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MISS HILDRED GI(A Y’S CHRISTMAS GUT
"Sy Odessa Strickland Payne, Author of "The Mission Girl*. 'Esther Ferrall’s Experiment”, "Holo East End Was Redeemed”, Etc., Etc
4.
T WAS Christmas, by the bells and the
calendar. An ideal Christmas, for there
was a light blanket of snow upon the
ground, and the stars shone in the far
off, blue-grey of the Southern sky, al
though the daylight still lingered.
The tall magnolia trees and Norway
pines, on sentinel duty before Miss Hil
dred Gray’s big, old-fashioned house, rus-
tied softly in the wind, as if they were sentient things,
and felt the vibrations of harmony and good cheer in
the atmosphere, which had suggestions of a genial
warmth in it, in spite of the snow.
Miss Gray’s house, in other years, had been the
delightful center of a vivid and attractive form of so
cial life. But, alas! there intervened a gulf of decades
between that far-off, prosperous era, and the present
time. The Gray half-acre lot, in the ante-bellum cem
etery, was full of the representatives of her family.
The grandest, fairest and loveliest of her race were
sleeping there, without dreams, on this Christmas
Eve, and she was, consciously, very lonely.
In the town, where she was an active member of
church and social circles, Miss Gray was an inter
esting, important personage; and, as she was every
body’s friend, it seemed like the work of Fate, that
she should be alone this Christmas Eve, when even
the sternest and grimest of hearts should register a
few throbs of human sympathy.
But, the usual holiday festivities at the church, had
been postponed to a later date. And, as Miss Gray
had done everything that she could afford to do for
her friends and the unfortunates, who were also her
friends, in a Christian sense, she was at liberty to
spend the evening at home. She had not desired it;
but nobody had remembered to invite her to their
homes, and there was nothing else left to do.
So, with the philosopohy to which her fifty years
and more entitled her, she had bravely resolved to
make the very best of the situation. From her quaint
ly furnished, old-fashioned sitting room, with its Chip
pendale chairs, Sheraton tables, and square, rose
wood piano, to the shining brass dogs in the quaint
brick fireplace, that stood guard beneath Miss Gray’s
great, great grandfather’s portrait, shrined in its deep
walnut frame —all things breathed of a past, that had
been as refined in its luxury as it was austere, in its
grand ideals.
Miss Gray could not be classed as an old maid. For
she acknowledged her birthdays, gaily. In person
she was neither tall nor angular, and in spirit, she
was not bitter. She was cultured; she had traveled
extensively in the full years, and the experiences of
her friends had disillusioned her with regard to mat
rimony. Every woman, who married the Sir Galahad
of her girlish fancy, was not happy, any more than the
woman who remained single, was miserable. It all de
pended, after all, perhaps, on the woman.
She thought it worth while to dress attractively,
and this Christmas Eve she had put on a dark-blue
house gown, with a wide white collar, caught with a
red scarf tied in a soft, fluffy bow r , beneath her finely
modeled chin. At the moment, she was sitting by the
center table, making some sort of slow calculations,
in an old, leather-bound account book.
“I am very sorry,” she commented, at last, looking
up from her arithmetic, and glancing into the red
lanes of the grate, “that my cotton crop this year
was a partial failure. I might have made so many
more people happy this ideal Christmas if it had not
been. It does look like a farm of two hundred acres
ought to keep up one woman and her establishment,
decently, and leave a wide margin in addition, for
doing helpful little things for others. But it looks like
I’ll have to add to the mortgage already on the farm
this year, in order to cancel my obligations. But,
all the same, I am more than glad that I gave that
supper last night to the dear, old, unfortunate
women of the town. It did my soul good to see them
forget their woes, the despairs, and the disappoint
ments of the grim years, while in the House of
Gray, which was once far-famed for its lavish and
abundant hospitality.”
She rose, restlessly, with the last words, and walk
ed to the window.
Across the way, a gentleman was walking, medita-
The Golden Age for December 22, 1910.
tively, between the lonic columns, which upheld
the white splendors of his great house. On his iron
grey hair was a skull-cap, and he had his hands
thrust deep into the pockets of his fur-lined over
coat. He was distinguished looking, even at the dis
tance from which his neighbor regarded him.
“I wonder,” she said rather wistfully, “what can
have brought Gerard Stephens home, at this season
cf the year? He must be lonely, with his son in
South Africa, and his daughter married to a man
who lives in a distant state. I guess that Gerard
is going to have a shooting-party, for I am sure that
nothing else could have enticed him from the city
at this season. It has been years and years since I
talked with him; bnt still he is my neighbor, and we
used to be such good, good friends, before he asked
me that fateful question, on that memorable Christ
mas Eve, and never came back for his answer.”
“I have wondered, for thirty years—why! But, I
never expect to find out here. Only, the silence of
the years is no longer a great, raw, personal agony,
like it was once, in which was consumed, remorse
lessly, Hope, Youth and Ambition and everything.
But he looks as lonely as I feel, and, I am tempted
to send him over a Christmas greeting, on a waiter
full of Mam Liza’s delectable cooking. It would, af
ter all, be nothing but a neighborly act. And it
would show, that I had forgiven and forgotten.”
“Besides, we are both growing old, and it may be
my last chance at reconciliation. When he comes
back next time, I may not be here.
“And it is Christmas! Christmas! Christmas! The
ideal time to forgive and forget.”
Then Miss Hildred Gray went back to her long
dining room, which was red-walled, warm, shadowy.
And, pausing before her old mahogany sideboard,
she set out an array of whitely embossed cakes on
the round, dining table. She cut wide slices from all
of the cakes, and filled, with a touch of daintiness,
two china plates, one with varied kinds of cake, and
the other entirely with fruit cake. She arranged
the plates on a silver waiter, with a cluster of long
stemmed roses, laid carelessly on the edge.
After this, she called Mam Liza, for the errand.
Writing her name on the back of a visiting card,
with the compliments of the season, she dispatched
the silver waiter to the house across the way. Then
she sat down, patiently, by the sitting-room fire, to
await the old colored woman’s return.
Miss Gray was too proud to cry, although she felt
strangely like it, and she was too nervous to sit still.
So, she paced the floor, with her hands crossed be
hind her back, while she murmured.
“He looked so lonely! And he has been so busy
making money that he is doubtless poor in friends.
At any rate, I have broken the silence of the years,
by a neighborly act; and I am too old to care.”
Ah! that was the infinite pathos of it, too old to
care! Time robs us, sooner or later, of everything
worth while, even the capacity for that sort of ex
quisite torture, which the very young undergo when
a love affair comes to an untimely end, like that
of Gerard Stephens and her’s.
Mam Liza was big and portly, but carried the bur
den of her sixty-five years, lightly. She poked her
white, turbaned head in the door now with a grin
of genuine delight.
“See! what Marse Gerard gie me!” she volun
teered, opening her large hand, to display a gold
dollar glittering on the lined palm. “And I neber
say turkey, neider bout it bein’ Christmus times,
honey, cross my heart I didn’t. But, sho! Miss Hil
dred, dat man was tickled mos’ to deff to git dat fruit
cake. An' he tuk dem roses up, lack he neber seen
one since he bin born on de yearth. Um! Uh-huhu!
Lordy! An’ his eyes des shine an’ shine, Miss Hil
dred, when he say:
“ ‘Tell your Mistress dat I neber had a Christmus
giff I ’preciated more.’ ”
Miss Gray’s own beautiful eyes filled with slow
tears.
“Poor fellow! Poor fellow!” she sighed. And then
she added, “How true it is, that a touch of sympathy
makes the whole world kin.”
Having dismissed Mam Liza with a soft word of
thanks, she tried to forget her report, and all the
causes that led up to it, from her mind. But she
found it rather difficult to do, for the distinguished
figure, walking quietly, between the columns, on the
porch, stalked, persistently, through the corridors of
her mind, although he had long since retired to the
interior of the house.
Suddenly, through the charmed Christmas silence,
flower-scented and sweet, in the long, green and
white sitting room, she felt the door swing open at
her back, as she stood by the high mantel, and, turn
ing, she saw the man who for thirty years had not
crossed her threshold.
“Gerard! ”
She was startled out of all thoughts of convention
ality; for this was something she had not once
dreamed of, in connection with her Christmas mood.
“Hildred!” he answered, in a rich, masculine voice,
as he clasped her white, extended hand. “I trust
that I am not presumptuous in making a call, with
out permission. But, after your neighborly act, I
felt compelled to come; because I am very lonely,
since my dear daughter left me, last week.”
“Left you? I do not understand?”
“Neither do I,” he returned, in a voice whose pain
he tried to suppress. “The mystery of death deep
ens, for me, as the years go by.”
“She can’t be dead! Gerard! Gerard!” Hildred
Gray exclaimed, in a shocked voice. “That radiant,
magnetic, beautiful, vivid girl, with hair like a sun
burst, whom I have so often watched across the
way.”
“Alas! yes! And with my noble boy in South Af
rica, you can guess how glad I was to know that
you had remembered that I was still in the world.”
“But, I did not come over to discuss my grief,”
he rallied with the ready grace of the man-of-the
world. “But, to ask you to come across the street,
and see a picture which I consider the best, the
most wonderful and lovely, of all my art-treasures.”
Hildred Gray knew the man standing before her
was of irreproachable honor, but he was, also, a wid
ower, and he had been such a long, long time, out
of her life.”
“It will only take you a few minutes,” he urged,
with a slight smile, “and the sight of the picture
will be my thanks, Hildred, for your kind and char
itable Christmas remembrance of me. Come!” he
added. “I promise that you will not regret it.”
Miss Gray picked up her turban, which happened
to be on the piano, and, after she had placed the
hat upon her head, by some blind instinct, she said:
“I will be glad to go, Mr. Stephens.”
It seemed so odd to her, to be crossing the street,
in this common, every-day way, with the man who
had once loved her, but who had elected to go out
of her young life in such a sudden manner, that it
had seemed like dishonor. He had asked her to be
his wife on one memorable Christmas Eve, and, be
cause she was coy and gay, and had many admirers,
she had put him off, and told him, lightly, that she
would answer him, at some future time.
But he had left for a tour of Europe, soon after,
and to take a post-graduate course at Heidelberg,
and he had never come back for his answer.
The great 'house across the way, after his moth
er’s death, had been shut up for years. How often
Miss Gray had watched it, with a bitter heartache!
And, after his marriage, it had been remodeled on a
grand scale, and the family, at times, came up to
spend a summer. But there had been no renewal of
intimacy between the mansions, with the width of
the street between them.
Miss Gray had never crossed the street since.
She had seen his children, and admired them, ar
dently. out of the depths of her lonely heart; but
she had never made another sign of friendship, even
after the death of his wife. She had heard and read
of his super-normal success in finance, for his name
was often in the news-columns, coupled with chaste
adjectives of sincere praise. But he might have
remained out of her colorless life, forever, but for
the magic stir of the Christmas spirit in her heart,
and the vision of him pacing behind the white col
umns in that lonely, deserted way.
(Continued on Page S.)
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