Ho! Ho! Ho! Santa Claus' Reading List
Page 355
* * *
“Is it your shop?”
* * *
“Yes,” said William with an air of importance. “It’s all my shop.”
* * *
She gazed at him in admiration and envy.
* * *
“I’d love to have a sweet-shop,” she said wistfully.
* * *
“Well, you take anythin’ you like,” said William generously.
* * *
She collected as much as she could carry and started towards the door. “Sank you! Sank you ever so!” she said gratefully.
* * *
William stood leaning against the door in the easy attitude of the good-natured, all-providing male.
* * *
“It’s all right,” he said with an indulgent smile. “Quite all right. Quite all right.” Then, with an inspiration born of memories of his father earlier in the day. “Not at all. Don’t menshun it. Not at all. Quite all right.”
* * *
He stopped, simply for lack of further expressions, and bowed with would-be gracefulness as she went through the doorway.
* * *
As she passed the window she was rewarded by a spreading effusive smile in a flushed face.
* * *
She stopped and kissed her hand.
* * *
William blinked with pure emotion.
* * *
He continued his smile long after its recipient had disappeared. Then absent-mindedly he crammed his mouth with a handful of Mixed Dew Drops and sat down behind the counter.
* * *
As he crunched Mixed Dew Drops he indulged in a day dream in which he rescued the little girl in the white fur coat from robbers and pirates and a burning house. He was just leaping nimbly from the roof of the burning house, holding the little girl in the white fur coat in his arms, when he caught sight of two of his friends flattening their noses at the window. He rose from his seat and went to the door.
* * *
“’Ullo, Ginger! ’Ullo, Henry!” he said with an unsuccessful effort to appear void of self-consciousness.
* * *
They gazed at him in wonder.
* * *
“I’ve gotta shop,” he went on casually. “Come on in an’ look at it.”
* * *
They peeped round the door-way cautiously and, reassured by the sight of William obviously in sole possession, they entered, openmouthed. They gazed at the boxes and bottles of sweets. Aladdin’s Cave was nothing to this.
* * *
“Howd’ you get it, William?” gasped Ginger.
* * *
“Someone gave it me,” said William. “I took one of them things to be p’lite an’ someone gave it me. Go on,” he said kindly. “Jus’ help yourselves. Not at all. Jus’ help yourselves an’ don’t menshun it.”
* * *
They needed no second bidding. With the unerring instinct of childhood (not unsupported by experience) that at any minute their Eden might be invaded by the avenging angel in the shape of a grown-up, they made full use of their time. They went from box to box, putting handfuls of sweets and chocolates into their mouths. They said nothing, simply because speech was, under the circumstances, a physical impossibility. Showing a foresight for the future, worthy of the noble ant itself, so often held up as a model to childhood, they filled pockets in the intervals of cramming their mouths.
* * *
A close observer might have noticed that William now ate little. William himself had been conscious for some time of a curious and inexplicable feeling of coldness towards the tempting dainties around him. He was, however, loth to give in to the weakness, and every now and then he nonchalantly put into his mouth a Toasted Square or a Fruity Bit.
* * *
It happened that a loutish boy of about fourteen was passing the shop. At the sight of three small boys rapidly consuming the contents, he became interested.
* * *
“What yer doin’ of?” he said indignantly, standing in the doorway.
* * *
“You get out of my shop,” said William valiantly.
* * *
“Yer shop?” said the boy. “Yer bloomin’ well pinchin’ things out o’ someone else’s shop, I can see. ’Ere, gimme some of them.”
* * *
“You get out!” said William.
* * *
“Get out yerself!” said the other.
* * *
“If I’d not took one to be p’lite,” said William threateningly, “I’d knock you down.”
* * *
“Yer would, would yer?” said the other, beginning to roll up his sleeves.
* * *
“Yes, an’ I would, too. You get out.” Seizing the nearest bottle, which happened to contain Acid Drops, he began to fire them at his opponent’s head. One hit him in the eye. He retired into the street. William, now a-fire for battle, followed him, still hurling Acid Drops with all his might. A crowd of boys collected together. Some gathered Acid Drops from the gutter, others joined the scrimmage. William, Henry, and Ginger carried on a noble fight against heavy odds.
* * *
It was only the sight of the proprietor of the shop coming briskly down the side-walk that put an end to the battle. The street boys made off (with what spoils they could gather) in one direction and Ginger and Henry in another. William, clasping an empty Acid Drop bottle to his bosom, was left to face Mr. Moss.
* * *
Mr. Moss entered and looked round with an air of bewilderment.
* * *
“Where’s Bill?” he said.
* * *
“He’s ill,” said William. “He couldn’t come. I’ve been keepin’ shop for you. I’ve done the best I could.” He looked round the rifled shop and hastened to propitiate the owner as far as possible. “I’ve got some money for you,” he added soothingly, pointing to the four pennies that represented his morning’s takings. “It’s not much,” he went on with some truth, looking again at the rows of emptied boxes and half-emptied bottles and the débris that is always and everywhere the inevitable result of a battle. But Mr. Moss hardly seemed to notice it.
* * *
“Thanks, William,” he said almost humbly. “William, she’s took me. She’s goin’ ter marry me. Isn’t it grand? After all these years!”
* * *
“I’m afraid there’s a bit of a mess,” said William, returning to the more important matter.
* * *
Mr. Moss waved aside his apologies.
* * *
“It doesn’t matter, William,” he said. “Nothing matters to-day. She’s took me at last. I’m goin’ to shut shop this afternoon and go over to her again. Thanks for staying, William.”
* * *
“Not at all. Don’t menshun it,” said William nobly. Then, “I think I’ve had enough of that bein’ p’lite. Will one mornin’ do for this year, d’you think?”
* * *
“Er—yes. Well, I’ll shut up. Don’t you stay, William. You’ll want to be getting home for lunch.”
* * *
Lunch? Quite definitely William decided that he did not want any lunch. The very thought of lunch brought with it a feeling of active physical discomfort which was much more than mere absence of hunger. He decided to go home as quickly as possible, though not to lunch.
* * *
“Goo’-bye,” he said.
* * *
“Good-bye,” said Mr. Moss.
* * *
“I’m afraid you’ll find some things gone,” said William faintly; “some boys was in.”
* * *
“That’s all right, William,” said Mr. Moss, roused again from his rosy dreams. “That’s quite all right.”
* * *
But it was not “quite all right” with William. Reader, if you had been left, at the age of eleven, in sole charge of a sweet shop for a whole morning, would it have been “all right” with you? I trow not.
But we will not follow William through the humiliating hours of the afternoon. We will leave him as, pale and unsteady, but as yet master of the situation, he wends his homeward way.
Christmas Eve
Robert Browning
Christmas Eve
I
* * *
Out of the little chapel I burst
Into the fresh night-air again.
Five minutes full, I waited first
In the doorway, to escape the rain
That drove in gusts down the common's centre
At the edge of which the chapel stands,
Before I plucked up heart to enter.
Heaven knows how many sorts of hands
Reached past me, groping for the latch
Of the inner door that hung on catch 10
More obstinate the more they fumbled,
Till, giving way at last with a scold
Of the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled
One sheep more to the rest in fold,
And left me irresolute, standing sentry
In the sheepfold's lath-and-plaster entry,
Six feet long by three feet wide,
Partitioned off from the vast inside—
I blocked up half of it at least.
No remedy; the rain kept driving.
They eyed me much as some wild beast,
That congregation, still arriving,
Some of them by the main road, white
A long way past me into the night,
Skirting the common, then diverging;
Not a few suddenly emerging
From the common's self thro' the paling-gaps
—They house in the gravel-pits perhaps,
Where the road stops short with its safeguard border
Of lamps, as tired of such disorder;—
But the most turned in yet more abruptly
From a certain squalid knot of alleys,
Where the town's bad blood once slept corruptly,
Which now the little chapel rallies
And leads into day again,—its priestliness
Lending itself to hide their beastliness
So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason),
And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on
Those neophytes too much in lack of it,
That, where you cross the common as I did,
And meet the party thus presided,
"Mount Zion" with Love-lane at the back of it,
They front you as little disconcerted
As, bound for the hills, her fate averted,
And her wicked people made to mind him,
Lot might have marched with Gomorrah behind him.
* * *
II
* * *
Well, from the road, the lanes or the common,
In came the flock: the fat weary woman,
Panting and bewildered, down-clapping
Her umbrella with a mighty report,
Grounded it by me, wry and flapping,
A wreck of whalebones; then, with snort,
Like a startled horse, at the interloper
(Who humbly knew himself improper,
But could not shrink up small enough)
—Round to the door, and in,—the gruff
Hinge's invariable scold
Making my very blood run cold.
Prompt in the wake of her, up-pattered
On broken clogs, the many-tattered
Little old-faced peaking sister-turned-mother
Of the sickly babe she tried to smother
Somehow up, with its spotted face,
From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place;
She too must stop, wring the poor ends dry
Of a draggled shawl, and add thereby
Her tribute to the door-mat, sopping
Already from my own clothes' dropping,
Which yet she seemed to grudge I should stand on:
Then, stooping down to take off her pattens,
She bore them defiantly, in each hand one,
Planted together before her breast
And its babe, as good as a lance in rest.
Close on her heels, the dingy satins
Of a female something, past me flitted,
With lips as much too white, as a streak
Lay far too red on each hollow cheek;
And it seemed the very door-hinge pitied
All that was left of a woman once,
Holding at least its tongue for the nonce.
Then a tall yellow man, like the Penitent Thief,
With his jaw bound up in a handkerchief,
And eyelids screwed together tight,
Led himself in by some inner light.
And, except from him, from each that entered,
I got the same interrogation—
"What, you the alien, you have ventured
"To take with us, the elect, your station?
"A carer for none of it, a Gallio!"—
Thus, plain as print, I read the glance
At a common prey, in each countenance
As of huntsman giving his hounds the tallyho.
And, when the door's cry drowned their wonder,
The draught, it always sent in shutting,
Made the flame of the single tallow candle
In the cracked square lantern I stood under,
Shoot its blue lip at me, rebutting
As it were, the luckless cause of scandal:
I verily fancied the zealous light
(In the chapel's secret, too!) for spite
Would shudder itself clean off the wick,
With the airs of a Saint John's Candlestick.
There was no standing it much longer.
"Good folks," thought I, as resolve grew stronger,
"This way you perform the Grand-Inquisitor
"When the weather sends you a chance visitor?
"You are the men, and wisdom shall die with you,
"And none of the old Seven Churches vie with you!
"But still, despite the pretty perfection
"To which you carry your trick of exclusiveness,
"And, taking God's word under wise protection,
"Correct its tendency to diffusiveness,
"And bid one reach it over hot ploughshares,—
"Still, as I say, though you've found salvation,
"If I should choose to cry, as now, 'Shares!'—
"See if the best of you bars me my ration!
"I prefer, if you please, for my expounder
"Of the laws of the feast, the feast's own Founder;
"Mine's the same right with your poorest and sickliest
"Supposing I don the marriage vestiment:
"So shut your mouth and open your Testament,
"And carve me my portion at your quickliest!"
Accordingly, as a shoemaker's lad
With wizened face in want of soap,
And wet apron wound round his waist like a rope,
(After stopping outside, for his cough was bad,
To get the fit over, poor gentle creature,
And so avoid disturbing the preacher)
—Passed in, I sent my elbow spikewise
At the shutting door, and entered likewise,
Received the hinge's accustomed greeting,
And crossed the threshold's magic pentacle,
And found myself in full conventicle,
—To wit, in Zion Chapel Meeting,
On the Christmas-Eve of 'Forty-nine,
Which, calling its flock to their special clover,
Found all assembled and one sheep over,
Whose lot, as the weather pleased, was mine.
* * *
III
* * *
I very soon had enough of it.
The hot smell and the human noises,
And my neighbour's coat, the greasy cuff of it,
Were a pebble-stone that
a child's hand poises,
Compared with the pig-of-lead-like pressure
Of the preaching man's immense stupidity,
As he poured his doctrine forth, full measure,
To meet his audience's avidity.
You needed not the wit of the Sibyl
To guess the cause of it all, in a twinkling:
No sooner our friend had got an inkling
Of treasure hid in the Holy Bible,
(Whene'er 'twas the thought first struck him,
How death, at unawares, might duck him
Deeper than the grave, and quench
The gin-shop's light in hell's grim drench)
Than he handled it so, in fine irreverence,
As to hug the book of books to pieces:
And, a patchwork of chapters and texts in severance,
Not improved by the private dog's-ears and creases,
Having clothed his own soul with, he'd fain see equipt yours,—
So tossed you again your Holy Scriptures.
And you picked them up, in a sense, no doubt: