And if he had, would this hard, business-encrusted heart have been less cold than the bitter winds that a.s.sailed it? Would the sight which made David Dubbs forget the fierceness of night have penetrated the chilly place where it rested and warmed it in pitying activity? Would the tender impulses, which the unsifted morals of barter extinguish, as they extinguish much of the n.o.bility in man, have enkindled anew and brightened this misery? Not if dollars would have done it; nay, not if even a word would have done it, would Emanuel Griffin have relaxed from the demeanor which purely business habits imposed upon him. He felt it due to his position in business society to maintain rigidly its maxims, the chief of which, "Do unto others as they would do unto you, if they could," he practised to the letter.
II.
Poor David Dubbs! Oh, the long time it seemed since boon companions had smitten him on the back and cried, "Bravo, Dave Dubbs! Bravo, old fellow!" to his little songs, or encouraged him by such exclamations as "Dave Dubbs can"t be beat at a ballad!" Oh, the long, long time ago! But to proceed. As David Dubbs met the ambushed winds that leaped upon him at the corner of the court, he also met the person to whom he had waved his hand from the store-door. If you had looked for the stature of a man you would have been doubly mistaken,--first in s.e.x, next in size. It was neither a man nor a woman. There, in a bl.u.s.tery doorway, shaking with cold, but ever on the alert, crouched a little girl. She wore a knitted hood, and out of it fell overflowing curls; but her poor, attenuated little body was ill-a.s.sorted with plenty of any kind, and the wealth of curls mocked the poverty of her clothes. A patched shawl affected to protect her poor little shoulders, and a calico dress flapped coldly about her legs. As David turned the corner she arose, and, for all her stiffness and shivering, exclaimed, cheerily, "A merry Christmas, father!" and reached to kiss him.
He took her in his arms--she was very, very slight--and lifted her to his lips, and then, throwing one side of his own scanty coat about her and holding it there with an affectionate hug, he said, "Come, come, little daughter, it"s too bleak for a little body like you to be out.
It"s cruel, cruel, but I dared not tell him it was so late. What does he know or care for my poor little faithful, Loving Scout?"
"Your Scout couldn"t miss Christmas Eve, father, if it was ever so cold."
"And does she ever miss? No, no, she"s a dutiful Scout, winter and summer, rain and shine, morning and night, and what should I ever do without her!"
So, talking and fighting the wind by turns, they walked on, the bent and shuffling old man and his Little Scout, as he had named her and as they all affectionately called her, through dark streets where, ever and anon, a car or belated dray shivered by, as if the cold had touched even its insensibility, and made the tracks resound and the paving blocks rattle in the clear air; through deep cisterns of streets, between lofty stone banks--as stern almost as their governing boards, for, although boards are chiefly wooden, a supplication will quickly petrify them; through rows of illuminated stores like walls of Arabian Night visions, with traceries of frost on their windows richer in design than the gems within them; through cl.u.s.tering crowds that entered or left continually the swinging doors of saloons and hotels; past waiting carriages; past swearing men; past laughing ladies, and past beggars, wearier, and colder, and lonelier than themselves. So they travelled, scarcely heeding what they saw in their speed until, on the margin of all the din, by a turn through a dark street, they reached a darker alley, and, pa.s.sing down it, at last stopped before their own homely door.
The building had once been a warehouse,--David liked it the better for that, he said. "Why, all my life has been spent in trade, and, you see, I"ve sort a become attached to anything that smacks of it, though I"ve little reason to feel so, the Lord knows!" he would exclaim to his friends. Up above, over a long door in the top story--you can scarcely make it out in the uncertain light--jutted a weather-beaten crane, with a long disused pulley dangling at its point, cracked, and rusted, and abandoned, and no less cracked and abandoned, shot out from the second floor a moss-covered platform that had been intended for the reception of bales of stuffs that had never arrived. The mortar had, here and there, been wrenched from between the bricks by savage weather and age, and the doors, too, had shrunk before their united malignity. How such a house had drifted to such a locality is unaccountable, unless--as is often the case--some navigator of real estate had thought he descried a port, where was only a shoal that left his venture high and dry among newer and costlier craft.
However, the nearest approach it had made in the last twenty years or so--so David said--to fulfilling its commercial place in the world was in opening its doors to a gentleman in the carpentering line. This gentleman, Mr. Jacob Tripple by name, occupied the ground floor, and all around it were scattered evidences, in the shape of window-frames, and wooden-horses, and props, and old lumber, of a thriving business. He, with all his men, had departed long ago and left the place dark, and still, and cold.
It had lain in this stupor of silence for more than an hour, waiting against hope to be resuscitated by any stray echoes that should drop in from the neighboring hubbub and waken it up, when it caught among its bleak angles the cheery voice of David"s Little Scout, and revived--as some old men do under the charm of gentle words--to a more respectable opinion of itself. So immediately it seemed refreshed, that if it were possible for such a decrepit--not to say inanimate--old structure as that even metaphorically to p.r.i.c.k up its ears, it metaphorically did as the sound of Dolly"s--her proper name--cheery welcome home echoed round it.
"Here we are once more, father," she cried, breaking away from him to have the door open when he plodded up to it. "Once more, and a welcome home, and a merry Christmas to you!"
"Always on duty, Little Scout! Always on duty!" he called after her.
(The wind was keen and drew water to his eyes again, and again he brushed it away.) "Always on duty," he went on repeating, with a doleful effort at cheerfulness.
She was up-stairs by that time, and, opening the door above, had called in, "Here"s father!" then ran back to meet him, which she did at the door below.
What these unusual proceedings meant, David Dubbs might have guessed or might have known traditionally, they being of an annual nature, but whether he did or not, or whether his ignorance was also traditional, he gave no sign, and walked feebly up-stairs, guided by the Little Scout, just as if it were not Christmas Eve at all.
What the proceedings did mean was that a steaming pot of coffee at the given signal was lifted from its warm corner and tilted into a cup that held a conspicuous place at the head of a little white spread table. On its right hand sat, in the position of an honored and seldom present guest, a juicy-complexioned, but not corpulent beefsteak; opposite to it, inviting death by explosion, rested a bowl full of steaming potatoes in their native jackets, and the centre was fully occupied by a huge loaf with a large family of slices.
Around this collation--aroused by the signal, for they had been idly waiting before--moved two pairs of hands with loving attention. The cloth was resmoothed, the knives and forks straightened, a brace of mealy potatoes was emptied on the two plates that awaited them, and at last a ruddy slice of beefsteak was deposited beside and oozed through them its savoriness. This last climax was reached just as the door opened, and the two pairs of hands speedily transferred themselves to the duty--no very arduous one--of helping David and Dolly out of their wraps.
And then, with many caresses and kisses and cries of "Take this side, father, where the coals are bright!" or "Put your feet here and get them good and warm, poor Little Scout!" then, when thick flying questions and travellings to the one end of the room for things that were not wanted, and excursions to the other end of the room for things that were wanted; when the chairs were drawn up; when the grateful old man and his little daughter, with those tender hands over their mouths to stifle the grat.i.tude they struggled to utter, were duly seated at the table, and when the kettle was singing its approval in the corner, then, only,--when all these preliminaries were gone through with,--did the possessors of the hands that devised them seat themselves on a low wooden settee opposite the table and enjoy the zest and delight they had ministered to.
Good nature and tender hearts, pale faces and cheerful eyes, honest red hands and neatly bound-up hair have never been faithfully reproduced in a state of print and paper, much less in imagination, and, indeed, how can anything so buxom and comely, even if the plainest in dress, be expected to be? It is, therefore, needless to say that the twin daughters of David, namely, Molly and Polly Dubbs, being all that is here set down, should have been seen in all their kindliness to be truly known, and no other form of introduction would do them full justice.
Molly was the counterpart of Polly in all respects save height. She was a very little taller than Polly, and a fortunate thing it had been for all concerned that she was so. Else, consider the vexation of the measles and other diseases essential to youth. Why, in their quandary which to begin on, they almost missed the twins altogether as it was.
Consider the complexity of young lovers who should pour into the ears of Polly pa.s.sionate adjectives intended solely to captivate the heart of Molly; and, most important of all, consider the conflict of choice which would have disquieted the soul of Mr. Jacob Tripple and at last driven him to the alternatives of suicide or bigamy.
But all these dangers had been averted by the provisions of Nature, and the twins, who had supped, for economic reasons, earlier in the evening, sat beaming on while David and little Dolly heartily devoured the supper.
David, looking up now for the first time, in the interval of a mouthful swallowed and a mouthful threatened, espied a bowery wreath of holly that hung around a picture of General Washington in the act of crossing a dark, green river Delaware in a court dress of red and breeches of yellow, surrounded on all sides by ice and officers in rainbow uniforms, and, as this was the only adornment of a rather bare room, it is no wonder it caught his eye.
"Why, who"s been a-brightening up the gen"ral so Christmas-like?" he exclaimed.
"We did, father! Leastwise it was Polly"s present," said Molly.
"And who may be a-sending presents to Polly now?" asked David, with a twinkle in his eye that had seen better days but none kindlier. "It wasn"t young Cuffy over at the baker"s, nor Jake Tripple, now, was it?"
He looked at Polly for an answer, whereat she stretched her arm along the back of the settee and let fall her hand on Molly"s shoulder with a punch which was intended as punishment for the giggles her sister struggled to confine in her mouth with both hands; but which, in spite of her, bubbled over and attacked David, and then, with a blush, Polly muttered,--
"It wasn"t young Cuffy at all, and I hate his loafy, little face, and I hate----"
"Not Jacob Tripple! No, no, not good Jake Tripple?" said David, reprovingly.
"I didn"t say that, father!" she exclaimed. "He"s your good old friend, and how could I hate him? He came in just before leaving for the day, and asked for you--what, made him think you were home I can"t tell, for it was long before your time--and asked for you, and left the wreath for--for--me."
The hem of her long checkered ap.r.o.n then needed close scrutiny and folding for some unknown purpose, and this duty diverted her thoughts from the subject, but she turned to Dolly, who enjoyed this banter in her own quiet little way, which seldom rippled into a loud laugh, for her own quiet little face was too pale and too pinched to invite such freebooters. "Come, come, Little Scout," she said. "Is she warm now, and were the rations good, and did she meet Kriss Kingle on his cold journey (with a caress of her pale little cheeks) with heaps of warm dresses, and heaps of pretty dolls, and heaps of sweetmeats too big to carry himself, so he asked her to carry some home to help him! Did she? (with another caress.) And would our Little Scout be sorry if he didn"t come himself to look after them and----"
"Ah, that reminds me!" said David, quite audibly for him, and rising from the table with knife and fork still in hand.
"What reminds you, father?" asked the twins, in chorus.
"Why, coming home!" said David, not very intelligibly.
"What coming home?" again from the chorus, in expectant att.i.tude.
"Why, Tom, I told you!" which he hadn"t done at all, but as by this time he was deep in the cupboard, where his overcoat hung, and as his voice was a little more m.u.f.fled than usual, it was useless to argue the point, so the chorus loudly exclaimed,--
"Tom?"
"Yes, yes, yes!" from David, faintly and rather testily, as he had groped through his old coat, and had successively dropped the knife and fork, reeking with gravy, into the inside and outside pockets.
"To be sure! Tom coming home and I clean forgot it, what with the cold and the surprises," he said again, emerging with the knife and fork in one hand and a letter in the other. "Here it is. He"ll be home to-morrow, he says, G.o.d willin", and eat our turkey with us. Poor Tom, poor boy! He"s been away so long he"s forgot Griffin and hard times, or he wouldn"t say that!"
"Tom! Be home! and to-morrow?"--interruption of chorus as it reaches for the letter, opens and reads it aloud--Dolly being lifted in the st.u.r.dy arms of Molly to look over.
David, meanwhile, overcome by the toothsomeness of beefsteak, falls to again, while the others dance a sort of fandango, and turn up the rag carpet, and rattle the dishes on the dresser, and lift Dolly high in the air to the improvised tune of "Tom"s coming home! Tom"s coming home!
Tom"s coming home to-morrow!"
"It"s another mouth to feed, but it"s hard to wish the poor boy back to Californy again," huskily said David; then he exclaimed, as the noise increased, "Hey dey! Why, you"ll spill the coffee next, and cave in the walls, too, in a minute, and then there"ll be no home for Tom to come to!"
This was good humoredly added as the final swing was given to the dance, which brought the twins holding Dolly aloft in their arms laughing and panting on the settee.
"But tell us, father, is he coming home for good? He don"t say so in the letter," asked Dolly, and all leaned forward to hear his answer.
"Coming home for good?" mused David. "Yes, he"s coming home for good, I hope; but I"m fearful he"ll find little beside the good in his sisters"
hearts."
"Poor Tom," said Dolly, with far-away eyes, "he"s had a weary life of it in the mines, I guess, poor fellow."
"Yes, yes," said David, "and that"s what makes it harder that we can"t greet him with a good Christmas to-morrow. Well, well, it"ll be a delight to see my poor boy again, hard times or no hard times, and we"ll be as cheerful as we can be and are now, thanks to my good girls," and here he arose from the table, and, seating himself at the fire, opened a morning paper that he had found in the waste-basket in Mr. Griffin"s counting-house (and very worthless it must have been to be found there!) in which, through the kind offices of a ma.s.sive old pair of spectacles, he was soon absorbed.
And now, while the Little Scout--in fulfilment of her established character--plays the spy on sundry crumbs that slink from notice under the table, and while the twins, too busy to talk, wash the dishes and dispose them in a glistening row along the dresser, and, while David opens the paper and plods up and down it, column by column, like a ploughman furrow by furrow up and down a field, and with almost as much toil; and while the ancient clock on the shelf over the stove and under the motley General Washington ticks loud enough to be heard above the clinking dishes and simmering kettle; and while the table, divested of its cloth and exhibiting a stained and blistered old back, is glad enough to avoid attention by being stowed away in the corner; while the pleasant spirits of domesticity that come only at the call of good men, and good wives, and good sons, and good daughters, but resist the imperious beckonings of the wealthiest hands, and wing on over their roofs to lowlier, and scantier, and purer habitations--while the pleasant spirits of domesticity and kindliness throng invisibly into the room, and David Dubbs reads stray sc.r.a.ps from his paper to his daughters, grouped near the fire at his feet, we must softly withdraw and leave them to the care of coming Christmas dreams.
III.