Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman Part 7

"Oh, my dear Major!" and she held out her hand; that tiny little hand which lace becomes so well, and that always suggests its morning baptism of rose water. Such a dainty white hand! I always bend over and kiss it whenever I have the chance, trying my best to be the gallant I know she would like me to be.

After the little ceremony of my salutation was over I handed her to a seat, still holding her finger-tips, bowing low just as her own cavaliers used to do in the days when she had half the County at her feet. I love these make-believe ceremonies when I am with her--and then again I truly think she would not be so happy without them. This over I took my place opposite so I could watch her face and the smiles playing across it--that face which the Colonel always said reminded him of "Summer roses a-bloom in October."

We talked of her journey and of how she had stood the cold and how reluctant she had been at first to leave Carter Hall, especially at the Christmas season, and of the Colonel (not a word, of course, about the encounter with Klutchem--no one would have dared breathe a word of that to her), and then of the sc.r.a.p of a pickaninny she had brought with her.

"Isn't he too amusing? I brought him up as much to help dear Chad as for any other reason. But he is incorrigible at times and I fear I shall have to send him back to his mother. I thought the livery might increase his self-respect, but it only seems to have turned his head.

He doesn't obey me at all, and is so forgetful. Chad is the only one of whom, I think, he is at all afraid."

A knock now sounded in the hall and I could hear the shuffling of Jim's feet, and the swinging back of the door. Then Fitz's card was brought in--not on the silver tray this time, but clutched in the monkey paw of the pickaninny.

Aunt Nancy looked at him with a certain well-a.s.sumed surprise and drew back from the proffered card.

"James, is that the way to bring me a card? Have I not told you often----"

The boy looked at her, his face in a tangle of emotions. "De _Pan_!

Fo' Gord, Mist'iss, I done forgot dat pan," and with a spring he was out again, returning with Fitz's pasteboard on the silver tray, closely followed by that gentleman himself, who was shaking with laughter over the incident.

"One of your body-guard, Aunt Nancy?" said Fitz, as he bent over and kissed her hand. It was astonis.h.i.+ng how easily Fitz fell into these same old-time customs when he was with the dear lady--he, of all men.

"No, dear friend, one of the new race of whom I am trying to make a good servant. His grandmother in slave times belonged to a neighbor of ours, and this little fellow is the youngest of six. I've just been telling the Major what a trial he is to me. And now let me look at you. Ah! you have been working too hard. I see it in your eyes.

Haven't you had some dreadful strain lately?"

Fitz declared on his honor, with one hand over his upper watch pocket, and the other still in hers, that he never felt better in his life, and that so idle had he become lately, that it was hard work for him to keep employed. And then Aunt Nancy made him sit beside her on the hair-cloth sofa, the one on which Fitz would not permit the Colonel to sleep, and I, being nearest, tucked a cus.h.i.+on under her absurdly small feet and rearranged about her shoulders her Indian mull shawl, which didn't require any rearranging at all. And after Fitz had told the dear lady for the third time how glad he was to see her, and after she had told him how glad she was to see both of us, and how she hoped dear George would soon secure the money necessary to build his railroad, so that we could all come to Carter Hall for next Christmas, she adding gravely that she really couldn't see any need for the road's existence or any hope of its completion, although she never said so to dear George, she being a woman and not expected to know much of such things;--after, I say, all these delightful speeches and attentions and confidences had been indulged in, Aunt Nancy bent her head, turned her sweet face framed in the lace cap and ribbons, first towards me and then back to Fitz again--she had been talking to Fitz all this time, I listening--and said with the air of a fairy G.o.dmother entertaining two children:

"And now I've got a great Christmas surprise for both of you, and you shall have one guess apiece as to what it is."

Fitz, with the memories of a former Christmas at Carter Hall still fresh in mind, and knowing the dear lady's generosity, and having seen the biggest bundle of feathers and the longest pair of legs he had ever laid his eyes on hanging head down on the measly wall of the shabby yard as he entered, screwed up his eyes, cudgelled his brain by tapping his forehead with his forefinger, and blurted out:

"Wild turkey stuffed with chestnuts."

Aunt Nancy laughed until her side curls shook.

"Oh, you dreadful gourmand! Not a _bit_ like a turkey. How mortified you will be when you find out! Go and stand in the corner, sir, with your face to the wall. Now, Major, it's your turn."

Fitz began to protest that he ought to have another chance, and that it had slipped out before he knew it, since he had never forgotten a brother of that same bird, one that he had eaten at her own table; but the little lady wouldn't hear another syllable, and waved him away with great dignity, whereupon Fitz buried his fat face in his hands, and said that life was really not worth the living, and that if anybody would suggest a comfortable way of committing suicide he would adopt it at once.

When my turn came, I, remembering the b.u.t.tons on "Jeems," guessed a livery for Chad, at which the dear lady laughed more merrily than before, and Fitz remarked in a disgusted tone that the dense stupidity of some men was one of the characteristics of the time.

"No; it's nothing to eat and it's nothing to wear. It's a most charming young lady who at my earnest solicitation has consented to dine with us, and to whom I want you two young gentlemen (Fitz is forty if he's a day, and looks it) to be most devoted."

"Pretty?" asked Fitz, pulling up his collar--prinking in mock vanity.

"Yes, and better than pretty."

"Young?" persisted Fitz.

"Young, and most entertaining.

"Now listen both of you and I will tell you all about it. She lives up in one of your most desolate streets, Lafayette Place, I think, they call it, and in such a sombre house that it looks as if the windows had never been opened. Her mother is dead, and such a faded, hopeless-looking woman takes care of the house, a relation of the father's, I understand, who is a business friend of George's, and with whom he tells me he once had a slight misunderstanding. George did not want Christmas to pa.s.s with these differences unsettled, and so, of course, I went to call the very day I arrived and invited her and her father to dine with us on Christmas Eve. We always celebrate our Christmas then as you both know, on account of our old custom of giving Christmas day to our servants. And I am so glad I went. I did not, of course, see the father. Oh, it would make your heart ache to see the inside of that house. Everything costly and solid, and yet everything so joyless. I always feel sorry for such homes,--no flowers about, no books that are not locked up, no knick-knacks nor pretty things. I hope you will both help me to make her Christmas Eve a happy one. You perhaps may know her father, Mr. Fitzpatrick,--he is in Wall Street I hear, and his name is Klutchem."

Fitz, in his astonishment, so far forgot himself as to indulge in a low whistle.

"Then you _do_ know him?"

"Oh, very well."

"And you tell me that Mr. Klutchem is really coming to dinner and going to bring his daughter?" asked Fitz, in a tone that made his surprise all the more marked.

"Yes; George had a note from him this morning saying his daughter would be here before dark and he would come direct from his office and meet her here in time for dinner. Isn't it delightful? You will be quite charmed with our guest, I'm sure. And about the father--tell me something of him?" Aunt Nancy inquired in her sweetest voice.

"About Mr. Klutchem? Well! Yes, to be sure. Why, Klutchem! Yes, of course. A most genial and kindly man," answered Fitz, controlling himself; "a little eccentric at times I have heard, but not more so than most men of his cla.s.s. Not a man of much taste, perhaps, but most generous. Would give you anything in the world he didn't want, and be so delighted when you took it off his hands. Insisted on giving me a lot of stock the other day, but of course I wouldn't take it." This was said with so grave a face that its point escaped the dear lady.

"How very kind of him. Perhaps that is where his daughter gets her charm," replied Aunt Nancy, with a winning smile.

There is no telling what additional mendacities regarding the Klutchem family Fitz, who had now regained his equilibrium, would have indulged in, had I not knit my eyebrows at him behind Aunt Nancy's back as a warning to the mendacitor not to mislead the dear lady, whose disappointment, I knew, would only be the greater when she met Klutchem face to face.

When I had risen to take my leave Fitz excused himself for a moment and followed me into the hall.

"Klutchem coming to dinner, Major, and going to bring his daughter?

What the devil do you think is up? If the Colonel wasn't so useless financially I'd think Klutchem had some game up his sleeve. But if that is so, why bring his daughter? My lawyer told me to-day the a.s.sault and battery case is all settled, so it can't be that. Wonder if the Colonel has converted Klutchem as to the proper way of running a bank? No, that's nonsense! Klutchem would skin a flea and sell the tallow, no matter what the Colonel said to him. Coming to dinner!

Well, that gets me!"

As I shut the front door behind me and stopped for a minute on the top step overlooking the yard, I caught sight of the grocer emerging from the tunnel with a basket on his arm for Chad, who was standing below me outside his kitchen door with the half-picked duck in his hand. The settlement of "Misser Grocerman's" unpaid accounts by Miss Nancy on one of her former visits to Bedford Place had worked a double miracle--Chad no longer feared the dispenser of fine wines and other comforts, and the dispenser himself would have emptied his whole shop into Chad's kitchen and waited months for his pay had that loyal old servant permitted it. This was evident from the way in which Chad dropped the half-picked duck on a bench beside the door and hurried forward to help unpack the basket; and the deferential smile on the grocer's face as he took out one parcel after another, commenting on their quality and cheapness.

I had promised Chad to stop long enough to inspect Miss Nancy's "tarr'pins," and so I waited until Chad's duties were over.

"That's the cheekiest little c.o.o.n ever come into the store," I hear the grocer say with a laugh. "I'd a-slid him out on his ear if he'd said much more."

Chad looked over his pile of bundles--they lay up on his arm; the top one held in place by his chin--and asked with some anxiety:

"Who, Jim? What did he do?"

"Do! He waltzed in yesterday afternoon with his head up and his under lip sticking out as if he owned the place. When I told him to take the sugar back with him, he said he wasn't carrying no bundles for n.o.body, he was waiting on Miss Carter. He's out at the gate now."

"Do ye hear dat, Major? Ain't dat 'nough to make a body sick? I been 'spectin' dis ever since he come. I'm gwinter stop dis foolishness short off."

The old darky waited until the grocer had reached the street, then he shouted into the gloom of the narrow pa.s.sage:

"Here, Jim. Come here."

The sc.r.a.p in b.u.t.tons slammed to the wicket gate and came running through the tunnel.

"What you tell dat gemman yisterday when I sont you for dat sugar, wid yo' lip stickin' out big 'nough for a body ter sit on?"

The boy hung his head.

"You'se waitin' on Miss Caarter, is ye, an' ye ain't caarryin' no bundles? If I ever hear ye sa.s.s anybody round here agin, white or black, I'll tear dem b.u.t.tons off ye an' skin ye alive--you'se caarryin' what I send ye for--do ye hear dat? _Free_, is ye? You'se free wid yo' sa.s.s an' dat's all de freedom you got."

"I--didn't know--yer want me ter--caa'ry it back," said the boy in a humble tone, but with the twinkle of a smouldering coal in his eye.