THE RED CANDLE
It was so cold that the world seemed as stiff and stark as a poet's hell. A little moon was frozen against a pallid sky. The old dark houses with their towers and gables wore the rigid look of iron edifices. The saint over the church door at the corner had an icicle on his nose. Even the street lights shone faint and benumbed through clouded glass.
Ostrander, with his blood like ice within his veins, yearned for a Scriptural purgatory with red fire and flame. To be warm would be heaven. It was a wise old Dante who had made hell cold!
As he crossed the threshold of his filthy tenement he felt for the first time a sense of its shelter. Within its walls there was something that approached warmth, and in his room at the top there was a bed with a blanket.
Making his way toward the bed and its promise of comfort, he was stopped on the second stairway by a voice which came out of the dark.
"Mr. Tony, you didn't see our tree."
Peering down, he answered the voice: "I was going up to get warm."
"Milly said to tell you that we had a fire."
"A real fire, Pussy? I didn't know that there was one in the world."
He came down again to the first floor. Pussy was waiting—a freckled dot of a child tied up in a man's coat.
The fire was in a small round stove. On top of the stove something was boiling. The room was neat but bare, the stove, a table, and three chairs its only furnishing. In a room beyond were two beds covered with patchwork quilts.
On the table was a tree. It was a Christmas tree—just a branch of pine and some cheap spangly things. The mother of the children sewed all day and late into the night. She had worked a little longer each night for a month that the children might have the tree.
There was no light in the room but that of a small and smoky lamp.
Milly spoke of it. "We ought to have candles."
Ostrander, shrugged close to the stove, with his hands out to its heat, knew that they ought to have electric lights, colored ones, a hundred perhaps, and a tree that touched the stars!
But he said: "When I go out I'll bring you a red candle—a long one—and we'll put it on the shelf over the table."
Milly, who was resting her tired young body in a big rocker with the baby in her arms, asked: "Can we put it in a bottle or stand it in a cup? We haven't any candlestick."
"We can do better than that," he told her, "with a saucer turned upside down and covered with salt to look like snow."
Pussy, economically anxious, asked, "Can we eat the salt afterward?"
"Of course."
"Then, may we do it, Milly?"
"Darling, yes. How nice you always fix things, Mr. Tony!"
Long before he had known them he had fixed things—things which would have turned this poor room into an Aladdin's palace. There was that Christmas Eve at the Daltons'. It had been his idea to light the great hall with a thousand candles when they brought in the Yule log, and to throw perfumed fagots on the fire.
He came back to the round stove and the tiny tree. "I like to fix things," he said. "Once upon a time"
They leaned forward eagerly to this opening.
"Of course you know it isn't true," he prefaced.
"Of course it couldn't be true"—Pussy was reassuringly sceptical—"the things that you tell us couldn't really happen—ever"
"Well, once upon a time, there was a tree in a great house by a great river, and it was set in a great room with squares of black-and-white marble for a floor, and with a fountain with goldfish swimming in its basin, and there were red-and-blue parrots on perches, and orange-trees in porcelain pots, and the tree itself wasn't a pine-tree or a fir or a cedar; it was a queer round, clipped thing of yew, and it had red and blue and orange balls on it, and in the place of a wax angel on top there was a golden Buddha, and there were no candles—but the light shone out and out of it, like the light shines from the moon."
"Was it a Christmas tree?" Pussy asked, as he paused.
"Yes, but the people who trimmed it and the ones who came to see it didn't believe in the Wise Men, or the Babe in the Manger, or the shepherds who watched their flocks by night—they just worshiped beauty and art—and other gods—but it was a corking tree"
"You use such funny words," Pussy crowed ecstatically. "Who ever heard of a corking tree?"
He smiled at her indulgently. He was warmer now, and as he leaned back in his chair and unbuttoned his coat he seemed to melt suddenly into something that was quite gentlemanly in pose and outline. "Well, it really was a corking tree, Pussy."
What's a Buddha?" Milly asked, making a young Madonna of herself as she bent over the baby.
"A gentle god that half of the world worships," Ostrander said, "but the people who put him on the tree didn't worship anything—they put him there because he was of gold and ivory and was a lovely thing to look at"
"Oh," said Pussy, with her mouth round to say it, "oh, how funny you talk, Mr. Tony!" She laughed, with her small hands beating her knees.
She was presently, however, very serious, as she set the table. There was little formality of service. Just three plates and some bread.
Milly, having carried the baby into the other room, was hesitatingly hospitable. "Won't you have supper with us, Mr. Tony?"
He wanted it. There was a savory smell as Milly lifted the pot from the stove. But he knew there would be only three potatoes—one for Pussy and one for Milly and one for the mother who was almost due, and there would be plenty of gravy. How queer it seemed that his mind should dwell on gravy!
"Onions are so high," Milly had said, as she stirred it. "I had to put in just a very little piece."
He declined hastily and got away.
In the hall he met their mother coming in. She was a busy little mother, and she did not approve of Ostrander. She did not approve of any human being who would not work.
"A merry Christmas," he said to her, standing somewhat wistfully above her on the stairs. She smiled at that. "Oh, Mr. Tony, Mr. Tony, they want a man in the shop. It would be a good way to begin the New Year."
"Dear lady, I have never worked in a shop—and they wouldn't want me after the first minute"
Her puzzled eyes studied him. "Why wouldn't they want you?"
"I am not—dependable"
"How old are you?" she asked abruptly.
"Twice your age"
"Nonsense"
"Not in years, perhaps—but I have lived—oh, how I have lived!"
He straightened his shoulders and ran his fingers through his hair. She had a sudden vision of what he might be if shorn of his poverty. There was something debonair—finished—an almost youthful grace—a hint of manner
She sighed. "Oh, the waste of it!"
"Of what?"
She flamed. "Of you!"
Then she went in and shut the door.
He stood uncertainly in the hall. Then once again he faced the cold.
Around the corner was a shop where he would buy the red candle. The ten cents which he would pay was to have gone for his breakfast. He had sacrificed his supper that he might not go hungry on Christmas morning. He had planned a brace of rolls and a bottle of milk. It had seemed to him that he could face a lean night with the promise of these.
There were no red candles in the shop. There were white ones, but a red candle was a red candle—with a special look of Christmas cheer. He would have no other.
The turn of a second corner brought him to the great square. Usually he avoided it. The blaze of gold on the west side was the club.
A row of motors lined the curb. There was Baxter's limousine and Fenton's French car. He knew them all. He remembered when his own French car had overshadowed Fenton's Ford.
There were wreaths to-night in the club windows, and when Sands opened the doors there was a mass of poinsettia against the hall mirror.
How warm it looked with all that gold and red!
In the basement was the grill. It was a night when one might order something heavy and hot. A planked steak—with deviled oysters at the start and a salad at the end.
And now another motor-car was poking its nose against the curb. And Whiting climbed out, a bear in a big fur coat.
Whiting's car was a closed one. And it would stay there for an hour. Ostrander knew the habits of the man. From the office to the club, and from the club—home. Whiting was methodical to a minute. At seven sharp the doors would open and let him out.
The clock on the post-office tower showed six!
There was a policeman on the east corner, beating his arms against the cold. Ostrander did not beat his arms. He cowered frozenly in the shadow of a big building until the policeman passed on.
Then he darted across the street and into Whiting's car!
Whiting, coming out in forty minutes, found his car gone. Sands, the door man, said that he had noticed nothing. The policeman on the corner had not noticed.
"I usually stay longer," Whiting said, "but to-night I wanted to get home. I have a lot of things for the kids."
"Were the things in your car?" the policeman asked.
"Yes. Toys and all that"
Ostrander, with his hand on the wheel, his feet on the brakes, slipped through the crowded streets unchallenged. It had been easy to unlock the car. He had learned many things in these later years.
It was several minutes before he was aware of faint fragrances—warm tropical fragrances of flowers and fruits and spices—Christmas fragrances which sent him back to the great kitchen where his grandmother's servants had baked and brewed.
He stopped the car and touched a button. The light showed booty. He had not expected this. He had wanted the car for an hour, to feel the thrill of it under his fingers, to taste again the luxury of its warmth and softness. He had meant to take it back unharmed—with nothing more than the restless ghost of his poor desires to haunt Whiting when again he entered it.
But now here were toys and things which Whiting, in a climax of generosity, had culled from bake-shop and grocer, from flower-shop, fruit-shop, and confectioner.
He snapped out the light and drove on. He had still a half-hour for his adventure.
It took just three of the thirty minutes to slide up to the curb in front of the tall tenement. He made three trips in and up to the top floor. He risked much, but Fate was with him and he met no one.
Fate was with him, too, when he left the car at a corner near the club, and slipped out of it like a shadow, and thence like a shadow back to the shop whence his steps had tended before his adventures.
When he returned to the tall tenement the small family on the first floor had finished supper, and the mother had gone back to work. The baby was asleep. Milly and Pussy, wrapped up to their ears, were hugging the waning warmth of the little stove.
"Mr. Tony, did you get the candle?" Pussy asked as he came in.
"Yes. But I've been thinking"—his manner was mysterious—"I don't want to put it on the shelf. I want it in the window—to shine out"
"To shine out—why?"
"Well, you know, there's St. Nicholas."
"Oh"
"He ought to come here, Pussy. Why shouldn't he come here? Why should he go up-town and up-town, and take all the things to children who have more than they want?"
Milly was philosophic. "St. Nicholas is fathers and mothers"
But Pussy was not so sure. "Do you think he'd come—if we did? Do you really and truly think he would?"
"I think he might"
The candle set in the window made a fine show from the street. They all went out to look at it. Coming in, they sat around the stove together.
Pussy drew her chair very close to Ostrander. She laid her hand on his knee. It was a little hand with short, fat fingers. In spite of lean living, Pussy had managed to keep fat. She was adorably dimpled.
Ostrander, looking down at the fat little hand, began: "Once upon a time—there was a doll—a Fluffy Ruffles doll, in a rosy gown"
"Oh!" Pussy beat the small, fat hand upon his knee.
"And pink slippers—and it traveled miles to find some one to—love it. And at last it said to St. Nicholas, 'Oh, dear St. Nick, I want to find a little girl who hasn't any doll'"
"Like me?" said Pussy.
"Like you"
"And St. Nicholas said, 'Will you keep your pink slippers clean and your nice pink frock clean if I give you to a poor little girl?' and the Fluffy Ruffles doll said 'Yes,' so St. Nicholas looked and looked for a poor little girl, and at last he came to a window—with a red candle"
The fat little hand was still and Pussy was breathing hard.
"With a red candle, and there was a little girl who—didn't have any doll"
Pussy threw herself on him bodily. "Is it true? Is it true?" she shrieked.
Milly, a little flushed and excited by the story, tried to say sedately: "Of course it isn't true. It couldn't be—true"
"Let's wish it to be true—" Ostrander said, "all three of us, with our eyes shut"
With this ceremony completed the little girls were advised gravely to go to bed. "If Fluffy Ruffles and old St. Nick come by and find you up they won't stop"
"Won't they?"
"Of course not. You must shut the door and creep under your quilt and cover up your head, and if you hear a noise you mustn't look."
Milly eyed him dubiously. "I think it is a shame to tell Pussy such"
"Corking things?" He lifted her chin with a light finger and looked into her innocent eyes. "Oh, Milly, Milly, once upon a time there was a Princess, with eyes like yours, and she lived in a garden where black swans swam on a pool, and she wore pale-green gowns and there were poppies in the garden. And a Fool loved her. But she shut him out of the garden. He wasn't good enough even to kneel at her feet, so she shut him out and married a Prince with a white feather in his cap."
He had a chuckling sense of Whiting as the white-feathered Prince. But Milly's eyes were clouded. "I don't like to think that she shut the poor Fool out of the garden."
For a moment he cupped her troubled face in his two hands. "You dear kiddie." Then as he turned away he found his own eyes wet.
As he started up-stairs Pussy peeped out at him.
"Wouldn't it be—corking—to see a Fluffy Ruffles doll—a-walking up the street?"
In a beautiful box up-stairs the Fluffy Ruffles doll stared at him. She was as lovely as a dream, and as expensive as they make 'em. There was another doll in blue, also as expensive, also as lovely. Ostrander could see Milly with the blue doll matching her eyes.
There were toys, too, for the baby. And there was a bunch of violets. And boxes of candy. And books. And there were things to eat. Besides the fruits a great cake, and a basket of marmalades and jellies and gold-sealed bottles and meat pastes in china jars, and imported things in glass, and biscuits in tins.
Ostrander, after some consideration, opened the tin of biscuits and, munching, he wrote a note. Having no paper, he tore a wrapper from one of the boxes. He had the stub of a pencil, and the result was a scrawl.
"It was I who borrowed your car—and who ran away with your junk. I am putting my address at the head of this, so that if you want it back you can come and get it. But perhaps you won't want it back.
"I have a feeling that to you and your wife I am as good as dead. If you have any thought of me it is, I am sure, to pity me. Yet I rather fancy that you needn't. I am down and out, and living on ten dollars a month. That's all I got when the crash came—it is all I shall ever get. I pay four dollars a month for my room and twenty cents a day for food. Sometimes I pay less than twenty cents when I find myself in need of other—luxuries. Yet there's an adventure in it, Whiting. A good little woman who lives in this house begs me to work. But I have never worked. And why begin? I've a heritage of bad habits, and one does not wish to seem superior to one's ancestors.
"The winters are the worst. I spend the summers on the open road. Ask Marion if she remembers the days when we read Stevenson together in the garden? Tell her it is like that—under the stars Tell her that I am getting more out of it than she is—with you
"But the winters send me back to town—and this winter Fate has brought me to an old house in a shabby street just a bit back from the Club. On the first floor there is a little family. Three kiddies and a young mother who works to keep the wolf from the door. There's a Pussy-Kiddie, and a Milly-Kiddie, and a baby, and they have adopted me as a friend.
"And this Christmas I had nothing to give them—but a red candle to light their room.
"When I got into your car it was just for the adventure. To breathe for a moment the air I once breathed—to fancy that Marion's ghost might sit beside me for one little moment, as she will sit beside you to the end of your days.
"I have played all rôles but that of robber—but when I saw the things that you had bought with Marion's money for Marion's children—it went to my head—and I wanted them in the worst way for those poor kiddies—who haven't any dolls or Christmas dinners.
"I am playing Santa Claus for them to-night. I shall take the things down and leave them in their poor rooms. It will be up to you to come and take them away. It will be up to you, too, to give this note to the police and steal my freedom.
"You used to be a good sport, Whiting. I have nothing against you except that you stole Marion—perhaps this will square our accounts. And if your children are, because of me, without their dolls to-morrow, you can remember this, that the kiddies are happy below stairs—since Dick Turpin dwells aloft!
"From among the rest I have chosen for myself a squat bottle, a box of biscuits, and a tin of the little imported sausages that you taught me to like.
"Well, my dear fellow, happy days! To-morrow morning I shall breakfast at your expense, unless you shall decide that I must breakfast behind bars.
"If you should come to-night, you will find in the window a red candle shining. They have put it there to guide St. Nicholas and a certain Fluffy Ruffles doll!
"Ever yours,
He found an envelope, sealed, and addressed it. Then he went to work.
Four trips he made down the stairs. Four times he tiptoed into the shadowed room, where the long red candle burned. And when he turned to take a last look there on the table beside the tree stood the blue doll for Milly and the Fluffy Ruffles doll for Pussy and the rattles and rings and blocks for the baby, and on the chairs and the shelf above the tree were the other things—the great cake and the fruit and the big basket and the boxes of candy.
And for the little mother there were the violets and a note:
"The red candle winked at your window and brought me in. It is useless to search for me—for now and then a Prince passes and goes on. And he is none the less a Prince because you do not know him."
And now there was that other note to deliver. Out in the cold once more, he found the moon gone and the snow falling. As he passed the saint on the old church, it seemed to smile down at him. The towers and gables were sheeted with white. His footsteps made no sound on the padded streets.
He left the note at Whiting's door. He fancied that, as the footman held it open, he saw Marion shining on the stairs!
He was glad after that to get home and to bed, and to the warmth of his blanket. There was the warmth, too, of the wine.
In a little while he was asleep. On the table by his untidy bed was the box of biscuits and the bottle and the tin of tiny sausages.
If all went well he would feast like a lord on Christmas morning!