This hood is rather a new wrinkle, though, isn"t it? I suppose it"s for a voyage, and you pull it up over your head when you come through the corridor back to your stateroom. We shall have to go to Europe, Lucy."
_Mrs. Fountain_: "I would go to Asia, Africa, and Oceanica, to escape another Christmas. Now if there are any more bath-robes-- Come in, Maggie."
VIII
MAGGIE, THE FOUNTAINS
_Maggie_, bringing in a bundle: "Something a District Messenger brought. Will you sign for it, ma"am?"
_Mrs. Fountain_: "You sign, Clarence. If I know anything about the look and the feel of a bundle, this _is_ another bath-robe, but I shall soon see." While she is cutting the string and tearing the wrappings away, Fountain signs and Maggie goes. Mrs. Fountain shakes out the folds of the robe. "Well, upon my word, I should think there was conspiracy to insult you, Clarence. I should like to know who has had the effrontery-- What"s on it?"
_Fountain_, reading from the card which had fallen out of the garment to the floor: ""With Christmas greetings from Mrs. Arthur J. Gibby.""
_Mrs. Fountain_, dropping the robe and seizing the card: "_Mrs._ Arthur J. Gibby! Well, upon my word, this _is_ impudence. It"s not only impudence, it"s indelicacy. And I had always thought she was the very embodiment of refinement, and I"ve gone about saying so. Now I shall have to take it back. The idea of a lady sending a bath-robe to a gentleman! What next, I wonder! What right has Mrs. Gibby to send you a bath-robe? Don"t prevaricate! Remember that the truth is the only thing that can save you. Matters must have gone pretty far, when a woman could send you anything so--intimate. What are you staring at with that paper? You needn"t hope to divert my mind by--"
_Fountain_, giving her the paper in which the robe came: "Seems to be for _Mrs._ Clarence Fountain."
_Mrs. Fountain_, s.n.a.t.c.hing it from him: "What! It is, it is! Oh, poor dear Lilly! How can you ever forgive me? She saw me looking at it to-day at Shumaker"s, and it must have come into her head in despair what else to get me. But it was a perfect inspiration--for it was just what I was longing for. Why"--laughing hysterically while she holds up the robe, and turns it this way and that--"I might have seen at a glance that it wasn"t a man"s, with this lace on and this silk hood, and"--she hurries into it, and pulls it forward, looking down at either side--"it"s just the right length, and if it was made for me it couldn"t fit me better. What a joke I _shall_ have with Lilly, when I tell her about it. I sha"n"t spare myself a bit!"
_Fountain_: "Then I hope you"ll spare me. I have some little delicacy of feeling, and I don"t like the notion of a lady"s giving me a bath-robe. It"s--intimate. I don"t know where you picked up your girl friends."
_Mrs. Fountain_, capering about joyfully: "Oh, how funny you are, darling! But go on. I don"t mind it, now. And you may be glad you"ve got off so easily. Only now if there are any more bath-robes--" A timid rap is heard at the door. "Come in, Maggie!" The door is slowly set ajar, then flung suddenly wide open, and Jim and Susy in their night-gowns rush dancing and exulting in.
IX
JIM, SUSY, THE FOUNTAINS
_Susy_: "We"ve caught you, we"ve caught you."
_Jim_: "I just bet it was you, and now I"ve won, haven"t I, mother?"
_Susy_: "And I"ve won, too, haven"t I, father?" Arrested at sight of her father in the hooded bath-gown: "He does look like Santa Claus, doesn"t he, Jimmy? But the real Santa Claus would be all over snow, and a long, white beard. You can"t fool _us_!"
_Jim_: "You can"t fool _us_! We know you, we know you! And mother dressed up, too! There isn"t any Mrs. Santa Claus, and that proves it!"
_Mrs. Fountain_, severely: "Dreadful little things! Who said you might come here? Go straight back to bed, this minute, or-- _Will_ you send them back, Clarence, and not stand staring so? What are you thinking of?"
_Fountain_, dreamily: "Nothing. Merely wondering what we shall do when we"ve got rid of our superst.i.tions. Shall we be the better for it, or even the wiser?"
_Mrs. Fountain_: "What put that question into your head? Christmas, I suppose; and that"s another reason for wishing there was no such thing. If I had my way, there wouldn"t be."
_Jim_: "Oh, mother!"
_Susy_: "No Christmas?"
_Mrs. Fountain_: "Well, not for disobedient children who get out of bed and come in, spoiling everything. If you don"t go straight back, it will be the last time, Santa Claus or no Santa Claus."
_Jim_: "And if we go right back?"
_Susy_: "And promise not to come in any more?"
_Mrs. Fountain_: "Well, we"ll see how you keep your promise. If you don"t, that"s the end of Christmas in _this_ house."
_Jim_: "It"s a bargain, then! Come on, Susy!"
_Susy_: "And we do it for you, mother. And for you, father. We just came in for fun, anyway."
_Jim_: "We just came for a surprise."
_Mrs. Fountain_, kissing them both: "Well, then, if it was only for fun, we"ll excuse you this time. Run along, now, that"s good children.
_Clarence!_"
X
MRS. FOUNTAIN, FOUNTAIN
_Fountain_: "Well?" He looks up at her from where he has dropped into a chair beside the table strewn with opened and unopened gifts at the foot of the Christmas tree.
_Mrs. Fountain_: "What _are_ you mooning about?"
_Fountain_: "What if it was all a fake? Those thousands and hundreds of thousands of churches that pierce the clouds with their spires; those millions of ministers and missionaries; those billions of worshipers, sitting and standing and kneeling, and singing and praying; those nuns and monks, and brotherhoods and sisterhoods, with their ideals of self-denial, and their duties to the sick and poor; those martyrs that died for the one true faith, and those other martyrs of the other true faiths whom the one true faith tortured and killed; those ma.s.ses and sermons and ceremonies, what if they were all a delusion, a mistake, a misunderstanding? What if it were all as unlike the real thing, if there is any real thing, as this pagan Christmas of ours is as unlike a Christian Christmas?"
_Mrs. Fountain_, springing up: "I knew it! I knew that it was this Christmas giving that was making you morbid again. Can"t you shake it off and be cheerful--like me? I"m sure I have to bear twice as much of it as you have. I"ve been shopping the whole week, and you"ve been just this one afternoon." She begins to catch her breath, and fails in searching for her handkerchief in the folds of her dress under the bath-robe.
_Fountain_, offering his handkerchief: "Take mine."
_Mrs. Fountain_, catching it from him, and hiding her face in it on the table: "You ought to help me bear up, and instead of that you fling yourself on my sympathies and break me down." Lifting her face: "And if it was all a fake, as you say, and an illusion, what would you do, what would you give people in place of it?"
_Fountain_: "I don"t know."
_Mrs. Fountain_: "What would you have in place of Christmas itself?"
_Fountain_: "I don"t know."
_Mrs. Fountain_: "Well, then, I wouldn"t set myself up to preach down everything--in a blue bath-gown. You"ve no idea how ridiculous you are."
_Fountain_: "Oh, yes, I have. I can see you. You look like one of those blue nuns in Rome. But I don"t remember any lace on them."
_Mrs. Fountain_: "Well, you don"t look like a blue monk, you needn"t flatter yourself, for there are none. You look like-- What are you thinking about?"
_Fountain_: "Oh, nothing. What do you suppose is in all these packages here? Useful things, that we need, that we must have? You know without looking that it"s the superfluity of naughtiness in one form or other.
And the givers of these gifts, they _had_ to give them, just as we"ve had to give dozens of gifts ourselves. We ought to have put on our cards, "With the season"s bitterest grudges," "In hopes of a return,"
"With a hopeless sense of the folly," "To pay a hateful debt," "With impotent rage and despair.""
_Mrs. Fountain_: "I don"t deny it, Clarence. You"re perfectly right; I almost wish we _had_ put it. How it would have made them hop! But they"d have known it was just the way they felt themselves."