XVII. In Dry Toronto
A LOCAL STUDY OF A UNIVERSAL TOPIC
Note.--Our readers--our numerous readers--who live in Equatorial Africa,may read this under the title "In Dry Timbucto"; those who live inCentral America will kindly call it "In Dry Tehauntepec."
It may have been, for aught I know, the change from a wet to a dryatmosphere. I am told that, biologically, such things profoundly affectthe human system.
At any rate I found it impossible that night--I was on the train fromMontreal to Toronto--to fall asleep.
A peculiar wakefulness seemed to have seized upon me, which appeared,moreover, to afflict the other passengers as well. In the darkness ofthe car I could distinctly hear them groaning at intervals.
"Are they ill?" I asked, through the curtains, of the porter as hepassed.
"No, sir," he said, "they're not ill. Those is the Toronto passengers."
"All in this car?" I asked.
"All except that gen'lman you may have heard singing in the smokingcompartment. He's booked through to Chicago."
But, as is usual in such cases, sleep came at last with unusualheaviness. I seemed obliterated from the world till, all of a sudden, Ifound myself, as it were, up and dressed and seated in the observationcar at the back of the train, awaiting my arrival.
"Is this Toronto?" I asked of the Pullman conductor, as I peered throughthe window of the car.
The conductor rubbed the pane with his finger and looked out.
"I think so," he said.
"Do we stop here?" I asked.
"I think we do this morning," he answered. "I think I heard theconductor say that they have a lot of milk cans to put off here thismorning. I'll just go and find out, sir."
"Stop here!" broke in an irascible-looking gentleman in a grey tweedsuit who was sitting in the next chair to mine. "Do they _stop_ here?I should say they did indeed. Don't you know," he added, turning to thePullman conductor, "that any train is _compelled_ to stop here. There'sa by-law, a municipal by-law of the City of Toronto, _compelling_ everytrain to stop?"
"I didn't know it," said the conductor humbly.
"Do you mean to say," continued the irascible gentleman, "that you havenever read the by-laws of the City of Toronto?"
"No, sir," said the conductor.
"The ignorance of these fellows," said the man in grey tweed, swinginghis chair round again towards me. "We ought to have a by-law to compelthem to read the by-laws. I must start an agitation for it at once."Here he took out a little red notebook and wrote something in it,murmuring, "We need a new agitation anyway."
Presently he shut the book up with a snap. I noticed that there was asort of peculiar alacrity in everything he did.
"You, sir," he said, "have, of course, read our municipal by-laws?"
"Oh, yes," I answered. "Splendid, aren't they? They read like aromance."
"You are most flattering to our city," said the irascible gentleman witha bow. "Yet you, sir, I take it, are not from Toronto."
"No," I answered, as humbly as I could. "I'm from Montreal."
"Ah!" said the gentleman, as he sat back and took a thorough look at me."From Montreal? Are you drunk?"
"No," I replied. "I don't think so."
"But you are _suffering_ for a drink," said my new acquaintance eagerly."You need it, eh? You feel already a kind of craving, eh what?"
"No," I answered. "The fact is it's rather early in the morning--"
"Quite so," broke in the irascible gentleman, "but I understand that inMontreal all the saloons are open at seven, and even at that hour arecrowded, sir, crowded."
I shook my head.
"I think that has been exaggerated," I said. "In fact, we always tryto avoid crowding and jostling as far as possible. It is generallyunderstood, as a matter of politeness, that the first place in theline is given to the clergy, the Board of Trade, and the heads of theuniversities."
"Is it conceivable!" said the gentleman in grey. "One moment, please,till I make a note. 'All clergy--I think you said _all_, did younot?--drunk at seven in the morning.' Deplorable! But here we are at theUnion Station--commodious, is it not? Justly admired, in fact, all overthe known world. Observe," he continued as we alighted from the trainand made our way into the station, "the upstairs and the downstairs,connected by flights of stairs; quite unique and most convenient: ifyou don't meet your friends downstairs all you have to do is to lookupstairs. If they are not there, you simply come down again. But stop,you are going to walk up the street? I'll go with you."
At the outer door of the station--just as I had remembered it--stood agroup of hotel bus-men and porters.
But how changed!
They were like men blasted by a great sorrow. One, with his back turned,was leaning against a post, his head buried on his arm.
"Prince George Hotel," he groaned at intervals. "Prince George Hotel."
Another was bending over a little handrail, his head sunk, his armsalmost trailing to the ground.
"_King Edward_," he sobbed, "_King Edward_."
A third, seated on a stool, looked feebly up, with tears visible in hiseyes.
"Walker House," he moaned. "First-class accommodation for--" then hebroke down and cried.
"Take this handbag," I said to one of the men, "to the _Prince George_."
The man ceased his groaning for a moment and turned to me with somethinglike passion.
"Why do you come to _us_?" he protested. "Why not go to one of theothers. Go to _him_," he added, as he stirred with his foot a miserablebeing who lay huddled on the ground and murmured at intervals,"_Queen's_! Queen's Hotel."
But my new friend, who stood at my elbow, came to my rescue.
"Take his bags," he said, "you've got to. You know the by-law. Take itor I'll call a policeman. You know _me_. My name's Narrowpath. I'm onthe council."
The man touched his hat and took the bag with a murmured apology.
"Come along," said my companion, whom I now perceived to be a person ofdignity and civic importance. "I'll walk up with you, and show you thecity as we go."
We had hardly got well upon the street before I realized the enormouschange that total prohibition had effected. Everywhere were the brightsmiling faces of working people, laughing and singing at their tasks,and, early though it was, cracking jokes and asking one another riddlesas they worked.
I noticed one man, evidently a city employe, in a rough white suit,busily cleaning the street with a broom and singing to himself: "Howdoes the little busy bee improve the shining hour." Another employe, whowas handling a little hose, was singing, "Little drops of water, littlegrains of sand, Tra, la, la, la, _la_ la, Prohibition's grand."
"Why do they sing?" I asked. "Are they crazy?"
"Sing?" said Mr Narrowpath. "They can't help it. They haven't had adrink of whisky for four months."
A coal cart went by with a driver, no longer grimy and smudged, butneatly dressed with a high white collar and a white silk tie.
My companion pointed at him as he passed.
"Hasn't had a glass of beer for four months," he said.
"Notice the difference. That man's work is now a pleasure to him. Heused to spend all his evenings sitting round in the back parlours of thesaloons beside the stove. Now what do you think he does?"
"I have no idea."
"Loads up his cart with coal and goes for a drive--out in the country.Ah, sir, you who live still under the curse of the whisky traffic littleknow what a pleasure work itself becomes when drink and all that goeswith it is eliminated. Do you see that man, on the other side of thestreet, with the tool bag?"
"Yes," I said, "a plumber, is he not?"
"Exactly, a plumber. Used to drink heavily--couldn't keep a job morethan a week. Now, you can't drag him from his work. Came to my house tofix a pipe under the kitchen sink--wouldn't quit at six o'clock. Gotin under the sink and begged to be allowed to stay--said he hated togo home. We had to drag him out with a rope. But here we are at yourhotel."
&nb
sp; We entered.
But how changed the place seemed.
Our feet echoed on the flagstones of the deserted rotunda.
At the office desk sat a clerk, silent and melancholy, reading theBible. He put a marker in the book and closed it, murmuring "LeviticusTwo."
Then he turned to us.
"Can I have a room," I asked, "on the first floor?"
A tear welled up into the clerk's eye.
"You can have the whole first floor," he said, and he added, with a halfsob, "and the second, too, if you like."
I could not help contrasting his manner with what it was in the olddays, when the mere mention of a room used to throw him into a fit ofpassion, and when he used to tell me that I could have a cot on the rooftill Tuesday, and after that, perhaps, a bed in the stable.
Things had changed indeed.
"Can I get breakfast in the grill room?" I inquired of the melancholyclerk.
He shook his head sadly.
"There is no grill room," he answered. "What would you like?"
"Oh, some sort of eggs," I said, "and--"
The clerk reached down below his desk and handed me a hard-boiled eggwith the shell off.
"Here's your egg," he said. "And there's ice water there at the end ofthe desk."
He sat back in his chair and went on reading.
"You don't understand," said Mr Narrowpath, who still stood at my elbow."All that elaborate grill room breakfast business was just a mere relicof the drinking days--sheer waste of time and loss of efficiency. Go onand eat your egg. Eaten it? Now, don't you feel efficient? What more doyou want? Comfort, you say? My dear sir! more men have been ruined bycomfort--Great heavens, comfort! The most dangerous, deadly drug thatever undermined the human race. But, here, drink your water. Now you'reready to go and do your business, if you have any."
"But," I protested, "it's still only half-past seven in the morning--nooffices will be open--"
"Open!" exclaimed Mr. Narrowpath. "Why! they all open at daybreak now."
I had, it is true, a certain amount of business before me, though ofno very intricate or elaborate kind--a few simple arrangements with thehead of a publishing house such as it falls to my lot to make every nowand then. Yet in the old and unregenerate days it used to take all dayto do it: the wicked thing that we used to call a comfortable breakfastin the hotel grill room somehow carried one on to about ten o'clockin the morning. Breakfast brought with it the need of a cigar fordigestion's sake and with that, for very restfulness, a certain perusalof the _Toronto Globe_, properly corrected and rectified by a lookthrough the _Toronto Mail_. After that it had been my practice to strollalong to my publishers' office at about eleven-thirty, transact mybusiness, over a cigar, with the genial gentleman at the head of it, andthen accept his invitation to lunch, with the feeling that a man who hasput in a hard and strenuous morning's work is entitled to a few hours ofrelaxation.
I am inclined to think that in those reprehensible bygone times, manyother people did their business in this same way.
"I don't think," I said to Mr. Narrowpath musingly, "that my publisherwill be up as early as this. He's a comfortable sort of man."
"Nonsense!" said Mr. Narrowpath. "Not at work at half-past seven! InToronto! The thing's absurd. Where is the office? Richmond Street? Comealong, I'll go with you. I've always a great liking for attending toother people's business."
"I see you have," I said.
"It's our way here," said Mr. Narrowpath with a wave of his hand. "Everyman's business, as we see it, is everybody else's business. Come along,you'll be surprised how quickly your business will be done."
Mr. Narrowpath was right.
My publishers' office, as we entered it, seemed a changed place.Activity and efficiency were stamped all over it. My good friend thepublisher was not only there, but there with his coat off, inordinatelybusy, bawling orders--evidently meant for a printing room--througha speaking tube. "Yes," he was shouting, "put WHISKY in black lettercapitals, old English, double size, set it up to look attractive, withthe legend MADE IN TORONTO in long clear type underneath--"
"Excuse me," he said, as he broke off for a moment. "We've a lot ofstuff going through the press this morning--a big distillery cataloguethat we are rushing through. We're doing all we can, Mr. Narrowpath,"he continued, speaking with the deference due to a member of the CityCouncil, "to boom Toronto as a Whisky Centre."
"Quite right, quite right!" said my companion, rubbing his hands.
"And now, professor," added the publisher, speaking with rapidity, "yourcontract is all here--only needs signing. I won't keep you more than amoment--write your name here. Miss Sniggins will you please witness thisso help you God how's everything in Montreal good morning."
"Pretty quick, wasn't it?" said Mr. Narrowpath, as we stood in thestreet again.
"Wonderful!" I said, feeling almost dazed. "Why, I shall be able tocatch the morning train back again to Montreal--"
"Precisely. Just what everybody finds. Business done in no time. Men whoused to spend whole days here clear out now in fifteen minutes. I knew aman whose business efficiency has so increased under our new regime thathe says he wouldn't spend more than five minutes in Toronto if he werepaid to."
"But what is this?" I asked as we were brought to a pause in our walkat a street crossing by a great block of vehicles. "What are all thesedrays? Surely, those look like barrels of whisky!"
"So they are," said Mr. Narrowpath proudly. "_Export_ whisky. Finesight, isn't it? Must be what?--twenty--twenty-five--loads of it. Thisplace, sir, mark my words, is going to prove, with its new energy andenterprise, one of the greatest seats of the distillery business, infact, _the_ whisky capital of the North--"
"But I thought," I interrupted, much puzzled, "that whisky wasprohibited here since last September?"
"Export whisky--_export_, my dear sir," corrected Mr. Narrowpath. "Wedon't interfere, we have never, so far as I know, proposed to interferewith any man's right to make and export whisky. That, sir, is a plainmatter of business; morality doesn't enter into it."
"I see," I answered. "But will you please tell me what is the meaningof this other crowd of drays coming in the opposite direction? Surely,those are beer barrels, are they not?"
"In a sense they are," admitted Mr. Narrowpath. "That is, they are_import_ beer. It comes in from some other province. It was, I imagine,made in this city (our breweries, sir, are second to none), but the sinof _selling_ it"--here Mr. Narrowpath raised his hat from his head andstood for a moment in a reverential attitude--"rests on the heads ofothers."
The press of vehicles had now thinned out and we moved on, my guidestill explaining in some detail the distinction between businessprinciples and moral principles, between whisky as a curse and whisky asa source of profit, which I found myself unable to comprehend.
At length I ventured to interrupt.
"Yet it seems almost a pity," I said, "that with all this beer andwhisky around an unregenerate sinner like myself should be prohibitedfrom getting a drink."
"A drink!" exclaimed Mr. Narrowpath. "Well, I should say so. Come rightin here. You can have anything you want."
We stepped through a street door into a large, long room.
"Why," I exclaimed in surprise, "this is a bar!"
"Nonsense!" said my friend. "The _bar_ in this province is forbidden.We've done with the foul thing for ever. This is an Import ShippingCompany's Delivery Office."
"But this long counter--"
"It's not a counter, it's a desk."
"And that bar-tender in his white jacket--"
"Tut! Tut! He's not a bar-tender. He's an Import Goods Delivery Clerk."
"What'll you have, gentlemen," said the Import Clerk, polishing a glassas he spoke.
"Two whisky and sodas," said my friend, "long ones."
The Import Clerk mixed the drinks and set them on the desk.
I was about to take one, but he interrupted.
"One minute, sir," he said.
> Then he took up a desk telephone that stood beside him and I heard himcalling up Montreal. "Hullo, Montreal! Is that Montreal? Well, say, I'vejust received an offer here for two whisky and sodas at sixty cents,shall I close with it? All right, gentlemen, Montreal has effected thesale. There you are."
"Dreadful, isn't it?" said Mr. Narrowpath. "The sunken, depravedcondition of your City of Montreal; actually _selling_ whisky.Deplorable!" and with that he buried his face in the bubbles of thewhisky and soda.
"Mr. Narrowpath," I said, "would you mind telling me something? I fearI am a little confused, after what I have seen here, as to what your newlegislation has been. You have not then, I understand, prohibited themaking of whisky?"
"Oh, no, we see no harm in that."
"Nor the sale of it?"
"Certainly not," said Mr. Narrowpath, "not if sold _properly_."
"Nor the drinking of it?"
"Oh, no, that least of all. We attach no harm whatever, under our law,to the mere drinking of whisky."
"Would you tell me then," I asked, "since you have not forbidden themaking, nor the selling, nor the buying, nor the drinking of whisky,just what it is that you have prohibited? What is the difference betweenMontreal and Toronto?"
Mr. Narrowpath put down his glass on the "desk" in front of him. Hegazed at me with open-mouthed astonishment.
"Toronto?" he gasped. "Montreal and Toronto! The difference betweenMontreal and Toronto! My dear sir--Toronto--Toronto--"
I stood waiting for him to explain. But as I did so I seemed to becomeaware that a voice, not Mr. Narrowpath's but a voice close at my ear,was repeating "Toronto--Toronto--Toronto--"
I sat up with a start--still in my berth in the Pullman car--with thevoice of the porter calling through the curtains "Toronto! Toronto!"
So! It had only been a dream. I pulled up the blind and looked outof the window and there was the good old city, with the bright sunsparkling on its church spires and on the bay spread out at its feet. Itlooked quite unchanged: just the same pleasant old place, as cheerful,as self-conceited, as kindly, as hospitable, as quarrelsome, aswholesome, as moral and as loyal and as disagreeable as it always was.
"Porter," I said, "is it true that there is prohibition here now?"
The porter shook his head.
"I ain't heard of it," he said.
XVIII. Merry Christmas
"My Dear Young Friend," said Father Time, as he laid his hand gentlyupon my shoulder, "you are entirely wrong."
Then I looked up over my shoulder from the table at which I was sittingand I saw him.
But I had known, or felt, for at least the last half-hour that he wasstanding somewhere near me.
You have had, I do not doubt, good reader, more than once that strangeuncanny feeling that there is some one unseen standing beside you, in adarkened room, let us say, with a dying fire, when the night has grownlate, and the October wind sounds low outside, and when, through thethin curtain that we call Reality, the Unseen World starts for a momentclear upon our dreaming sense.
You _have_ had it? Yes, I know you have. Never mind telling me about it.Stop. I don't want to hear about that strange presentiment you had thenight your Aunt Eliza broke her leg. Don't let's bother with _your_experience. I want to tell mine.
"You are quite mistaken, my dear young friend," repeated Father Time,"quite wrong."
"_Young_ friend?" I said, my mind, as one's mind is apt to in such acase, running to an unimportant detail. "Why do you call me young?"
"Your pardon," he answered gently--he had a gentle way with him, hadFather Time. "The fault is in my failing eyes. I took you at first sightfor something under a hundred."
"Under a hundred?" I expostulated. "Well, I should think so!"
"Your pardon again," said Time, "the fault is in my failing memory. Iforgot. You seldom pass that nowadays, do you? Your life is very shortof late."
I heard him breathe a wistful hollow sigh. Very ancient and dim heseemed as he stood beside me. But I did not turn to look upon him. I hadno need to. I knew his form, in the inner and clearer sight of things,as well as every human being knows by innate instinct, the Unseen faceand form of Father Time.
I could hear him murmuring beside me, "Short--short, your life isshort"; till the sound of it seemed to mingle with the measured tickingof a clock somewhere in the silent house.
Then I remembered what he had said.
"How do you know that I am wrong?" I asked. "And how can you tell what Iwas thinking?"
"You said it out loud," answered Father Time. "But it wouldn't havemattered, anyway. You said that Christmas was all played out and donewith."
"Yes," I admitted, "that's what I said."
"And what makes you think that?" he questioned, stooping, so it seemedto me, still further over my shoulder.
"Why," I answered, "the trouble is this. I've been sitting here forhours, sitting till goodness only knows how far into the night, tryingto think out something to write for a Christmas story. And it won't go.It can't be done--not in these awful days."
"A Christmas Story?"
"Yes. You see, Father Time," I explained, glad with a foolish littlevanity of my trade to be able to tell him something that I thoughtenlightening, "all the Christmas stuff--stories and jokes andpictures--is all done, you know, in October."
I thought it would have surprised him, but I was mistaken.
"Dear me," he said, "not till October! What a rush! How well I rememberin Ancient Egypt--as I think you call it--seeing them getting out theirChristmas things, all cut in hieroglyphics, always two or three yearsahead."
"Two or three years!" I exclaimed.
"Pooh," said Time, "that was nothing. Why in Babylon they used to gettheir Christmas jokes ready--all baked in clay--a whole Solar eclipseahead of Christmas. They said, I think, that the public preferred themso."
"Egypt?" I said. "Babylon? But surely, Father Time, there was noChristmas in those days. I thought--"
"My dear boy," he interrupted gravely, "don't you know that there hasalways been Christmas?"
I was silent. Father Time had moved across the room and stood beside thefireplace, leaning on the mantelpiece. The little wreaths of smoke fromthe fading fire seemed to mingle with his shadowy outline.
"Well," he said presently, "what is it that is wrong with Christmas?"
"Why," I answered, "all the romance, the joy, the beauty of it has gone,crushed and killed by the greed of commerce and the horrors of war. I amnot, as you thought I was, a hundred years old, but I can conjure up,as anybody can, a picture of Christmas in the good old days of a hundredyears ago: the quaint old-fashioned houses, standing deep among theevergreens, with the light twinkling from the windows on the snow; thewarmth and comfort within; the great fire roaring on the hearth; themerry guests grouped about its blaze and the little children with theireyes dancing in the Christmas fire-light, waiting for Father Christmasin his fine mummery of red and white and cotton wool to hand thepresents from the yule-tide tree. I can see it," I added, "as if it wereyesterday."
"It was but yesterday," said Father Time, and his voice seemed to softenwith the memory of bygone years. "I remember it well."
"Ah," I continued, "that was Christmas indeed. Give me back such daysas those, with the old good cheer, the old stage coaches and the gabledinns and the warm red wine, the snapdragon and the Christmas-tree, andI'll believe again in Christmas, yes, in Father Christmas himself."
"Believe in him?" said Time quietly. "You may well do that. He happensto be standing outside in the street at this moment."
"Outside?" I exclaimed. "Why don't he come in?"
"He's afraid to," said Father Time. "He's frightened and he daren't comein unless you ask him. May I call him in?"
I signified assent, and Father Time went to the window for a moment andbeckoned into the darkened street. Then I heard footsteps, clumsy andhesitant they seemed, upon the stairs. And in a moment a figurestood framed in the doorway--the figure of Father Christmas. He stoodsh
uffling his feet, a timid, apologetic look upon his face.
How changed he was!
I had known in my mind's eye, from childhood up, the face and form ofFather Christmas as well as that of Old Time himself. Everybody knows,or once knew him--a jolly little rounded man, with a great muffler woundabout him, a packet of toys upon his back and with such merry, twinklingeyes and rosy cheeks as are only given by the touch of the driving snowand the rude fun of the North Wind. Why, there was once a time, notyet so long ago, when the very sound of his sleigh-bells sent the bloodrunning warm to the heart.
But now how changed.
All draggled with the mud and rain he stood, as if no house hadsheltered him these three years past. His old red jersey was tattered ina dozen places, his muffler frayed and ravelled.
The bundle of toys that he dragged with him in a net seemed wet and worntill the cardboard boxes gaped asunder. There were boxes among them, Ivow, that he must have been carrying these three past years.
But most of all I noted the change that had come over the face of FatherChristmas. The old brave look of cheery confidence was gone. The smilethat had beamed responsive to the laughing eyes of countless childrenaround unnumbered Christmas-trees was there no more. And in the place ofit there showed a look of timid apology, of apprehensiveness, as of onewho has asked in vain the warmth and shelter of a human home--such alook as the harsh cruelty of this world has stamped upon the faces ofits outcasts.
So stood Father Christmas shuffling upon the threshold, fumbling hispoor tattered hat in his hand.
"Shall I come in?" he said, his eyes appealingly on Father Time.
"Come," said Time. He turned to speak to me, "Your room is dark. Turn upthe lights. He's used to light, bright light and plenty of it. The darkhas frightened him these three years past."
I turned up the lights and the bright glare revealed all the morecruelly the tattered figure before us.
Father Christmas advanced a timid step across the floor. Then he paused,as if in sudden fear.
"Is this floor mined?" he said.
"No, no," said Time soothingly. And to me he added in a murmuredwhisper, "He's afraid. He was blown up in a mine in No Man's Landbetween the trenches at Christmas-time in 1914. It broke his nerve."
"May I put my toys on that machine gun?" asked Father Christmas timidly."It will help to keep them dry."
"It is not a machine gun," said Time gently. "See, it is only a pile ofbooks upon the sofa." And to me he whispered, "They turned a machine gunon him in the streets of Warsaw. He thinks he sees them everywhere sincethen."
"It's all right, Father Christmas," I said, speaking as cheerily as Icould, while I rose and stirred the fire into a blaze. "There are nomachine guns here and there are no mines. This is but the house of apoor writer."
"Ah," said Father Christmas, lowering his tattered hat still further andattempting something of a humble bow, "a writer? Are you Hans Andersen,perhaps?"
"Not quite," I answered.
"But a great writer, I do not doubt," said the old man, with a humblecourtesy that he had learned, it well may be, centuries ago in theyule-tide season of his northern home. "The world owes much to its greatbooks. I carry some of the greatest with me always. I have them here--"
He began fumbling among the limp and tattered packages that he carried."Look! _The House that Jack Built_--a marvellous, deep thing, sir--andthis, _The Babes in the Wood_. Will you take it, sir? A poor present,but a present still--not so long ago I gave them in thousands everyChristmas-time. None seem to want them now."
He looked appealingly towards Father Time, as the weak may look towardsthe strong, for help and guidance.
"None want them now," he repeated, and I could see the tears start inhis eyes. "Why is it so? Has the world forgotten its sympathy with thelost children wandering in the wood?"
"All the world," I heard Time murmur with a sigh, "is wandering in thewood." But out loud he spoke to Father Christmas in cheery admonition,"Tut, tut, good Christmas," he said, "you must cheer up. Here, sit inthis chair the biggest one; so--beside the fire. Let us stir it to ablaze; more wood, that's better. And listen, good old Friend, to thewind outside--almost a Christmas wind, is it not? Merry and boisterousenough, for all the evil times it stirs among."
Old Christmas seated himself beside the fire, his hands outstretchedtowards the flames. Something of his old-time cheeriness seemed toflicker across his features as he warmed himself at the blaze.
"That's better," he murmured. "I was cold, sir, cold, chilled to thebone. Of old I never felt it so; no matter what the wind, the worldseemed warm about me. Why is it not so now?"
"You see," said Time, speaking low in a whisper for my ear alone, "howsunk and broken he is? Will you not help?"
"Gladly," I answered, "if I can."
"All can," said Father Time, "every one of us."
Meantime Christmas had turned towards me a questioning eye, in which,however, there seemed to revive some little gleam of merriment.
"Have you, perhaps," he asked half timidly, "schnapps?"
"Schnapps?" I repeated.
"Ay, schnapps. A glass of it to drink your health might warm my heartagain, I think."
"Ah," I said, "something to drink?"
"His one failing," whispered Time, "if it is one. Forgive it him. He wasused to it for centuries. Give it him if you have it."
"I keep a little in the house," I said reluctantly perhaps, "in case ofillness."
"Tut, tut," said Father Time, as something as near as could be to asmile passed over his shadowy face. "In case of illness! They used tosay that in ancient Babylon. Here, let me pour it for him. Drink, FatherChristmas, drink!"
Marvellous it was to see the old man smack his lips as he drank hisglass of liquor neat after the fashion of old Norway.
Marvellous, too, to see the way in which, with the warmth of the fireand the generous glow of the spirits, his face changed and brightenedtill the old-time cheerfulness beamed again upon it.
He looked about him, as it were, with a new and growing interest.
"A pleasant room," he said. "And what better, sir, than the wind withoutand a brave fire within!"
Then his eye fell upon the mantelpiece, where lay among the litter ofbooks and pipes a little toy horse.
"Ah," said Father Christmas almost gayly, "children in the house!"
"One," I answered, "the sweetest boy in all the world."
"I'll be bound he is!" said Father Christmas and he broke now into amerry laugh that did one's heart good to hear. "They all are! Lord blessme! The number that I have seen, and each and every one--and quite righttoo--the sweetest child in all the world. And how old, do you say? Twoand a half all but two months except a week? The very sweetest age ofall, I'll bet you say, eh, what? They all do!"
And the old man broke again into such a jolly chuckling of laughter thathis snow-white locks shook upon his head.
"But stop a bit," he added. "This horse is broken. Tut, tut, a hind legnearly off. This won't do!"
He had the toy in his lap in a moment, mending it. It was wonderful tosee, for all his age, how deft his fingers were.
"Time," he said, and it was amusing to note that his voice had assumedalmost an authoritative tone, "reach me that piece of string. That'sright. Here, hold your finger across the knot. There! Now, then, a bitof beeswax. What? No beeswax? Tut, tut, how ill-supplied your housesare to-day. How can you mend toys, sir, without beeswax? Still, it willstand up now."
I tried to murmur by best thanks.
But Father Christmas waved my gratitude aside.
"Nonsense," he said, "that's nothing. That's my life. Perhaps the littleboy would like a book too. I have them here in the packet. Here, sir,_Jack and the Bean Stalk_, most profound thing. I read it to myselfoften still. How damp it is! Pray, sir, will you let me dry my booksbefore your fire?"
"Only too willingly," I said. "How wet and torn they are!"
Father Christmas had risen from his chair and was fumbling a
mong histattered packages, taking from them his children's books, all limp anddraggled from the rain and wind.
"All wet and torn!" he murmured, and his voice sank again into sadness."I have carried them these three years past. Look! These were for littlechildren in Belgium and in Serbia. Can I get them to them, think you?"
Time gently shook his head.
"But presently, perhaps," said Father Christmas, "if I dry and mendthem. Look, some of them were inscribed already! This one, see you, waswritten '_With father's love_.' Why has it never come to him? Is it rainor tears upon the page?"
He stood bowed over his little books, his hands trembling as he turnedthe pages. Then he looked up, the old fear upon his face again.
"That sound!" he said. "Listen! It is guns--I hear them."
"No, no," I said, "it is nothing. Only a car passing in the streetbelow."
"Listen," he said. "Hear that again--voices crying!"
"No, no," I answered, "not voices, only the night wind among the trees."
"My children's voices!" he exclaimed. "I hear them everywhere--theycome to me in every wind--and I see them as I wander in the night andstorm--my children--torn and dying in the trenches--beaten into theground--I hear them crying from the hospitals--each one to me, still asI knew him once, a little child. Time, Time," he cried, reaching out hisarms in appeal, "give me back my children!"
"They do not die in vain," Time murmured gently.
But Christmas only moaned in answer:
"Give me back my children!"
Then he sank down upon his pile of books and toys, his head buried inhis arms.
"You see," said Time, "his heart is breaking, and will you not help himif you can?"
"Only too gladly," I replied. "But what is there to do?"
"This," said Father Time, "listen."
He stood before me grave and solemn, a shadowy figure but half seenthough he was close beside me. The fire-light had died down, and throughthe curtained windows there came already the first dim brightening ofdawn.
"The world that once you knew," said Father Time, "seems broken anddestroyed about you. You must not let them know--the children. Thecruelty and the horror and the hate that racks the world to-day--keep itfrom them. Some day _he_ will know"--here Time pointed to the prostrateform of Father Christmas--"that his children, that once were, have notdied in vain: that from their sacrifice shall come a nobler, betterworld for all to live in, a world where countless happy children shallhold bright their memory for ever. But for the children of To-day, saveand spare them all you can from the evil hate and horror of the war.Later they will know and understand. Not yet. Give them back their MerryChristmas and its kind thoughts, and its Christmas charity, till lateron there shall be with it again Peace upon Earth Good Will towards Men."
His voice ceased. It seemed to vanish, as it were, in the sighing of thewind.
I looked up. Father Time and Christmas had vanished from the room. Thefire was low and the day was breaking visibly outside.
"Let us begin," I murmured. "I will mend this broken horse."
END
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