then have instantly revived and soothed him, whose tender love was his comfort, his sanctuary from pursuing evils; the scene of his old home, far cosier, far more beloved, far more cheerful for all its homeliness, for all its poverty, than the more pretentious one of Emanuel Griffin; the scene of lowly pleasures it had cherished; of the bitter trials it had a.s.suaged; and, finally, of the bright, laughing group he had left there, oh! so little prepared, so little conscious of the blight he would bring among them. This vision, these thoughts had flowed in upon his already disturbed mind, and had driven quite away all consciousness of where he was or how long he had stood in the bitter cold, when a policeman--overcoated, and furred, and frozen-bearded,--came by, and, suspecting things to be not altogether right, caught David by the sleeve, and adjusted his scarf and hat, saying,--
"No loafing on the bridge, old man. Move on; move on, now!" at which David started, looked all around him, and then moved on as commanded.
His back, always bent, and his gait, always decrepit and shuffling, were now pitiably so, and he had a long, long journey before him; but, thanks be to Him whose omnipotent care protects and watches over the poor in spirit, he had escaped a far longer one. On and on he went, not cold now, not thinking, not in haste; pa.s.sing thick-coated travellers who ran, and clapped their hands, and swung their arms for warmth; pa.s.sing gay companies in cabs that rolled over the snow as softly as footsteps on velvet. But he heeded nothing of all this, and staggered onward to his own poor home.
A light was streaming out from the windows of the old warehouse, crossing the snow piled on the platform above and slanting on the heaps beneath. It was an inviting glimmer, a herald from within to all cold travellers without of the blessedness of home, and, as David approached the corner of the court, his eye was greeted cheerily by its "Welcome home!" and, indeed, it was the first thing he had distinctly seen since leaving the house of Mr. Griffin. But his heart failed him. How could he face his dear girls again and tell them of the dest.i.tution of to-morrow?
Of the worse than poverty? Thus he thought, and lingered, and slunk away by turns, but the ray of home-born light allured him, impa.s.sively, into its midst, and as he stood over against the house, a poor, weak, old man, rambling in his mind, and heroically deciding rather to leave them in peace to-night, one more night, and return to them to-morrow, a window was thrown up, and Jacob Tripple, putting forth his head, looked up and down the court, and then directly in front of him, where David stood immovable in the light.
"Why, there he is, now!" he cried. "What"s gone amiss, David? What"s kept you so long? Here he is! Here he is!" he exclaimed again and again, and, drawing in his head in much less time than the words could be said, Jacob Tripple, followed by the girls, was down-stairs, was--still followed by the girls--out in the snow, and had forcibly carried David up with them.
They laid him on the settee, moaning and crying aloud against Emanuel Griffin, and repeating again and again that they were "Beggars, beggars, beggars!" and exclaiming, "My poor Little Scout! My poor girls! My poor----"
"They shall not suffer, father!" said a new voice, the sound of which raised him up with wide-opened eyes and palsied hands at his head, and a long stare at the speaker--"It"s Tom, father. Don"t you know me?"
repeated the voice.
Know him! How should he know him? tall, and brawny, and whiskered, with pleasant blue eyes, and ruddy cheeks, and good nature streaming from his whole face! Him who, so many years ago,--a beardless youth--had run off to California after gold bubbles, and whom little good had been heard of when anything at all was heard of him. Know him? Of course he did not; but, as he sat down beside him on the settee and shook his old hand, David put his arms about his neck, and hung his head upon his bosom, and saw, in imagination, the thriftless boy of long ago whom he loved for all his waywardness.
Tom"s strong arms soon bore him to his old seat near the fire, and, for the first time, David"s wandering eye noticed the bower of green holly and red-berried mistletoe that decked the room. General Washington was loaded with it. The old clock, actually striking in a cheerier voice the hour of nine, had its full share. The dresser hid in festoons of it.
Even David"s chair had its sprig. But what was that on the floor? An opened trunk, like a cloven pomegranate, displaying within rich trinkets that many a lady might covet?
"Wha--what"s it all mean, girls? Tell me, Little Scout," said David, catching her hand. "What happened to me? I thought I came home--home to tell you Griffin threw me out in the snow, and called me a thief, and how all of them scowled and cried out at me, and I thought----" then, looking at the tall man, he cried again,--