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A RHAL CHRISTMAS STOR'i
’Twas Christmas eve; the night was cold;
The wind moaned through the trees.
A widow sat before the fire,
Her elbows on her knees.
Her face was hidden in her hands,
In grief and sorrow sore,
While tears between her fingers ran
And dropped upon the floor.
Three urchins lay upon the bed,
The first a lad of ten;
The other two were six and three,
She hoped to see them men.
For them she lived; for them she toiled;
They must be clothed and fed;
For them the busy wheel she plied,
When neighbors were in bed.
At Yuletide they were wont to hang
(As children ever will),
Their stockings in the chimney jam,
For Santa Claus to fill.
Till now they’d always found them crammed
With fruits and toys and things,
And shared in all the childish joys,
The Christmas season brings.
And aye” till now the Yule log burned
Upon a happy hearth,
And all the season’s joys were shared
By one now gone from earth.
Despite her toil and constant care,
Grim Want stood at the door,
And Christmas found her destitute
Os money and of store.
She thought her boys were all asleep;
Indeed, the younger were;
But the eldest, though he lay quite still,
Was witness of her care.
And thus she sat —the fire burned low —
Anon she raised her head,
And turned and cast a loving look
Upon the little bed.
MISS HILDRED GRATS CHRISTMAS GIFT
“We will not bother my housekeep
er,” he observed, as he flung open a
side door, “though she often regales
me with stories about the lady every
body loves in our town. I have already
heard about your supper to the old
women, Hildred, last night, and I
really think that it was a beautiful
idea, because the very old are obliged,
in the very nature of things, to have
such tragical memories, and so few
ever think to try and balance their in
evitable mental attitudes kindly.
“But here we are in the library,
and if you will just wait a moment I
will show you my art treasure.”
He unlocked a door, which led into
what seemed to be a private study;
for there was just a single book-case
in the room, a desk and one big, luxu
rious leather chair.
Over the mantel was a tremendous,
veiled picture.
He pulled the loose blue cord. And
Miss Gray, standing just inside the
door, took in the picture with the
breathless, artless wonder of one who
had all her life loved the artistic and
the beautiful.
It was the full-length portrait of a
young woman, standing by a carved,
marble-white balustrade of a terrace
that overlooked the sea. She wore a
dress of elusive silver gray, and her
hat, held by the strings, trailed from
one drooping hand. But it was the
expression of the young woman’s
lovely face which enthralled Miss
And when her eyes the stockings saw,
So empty and forlorn,
Her face again went down in grief,
So grievous to be borne.
What should she do? What could she do?
How disappoint her boys;
Who slept and dreamed of stockings filled,
With fruits and nuts and toys?
!Efl
Her eldest son lay, watching her,
And wondered why she wept,
And while he wept in sympathy,
The mother thought he slept.
Sob after sob convulsed her frame,
As the storm doth shake the oak.
He lay and watched and wept the while,
It seemed that he would choke.
Gray, not the panoramic background
of cobalt Italian sky, such as Poussin
loved to reverence and to paint, nor
the sea that looked a gray infinite of
calm, with only a fleck of foam-crested
wave here and there to mark the un
dulation of the waves.
“How perfectly lovely!” Miss Gray
exclaimed, as she examined the pic
ture. And she slowly took it all in—
the charm of the youthful, willowy fig
ure, the intellectuality which breathed
from the calm hazel eyes, and the ex
quisite lines of the perfectly modeled
mouth.
“What message does my best-prized
picture bring to you, Miss Gray?” Mr.
Stephens queried, with a curious light
in his dark, magnetic eyes, as he
leaned carelessly against the high
mantel and noted his neighbor’s en
thusiastic delight, her radiant and un
disguised commendation of his artistic
taste.
“Oh! it is the message of youth!”
she answered. “It seems to say, ‘I
dare to be happy, because life has
blinded me to its gravity and is well
worth the living; and because there
is that within myself which assures
me that I can have what I desire most,
and conquer Fate.’ ”
“I wonder, and I have often won
dered,” he said, as he moved a silver
match-case along the mantel shelf
with a long, slender, aristocratic hand,
“if you have conquered Fate. Because
I would like to know what the years
The Golden Age for December 22, 1910.
have brought you; for, believe me, I
have always felt the profoundest in
terest in you since that memorable
Christmas Eve, so long ago, w’hen you
practically refused my name and hand
in marriage.”
“I did nothing of the kind,” she said,
in a voice of quick emotion. “I told
you to come back for your answer,
and you never came.”
“I had good and sufficient reasons,”
Mr. Stephens replied. “I heard, next
morning, down town, that you were
engaged to Gordon Hightower; and I
am sure you looked happy enough on
the afternoon of that same day, when
I saw you out riding with him, to
make any sane man believe it was
true. Afterwards, of course, I couldn’t
be guilty of the indescribable folly of
going back to you simply to get—the
mitten.”
“How if I never intended to give it
to you, sir?”
“I have sometimes dared to think
that,” he replied, calmly, “since you
elected not to marry at all. Tell me
the truth, Hildred; it can’t matter
now.”
“You mean that we are both too old
to care?”
“No; but it is my right. What
would the answer have been —tell me,
Hildred? Yes-no?”
But Miss Gray shook her head. She
had not lost all the coy privileges of
her womanhood with her youth.
“Let the matter stay where it is,
At last he saw her raise her head;
A light was in her eyes.
She dried them and rebuilt the fire.
He watched her in surprise.
She went and rummaged in a chest
That stood against the wall,
And brought therefrom a little bag,
A mere handful withal.
\
Wheat flour then was very scarce,
And rare upon her boar£;
Not oftener than once a month
Could she such fare afford.
This precious handful was the last,
And she had kept it hid,
Until some friend should visit her,
As friends not often did.
She also brought from another place
A bottle, black and tall,
And from it drained a few spoonfuls
Os molasses —that was all.
She made the flour into cakes
And moulded with her hands,
Horses and cows and cats and dogs,
And beasts from foreign lands.
The cakes were baked, the stockings filled,
The widow’s work was done —
She little recked the things she did
Were witnessed by her son.
The morning dawned, the children found
Their stockings filled up, quite;
They ate their cakes, were happy, too;
Their little hearts were light.
The eldest had seen and understood
And loved his mother more,
For the little cakes she made that night,
From poverty’s scanty store.
And ever since, the season brings -
To him remembrance, dear,
Os the sweetest gift he e’er received —
A cake mixed with a tear.
Mr. Stephens; we are both beyond the
age of sentimentality at least.”
“It does not look like I am,” he re
plied, with a slight smile and a swift
glance toward the portrait. “When
I had your portrait painted,” he re
sumed, “and have kept it from all
curious eyes, in my private study,
since my wife’s death —it does not
look like I am.”
“That is not my portrait.”
“It is. I gave the artist the only
photograph with which you ever hon
ored me. The Italian environment,
the dress, are the artist’s decorative
strokes; but that glorious girl is you,
the woman that I have loved all my
life, and will love to the day of my
death.”
Miss Gray found herself holding out
her hands, impulsively.
“My answer,” she said, slowly, dis
tinctly, sweetly, “would have been —
yes—Gerard with all my woman’s
heart back of it.”
“And now,” he said, imprisoning her
hands, “will you be my wife yet—at
this late date?”
“Gerard, when you have waited
thirty years for the only Christmas
present in the world worth having,
which could give you any sense of
personal joy,” she answered him, a
radiant flash of light in her brown
eyes which made her look very much
indeed like the wonderful portrait at
the moment —for such is the trans
forming power of love —“why refuse it,
at last, when it is laid at your feet?"
