Christmas stories

CHAPTER I. CHRISTMAS EVE. It was Christmas eve, and the parlors of No. 46 Shelby Street were ablaze with light; rare flowers, in vases rarer still, filled the rooms with a sweet perfume, bringing back, as it were, the summer glory which had faded in the autumn light, and died in the chill December’s breath. Costly pictures adorned the walls; carpets, which seemed to the eye like a mossy bed inlaid with roses, covered the floors, while over all, the gas-light fell, making a scene of brilliant beauty such as was seldom witnessed in the quiet city of ——, where our story opens. It was the night of Alice Warren’s first presentation to society, as a young lady, and in her luxurious dressing-room she stood before her mirror, bending her graceful head, while her mother placed among her flowing curls a golden arrow, and then pronounced the toilet complete. Alice Warren was very beautiful with her fair young face, her waving hair, and lustrous eyes of blue, which shone with more than their wonted brightness, as, smoothing down the folds of her dress, she glanced again at the mirror opposite, and then turned toward her mother just as a movement in the hall without attracted the attention of both. It was a slow, uncertain step, and darting forward, Alice cried: “It is father—come to see how I look on my eighteenth birthnight!” “Not to see you, my child,” the father answered; and in the tones of his voice there was a note of sorrow, as if the struggle of nineteen long years were not yet fully over. To Hugo Warren the world was one dark, dreary night, and the gold so many coveted would have been freely given, could he but once have looked upon the face of his only child, who, bounding to his side, parted the white hair from his forehead, and laying his hand upon her head, asked him “to feel if she were not beautiful.” Very tenderly and caressingly the father’s hand moved over the shining hair, the glowing cheek, and rounded arms of the graceful little figure which stood before him, then dashing a tear away, the blind man said: “My Alice must be beautiful if she is, as they tell me, like her mother,” and the sightless eyes turned instinctively toward the mother, who, coming to his side, replied: “Alice is like me as I was when you last saw my face—but I have changed since then—there are lines of silver in my hair, and lines of time upon my face.” The blind man shook his head. The picture of the fond girl-wife, who, in his hour of bitter agony had whispered in his ear, “I will be sunlight, moonlight, starlight—everything to you, my husband,” had never changed to him—for faithfully and well that promise had been kept, and it was better perhaps, that he could not see the shadows on her face—shadows which foretold a darker hour than any he had ever known—an hour when the sunlight of her love would set forever. But no such forebodings were around him now. He held his wife and daughter both in his arms, and holding them thus, forgot for a moment that he was blind. “Did you invite Adelaide?” Alice asked at last; and Mr. Warren replied: “Yes, but it is doubtful whether she will come. She is very proud, her father says, and does not wish to put herself in a position to be slighted.” “Oh, father!” Alice cried, “Adelaide Huntington does not know me. I could not slight her because she is poor, and if she comes I will treat her like a royal princess,” and Alice’s face flushed with pleasure as she thought how attentive she would be to the daughter of her father’s “confidential clerk and authorized agent.” Meanwhile, in a distant part of the city, in a dwelling far more humble than that of Hugo Warren, another family group was assembled, father, mother, daughter—all, save old Aunt Peggy, who, thankful for a home which saved her from the almshouse, performed willingly a menial’s part, bearing patiently the whims of the mother, and the caprices of the daughter, the latter of whom proved a most tyrannical and exacting mistress. Tall, dignified, and rather aristocratic in her bearing, Adelaide Huntington was called handsome by many, and admired by those who failed to see the treachery hidden in her large, dark eyes, or the constant effort she made to seem what she was not. To be noticed by those whose position in life was far above her own, was her aim, and when the envied Alice Warren extended to her family an invitation to be present at her birthday party, her delight was unbounded. She would go, of course, she said, “and her father would go with her, and she must have a new dress, too, even if it took every cent they had.” The dress was purchased, and though it was only a simple white muslin, it well became the queenly form of the haughty Adelaide, who, when her toilet was completed, asked her father if “he did not think she would overshadow the diminutive Alice?” “I don’t see why there should be this difference between us,” she continued, as her father made no answer. “Here I must be poor all my life, while she will be rich, unless Mr. Warren chances to fail——” “Which he will do before three days are passed,” dropped involuntarily from the lips of Mr. Huntington. Then with a wild, startled look he grasped his daughter’s arm, exclaiming: “Forget what I just said—breathe not a word of it to any one, for Heaven knows I would help it if I could. But it is too late—too late.” It was in vain that Adelaide and her mother sought an explanation of these strange words. Mr. Huntington would give none, and in unbroken silence he accompanied his daughter to the house of Mr. Warren. Very cordially Alice welcomed the young girl striving in various ways to relieve her from the embarrassment she would naturally feel at finding herself among so many strangers. And Adelaide was ill at ease, for the spirit of jealous envy in her heart whispered to her of slight and insult where none were intended; whispered, too, that her muslin dress which, at home with her mother and Aunt Peggy to admire, had been so beautiful, was nothing, compared with the soft, flowing robes of Alice Warren, whose polite attentions she construed into a kind of patronizing pity exceedingly annoying to one of her proud nature. Then, as she remembered her father’s words, she thought, “We may be equals yet. I wonder what he meant? I mean to ask him again,” and passing through the crowded apartments she came to the little ante-room, where all the evening her father had been sitting—a hard, dark look upon his face, and his eyes bent on the floor, as if for him that festive scene possessed no interest. “Father,” she said, but he made her no reply; he did not even know that she was standing at his side. Far back through the “past” his thoughts were straying, to the Christmas Eve when penniless, friendless and alone he had come to the city, asking employment from one whose hair was not as white then as it was now, and whose eyes were not quenched in darkness, but looked kindly down upon him, as the wealthy merchant said: “I will give you work as long as you do well.” Hugo Warren was older than William Huntington, and his station in life had always been different, but over the mountain side the same Sunday bell had once called them both to the house of God—the same tall tree on the river bank bore on its bark their names—the same blue sky had bent above their childhood’s home, and for this reason he had given the poor young man a helping hand, aiding him step by step, until now, he was the confidential clerk—the one trusted above all others—for when the blindness first came upon him the helpless man had put his hand on William’s head, saying, as he did so: “I trust you, with my all, and as you hope for Heaven, do not be false to the trust.” How those words, spoken years before, rang in William Huntington’s ears, as he sat thinking of the past, until the great drops of perspiration gathered thickly around his lips and dropped upon the floor. He had betrayed his trust—nay, more, he had ruined the man who had been so kind to him, and before three days were passed his sin would find him out. Heavy bank notes must be paid, and there was nothing with which to pay them. The gambling table had been his ruin. Gradually he had gone down, meaning always to replace what he had taken, and oftentimes doing so; but fortune had deserted him at last, and rather than meet the glance of those sightless eyes, when the truth should be known, he had resolved to go away. The next day would be a holiday, and before the Christmas sun set, he would be an outcast—a wanderer on the earth. Of all this he was thinking when Adelaide came to his side. The sound of her voice aroused him at last, and starting up, he exclaimed: “It is time we were at home. The atmosphere of these rooms is stifling. Get your things at once.” Rather unwillingly Adelaide obeyed, and ten minutes later she was saying good night to Alice and her mother, both of whom expressed their surprise that she should go so soon, as did Mr. Warren also. “I meant to have talked with you more,” he said, as he stood in the hall with Mr. Huntington, who, grasping his hand, looked earnestly into the face which for all time to come would haunt him as the face of one whom he had greatly wronged. A few hours later, and all was still in the house where mirth and revelry had so lately reigned. Flushed with excitement and the flattery her youthful beauty had called forth, Alice Warren had sought her pillow, and in the world of dreamland was living over again the incidents of the evening. The blind man, too, was sleeping, and in his dreams he saw again the forms of those he loved, but he did not see the cloud hovering near, nor the crouching figure which, across the way, was looking toward his window and bidding him farewell. Mr. Huntington had accompanied Adelaide to his door, and then, making some trivial excuse, had left her, and gone from his home forever, leaving his wife to watch and wait for him as she had often done before. Slowly the December night waned, and just as the morning was breaking—the morn of the bright Christmas day—a train sped on its way to the westward, bearing among its passengers one who fled from justice, leaving to his wife and daughter grief and shame, and to the blind man darkness, ruin, and death.