When the Christmas Tide Sets In

by Mary Stewart Cutting

WHEN THE CHRISTMAS TIDE SETS IN

BY MARY STEWART CUTTING

 

I'M SORRY I can't go with you, Bunny."

"Yes, I'm sorry, too." Mrs. Lorimer's tone was yearning; it was a time-honored fiction that to take a day off for Christmas shopping with one's husband was one of the pleasures of the season, although experience had proved it not an unmixed joy. Mr. Lorimer's holiday exhilaration was apt to die down into a silent and dogged patience under the strain of struggling to get at crowded counters to spend money which he couldn't afford, an exercise which always developed a mysteriously acute pain in the back of his neck or on his elbow. There were awful half hours devoted to waiting for change delayed beyond all reason, when his wife was weakly afraid to look at him. Yet, after all, there had been a real pleasure in being together; it was a custom begun in comradeship, a part of Christmas. Mr. Lorimer's manner was affectionate as he patted his wife's plump arm and said:

"Don't tire yourself out, Bunny, and be sure to get your lunch. I don't know that I quite like your shopping around by yourself in those crowded stores, you're so near-sighted that when you jam yourself up close to things I'm always afraid you'll break something, or get taken up for a shoplifter——"

"I'm sure I don't see why you will talk like that; I never have done anything." Mrs. Lorimer's blue eyes winked suspiciously.

"Then don't begin," said her husband inexorably. He added, with a glance at a pale young girl who had risen listlessly from the breakfast table: "What's Jessica doing? Why can't she go with you?"

"I don't think Jessica feels well enough," interposed Mrs. Lorimer, a hastily paving the way for refusal.

"Oh, I'd like to go!" cried the girl with eagerness, the color coming momentarily into her face. "I'll help get the children off for school so we can start early, Marian."

"Very well, then; that's all right." Mr. Lorimer's tone was satisfied. "Have you enough money?"

"Why, yes. plenty; that is, I'll try to make it do, of course."

Mr. Lorimer automatically dived into his trousers pocket and brought up a handful of small coins, spreading them out on the table with two fingers.

"It may he!p you out a little, Bunny," he said kindly.

When forehanded people asked Mrs. Lorimer why she left her Christmas shopping until so late, she laid her dilatoriness to the measles, or the visit of Mr. Lorimer's aunt, or the making of the children's clothes, or to that condition alluded to colloquially in the suburbs as "being without a girl," but the primal reason was that she had to wait until the desperate nearness of the season squeezed out the money for its celebration.

The Lorimers lived, if modestly, as gentlefolks; what they could not pay for they went quietly without; but extra money for presents there never had been, though it always seemed as if there might be. Christmas after Christmas Mrs. Lorimer's tiny remembrances went to faraway friends and relatives with lovingly apologetic notes as to this year's scantiness, and holding out glad hope of a horn of plenty next time.

To-day. while she stood up in the crowded cabin of the ferry-boat with her young sister-in-law, she was, as usual, trying to juggle mentally with the list and her funds. If she strove to be festally unconscious of the necessities which, perhaps, ought to be bought instead of toys and knick-knacks, she resolutely made up her mind so to cut down her small purchases as to leave enough money for those "last things" for which no funds are usually provided, and which keep up their maddening drain unto the very Day itself, making it sordid instead of blessed. This year she would not be false to her ideals.

She wanted everyone near her to be happy. She looked more than once furtively at Jessica. and wished that she knew what to do for the girl. Mrs. Lorimer was sensitive to mental atmosphere and Jessica's listlessness and depression during the last month had distressed the older woman, all the more that Jessica, although she had lived with them for a couple of years, was still an "in law" who couldn't be approached quite like one's own. She would have thought that Jessica was in love, but there did not seem to be any one to be in love with, as she had said to Mr. Lorimer when they spoke about the child.

"If you get too tired you must go home," she said now, with a little affectionate undertone as she noted the droop of the girl's figure.

"Oh, this won't tire me more than anything else," returned Jessica. "Mrs. Dove is speaking to you, Marian."

"Oh, good-morning, Mrs. Dove!" Mrs. Lorimer did not know many people; she had moved here from the South only a couple of years ago. "I didn't see you. I suppose you're going in shopping, like the rest of us."

"Just for a few last things," replied Mrs. Dove. a very large woman with tails of fur rising and falling on her capacious chest. and with other tails tastefully combined in a hat above. In one hand she carried, shield fashion, an enormous silver-cornered pocket-book. "I have a couple of yards of ribbon to get, and a little lace, and a pair of doll's shoes. I never wait for anything. I have everything sent and charged, if it's only five cents' worth."

"I expect to get through all my shopping to-day," said Mrs. Lorimer brightly. "I didn't mean to leave it until so late, but—— The weather's lovely, isn't it? It makes it seem like Christmas!"

"Well, I shall be glad when it is over," sighed Mrs. Dove. "Really, I have such a cold, I oughtn't to be out. The shops are so heated, and they're so crowded it's almost dangerous to go through them. Did you hear of Mrs. Lawson's accident the other day?"

"No, indeed; what was it?"

"She broke a large cut-glass dish at Foraker's—knocked it right off the counter. You can imagine how she felt. She nearly fainted on the spot."

"Well?" asked Mrs. Lorimer breathlessly.

"Well, they were perfectly lovely to her; said she needn't pay a cent for the dish if she intended purchasing anything in the store. Of course, she bought presents for every one at once; that comes of going to a reliable place." Mrs. Dove dropped her voice. "Your sister-in-law doesn't look well; she isn't going into a decline, is she? People who live in the house are so apt not to notice as much as outsiders."

"Thank you, she is quite well," said Mrs. Lorimer with some asperity.

"Maybe she's in love," suggested Mrs. Dove genially.

"Oh, no, indeed; not at all," stated Mrs. Lorimer. She turned away from her adviser to Jessica.

"Here we are at last; come on, dear. Shall we go up in the elevated, or walk over to Broadway and take the surface cars?"

"Oh, walk over to Broadway," said Jessica hastily. For what else had she come to town?

Jessica was a pretty little thing in a vaguely appealing sort of way, with delicate features and dark eyes that had grown to have a pathetic expression in unguarded moments. The repudiated solution was the true one, after all—Jessica was in love, even though there really did not seem to be anyone to be in love with. But this is something about which you can never tell. As the worn vine of simile will reach for any support, so will the romance in a girl hang itself on the most unlikely peg. Jessica's romance hung on glances. In her trips to town thrice a week to study the kindergarten method she passed an office building, on the ground floor of which, behind plate glass and an iron railing, at a corner desk, sat a beautiful young man. What had made him look up that first morning as she went by? She had turned her head away the instant after his blue eyes had met her brown ones, and had gone on, yet with something tingling at her heart.

Since that time, with her tri-weekly journeys into the city, Jessica had passed through every phase of a secret passion, shared in fancy by the unknown. Sometimes she looked in as she went by, and sometimes she did not—sometimes he looked out, and sometimes he did not; she was skilled to interpret every change of attitude, every fraction of a glance, and suffered delightful remorse when she believed that her coldness had "hurt his feelings."

After a while she found out by all sorts of devious ways, from people who had dealings with the Electrographic Company, that her "friend" was Harold Grafton, and probably known to the Nichols and the Callenders, whom she had once met and who abode in another suburb. She lived henceforth in constant and exciting expectation of his also discovering who she was and coming to the house under convoy of some mutual friend, and had even dressed for the occasion on prophetically psychic evenings.

Man was to the feminine Jessica a being endowed with almost supernatural powers, made to triumph over all obstacles. Harold Grafton, indeed, had often said to himself with feeling, "By George, I'd like to know that little girl," but he never dreamed of trying to bring it about. He was an extremely nice young fellow of that distinctly modern variety which leaves the initiation in social affairs and in affairs of the heart entirely to a woman. He accepted invitations, and he went where he was asked; he was not at all deficient in ardor on these occasions, but it never occurred to him to originate them.

Matters were at this stage when Jessica's kindergarten lessons ceased. When she went to town again after the absence of a week, he had disappeared from the office; nor did he return? Was he ill? Had he gone away entirely? Had he thought she did not care? Would she never see him again? Heaven only knows on what long, torturing journeys Jessica's tender, foolish heart went while she plodded around the house, and served and helped with the children, and made a fourth at the card parties. To-day, as she went up the street from the ferry, she hardly dared glance in at the window. No; he was not there! There was an unknown world between them; the romance was ended; nothing short of a miracle could bring him to her now.

"And what do you want for Christmas, Jessica?" asked Mrs. Lorimer, hospitably, inspired with the thought of an unbroken twenty-dollar bill, although part of it was to be reserved. She and Jessica were gazing in at a shop window.

"You might as well say if you'd like a new waist."

"Oh, I don't want anything," said Jessica listlessly. "I don't care about clothes." She could not say, "I want a young man,"

"Not care about clothes!" Mrs. Lorimer's gentle tone expressed extreme wonder. It really seemed as if—— At any rate, something must be radically wrong. She regarded the girl critically. "Jessica, I think you'd better go home. I do really." Festively inclined as she might be, to have Jessica resignedly plodding after her in a crowd all day would be, in slang parlance, "the limit."

"Won't you mind?" asked the girl.

"No, indeed! Not the least bit! Now go right along, dear. That's your car; you'll be home in time for lunch."

Mrs. Lorimer turned with relief; if she got tired now, it would just be her own tired, without any one else to uphold. She found herself after a few minutes in front of another window in which phenomenal prices reigned.

"Aren't you coming in?"

"Oh, Mrs. Dove! Why, I was just thinking about it; it's The Garden Store, isn't it—that new place?"

"Yes; they have the most wonderful bargains," said Mrs. Dove. "I don't know that I care for the place in some ways, but they do have bargains; and they try to have every attraction. Did you know that they have a horse show going on up-stairs next to the candy department? There's a fine sale of charlotte russes in the basement now. That's where I'm going. I thought I'd carry out a few for dinner to-night—they put them in a box. It's so hard to think of meals at this season."

"Yes, it is," agreed Mrs. Lorimer. She hesitated. "I suppose I might as well go in and look around, anyway." She did want to save money, certainly, yet she felt a sort of compunction as she entered the store. Her husband was conservative in some ways, and did not like her to deal at so-called "cheap places" that might be questionable in their methods. And after wandering exhaustively up and down the crowded aisles she bought only a couple of trifles with some of her loose change—most of the cheap things were so cheap intrinsically as to be dear at any price. Christmas cheer seemed inherently lacking in spite of the wreaths and stars of red and green with which the walls were plentifully decorated; they might have been hams and cabbages as far as any symbolism was concerned. Still, a Christmas crowd is always a crowd in which good-nature prevails, although this one was made up of flashily dressed girls, stout, heavy-browed women, or bony, haggard ones, all equally eager for bargains, pushing and grabbing at counters. Mothers abounded with babes in arms and children tagging on behind, adjured every few minutes to remember what Santa Claus was going to bring them.

One voice made itself insistently and irritatingly heard, raised in a monotonously recurrent wail. Mrs. Lorimer had bought a seven-cent handkerchief and had been waiting for it in a more and more repentant state of mind for half an hour by the clock. It was twelve already, and she had only a few cheap trifles to show for all her shopping. She must make haste now. She snatched her parcel from the hand of an oblivious shop-girl, and started off. The wail grew nearer as she stopped, perforce, in the crowd.

Toward her came a young woman, her feathered hat awry; in one hand she carried a number of bundles, tied together, and with the other arm she held, half over her shoulder, a fat and stolid year-old baby. Behind her followed the wail—it came from another baby, scarcely larger than the first, who toddled along uncertainly with hands outstretched trying to reach his mother's skirt ever just ahead of him. She halted suddenly in front of Mrs. Lorimer, and, stooping down, gave him a little slap, not apparently with intent to hurt, but as a counteracting influence. Mrs. Lorimer's instinctive anger died out as she saw the girl's face—it was not unamiable, but tired and harassed—and caught her words of explanation to a sympathizing bystander.

"Sure, I can't stand here slappin' him all day, and me not half through what I've got to do. It's tired he is, but I can't carry the two of them." She went on her way, the child two or three feet behind her, his arms stretched out, his little legs tottering; the wail had now a catch in it that came from the baby heart.

Mrs. Lorimer's glimpse of his face had shown her a little turned-up nose and a wide mouth distorted with crying: mite as he was, he was in tiny trousers, and a soiled red tam-o'shanter cap—there was no infantile grace to captivate her, yet when the little voice broke with that catch in it something tugged at her heartstrings that was stronger than beauty. In all this place, devoted to the needs of Christmas seekers, there was no room for the child. She ran ahead, pushing others aside, and, bending over, lifted him in spite of her muff and her shopping-bag and her loose boa.

"Poor little soul, I'll carry you," she said.

The boy stopped crying as he felt himself in the shelter of her arms, scanned her face, and, reassured by it, dropped his dirty, tear-stained cheek upon her shoulder with a tired sigh of contentment as she walked on with him.

"I'll try and get a seat over there by the stairs," she called to the mother, who had looked back, with a relieved expression, and answered, "All right; I won't be long."'

The seat by the stairs was a long wooden settee on a low landing raised above the main floor of the china department by a couple of steps, at the side of which stood a large yellow majolica vase. By watching her chance, Mrs. Lorimer at last gained a place on the bench, none too soon; for her charge was as heavy and inert as a little log. Occasionally he gave a long, shuddering sigh, but, for the most part, he sat gravely and happily playing with the bag clasps of the stranger lady, or the furry ends of her well-worn boa, preferring them to the monkey-on-a-stick, one of her few purchases she sought to share with him.

He cuddled his head in the soiled tam-o'shanter against her—grotesque little mortal as he was, his baby heart was satisfied; once in a while he looked up at her with a confident, wet-mouthed smile. Mrs. Lorimer was singularly satisfied, too. In every little new helpless soul the Holy Child lives once more to those who can see Him. She had an odd, unspeakable feeling as if—as she half expressed it to herself in grateful humility—in the midst of her own selfish cares, her own pleasures, she had been "let to do something."

The clock ticked away in front of her over the changing crowds in the china department, the minutes after awhile going perilously fast. She had no luncheon, she had all her shopping before her, yet she waited peacefully. The wreaths and stars seemed no longer an empty symbolism, but the reminders to all of tidings of great joy. Perhaps she had been more tired than she knew.

"Why, Mrs. Lorimer! I didn't recognize you at first This isn't your little boy?"

The clear voice and charming smile of the speaker were strange, yet familiar; after an instant she placed them as belonging to a Mrs. Callender, with whom she had made acquaintance one Summer during two weeks of a stay in a farm-house, filled with nice people; she had always hoped to see more of them, but no beings are so cut off from each other as those who live in diverging suburbs, though, as the crow flies, the distance may be but short.

"I'm so glad to see you!" She put out a hand from around the child. "No, indeed, this baby doesn't belong to me; in fact, I don't even know his name. His mother is in here shopping, and he was so tired I thought I'd keep him for a while."

"Why, that's very kind of you," said young Mrs. Callender, looking at her curiously. "Are your children well—and your husband? Now that we have an automobile in the family, I'm really coming to see you soon."

"Oh, I wish you would!" cried Mrs. Lorimer eagerly.

"I must go on now. Isn't this a dreadful place? don't know what made me come in, but I'm very glad I did, since I've met you. I wish you a very Merry Christmas!"

"And I wish the same to you," said Mrs. Lorimer, happily. She might have wondered why Mrs. Callender still looked at her so curiously as she went off, but just then the young mother hove in sight, eating from a paper of cakes, and talking to a girl beside her.

"I guess you thought I'd given you the slip," she said to Mrs. Lorimer cheerfully. "It was awful good of you to be takin' care of Tommy this long time. Maggie, she'll carry him for me now. Come on, Tommy boy. Kiss the lady now for being that kind to you."

"Good-by, little Tommy," said Mrs. Lorimer.

She rose to follow, somewhat stiffly, cramped from her long station on the bench.

How did it happen? Did she slip on that step, or was she pushed against it by some one jolting past? She lurched violently to one side, tried to recover herself, put out one hand and fell against something that gave way under her and struck the floor with a deafening crash of splintering china. The yellow majolica vase at the foot of the steps lay in fragments below, with Mrs. Lorimer collapsed beside them. She felt as if she had been dashed bodily down a precipice.

"Bring some water—there's a lady fainted!"

A crowd had instantly formed, jamming closer and closer, yet keeping outside the circle of breakage. A swarthy cash-boy made his way through it with an inch of water in a small thick tumbler to where Mrs. Lorimer sat propped up by a stout woman in a very small bonnet.

"You're spilling it all down my neck. I don't get any of it," protested the victim, looking around at the pitying faces confronting her, in hopes of seeing a familiar one. Oh, if she had kept Jessica with her now, or were in a shop where she was known! "Let go of me, please; I want to get up."

Confused murmurs were growing all around her from back in the crowd, through which, indeed, Mrs. Dove had recognized the victim.

"What's she broken?" "How much was 1t worth?" "One of them was over two hundred dollars. "Just a plain looking thing and worth a thousand!" "Oh, ain't that dreadful."

The words seemed to be echoed far off in excited repetition—a thousand dollars, a thousand dollars—to be met by another murmur of the manager, as a thin, sandy-haired man with sharp eyes and an imperturbable expression forced his way to the front, to be hailed by one of the shop-girls:

"It's over here the lady is, Mr. Walker."

"Let me get up," cried Mrs. Lorimer again. She freed herself from the detaining grasp of her protectress and dashed impetuously toward the manager without waiting for him to speak, reparation at all costs being the one overwhelming thought of her horrified soul.

"I have just broken that vase." She opened her pocketbook as she spoke, fumbling with nervous fingers for her twenty-dollar bill. "What was the price of it?" Suppose she hadn't enough! A dreadful, unreasoning fear of arrest seized her in this strange place.

"If you have an account here——" began Mr. Walker.

"No, I haven't. Please tell me at once how much I have to pay for the vase."'

"The price was fifty-nine dollars and twenty-five cents," said Mr. Walker impressively, stooping down to lift a verifying tag still tethered to a yellow shard.

"Oh, what shall I do! If you will only take this——" Mrs. Lorimer thrust her all into his hand, terror taking complete possession of her. "If you will only let me go home and send you the rest afterward. I'll send it as soon as I can; my husband will send it if you will only wait."

"We make no claims for breakages at this season within limits," said Mr. Walker, regarding her with what, nevertheless, seemed to her excited mind, deep suspicion. "Where a person desires to stand part of the loss, however——This is twenty dollars you have given me, madam."

"Yes, yes! Oh, please take it!" breathed Mrs. Lorimer. "My husband would want me to pay—he would indeed."

"We will consider this quite satisfactory. We wish every one to be satisfied with The Garden Store. If you would like to open an account here, madam——"

"No, no!" cried Mrs.°Lorimer. "Thank you very much. Will you please let me pass! Let me pass!" She almost ran in her haste to get out unnoticed, penniless, after all her conscientious planning, save for the remains of Mr. Lorimer's "change"; and alone, although she saw a familiar figure disappearing down the street far ahead of her—Mrs. Dove, fleeing in the first instant, guiltily conscious of a cowardly lack of support owing to the secret knowledge that her gorgeous pocketbook contained only a postage-stamp, her railway ticket and a nickel.

"Well, Bunny, I hope you have had enough of going about alone."

Mr. Lorimer had his arm around his wife; if his tone was admonishing, it was also very tender; he was intensely sorry for her.

"You poor girl, you are too near-sighted to see anything: I always told you you'd get into trouble. That is why I insisted on your taking Jessica, and then you go and send her home. She should have stayed with you anyway."

"Oh, but Anthony! It wasn't because I was near-sighted—it might have happened to anybody."

"Then they had no business to leave breakable stuff where people could trip over it. They shouldn't have let you pay a cent."

"But I insisted," Mrs. Lorimer was still protesting. "I thought you'd want me to. I thought you'd say it wasn't honest if I didn't."

"You did just right," said her husband heartily, "but as for them——"

"Anthony, it was a dreadful place, but that man was very nice to me—really. I can see it now."

"All right; I'll go around with you myself next time, and then we won't have you wandering into strange stores and getting scared, and taking care of other people's neglected babies—such a sweet, soft-hearted girl I never saw. Run away, Gert and Tony; mama's tired. Well, they can just come and kiss you, then. Poor mama's worrying because she went and paid out all the Santa Claus money for a yellow majolica vase, and she's afraid little children won't get much in their stockings this year. But I'll tell you one thing, there won't anybody have as nice a mama for Christmas as you have."

Four small strangling arms around her neck gave emphasis to the family belief. Mrs. Lorimer broke down and wept, though not all with sorrow. This was what no money could buy. Yet her wildest flight of imagination could have given her no foreshadowing of the conversation that took place a day later fourteen miles off as the crow flies in the simple evolution of a miracle.

"Isn't it perfectly dreadful!" Mrs. Callender was unusually agitated. "Chauncey, can't you give some of the Electrographic business to Mr. Lorimer? Speak to Mr. Nichols about it. Just think what this must mean to them—a thousand dollars for a vase! It will take him years to make it up. Do see about it."

"Why, I suppose I might——" Mr. Callender looked considering. "We certainly have more than we can attend to, now that Willis has taken up the Western branch. I'd forgotten about Lorimer—nice fellow, straight as a string, and with brains, too. I'll look him up. Yes, indeed, this vase business seems pretty bad; I could hardly believe it was true at first. It was kept out of the papers someway, but Dove told Atwood that his wife was in the shop when it happened. She said everybody in there was horrified when they heard the sum. They were talking of it all over the place."

"And to think that I was there myself only a few minutes before! I always meant to see more of her, she was such a dear little thing, and had so few friends here; but somehow I never did, things seem to get crowded out so!"—Mrs. Callender stopped short and went on in a new tone: "There was something about her yesterday—she sat there with that dirty child in her lap, as I told you, looking like such a lady, and so shabby, and so sweet. I can't tell you how it made me feel; I do so little for anybody! I emptied my purse in that old Salvation Army kettle when I went by. I don't know why. I've been over to Mrs. Nichols's this morning, and to Jo Atwood's—we're going to have a party for the Mission children—there didn't seem to be any time for it, but we'll just make it; and since we heard of this trouble of the Lorimers, we've made up a big box to send over to them—toys for the children, and lots of things. She can't mind when it's Christmas! I've put in some holly, too, and a note with all our loves."

"I'll never get there in time," said Mr. Callender; "it's late now, and the express companies are so rushed."

"Yes, that's so," said his wife, thoughtfully. She raised her voice. "Harold, Harold Grafton, are you listening? Do you feel well enough to take the things over in the automobile to-morrow?"

"I certainly do," said a young man, lounging into view from behind the window-curtains, where he had been watching the passers-by and thinking sentimentally of a trimly booted little figure that used to pass the office before "I'm very glad you suggested my going, Cynthia," he added earnestly; "I'd like to help."'

 

Jessica in the early dusk of Christmas Eve was striving faithfully to the best of her ability to supplement her sister's efforts for its celebration. The children had refused not to expect Santa Claus. Little gifts had been hastily manufactured, coals and potatoes wrapped in colored paper to add their jest to the pile; little cakes had been baked and candies made, and branches brought in for decorating. Jessica had finished putting up the boughs now, with the children's happy little voices helping, and had come to the one spring of mistletoe given her by a neighbor. Yet, to put up mistletoe when there is no chance of being kissed under it is a sorry task for a maiden, and hurts. She was still holding it in her hand, the children clinging to her, when she went to the door to answer the bell and tell the person from that automobile that he had mistaken the house, before she found——

 

Not the least wonderful part of that Christmas wave which Mrs. Lorimer's simple act of love had set in endless motion, was that it had brought straight to Jessica's feet her beautiful young man.