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.”
Fountain, going on thoughtfully: “It’s the cap-sheaf of the social barbarism we live in, the hideous hypocrisy. It’s no use to put it on religion. The Jews keep Christmas, too, and we know what they think of Christianity as a belief. No, we’ve got to go further back, to the Pagan Saturnalia — Well, I renounce the whole affair, here and now. I’m going to spend the rest of the night bundling these things up, and to-morrow I’m going to spend the day in a taxi, going round and giving them back to the fools that sent them.”
Mrs. Fountain: “And I’m going with you. I hate it as much as you do — Come in, Maggie!”
XI
MAGGIE, MRS. FOUNTAIN, FOUNTAIN
Maggie: “Something the elevator-boy says he forgot. It came along with the last one.”
Mrs. Fountain, taking a bundle from her: “If this is another bath-robe, Clarence! It is, as I live. Now if it is a woman sending it—” She picks up a card which falls out of the robe as she unfolds it. “‘Love the Giver,’ indeed! Now, Clarence, I insist, I demand—”
Fountain: “Hold on, hold on, my dear. The last bath-robe that came from a woman was for you.”
Mrs. Fountain: “So it was. I don’t know what I was thinking about; and I do beg your par — But this is a man’s bath-robe!”
Fountain, taking the card which she mechanically stretches out to him: “And a man sends it — old Fellows. Can’t you read print? Ambrose J. Fellows, and a message in writing: ‘It was a toss-up between this and a cigar-case, and the bath-robe won. Hope you haven’t got any other thoughtful friends.’”
Mrs. Fountain: “Oh, very brilliant, giving me a start like this! I shall let Mr. Fellows know — What is it, Maggie? Open the door, please.”
Maggie, opening: “It’s just a District Messenger.”
Fountain, ironically: “Oh, only a District Messenger.” He signs the messenger’s slip, while his wife receives from Maggie a bundle which she regards with suspicion.
XII
MRS. FOUNTAIN, FOUNTAIN
Mrs. Fountain: “‘From Uncle Philip for Clarence.’ Well, Uncle Philip, if you have sent Clarence — Clarence!” breaking into a whimper: “It is, it is! It’s another.”
Fountain: “Well, that only makes the seventh, and just enough for every day in the week. It’s quite my ideal. Now, if there’s nothing about a cigar-case — Hello!” He feels in the pocket of the robe and brings out a cigar-case, from which a slip of paper falls: “‘Couldn’t make up my mind between them, so send both. Uncle Phil.’ Well, this is the last stroke of Christmas insanity.”
Mrs. Fountain: “His brain simply reeled under it, and gave way. It shows what Christmas really comes to with a man of strong intellect like Uncle Phil.”
Fountain, opening the case: “Oh, I don’t know! He’s put some cigars in here — in a lucid interval, probably. There’s hope yet.”
Mrs. Fountain, in despair: “No, Clarence, there’s no hope. Don’t flatter yourself. The only way is to bundle back all their presents and never, never, never give or receive another one. Come! Let’s begin tying them up at once; it will take us the rest of the night.” A knock at the door. “Come, Maggie.”
XIII
JIM AND SUSY, MRS. FOUNTAIN, FOUNTAIN
Jim and Susy, pushing in: “We can’t sleep, mother. May we have a pillow fight to keep us amused till we’re drowsy?”
Mrs. Fountain, desolately: “Yes, go and have your pillow fight. It doesn’t matter now. We’re sending the presents all back, anyway.” She begins frantically wrapping some of the things up.
Susy: “Oh, father, are you sending them back?”
Jim: “She’s just making believe. Isn’t she, father?”
Fountain: “Well, I’m not so sure of that. If she doesn’t do it, I will.”
Mrs. Fountain, desisting: “Will you go right back to bed?”
Jim and Susy: “Yes, we will.”
Mrs. Fountain: “And to sleep, instantly?”
Jim and Susy, in succession: “We won’t keep awake a minute longer.”
Mrs. Fountain: “Very well, then, we’ll see. Now be off with you.” As they put their heads together and go out laughing: “And remember, if you come here another single time, back go every one of the presents.”
Fountain: “As soon as ever Santa Claus can find a moment for it.”
Jim, derisively: “Oh, yes, Santa Claus!”
Susy: “I guess if you wait for Santa Claus to take them back!”
XIV
MRS. FOUNTAIN, FOUNTAIN
Mrs. Fountain: “Tiresome little wretches. Of course we can’t expect them to keep up the self-deception.”
Fountain: “They’ll grow to another. When they’re men and women they’ll pretend that Christmas is delightful, and go round giving people the presents that they’ve worn their lives out in buying and getting together. And they’ll work themselves up into the notion that they are really enjoying it, when they know at the bottom of their souls that they loathe the whole job.”
Mrs. Fountain: “There you are with your pessimism again! And I had just begun to feel cheerful about it!”
Fountain: “Since when? Since I proposed sending this rubbish back to the givers with our curse?”
Mrs. Fountain: “No, I was thinking what fun it would be if we could get up a sort of Christmas game, and do it just among relations and intimate friends.”
Fountain: “Ah, I wish you luck of it. Then the thing would begin to have some reality, and just as in proportion as people had the worst feelings in giving the presents, their best feeling would be hurt in getting them back.”
Mrs. Fountain: “Then why did you ever think of it?”
Fountain: “To keep from going mad. Come, let’s go on with this job of sorting the presents, and putting them in the stockings and hanging them up on the tree and laying them round the trunk of it. One thing: it’s for the last time. As soon as Christmas week is over, I shall inaugurate an educational campaign against the whole Christmas superstition. It must be extirpated root and branch, and the extirpation must begin in the minds of the children; we old fools are hopeless; we must die in it; but the children can be saved. We must organize and make a house-to-house fight; and I’ll begin in our own house. To-morrow, as soon as the children have made themselves thoroughly sick with candy and cake and midday dinner, I will appeal to their reason, and get them to agree to drop it; to sign the Anti-Christmas pledge; to—”
Mrs. Fountain: “Clarence! I have an idea.”
Fountain: “Not a bright one?”
Mrs. Fountain: “Yes, a bright one, even if you didn’t originate it. Have Christmas confined entirely to children — to the very youngest — to children that believe firmly in Santa Claus.”
Fountain: “Oh, hello! Wouldn’t that leave Jim and Susy out? I couldn’t have them left out.”
Mrs. Fountain: “That’s true. I didn’t think of that. Well, say, to children that either believe or pretend to believe in him. What’s that?” She stops at a faint, soft sound on the door. “It’s Maggie with her hands so full she’s pushing with her elbow. Come in, Maggie, come in. Come in! Don’t you hear me? Come in, I say! Oh, it isn’t Maggie, of course! It’s those worthless, worthless little wretches, again.” She runs to the door calling out, “Naughty, naughty, naughty!” as she runs. Then, flinging the door wide, with a final cry of “Naughty, I say!” she discovers a small figure on the threshold, nightgowned to its feet, and looking up with a frightened, wistful face. “Why, Benny!” She stoops down and catches the child in her arms, and presses him tight to her neck, and bends over, covering his head with kisses. “What in the world are you doing here, you poor little lamb? Is mother’s darling walking in his sleep? What did you want, my pet? Tell mudda, do! Whisper it in mudda’s big ear! Can’t you tell mudda? What? Whisper a litt
le louder, love! We’re not angry with you, sweetness. Now, try to speak louder. Is that Santa Claus? No, dearest, that’s just dadda. Santa Claus hasn’t come yet, but he will soon. What? Say it again. Is there any Santa Claus? Why, who else could have brought all these presents? Presents for Benny and Jim and Susy and mudda, and seven bath-gowns for dadda. Isn’t that funny? Seven! And one for mudda. What? I can’t quite hear you, pet. Are we going to send the presents back? Why, who ever heard of such a thing? Jim said so? And Susy? Well, I will settle with them, when I come to them. You don’t want me to? Well, I won’t, then, if Benny doesn’t want mudda to. I’ll just give them a kiss apiece, pop in their big ears. What? You’ve got something for Santa Claus to give them? What? Where? In your crib? And shall we go and get it? For mudda too? And dadda? Oh, my little angel!” She begins to cry over him, and to kiss him again. “You’ll break my heart with your loveliness. He wants to kiss you too, dadda.” She puts the boy into his father’s arms; then catches him back and runs from the room with him. Fountain resumes the work of filling the long stocking he had begun with; then he takes up a very short sock. He has that in his hand when Mrs. Fountain comes back, wiping her eyes. “He’ll go to sleep now, I guess; he was half dreaming when he came in here. I should think, when you saw how Benny believed in it, you’d be ashamed of saying a word against Christmas.”
Fountain: “Who’s said anything against it? I’ve just been arguing for it, and trying to convince you that for the sake of little children like Benny it ought to be perpetuated to the end of the world. It began with the childhood of the race, in the rejuvenescence of the spirit.”
Mrs. Fountain: “Didn’t you say that Christmas began with the pagans? How monstrously you prevaricate!”
Fountain: “That was merely a figure of speech. And besides, since you’ve been out with Benny, I’ve been thinking, and I take back everything I’ve said or thought against Christmas; I didn’t really think it. I’ve been going back in my mind to that first Christmas we had together, and it’s cheered me up wonderfully.”
Mrs. Fountain, tenderly: “Have you, dearest? I always think of it. If you could have seen Benny, how I left him, just now?”
Fountain: “I shouldn’t mind seeing him, and I shouldn’t care if I gave a glance at poor old Jim and Susy. I’d like to reassure them about not sending back the presents.” He puts his arm round her and presses her toward the door.
Mrs. Fountain: “How sweet you are! And how funny! And good!” She accentuates each sentiment with a kiss. “And don’t you suppose I felt sorry for you, making you go round with me the whole afternoon, and then leaving you to take the brunt of arranging the presents? Now I’ll tell you: next year, I will do my Christmas shopping in July. It’s the only way.”
Fountain: “No, there’s a better way. As you were saying, they don’t have the Christmas things out. The only way is to do our Christmas shopping the day after Christmas; everything will be round still, and dog-cheap. Come, we’ll begin day after to-morrow.”
Mrs. Fountain: “We will, we will!”
Fountain: “Do you think we will?”
Mrs. Fountain: “Well, we’ll say we will.” They laugh together, and then he kisses her.
Fountain: “Even if it goes on in the same old way, as long as we have each other—”
Mrs. Fountain: “And the children.”
Fountain: “I forgot the children!”
Mrs. Fountain: “Oh, how delightful you are!”
THE END
A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS AND OTHER STORIES
CONTENTS
A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS
THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO.
A DIFFICULT CASE.
THE MAGIC OF A VOICE.
A CIRCLE IN THE WATER.
A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS
I.
We first met Glendenning on the Canadian boat which carries you down the rapids of the St. Lawrence from Kingston and leaves you at Montreal. When we saw a handsome young clergyman across the promenade-deck looking up from his guide-book toward us, now and again, as if in default of knowing any one else he would be very willing to know us, we decided that I must make his acquaintance. He was instantly and cordially responsive to my question whether he had ever made the trip before, and he was amiably grateful when in my quality of old habitué of the route I pointed out some characteristic features of the scenery. I showed him just where we were on the long map of the river hanging over his knee, and I added, with no great relevancy, that my wife and I were renewing the fond emotion of our first trip down the St. Lawrence in the character of bridal pair which we had spurned when it was really ours. I explained that we had left the children with my wife’s aunt, so as to render the travesty more lifelike; and when he said, “I suppose you miss them, though,” I gave him my card. He tried to find one of his own to give me in return, but he could only find a lot of other people’s cards. He wrote his name on the back of one, and handed it to me with a smile. “It won’t do for me to put ‘reverend’ before it, in my own chirography, but that’s the way I have it engraved.”
“Oh,” I said, “the cut of your coat bewrayed you,” and we had some laughing talk. But I felt the eye of Mrs. March dwelling upon me with growing impatience, till I suggested, “I should like to make you acquainted with my wife, Mr. Glendenning.”
He said, Oh, he should be so happy; and he gathered his dangling map into the book and came over with me to where Mrs. March sat; and, like the good young American husband I was in those days, I stood aside and left the whole talk to her. She interested him so much more than I could that I presently wandered away and amused myself elsewhere. When I came back, she clutched my arm and bade me not speak a word; it was the most romantic thing in the world, and she would tell me about it when we were alone, but now I must go off again; he had just gone to get a book for her which he had been speaking of, and would be back the next instant, and it would not do to let him suppose we had been discussing him.
II.
I was sometimes disappointed in Mrs. March’s mysteries when I came up close to them; but I was always willing to take them on trust; and I submitted to the postponement of a solution in this case with more than my usual faith. She found time, before Mr. Glendenning reappeared, to ask me if I had noticed a mother and daughter on the boat, the mother evidently an invalid, and the daughter very devoted, and both decidedly ladies; and when I said, “No. Why?” she answered, “Oh, nothing,” and that she would tell me. Then she drove me away, and we did not meet till I found her in our state-room just before the terrible mid-day meal they used to give you on the Corinthian, and called dinner.
She began at once, while she did something to her hair before the morsel of mirror: “Why I wanted to know if you had noticed those people was because they are the reason of his being here.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Of course not. But I knew it, for he asked if I had seen them, or could tell him who they were.”
“It seems to me that he made pretty good time to get so far as that.”
“I don’t say he got so far himself, but you men never know how to take steps for any one else. You can’t put two and two together. But to my mind it’s as plain as the nose on his face that he’s seen that girl somewhere and is taking this trip because she’s on board. He said he hadn’t decided to come till the last moment.”
“What wild leaps of fancy!” I said. “But the nose on his face is handsome rather than plain, and I sha’n’t be satisfied till I see him with the lady.”
“Yes, he’s quite Greek,” said Mrs. March, in assent to my opinion of his nose. “Too Greek for a clergyman, almost. But he isn’t vain of it. Those beautiful people are often quite modest, and Mr. Glendenning is very modest.”
“And I’m very hungry. If you don’t hurry your prinking, Isabel, we shall not get any dinner.”
“I’m ready,” said my wife, and she continued with her eyes still on the glass: “He’s got a church out in Ohio, somewh
ere; but he’s a New-Englander, and he’s quite wild to get back. He thinks those people are from Boston: I could tell in a moment if I saw them. Well, now, I am ready,” and with this she really ceased to do something to her hair, and came out into the long saloon with me where the table was set. Rows of passengers stood behind the rows of chairs, with a detaining grasp on nearly all of them. We gazed up and down in despair. Suddenly Mrs. March sped forward, and I found that Mr. Glendenning had made a sign to her from a distant point, where there were two vacant chairs for us next his own. We eagerly laid hands on them, and waited for the gong to sound for dinner. In this interval an elderly lady followed by a young girl came down the saloon toward us, and I saw signs, or rather emotions, of intelligence pass between Mr. Glendenning and Mrs. March concerning them.
The older of these ladies was a tall, handsome matron, who bore her fifty years with a native severity qualified by a certain air of wonder at a world which I could well fancy had not always taken her at her own estimate of her personal and social importance. She had the effect of challenging you to do less, as she advanced slowly between the wall of state-rooms and the backs of the people gripping their chairs, and eyed them with a sort of imperious surprise that they should have left no place for her. So at least I read her glance, while I read in that of the young lady coming after, and showing her beauty first over this shoulder and then over that of her mother, chiefly a present amusement, behind which lay a character of perhaps equal pride, if not equal hardness. She was very beautiful, in the dark style which I cannot help thinking has fallen into unmerited abeyance; and as she passed us I could see that she was very graceful. She was dressed in a lady’s acceptance of the fashions of that day, which would be thought so grotesque in this. I have heard contemporaneous young girls laugh at the mere notion of hoops, but in 1870 we thought hoops extremely becoming; and this young lady knew how to hold hers a little on one side so as to give herself room in the narrow avenue, and not betray more than the discreetest hint of a white stocking. I believe the stockings are black now.
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 1039