Gabrielle E. Jackson

“ Eleanor Carruth had returned from college three days before Christmas, to find everyone in the liveliest, gayest mood, and each moment crowded to its very limit with duties or pleasures. Christmas in Mrs. Carruth’s home had always been a day of “good will toward man” in its truest, sweetest sense. No one had time to think of self in her desire to think of others. For more than sixty years Mammy’s voice had been the first one to cry “Christmas gif’” to her children, as she went from bed to bed in the chill Christmas dawn. ”

“ To be the chief support of her family, to give to her mother the thousand little luxuries she had known in earlier life, to give to Jean every possible advantage, both educational and social, and still have time to enjoy life at its heyday herself—why—surely, no more could be asked.
Mary and Fanny Willing were as happy and content as two girls well could be, and worked and sang from dawn to twilight. With the autumn even more help became necessary to keep abreast of the orders; and, through Hadyn, Constance secured the services of a man in whom Hadyn was deeply interested. ”

“ Mammy, do you wish to remain here and hear the rest of this ridiculous story, or must I have Sniffins and his sister taken up to my office? It is too public here for loud talking, and if you wish to save your little girl deep mortification, and her mother the keenest distress, you will control yourself. This is the greatest folly I could have believed any sane being capable of, but if it gets noised abroad it will soon grow into a scandal, as you must realize. Remember this, every one present, Miss Carruth must never learn one word about it if we can keep it from her. ”

“ Carruth.
“Just sit and watch us work. That helps,” answered Mary, as she relieved Constance.
“Will you be just a heap happier if I let you help wrap the fudge in paraffin paper?” asked Constance as she nestled her head for a moment in her mother’s neck. “Eh? Will you? You busy body. Why can’t you let us do all the work and so win all the glory? I suspect you’re a terribly selfish mother; yes, I do. You needn’t protest. You won’t even let your girls, real own ones or adopted ones, make their sticky marks in this world in peace. ”

“ Carruth’s eyes followed her a moment, then turned to encounter Hadyn’s looking at her with a tenderness she never forgot as he extended his arms and said:
“My little mother! My little mother! Will you let these serve and hold you henceforth? May I be, as dear old Mammy says, ‘your boy?’ You do not know how I have longed to be that in reality all these years that I have been waiting. Come!”
“In the beautiful days of long ago,” When all this world was so new and fair, An Angel came from the world above To bestow the gift of all gifts most rare. ”

“ The first year was the hardest; a freshman’s possibilities are circumscribed; Sophomore year brought with it broader opportunities; Junior year established her place in the college world beyond all argument, and now with senior year her triumph and success lay close at hand. Moreover, this last year was being made much easier for her by Constance’s success in her candy kitchen. The same autumn that Eleanor entered college Constance, in spite of Mammy’s protests and opposition, had branched out on a scale to outrage all the old colored woman’s instincts and traditions. ”

“ Ah, life holds some sweet moments, and this old world is not such a bad one, after all. But we anticipate.
October came again, and all the world was beautiful in its golden haze. With Eleanor’s engagement to Homer Forbes, and her complete absorption in her demi-god, who had changed her plans so completely, her future so entirely, Eleanor plunged headlong into consummating his dreams so far as in her power lay. This left Constance largely to herself and her own plans. ”

“ Then quickly slipping her riding-crop through the loop with Hadyn’s assistance, she turned it tighter and tighter, and presently had the joy of seeing that red flow lessen. “Oh, for help! Is no one within a hundred miles of us?” she moaned. “Hold this, Hadyn, and let me ride for someone,” she cried.
“Constance! Never! Do you realize the state you are in?”—for the girl had given no thought to self in her excitement. One glance at her habit was enough.
“And do you think I would let you mount that mad brute? Had he not plunged aside, he, instead of Comet, would be lying before us this minute. ”

“ But Hadyn was looking farther into the future than Mrs. Carruth looked. Perhaps his wish had some bearing upon the thought, for from the moment Hadyn Stuyvesant had met Constance Carruth his future was settled so far as he was concerned. But he was too wise to let the sixteen-year-old girl guess his feelings. The gulf between sixteen and twenty-three is a wide one. As the years advance it mysteriously narrows. At nineteen Constance often wondered why Hadyn seemed younger to her in his twenty-sixth year than he had at twenty-three. ”

“ Miss Willing will bear the brunt of the hard work this winter, leaving Miss Constance free to finish her high-school-course. It is a wise plan all around and a kinder one than you realize. The Arcade telephone switchboard was no place for a girl like Mary Willing, and to have been instrumental in removing her from the temptations she was sure to meet there is a more beautiful charity than those blazoned at large in the daily papers. Don’t thwart it, Mammy. Let the little girl down yonder go on with her good work; she doesn’t realize how far-reaching it is: perhaps she will never learn. ”

“ If Charles grows worse, or you think mother is worn out and needs me, will you flash the electric light three times? I shall know what it means and come straight over.” Constance spoke very quietly, but very earnestly.
“I’ll do it. I may go to sleep, but somehow I know I shall wake up if I am needed, Connie. Even if I am only fourteen years old I can be a little woman, as mother so often says I am.”
“I know you can, dear, and you are, Jean; even if in many ways you are younger than most girls of your age. I don’t think any of us have grown up quite so fast as the girls around us. ”

“ Isn’t all the world beautiful? Why need anybody or anything in it ever die, and why will other people make them. Oh, Champion, if I only hadn’t made Baltie!” and quick tears sprung into her eyes. During the two weeks since Baltie’s death Jean had actually lost flesh and grown pale in her sorrow and remorse for what she believed to be purely the result of her want of thought. ”

“ Then, as soon as she was dressed, Jean flew to the stable, and a pretty scene always followed. When Charles came into the family he was the one to go first to the stable; but neither Jean nor Mammy ever failed to visit Baltie a little later, and during those years he had become almost human. Only human speech seemed denied him, but this lack he supplied by his own Houyhnhum language, and the silent but most eloquent language of the eyes and ears which God has given mute creatures—each so very wonderful if dull humans will only try to learn them. ”

“ Not a human being was in sight as she turned into the street upon which Dr. Black’s house stood five blocks further down. They might almost as well have been fifty, for the street was narrower than most of the others, and running north and south had caught the full brunt of the northeaster. More than one piazza and front door was banked nearly to the piazza roof, and the street itself practically impassable.
Baltie had come bravely thus far, but such a white mountain as now lay before him was enough to daunt a young horse, much less an old blind one. ”

“ Carruth, quick to read and comprehend, found a field for the sweetest missionary work a woman can enter upon—that of shaping the life of a young girl for the noblest position to which she can attain—a refined young womanhood, a beautiful wifehood, and a motherhood as perfect as God will give her grace to make it. ”

“ Look at the coloring over on that mountain and on our own hills. It is perfectly intoxicating. It makes me feel like doing something out of the usual order, and yet I ought to go out yonder to the Candy Kitchen and lend a hand with the thousand and one things to be attended to. I tell you, Hadyn Stuyvesant, I am rapidly becoming a power in the commercial world,” laughed Constance.
“You are a greater power already than you guess. Before you know it that business will have grown beyond its boundaries again, and even greater expansion will be necessary. ”

“ For many days Jack Frost had been busy, and had done his wonderful work most effectively, completing it during the previous night by a light coating of diamond-dust, which glistened and sparkled in the clear sunshine, or swirled up in fantastic spirals as the skaters whirled away through it. The boathouse at the river’s edge served as a shelter for the chilled ones, and, far-sighted woman! ”

“ Come, Baltie!” she called, running across to the box stall and opening the door. Then there was a low cry, and Jean stood for a moment as though petrified. On the sweet, clean straw lay the old horse, body inert, limbs relaxed, head resting upon its bed of soft straw as a tired, worn-out veteran’s might rest upon his pillow, his eyes closed, and without a flutter of the delicate nostrils to indicate breathing. Life seemed extinct. With a piteous cry Jean glided to the horse’s head and dropped upon her knees, clasping her arms about the silky neck. ”

“ Carruth watched developments with resignation; Constance with open amusement; Mammy with a division between tolerance and contempt—the saving grace in the cause being that Forbes could remotely claim kinship with the Blairsdales. But it was upon Jean that the effect was the funniest. Jean had spent all her life with people older than herself. ”

“ It was the day following Christmas, and such a day as long dwells in one’s memory of perfect winter days; scarcely a cloud in the sky, and the air filled with a crispness which set one’s blood a-tingle. The world wore her white robes of the season, bedecked with a thousand sparkling jewels. The river was frozen nearly across, and on its glistening surface groups of skaters darted about, or pushed ice-chairs, in which were seated older or less vigorous bodies for whom skating was not. ”

“ Mammy had sent Charles down there with a great basket of sandwiches, and a heaterful of steaming chocolate. Somehow nature had made a big mistake when she fashioned Mammy: she should have formed a man, a white man, and cast his lot among the great commerical lights of his day.
The chocolate heater had to be replenished more than once, and the manner in which the sandwiches vanished was almost miraculous.
Eleanor, Constance and Jean were as much at home upon their skates as upon the soles of their feet, and Hadyn had skated ever since he could move without assistance ”

“ The interval in which he had fallen upon evil days had vanished as an ugly dream, and with nobility’s inherent qualities, whether manifested in man or beast, he had dismissed the memory, risen above it, and with all of his noblesse oblige was helping others to do likewise.
His wonderfully attuned ears were quick to catch the sound of Constance’s footfalls upon the soft turf, and he greeted her with a stifled nicker, for his position made a gentlemanly greeting well-nigh impossible: he was lying at full length upon a bed of sweet clover, his head in Jean’s lap. ”

“ Instead of doing so, he raised his hat, and with a most impressive bend of his long, loosely-hung figure, and a smile which irritated her by its self-complacency, said:
“How are you, Miss Carruth? You’re sure putting up a big show here, ain’t you?”
“What can I do for you?” asked Constance, with quiet dignity.
“Guess you can’t do nothing for me, but maybe I can do something for you. Candy ain’t in my line. Never spent none o’ my solid cash for the stuff, but I’m glad other people do; plenty of fools in this world to help wise folks get rich, ain’t there?” ”

“ Carruth when this strong man held her in his arms, and called her by that tenderest of all names, “Mother,” passes all power to describe. From that instant he was “her boy,” for the man ever remains “the boy” in the mother’s love, and Hadyn had rich store of Mrs. Carruth’s.
Leading her to a settee, with arm still circling her, he told her the whole story. ”

“ Constance had reason to know that one can be foot-weary after several hours spent in candy-making. Consequently these packing tables were made low enough to enable those working at them to sit upon the comfortable bent-wood chairs while doing the work, which often required several hours, for not only had the candy to be packed in its pretty boxes, but the boxes had to be wrapped and tied with dainty ribbons. Nothing must fall short of perfection.
But the crowning point of Constance’s practicability was shown in the actual kitchen itself. ”

“ Grace, beauty, strength incarnate as the play of the great muscles beneath that satiny coat carried him forward—one of God’s most perfect creatures. The girl riding cross-saddle felt the thrill of his action to her finger-tips. Her body swayed with every motion of the beautiful horse. ”

“ Carruth, you’ve got it to do. It is clearly a duty brought to your door,” added Homer Forbes. “Moreover, it will give me a wonderful opportunity to pursue my psychological studies. Didn’t know I was knee-deep in them, did you, Eleanor? Fact, however. Human emotions as the direct result of unsuspected mental suggestion, etc. Bring on your subjects, Constance.”
“I give in. Do as you’ve a mind to, you incorrigible children, only bear this in mind—you are not to tease those girls and make them miserable. Jean has made one wild break, but there shall be no more if I can prevent it. ”

“ Come on, Forbes! Where’s that stout walking-stick, Mrs. Carruth? Bring along the wheelbarrow for the remains, Charles—of the turkey, I mean.”
Haydn was making for the door, Forbes hard upon his heels, when Jean darted to her mother’s side to draw her head toward her and whisper something into the listening ear. Jean’s guests sat like graven images. Constance and Eleanor were ready to shriek at the absurdity of the situation.
“Hadyn, Homer, come back! Mammy, send in the quail pie and all the other good things you’ve prepared; we shall not starve. ”

“ Carruth or Miss Constance come out to sit with us a little while. They always say they have come out to welcome their guests, because Fanny’s guests and mine are theirs, too. Isn’t that a sweet way of putting it? We know, though, that they do it because they want our friends to feel at home, and there hasn’t been a single evening when they haven’t sent Mammy up with some cake, or lemonade, or something nice, and I can always take a pound of candy if I want to. Oh, there’s no place in all the world like the ‘Bee-hive,’ I tell you!” And, with a happy smile, Mary went upon her way. ”

“ If anything will wheedle you into being good, letting you get busy will,” ended Constance, turning to the table and deftly lifting the squares to the flat pans upon which they were to be carried to the packing room.
“Shoo along in there and get busy if you must, and while you are getting sticky enough to satisfy even yourself, you will tell me what is simmering. And mind, Mary can hear, too; so if it is too anarchistic she will come to the rescue. Oh, you can’t do as you used to. Whyfor do I make candy by the pounds innumerable? ”

“ Jean repeated the legend with infinite scorn, and Hadyn laughed outright. Then growing serious again, he said:
“Perhaps a better record of Jabe’s true character is preserved in his neighbors’ memory of him, and I should think that Mrs. Raulsbury might now draw her first free breath. It is true that a man’s death can sometimes bring oblivion of his evil deeds. Poor old Baltie might have told a few of Jabe’s, but even had he possessed human speech I doubt if he would have so employed it. Baltie was a gentleman. ”

“ On plodded the good old creature, breaking into a light lope where the wind had swept the street comparatively free of snow, wallowing, pounding, pawing into the drifts where they barred his progress, snorting his protest, not at Jean, but at the elements, though never pausing in his efforts, which made him breathe hard, and more than once slow up for his second wind. ”