The Christmas Megapack

by Reginald Robert

  “Doctor Ralph?”

  “Doctor Ralph! What right had he, I’d like to know, to marry that pretty sister of yours and go off honeymooning holiday time. Didn’t he know that we needed him and Sister Madge here for Christmas? I miss ’em both. Young pirate!”

  Roger’s heart swelled with loyalty. It was Doctor Ralph’s skilful hand that had helped him walk.

  “Most likely,” he said fairly, “I’m a little to blame there. After I came home from the hospital, I did tell Sister Madge to marry him—”

  “Most likely,” acknowledged the Doctor, “I said something similar to Doctor Ralph. I can’t have you shouldering all the responsibility. Well, your Honor, there’s the Christmas evidence. What’s the verdict?”

  Roger considered. This man to man game had certain phraseological conclusions.

  “No case!” he said suddenly, nor would he alter his decision when the Doctor protested against its severity.

  “You had so awful many peoply sort of places to go,” pointed out Roger, and the Doctor laughed.

  “And let you spend this first Christmas on your two legs in a city?” he demanded. “Well, I guess not! No-sir-ee-bob! There!—the alder berries have faded out and the garden’s thick with twilight.”

  “And it’s Christmas eve!” cried Roger, his black eyes shining with delight.

  “Speaking of Christmas,” said the Doctor, sniffing luxuriously, “I feel that I ought to slip out to the kitchen for a minute or so. I do smell something tremendously Christmasy and spicy—”

  Roger caught his breath. With a Christmas intrigue as surely in the air as the smell of spice, here was dangerous ground.

  “Aunt Ellen,” he faltered, “Aunt Ellen said she couldn’t pos’bly be bothered with—with any men folks in the kitchen—not even me.”

  “Pooh!” rebelled the Doctor largely, “that’s merely a ruse of hers to protect the cookies. And what I’d like to know is just this—what’s Aunt Ellen doing in the kitchen anyway? Certainly old Annie’s able to do the Christmas fussing for three people. Aunt Ellen ought to be in here with us. That was part of my lonesome grievance but I forgot to mention it.”

  Roger, shivering apprehensively, visioned suspicious stores of Christmas delicacies—holly and evergreen—and a supper table set for ten! And off somewhere among those purple spears of twilight old Asher, the hired man, was waiting at the station with the big farm sleigh.

  He must keep his eye upon the Doctor until six o’clock, and lure him away from the window.

  “Tell me a story,” begged Roger—“over here by the fire.” And his voice was so very tremulous and urgent that the hungry Doctor abandoned his notion of a Christmas cookie, and complied.

  To Roger, in a nervous ecstasy of anticipation, the story was a blurred hodge-podge of phrases and crackling fire, distant noises of clinking china and hurrying feet, and wild flights of imagination.... Old Asher must be coming past the red barn now...and now down the hill...and now past the Deacon’s pond...and now—

  Sleigh-bells fairly leaped out of the quiet, and Roger jumped and gulped, aquiver with excitement. The Doctor regarded him with mild disfavor.

  “Bless my soul,” he said in surprise, “that was the quietest part of my story. You’re restless.”

  “Go on!” said Roger hoarsely, and the obliging Doctor, mistaking his agitation for interest, went on with his tale.

  But Roger had heard old Asher driving along by the picket fence and turning in at the gate-posts, and the story was no more to him than the noisy crackle of the log. Off somewhere in the region of the kitchen door he detected a subdued scuffle of many feet.

  The grandfather’s clock struck six.... Roger’s cheeks were blazing—the fire and the Doctor still duetting.... Why, oh, why didn’t somebody come and call them to supper...? There had been plenty of time now for everything. Why—

  The door swung back and Roger jumped. Old Annie, Asher’s wife, stood in the doorway, her wrinkled face inscrutable.

  “Supper, sir!” she said and vanished. Hand in hand, the Doctor and Roger went out to supper.

  The dining-room door was closed. That in itself was unusual. But the unsuspecting Doctor pushed through with Roger at his heels, only to halt and stare dumfounded over his spectacles while Roger screamed and danced and clapped his hands. For to the startled eyes of Doctor John Leslie, the snug, old-fashioned room was alive with boys and holly—boys and boys and boys upon boys, he would have told you in that first instant of delighted consternation, in different stages of embarrassment and rags. And one had but to glance at the faces of old Asher and Annie in the kitchen doorway, at Aunt Ellen, hovering near her Christmas brood with the look of all mothers in her kind, brown eyes, and then at Roger, scarlet with enthusiasm, to know that the Doctor had been the victim of benevolent conspiracy.

  “It’s a s’prise!” shrieked Roger, “a Christmasy s’prise! Aunt Ellen she says you’re so awful keen on s’prisin’ other folks that we’d show you—an’—an’ you’ll have a bang-up Christmas with kids like you love an’ so will I, an’ so will they an’ the minister he went to the city and found seven boys crazy for Christmas in the country an’—”

  “Roger! Roger!” came Aunt Ellen’s gentle voice—“do please take a breath, child. You’re turning purple.”

  The Doctor adjusted his glasses.

  “Seven boys!” he said. “Bless my soul, when I opened that door I saw seventy boys!” He counted them aloud—then for no reason at all save that he had glanced into seven eager faces, thinner and sharper than he liked, for all they glowed with excitement and furtive interest in the long supper table asparkle with lights and holly, he wiped his glasses and patted Roger on the back.

  “Is your leg botherin’ so much now, daddy Doctor?” demanded Roger.

  “Nothing like so much,” admitted the Doctor.

  “Are you lonesome ’nuff now to stick out your chin?”

  “Bless your heart, Roger,” admitted the Doctor huskily, “I’m so full of Christmas I can hardly breathe!”

  “Hooray!” said Roger. “Me, too.”

  II. IT BLAZES HIGHER

  It was well that the Doctor had a way with boys, for there was a problem to be solved here with infinite tact—a problem of protuberant eyes and paralyzing self-consciousness, of unnatural silences and then unexpected attempts at speech that died in painful rasps and gurgles, of stubbing toes and nudging elbows, of a centipedal supply of arms and legs that interfered with abortive and conscience-stricken attempts at courtesy, and above all an interest in the weave of the carpet that was at once a mania and an epidemic—but by the time supper was well under way, things, in the language of Roger, had begun to hum, and by the time the Doctor had mastered the identities of his guests, from Jim, the shy, sullen boy who would not meet his eyes, to Mike’s little brother, Muggs, who consumed prodigious quantities of everything in staring silence, and looked something like a girl save for a tardily-cast-off suit of Mike’s, somewhat oceanic in flow and fit, the hum had become celebrative and distinctly a thing of Christmas.

  Constraint in the mellowing halo of a Christmas eve supper where holly and a Yule-log blazed and the winter wind frostily rattled the checker-paned windows of the sitting-room in jealous spleen, fled to join the Doctor’s rheumatism.

  By the time the grandfather’s clock struck seven through a haze of holly, the Doctor had pokered the Yule-log into a frenzied shower of gold; apples and nuts were steadily disappearing from a basket by the Doctor’s chair and the Doctor himself was relating an original Christmas tale of adventure, born of uncommon inspiration and excitement, to a huddled group with circular eyes and contented stomachs. But Muggs—inimitable workman—his small face partially obscured by the biggest apple in the basket, had not yet spoken, and Jim, the shy, sullen little boy to whom Roger had taken a fancy because he was lame, had met the Doctor’s eyes but once, and then with a rush of color.

  Now, whether it was the scheming excitement of a busy day or the warmth of
a busy log or the rambling yarn of a busy Doctor, who may say? Certainly Roger fell asleep at a fictional crisis and remained asleep for all that Jim furtively nudged him.

  “There!” said the Doctor as the clock struck eight, “that’s all. To bath and beds, every one of you! Annie’s had a lamp on the kitchen table this half hour ready to light you up the stairs. My! My! My!—but there’s a busy day ahead. Roger! Well, of all ungrateful listeners! Roger!”

  But in the end, the Doctor carried Roger up to bed, preceded by Annie with the lamp. And while Annie was turning back quilts and smoothing pillows and fumbling at windows, with the freedom of long service she soundly berated the Doctor for postponing the bedtime hour with his Christmas twaddle.

  “And Mister Muggs there,” she said severely, “has had one apple too many, I’m thinkin’, and the last one as big as his head. He’ll need a pill before morning. The child’s packed himself that hard and round ye fear to touch him.” And then because Muggs was such a very little boy Annie was minded to assist with his bath, and laid kindly hands upon an indefinite outer garment which began immediately beneath his arm-pits and ended at his shoe-tops in singular fringe.

  “An’, ma’am,” she explained to Aunt Ellen a little later, “I had to let him go in to his bath by himself. No more had I touched his bushel-basket of rags—an’ they were hitched over his shoulders with school straps and somebody’s shirtwaist underneath—than he let out a terrific shriek (ye must have heard him) an’ all the boys come runnin’ and crowdin’ round him and starin’ so frightened at me, an’ his brother yelled at him to keep quiet or something or somebody’d get him, and he kept quiet that sudden I could fairly see the child swell. He’s unnatural still and unnatural full, ma’am, an’ the Doctor better leave his pills handy.”

  Bathed and freshly night-gowned, the Doctor’s guests tumbled, a little noisily into bed. Only Jim lay silent and wakeful. Once he nudged his bed-fellow.

  “Luke,” he whispered, “d’ye think I’d orta tell ’em?”

  “Aw,” said Luke sleepily, “dry up, Jim! Gosh, ain’t the bed soft!”

  Jim sighed.

  Christmas came to the old farmhouse with the distant echo of village bells at midnight but, long before that, Christmas, in a fur cap and great-coat had swept up the driveway with a jingle of sleigh-bells, behind old Polly, the Doctor’s mare, his sleigh packed high with bundles. By the light of a late moon, flinging festal silver on the snow, it might be seen that Christmas resembled a somewhat guilty looking old gentleman with a grizzled beard.

  “I’ll catch old Scratch!” he admitted, suddenly overcome by the bulbous appearance of the sleigh, “but Ellen may say what she will. She couldn’t have thought of everything!”

  No call for pills came that night from Muggs, asleep in a crib that had seen much service. He was awake however long before daylight, trembling with excitement.

  “Mike, oh Mike!” he called hoarsely. “Wake up. It’s Christmas mornin’.”

  Mike, in a big bed with Marty Fay, sat up.

  “Don’t you dare open your mouth today!” he cried in blood-thirsty accents, “or Mom Murphy’ll git ye surer’n scat. Ain’t I schemed enuff to git ye here? Huh? Wanta be sent home—huh?” Muggs ducked beneath the blankets with a shivering wail.

  III. THE LOG AT DAWN

  In the still, cold corridors of a farmhouse, with frost-jungles clouding every window pane and a zero-dark outside, the cry of “Merry Christmas!” is most at home. Let noses be ever so cold and blanketed bodies ever so warm, the cry fills the dawn with electric energy. The Doctor began it. He knew by the instant response that he had started something that he could not stop. Almost in no time, it seemed, Roger was leading a wild, bare-footed scamper down the stairs—for Roger knew—and the Doctor, hastily bath-robed and slippered, was on behind with a lamp. But here was no cyclonic invasion of a dark, cold sitting-room. Old Annie and Asher knew boys! A log blazed brightly in the fireplace and the lamp was lit. If the room was over-warm, it proved simply that Annie had seen boys of another generation rushing down of a Christmas morning, scantily clad.

  And the King of Christmas trees blazed in candle-glory from wall to wall, tinselled boughs sagging with the weight of its Christmas freight. It could not have been bigger—it could not have glittered more. It had as many arms as an Octopus and its shaggy evergreen head, starred gorgeously with iridescence, brushed the old-fashioned paper on the ceiling. A great, lovable Christmas giant guarding a cargo of Christmas gifts!

  Muggs emitted one blood-curdling shriek of delight, clapped his hand over his mouth and began to swell about the cheeks. Then he stepped on the hem of his night-gown and fell sprawling at Annie’s feet.

  “Dear me,” said Annie vexedly, though she righted him with kindly hands, “I can’t for the life of me make out what ails that child. He acts so mortal queer at times, an’ he’s ready to swell up over nothing at all.”

  With the advent of Aunt Ellen, Christmas packages began to lose twine and paper, and what the packages lost the sitting-room speedily gained in disorder. For here were warm suits and overcoats, shoes and stockings and sweaters and caps, skates and horns and whistles and drums, home-made popcorn and candy, oranges—ah! well, sensible gifts in plenty, and foolish gifts that were wiser than Solomon for they included a boy’s heart as well as his body.

  In a lull all eyes turned to Muggs. His pockets were crammed with pop-corn and candy. One arm was quite as full of toys as he could pack it—the other had begun the day’s conveyance of food from hand to mouth, but he was regarding a very small, warm suit of clothes and substantial boots with dangerously quivering lips. Nor could one misinterpret his disapproval. For a moment the startled Doctor fancied he heard Mike hiss the astonishing words “Mom Murphy!” but by the time he had wheeled about, Muggs, with circular eyes of terror, had begun to swell.

  “That child,” said Annie, “has something on his mind. Don’t tell me! I know it.”

  The inevitable blare of racket came all too soon. Horns and whistles and drums united in a deafening blast, and if thanks did not come easily to the lips of boys, noise did. Nor could Muggs at any time thereafter be separated from a shoulder drum upon which he had beaten with insane and single-minded concentration even after the din was past and a hungry hint of breakfast in the air. Lacking one outlet of expression he had seized upon another. He drummed his way fiercely upstairs, to dress, and he drummed his way down to breakfast, a ridiculous self-consciousness in his small face whenever he glanced at his new suit of clothes. Small as it was it engulfed him utterly.

  “Jim!” said the Doctor suddenly. “You’re not limping!”

  Jim hung his head and glanced at his shining new shoes.

  “No, sir!” he said and gulped.

  “Bless me,” said the Doctor, adjusting his spectacles, “I thought you were lame and if I hadn’t forgotten it last night you’d have had no skates this morning.”

  “I didn’t have no heel on one shoe,” blurted Jim in confusion, and Roger, in relief, hoorayed himself into hoarseness.

  But Jim, like Muggs, was something of a mystery, and after a time the Doctor, with a sigh, abandoned his effort to break through the boy’s sullen shyness. Still Jim was the first at the chopping block when Annie wanted wood, and when the task took on something of the charm of Tom Sawyer’s fence by reason of a winter wren, so tame from overfeeding that he perched himself now and then upon the handle of the ax, Jim fell back with resentment and resigned the ax to Marty Fay who spat upon his hands, doubled up his fists, sparred, in an excess of good spirits, with an invisible antagonist, and thereafter made the chips fly so fast that the little wren departed.

  Already there were great Christmas bunches of oats upon glistening trees and fences, but, while Asher was carrying double portions of food to cattle and horses, to Toby, the cat, and Rover, the dog, the Doctor went about, with an eager pack of boys at his heels, distributing further Christmas largess for his feathered friends—suet and crumbs and seed
. For there were chickadees in the clump of red cedars by the barn, and juncos and nuthatches, white-throated sparrows and winter wrens, all so frank in their overtures to the Doctor that the boys with one accord closed threateningly around Muggs to keep him from drumming the birds into flight. Jim fastened a great chunk of suet to a tree-trunk and very soon a red-breasted nuthatch was busy with his Christmas breakfast. Altogether Roger’s bang-up Christmas began with terrific bustle, with Annie, from whose kitchen already floated odors that set the insatiable Muggs to sniffing, by far the busiest of them all.

  The grandfather’s clock struck ten. It found the old farmhouse deserted save for Annie in the kitchen and Aunt Ellen in her rocking chair by the sitting-room window. The Doctor was guiding his guests to the Deacon’s pond.

  New skates, new sweaters, and a pond as smooth as glass! What wonder then that Roger’s trembling fingers bungled his straps, and Jim, kneeling, fastened them on with nimble fingers.

  “Ain’t ye never skated?”

  “No—I—I been lame. Oh, hurry, Jim! See, Mike’s flyin’ down the pond like wind!”

  Jim’s eyes softened.

  “I’ll teach ye,” he said.

  As for the Doctor he had disinterred an ancient pair of skates from the attic, and presently he began to perform pedal convolutions of such startling design and eccentricity that the boys gathered about him and cheered until, seating himself unexpectedly in the center of a particularly wide and airy flourish, he flatly told the boys to run about their business.

  Now Muggs, though he carried upon his shoulder a ridiculous pair of elfin skates, was much too small a boy, his brother thought, to embark upon the ice, wherefore he stood like a sentinel upon the shore and drummed and ate incessantly, until an orange catapulted from an overcrowded pocket, when he pursued it with a roar.

  The peal of the village town-clock striking twelve came all too soon, but homing was no task with a turkey at the end. Muggs, still wrapped in mysterious silence, knew the very spot where Christmas odors began to permeate the frosty air and redoubled the speed in his drumming arm, but when after a vigorous scrubbing his glistening eye fell upon the holly-bright table and an enormous turkey by the Doctor’s plate, only a frosty menace in Mike’s eye, it seemed, restrained another blood-curdling shriek of delight. There was paralyzing apology in his eyes as Mike’s lips formed the soundless threat—“Mom Murphy!”