Chapter VIII: Part III (4)

The upholstered cheerfulness of the dining-car found favor in the sight of Hope. She conducted herself, however, with her usual dignity, broken only occasionally by an ecstatic wriggle as the prospective visit of Santa Claus crossed her mind. Her dinner, superintended by an eminent physician and a trained nurse, was naturally a simple and severely hygienic one, but here, too, her admirable training was evident. She ate cheerfully her bowl of bread and milk, and wasted no longing glances on the plum-pudding.

Later, in the feverish excitement of hanging up her stockings, going to bed, and peeping through the curtains to catch Santa Claus, a little of her extraordinary repose of manner deserted her; but she fell asleep at last, with great reluctance.

When the curtains round her berth had ceased trembling, a most unusual procession wended its silent way toward Dr. Van Valkenberg’s section. In some occult manner the news had gone from one end to the other of the “Special” that a little girl in section nine, car _Floradora_, had hung up her stockings for Santa Claus. The hearts of fathers, mothers, and doting uncles responded at once. Dressing-cases were unlocked, great valises were opened, mysterious bundles were unwrapped, and from all these sources came gifts of surprising fitness. Small daughters and nieces, sleeping in Western cities, might well have turned restlessly in their beds had they seen the presents designed for them drop into a pair of tiny stockings and pile up on the floor below these.

A succession of long-drawn, ecstatic breaths and happy gurgles awoke the passengers on car _Floradora_ at an unseemly hour Christmas morning, and a small white figure, clad informally in a single garment, danced up and down the aisle, dragging carts and woolly lambs behind it. Occasionally there was the squeak of a talking doll, and always there was the patter of small feet and the soft cooing of a child’s voice, punctuated by the exquisite music of a child’s laughter. Dawn was just approaching, and the lamps, still burning, flared pale in the gray light. But in the length of that car there was no soul so base as to long for silence and the pillow. Crabbed old faces looked out between the curtains and smiled; eyes long unused to tears felt a sudden, strange moisture. Dr. Van Valkenberg had risen almost as early as Hope, and possibly the immaculate freshness of his attire, contrasted with the scantiness of her own, induced that young lady to retire from observation for a short time and emerge clothed for general society. Even during this brief retreat in the dressing-room the passengers heard her breathless voice, high-pitched in her excitement, chattering incessantly to the responsive Nana.

Throughout the day the snow still fell, and the outside world seemed far away and dreamlike to Dr. Van Valkenberg. The real things were this train, cutting its way through the snow, and this little child, growing deeper into his heart with each moment that passed. The situation was unique, but easy enough to understand, he told himself. He had merely gone back twenty-five years to that other child, whom he had petted in infancy and loved and lost in womanhood. He had been very lonely—how lonely he had only recently begun to realize, and he was becoming an old man whose life lay behind him. He crossed the aisle suddenly and sat down beside the nurse, leaving Hope singing her doll to sleep in his section. There was something almost diffident in his manner as he spoke.

“Will you tell me all you know about the child?” he asked. “She interests me greatly and appeals to me very strongly, probably because she’s so much like some one I used to know.”

The nurse closed her book and looked at him curiously. She had heard much of him, but nothing that would explain this interest in a strange child. He himself could not have explained it. He knew only that he felt it, powerfully and compellingly.

“Her name is Hope Armitage,” she said, quietly. “Her mother, who has just died, was a widow—Mrs. Katharine Armitage. They were poor, and Mrs. Armitage seemed to have no relations. She had saved a little, enough to pay most of her expenses at the hospital, and—” She hesitated a moment, and then went on: “I am telling you everything very frankly, because you are you, but it was done quietly enough. We all loved the woman. She was very unusual, and patient, and charming. All the nurses who had had anything to do with her cried when she died. We felt that she might have been saved if she had come in time, but she was worked out. She had earned her living by sewing, after her husband’s death, three years ago, and she kept at it day and night. She hadn’t much constitution to begin with, and none when she came to us. She was so sweet, so brave, yet so desperately miserable over leaving her little girl alone in the world——”

Dr. Van Valkenberg sat silent. It was true, then. This was Katharine’s child. Had he not known it? Could he have failed to know it, whenever or wherever they had met? He had not known of the death of Armitage nor of the subsequent poverty of his widow, but he had known Katharine’s baby, he now told himself, the moment he saw her.

“Well,” the nurse resumed, “after she died we raised a small fund to buy some clothes for Hope, and take her to Chicago to her new home. Mrs. Armitage has a cousin there, who has agreed to take her in. None of the relatives came to the funeral; there are not many of them, and the Chicago people haven’t much money, I fancy. They offered to send Hope’s fare, or even to come for her if it was absolutely necessary; but they seemed very much relieved when we wrote that I would bring her out.”

Dr. Van Valkenberg did not speak at once. He was hardly surprised. Life was full of extraordinary situations, and his profession had brought him face to face with many of them. Nevertheless, a deep solemnity filled him and a strange peace settled over him. He turned to the nurse with something of this in his face and voice.

“I want her,” he said, briefly. “Her mother and father were old friends of mine, and this thing looks like fate. Will they give her to me—these Chicago people—do you think?”

Tears filled the woman’s eyes.

“Indeed they will,” she said, “and gladly. There was”—she hesitated—“there was even some talk of sending her to an institution before they finally decided to take her. Dear little Hope—how happy she will be with you!”

He left her, and went back to the seat where Hope sat, crooning to the doll. Sitting down, he gathered them both up in his arms, and a thrill shot through him as he looked at the yellow curls resting against his breast. Her child—her little helpless baby—now his child, to love and care for. He was not a religious man; nevertheless a prayer rose spontaneously in his heart. But there was a plea to be made—a second plea, like the one he had made the mother; this time he felt that he knew the answer.

“Hope,” he said, gently, “once, long ago, I asked a little girl to come and live with me, and she would not come. Now I want to ask you to come, and stay with me always, and be my own little girl, and let me take care of you and make you happy. Will you come?”

The radiance of June sunshine broke out upon her face and shone in the brown eyes upturned to his. How well he knew that look! Hope did not turn toward Nana, and that significant omission touched him deeply. She seemed to feel that here was a question she alone must decide. She drew a long breath as she looked up at him.

“Really, truly?” she asked. Then, as he nodded without speaking, she saw something in his face that was new to her. It was nothing to frighten a little girl, for it was very sweet and tender; but for one second she thought her new friend was going to cry! She put both arms around his neck, and replied softly, with the exquisite maternal cadences her voice had taken on in her first words to him when he entered the car:

“I’ll be your own little girl, and I’ll take care of you, too. You know, you said I could.”

Dr. Van Valkenberg turned to the nurse.

“I shall go with you to her cousin’s, from the train,” he announced. “I’m ready to give them all the proofs they need that I’m a suitable guardian for the child, but,” he added, with a touch of the boyishness that had never left him, “I want this matter settled now.”

The long train pounded its way into the station at Chicago, and the nurse hurriedly put on Hope’s coat and gloves and fastened the ribbons of her hood under her chin. Dr. Van Valkenberg summoned a porter.

“Take care of all these things,” he said, indicating both sets of possessions with a sweep of the arm. “I shall have my hands full with my little daughter.”

He gathered her into his arms as he spoke, and she nestled against his broad chest with a child’s unconscious satisfaction in the strength and firmness of his clasp. The lights of the great station were twinkling in the early dusk as he stepped off the train, and the place was noisy with the greetings exchanged between the passengers and their waiting friends.

“Merry Christmas,” “Merry Christmas,” sounded on every side. Everybody was absorbed and excited, yet there were few who did not find time to turn a last look on a singularly attractive little child, held above the crowd in the arms of a tall man. She was laughing triumphantly as he bore her through the throng, and his heart was in his eyes as he smiled back at her.

[11]By special permission of the author.

A BEGGAR’S CHRISTMAS[12]

A FABLE

_Edith Wyatt_

Once upon a time there was a beggar-maid named Anitra, who lived in a cellar in the largest city of a wealthy and fabulous nation.

In spite of the fact that the country was passing through an era of great commercial prosperity, it contained such large numbers of beggars, and the competition among them was so keen, that on Christmas Eve at midnight, Anitra found herself without a single cent.

She turned away from the street-corner, where she had been standing with her little stack of fortune-cards, and hurried through the alleys to the shelter of her cellar. These fortune-cards of hers were printed in all languages; and, had the public but known, it could not go wrong among them, for every single card promised good-luck to the chooser. But, in spite of all this tact on Anitra’s part, and her complete dependence upon universal chivalry, qualities which are woman’s surest methods of success in the real world, in the wealthy and fabulous kingdom she now found herself not only hungry, ragged, and penniless, but also without a roof over her head. For when she reached her cellar-door it was nailed shut: and, as she had not paid her rent for a long time, she knew she could not persuade her fabulous landlord to open it for her.

She walked away, holding her little torn shawl fast around her, and shaking her loose black hair around her cheeks to try to keep them warm. But the cold and the damp struck to her very bones. Her little feet in their ragged shoes and stockings were as numb as clubs; and she limped along, scarcely able to direct them, to know where she was going, or to know anything in fact, except that she would freeze to death if she stood still.

Soon she reached a large dark building with a broad flight of steps and a pillared entrance. Nobody seemed to be guarding it, and she managed to creep up the steps and in between the pillars out of the snow.

Behind the pillars rose enormous closed doors. Under the doors shone a chink of light. Anitra stooped down and put her hand against the crack. There was a little warmth in the air sifting through. She laid her whole body close against the opening. That pushed the doors inward slightly, and she slipped inside the entrance.

She was in a tremendous gilded, carven, and pillared hall of great tiers of empty seats and far dark galleries, all dimly lighted and all garlanded with wreaths of mistletoe and holly. For a long time she sat on the floor with her head thrown back against the door, staring quietly about her, without moving a hair for fear of being driven away. But no one came. The whole place was silent.

After about an hour, she rose softly, and stepped without a sound along the dark velvet carpet of the centre aisle and up a flight of steps at the end, to a great gold throne with cushions of purple velvet and ermine. She rested her wrists on the gold ledge of the seat, and with a little vault she jumped up on the cushions. They were warm and soft. She curled up among them, and pulled her little shawl over her, meaning to jump down the instant she heard the least noise. And while she was listening she fell fast asleep.

She was awakened by the cool gray light of the December daybreak falling through the long windows, over all the gold-carven pillars and high beams and arches, all the empty seats and dark velvet cushions and high garlands of holly.

She held her breath. Three men, who had plainly not seen her, had entered at a side-door. She recognized them all from their pictures in the papers. They were the aged Minister, the middle-aged Chancellor, and the young King of the kingdom. The King carried a roll of parchment in his hand and seemed very nervous, and the Chancellor was speaking to him about “throwing the voice,” as they all came up the centre aisle, and then straight up the steps, toward the throne.

Dumb with fright, Anitra raised her head from the cushions. The three men suddenly saw her. The young King started and dropped the parchment, the Chancellor stumbled and nearly fell, and the aged Minister darted toward her.

“What are you doing here?” he cried angrily.

“Nothing,” said Anitra, sitting up, with her shawl held tightly around her, and her little ragged shoes dangling from the throne.

“Who are you?” said the Chancellor suspiciously, staring at her. He was very short-sighted.

“Nobody,” said Anitra.

“She is just a stray who has got in here somehow,” said the Minister rather kindly. “Run away, my child,” he added, giving her a coin. “Can’t you see the King wants to practice his speech here, now?”

But the Chancellor seemed to be considering. “Do you know,” he said softly to the Minister, as the King, who had picked up the parchment, stood absorbed, whispering his speech over to himself, “an idea has struck me. I don’t know but that we might let her stay there till the reporters come to photograph the new hall. It would look rather well, you know, if something like this should get into the papers, ‘Mighty Monarch Finding Stray Asleep on Throne, on Christmas Morn, Refuses to Break Slumbers.’”

The old Minister looked a little doubtful. “You can’t tell what she might say afterwards,” he said.

“We can easily arrange that,” replied the Chancellor; and he turned towards Anitra and said sternly, “If we let you stay here will you promise not to say one word to anyone about the matter or about anything you see or hear in this hall, without our permission?”

“Yes,” said Anitra readily.

“Consider what you are saying, my child,” said the Minister mildly. “Do you know this means that if you say one word the administration dislikes you will be hung?”

“No, indeed,” said Anitra in misery. “How could I know that?”

“You should not have promised so rashly,” said the Chancellor. “But now that it is done, we will trust that everything will fall out so that it will not be necessary to hang you.”

“What do you want me to do?” said Anitra.

“Simply remain here now, just as you were when we came in, except with your eyes shut,” said the Chancellor, “and then when we tell you to do so, go down and sit on the throne-steps until the audience-hall is filled with all the populace who are coming to see the new audience-chamber, and to listen to the judgments of the King, on Christmas Day. If anybody asks you how you came to be here, you might mention the fact that you had strayed in from the cold, and tell about the royal clemency shown in permitting you to remain. Then, at the end of the day, if you have done as you should, you can go out with the rest of the people.”

“Go to sleep again, now,” said the aged Minister, “just as you were when we came in.”

Anitra put her head down on the cushion again, but she could not sleep, for the King began to read his proclamation at the top of his lungs, so that it could be heard in the furthest galleries, where the Chancellor stood and kept calling, “Louder! Louder!” The speech was all about the wealth and prosperity and happiness and good fortune of the kingdom, and how no one needed to be hungry or cold or poor in any way, because there was such plenty.

When the King had finished, he said rather crossly to the Chancellor, “Well, are you suited?”

The Chancellor expressed his content, and they talked over the prisoners who were to be judged, which ones were to be hanged, and which ones were to be pardoned, till the Chancellor had to hurry away to attend to some other matters. The King left moodily soon afterwards. The Chancellor’s opinions and methods were often obnoxious to him; but he disliked greatly to wound or oppose him in any way. He had been an old and intimate friend of the King’s father, and besides he was very powerful in the country.

All this time Anitra had kept her eyes closed; and she now lay still, while strange footsteps sounded on the marble floors and she heard the reporters coming to photograph the new audience-hall, heard them asking the aged Minister why she was there, and heard him telling them about the early visit of the King to inspect the new audience-chamber, and his wish that the slumber of the beggar-girl should not be disturbed till the arrival of the audience made it absolutely necessary. Then she heard them tiptoeing away to a little distance, heard their fountain-pens scratching and their cameras clicking through the empty galleries, and at last she heard them going away.

“Now you can jump down, and run around for a little while,” said the Minister, waiting a minute before following them. “Some of the Democratic papers will have extras out, by three o’clock this afternoon, with photographs of you asleep on the throne, and there will be editorials in the Republican papers about the King’s tact and grace in the matter.”

Although Anitra wished to answer that she was too faint from hunger to jump down and run around, she made no reply for fear of being hung. But she slipped down from the throne, and sat on the throne-step, on the tread nearest the floor, in the hope of not being seen and questioned by the entering audience, for some time at least.

For it was ten o’clock now. The great doors had swung wide open and a tremendous crowd of people surged into the hall,—men, women, and children, laughing, talking, exclaiming over the beauty of the new audience-chamber, and wondering what would happen to the three murderers the King would judge that day. It was a prosperous, well-dressed city crowd, and it poured in till it had filled the hall, the galleries, the aisles, and the staircases, and till the latest comers had even climbed upon the shoulders of the others, to the window-sills and the ledges of the wainscoting. With the rest came two old, wrinkled, clumsy shepherds from the country, with staffs in their hands and sheepskins on their backs, and sharp, aged eyes looking out from under their shaggy eyebrows, as though they could watch well for wolves. Although they came among the last, they somehow made their way up to the very front of the hall. Except for these old shepherds and Anitra, all the people wore their very best clothes. The sun sparkled over everything. Outside, the Christmas bells rang, and Anitra looked at it all, and listened to it all, and hoped she would not faint with hunger, and wondered whether she could go through the day without saying something the Chancellor would dislike and being hung for it.

The people in the first row stared hard at her, and one usher wished to put her out because she was sitting inside the red velvet cordon intended to separate the royal platform from the populace. But another usher came hurrying up to say that he had received official orders to the effect that she was to be permitted to remain just where she was.

Before any one in the first row had time to ask her how she came to be there inside the red velvet cordon, the heralds blew on the trumpets, and everybody turned to see the entrance of the prisoners.

They were a man, a woman, and a boy. The woman was a cotton-spinner, Elizabeth, a poor neighbor of Anitra’s, who had left a fatherless child of hers upon a doorstep where it died. The boy was a Moorish merchant’s son, Joseph, who had stabbed another boy in a street-brawl. The man was a noble, Bernardino, who had killed his adversary in a duel. The turnkeys marched on either side of the prisoners and marshaled them into their seats on the platform.

No one in the court knew about Elizabeth or the Moorish boy Joseph, or paid any attention to them, except that Joseph’s father stood with haggard eyes close to the cordon, and he looked at his son and his son looked back at him with a deep glance of devotion when the prisoners marched by to judgment. Six or seven rows back in the audience sat Elizabeth’s little sister, and when the prisoners were standing at the bar, she leaned far forward and threw a little sprig of holly down at Elizabeth’s feet, and Elizabeth stooped and picked it up.

But there was a great buzz in the crowd when Bernardino, the nobleman, marched by. He was well known at court. His best friends sat together, and they cheered, and there was constant applause as he passed, and he bowed grandly to everybody.

Then there was another flourish of trumpets, and the pages and ladies-and-lords-in-waiting and knights and chamberlains came in, and the Minister and the Chancellor, and last of all the young King. The whole room rang with applause and cheers. All the heralds blew on the bugles. The bells rang and the young King took his seat on the throne between the Minister and the Chancellor, and waited till the audience-chamber was still.

The herald came forward and cried, “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Bernardino, Duke of Urba, Lord of Rustica, come into the Court!” Bernardino, with his fur cape swinging from his broad shoulders and his plume tossing, stepped forward from the bar, and his trial began. The King heard evidence upon one side and heard evidence upon the other for a long, long time: and at last he pardoned Bernardino. The bells rang, and the trumpets sounded again, and Bernardino’s friends went nearly wild with joy. And Bernardino kissed the King’s hand and walked down the throne-steps a free man.

Only, the two aged clumsy shepherds turned and looked at each other, as if they felt some contempt for what was happening. And while Anitra watched them, as she thought how hungry she was, it seemed to her that they were far younger than she had noticed at first. They appeared to be about fifty years old.

Bernardino’s trial had occupied a great length of time; and just after it was over, and the applause and tumult after the decision had died down, and the herald had called, “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Joseph, son of the merchant Joseph, come into the Court!” then Anitra noticed that every one was looking at her, and whispering. She saw papers passed from hand to hand, and knew that the extras the King had spoken of must have come out.

Everybody was so entertained and preoccupied with comparing the newspaper pictures of Anitra with Anitra herself, and with reading, “Mighty Monarch Finding Stray on Throne on Christmas Morn Refuses to Break Slumbers,” that Joseph’s trial seemed to slip by almost without public notice.

Only, Joseph’s father hung on every word. The King heard evidence upon one side and heard evidence upon the other for a long, long time, and every few minutes, on account of the buzz about Anitra’s being permitted to sleep on the throne, the herald would be obliged to ask for silence in the audience-chamber. For no one knew Joseph, and no one cared about his fate except in so far as there was a general feeling that a murder committed by a Moor was more dangerous than a murder committed by anybody else. So that toward the end, when the evidence seemed to show more and more that Joseph had fought only to defend himself, the court was more silent, and there was a certain tenseness in the air. The King turned white. He condemned Joseph to death; but he did not look at him, he looked away. Joseph stood proudly before him, without moving an eyelash, without moving a muscle. Joseph’s father looked as proud as his son. But his face had changed to the face of an old man, and in his eyes burned the painful glance of a soul enduring an injustice.

Every one else seemed to be satisfied, however. Only, the two aged, clumsy shepherds turned and looked at each other as though they felt a certain contempt for what was happening. And while Anitra watched, as she thought how hungry she was, it seemed to her that they were not aged at all. They appeared to be about forty years old.

Then the herald called, “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Elizabeth, spinner of cotton, come into the Court!” And everything turned so black before Anitra that she could hardly see Elizabeth come out and stand before the King. For she loved Elizabeth and Elizabeth’s sister, and she knew that Elizabeth had deserted her baby when she was beside herself with sickness and disgrace and poverty, and she knew that the father who had deserted her and deserted the baby was one of those trumpeters of the King, who had just been blowing the blasts of triumph for him, to the admiration of the whole court.

Then the King heard evidence upon one side, and heard evidence upon the other. But almost everything was against Elizabeth; though the King in his mercy changed her sentence from death to imprisonment and disgrace for her whole life. Every one applauded his clemency. But the little sister sobbed and cried like a crazy thing, though Elizabeth raised her chin and smiled bravely at her, to comfort her.

The shepherds turned and looked at each other with a glance of contempt for what was happening. And now they were not aged or clumsy at all. They were strong, straight young men, more beautiful than anything else Anitra had seen in her whole life; and they looked at her beautifully as though they were her brothers.

Then the heralds all came out and blew upon the trumpets to announce the King’s proclamation; and the King read about all the wealth and prosperity and peace and good fortune and happiness and plenty of the nation; and every minute Anitra grew more and more faint with hunger.

When the proclamation was done the people screamed and shouted. The Christmas bells rang. The fifes and bugles sounded. Everybody cheered the King, and the King rose and responded. Then everybody cheered the Chancellor, and he bowed and responded. Then there were cries of “Long Live Bernardino!” and the bugles were sounded for him; and he bowed and responded. And then some one called “Long Live Anitra, the Beggar-girl!” And there was an uproar of cheers and bugles and applause and excitement.

Anitra rose and stood upon the throne-steps. But she looked only at the shepherds, who were more beautiful than anything else she had ever seen in her whole life, and who looked at her beautifully as though they were her brothers. She thought, “I must have died some day at any rate. So I will die to-day and speak the truth.”

When the audience-chamber was still she said, “I am Anitra the Beggar-girl. But I do not praise the King for his kindness, for though he let me stay on his throne he is letting me die of hunger. And I do not praise the King for his justice, for in his court the man who deserts his child and his child’s mother walks free, and the woman who deserts her child must die in prison. And in his court the King pardons one man and condemns another for exactly the same fault.”

Then the two shepherds walked up the steps of the throne. Everything was still. Not a bell rang. Not a trumpet blew. But as the shepherds walked, the audience-chamber seemed to vanish away; and all around, beyond the pillared arches, and beyond the prosperous people, stood all the poor people, all the hungry people, all the unjustly-paid and overworked and sick and struggling people in the nation. And in the judges and judged, and the prosperous people and the poor people, there rose like the first quiver of dawn a sense simply of what was really true for each one and for every one.

The younger shepherd said, “In this Court to-day stand those who are more strong than all the triumphs of the world. We are the Truth and Death.”

And as he spoke, all thought of judgment and of condemnation and pardon and patronage vanished away; and in everybody’s soul the thought simply of what was really true for each one and for every one opened like the clear flower of daybreak.

Not a bell rang. Not a trumpet blew. “We are the Truth and Death,” repeated the older shepherd.

And the thought simply of what was really true for each one and for every one, and the thought that all were common fellow mortals thrilled through everybody’s soul more keenly and more fully than the light of morning and the tones of all the trumpets of the world.

After that, the shepherds did not again turn and glance at each other as though they felt a contempt for what was happening. For from that time on, everything was done in the Court only with the thought of what was really true for each one and for every one, and the thought that all were fellow mortals; and before the next Christmas, there were no beggars at all in the fabulous nation. And the Truth and Death, there, always looked at everybody beautifully, as though they were their brothers.

[12]By permission of the author and the “Atlantic Monthly.”

A CHRISTMAS MYSTERY[13]

THE STORY OF THREE WISE MEN

_William J. Locke_

I cannot tell how the truth may be;
I say the tale as ’twas said to me.

Three men who had gained great fame and honor throughout the world met unexpectedly in front of the bookstall at Paddington Station. Like most of the great ones of the earth they were personally acquainted, and they exchanged surprised greetings.

Sir Angus McCurdie, the eminent physicist, scowled at the two others beneath his heavy black eyebrows.

“I’m going to a God-forsaken place in Cornwall called Trehenna,” said he.

“That’s odd; so am I,” croaked Professor Biggleswade. He was a little, untidy man with round spectacles, a fringe of grayish beard and a weak, rasping voice, and he knew more of Assyriology than any man, living or dead. A flippant pupil once remarked that the Professor’s face was furnished with a Babylonic cuneiform in lieu of features.

“People called Deverill, at Foullis Castle?” asked Sir Angus.

“Yes,” replied Professor Biggleswade.

“How curious! I am going to the Deverills, too,” said the third man.

This man was the Right Honorable Viscount Boyne, the renowned Empire Builder and Administrator, around whose solitary and remote life popular imagination had woven many legends. He looked at the world through tired gray eyes, and the heavy drooping blonde mustache seemed tired, too, and had dragged down the tired face into deep furrows. He was smoking a long black cigar.

“I suppose we may as well travel down together,” said Sir Angus, not very cordially.

Lord Boyne said courteously: “I have a reserved carriage. The railway company is always good enough to place one at my disposal. It would give me great pleasure if you would share it.”

The invitation was accepted, and the three men crossed the busy, crowded platform to take their seats in the great express train. A porter laden with an incredible load of paraphernalia, trying to make his way through the press, happened to jostle Sir Angus McCurdie. He rubbed his shoulder fretfully.

“Why the whole land should be turned into a bear garden on account of this exploded superstition of Christmas is one of the anomalies of modern civilization. Look at this insensate welter of fools traveling in wild herds to disgusting places merely because it’s Christmas!”

“You seem to be traveling yourself, McCurdie,” said Lord Boyne.

“Yes—and why the devil I’m doing it, I’ve not the faintest notion,” replied Sir Angus.

“It’s going to be a beast of a journey,” he remarked some moments later, as the train carried them slowly out of the station. “The whole country is under snow—and as far as I can understand we have to change twice and wind up with a twenty-mile motor drive.”

He was an iron-faced, beetle-browed, stern man, and this morning he did not seem to be in the best of tempers. Finding his companions inclined to be sympathetic, he continued his lamentation.

“And merely because it’s Christmas I’ve had to shut up my laboratory and give my young fools a holiday—just when I was in the midst of a most important series of experiments.”

Professor Biggleswade, who had heard vaguely of and rather looked down upon such new-fangled toys as radium and thorium and helium and argon—for the latest astonishing developments in the theory of radio-activity had brought Sir Angus McCurdie his worldwide fame—said somewhat ironically:

“If the experiments were so important, why didn’t you lock yourself up with your test tubes and electric batteries and finish them alone?”

“Man!” said McCurdie, bending across the carriage, and speaking with a curious intensity of voice, “d’ye know I’d give a hundred pounds to be able to answer that question.”

“What do you mean?” asked the Professor, startled.

“I should like to know why I’m sitting in this damned train and going to visit a couple of addle-headed society people whom I’m scarcely acquainted with, when I might be at home in my own good company furthering the progress of science.”

“I myself,” said the Professor, “am not acquainted with them at all.”

It was Sir Angus McCurdie’s turn to look surprised.

“Then why are you spending Christmas with them?”

“I reviewed a ridiculous blank-verse tragedy written by Deverill on the Death of Sennacherib. Historically it was puerile. I said so in no measured terms. He wrote a letter claiming to be a poet and not an archæologist. I replied that the day had passed when poets could with impunity commit the abominable crime of distorting history. He retorted with some futile argument, and we went on exchanging letters, until his invitation and my acceptance concluded the correspondence.”

McCurdie, still bending his black brows on him, asked him why he had not declined. The Professor screwed up his face till it looked more like a cuneiform than ever. He, too, found the question difficult to answer; but he showed a bold front.

“I felt it my duty,” said he, “to teach that preposterous ignoramus something worth knowing about Sennacherib. Besides I am a bachelor and would sooner spend Christmas, as to whose irritating and meaningless annoyance I cordially agree with you, among strangers than among my married sisters’ numerous and nerve-racking families.”

Sir Angus McCurdie, the hard, metallic apostle of radio-activity, glanced for a moment out of the window at the gray, frost-bitten fields. Then he said:

“I’m a widower. My wife died many years ago and, thank God, we had no children. I generally spend Christmas alone.”

He looked out of the window again. Professor Biggleswade suddenly remembered the popular story of the great scientist’s antecedents, and reflected that as McCurdie had once run, a barefoot urchin, through the Glasgow mud, he was likely to have little kith or kin. He himself envied McCurdie. He was always praying to be delivered from his sisters and nephews and nieces, whose embarrassing demands no calculated coldness could repress.

“Children are the root of all evil,” said he. “Happy the man who has his quiver empty.”

Sir Angus McCurdie did not reply at once; when he spoke again it was with reference to their prospective host.

“I met Deverill,” said he, “at the Royal Society’s Soirée this year. One of my assistants was demonstrating a peculiar property of thorium and Deverill seemed interested. I asked him to come to my laboratory the next day, and found he didn’t know a damned thing about anything. That’s all the acquaintance I have with him.”

Lord Boyne, the great administrator, who had been wearily turning over the pages of an illustrated weekly chiefly filled with flamboyant photographs of obscure actresses, took his gold glasses from his nose and the black cigar from his lips, and addressed his companions.

“I’ve been considerably interested in your conversation,” said he, “and as you’ve been frank, I’ll be frank too. I knew Mrs. Deverill’s mother, Lady Carstairs, very well years ago, and of course Mrs. Deverill when she was a child. Deverill I came across once in Egypt—he had been sent on a diplomatic mission to Teheran. As for our being invited on such slight acquaintance, little Mrs. Deverill has the reputation of being the only really successful celebrity hunter in England. She inherited the faculty from her mother, who entertained the whole world. We’re sure to find archbishops, and eminent actors, and illustrious divorcées asked to meet us. That’s one thing. But why I, who loathe country house parties and children and Christmas as much as Biggleswade, am going down there to-day, I can no more explain than you can. It’s a devilish odd coincidence.”

The three men looked at one another. Suddenly McCurdie shivered and drew his fur coat around him.

“I’ll thank you,” said he, “to shut that window.”

“It’s shut,” said Boyne.

“It’s just uncanny,” said McCurdie, looking from one to the other.

“What?” asked Boyne.

“Nothing if you didn’t feel it.”

“There did seem to be a sudden draught,” said Professor Biggleswade. “But as both window and door are shut, it could only be imaginary.”

“It wasn’t imaginary,” muttered McCurdie.

Then he laughed harshly. “My father and mother came from Cromarty,” he said with apparent irrelevance.

“That’s the Highlands,” said the Professor.

“Ay,” said McCurdie.

Lord Boyne said nothing, but tugged at his mustache and looked out of the window as the frozen meadows and bits of river and willows raced past. A dead silence fell on them. McCurdie broke it with another laugh and took a whisky flask from his handbag.

“Have a nip?”

“Thanks, no,” said the Professor. “I have to keep to a strict dietary, and I only drink hot milk and water—and of that sparingly. I have some in a thermos bottle.”

Lord Boyne also declining the whisky, McCurdie swallowed a dram and declared himself to be better. The professor took from his bag a foreign review in which a German sciolist had dared to question his interpretation of a Hittite inscription. Over the man’s ineptitude he fell asleep and snored loudly.

To escape from his immediate neighborhood McCurdie went to the other end of the seat and faced Lord Boyne, who had resumed his gold glasses and his listless contemplation of obscure actresses. McCurdie lit a pipe, Boyne another black cigar. The train thundered on.

Presently they all lunched together in the restaurant car. The windows steamed, but here and there through a wiped patch of pane a white world was revealed. The snow was falling. As they passed through Westbury, McCurdie looked mechanically for the famous white horse carved into the chalk of the down; but it was not visible beneath the thick covering of snow.

“It’ll be just like this all the way to Gehenna—Trehenna, I mean,” said McCurdie.

Boyne nodded. He had done his life’s work amid all extreme fiercenesses of heat and cold, in burning draughts, in simoons and in icy wildernesses, and a ray or two more of the pale sun or a flake or two more of the gentle snow of England mattered to him but little. But Biggleswade rubbed the pane with his table-napkin and gazed apprehensively at the prospect.

“If only this wretched train would stop,” said he, “I would go back again.”

And he thought how comfortable it would be to sneak home again to his books and thus elude not only the Deverills, but the Christmas jollities of his sisters’ families, who would think him miles away. But the train was timed not to stop till Plymouth, two hundred and thirty-five miles from London, and thither was he being relentlessly carried. Then he quarreled with his food, which brought a certain consolation.

The train did stop, however, before Plymouth—indeed, before Exeter. An accident on the line had dislocated the traffic. The express was held up for an hour, and when it was permitted to proceed, instead of thundering on, it went cautiously, subject to continual stoppings. It arrived at Plymouth two hours late. The travelers learned that they had missed the connection on which they had counted and that they could not reach Trehenna till nearly ten o’clock. After weary waiting at Plymouth they took their seats in the little, cold local train that was to carry them another stage on their journey. Hot-water cans put in at Plymouth mitigated to some extent the iciness of the compartment. But that only lasted a comparatively short time, for soon they were set down at a desolate, shelterless wayside junction, dumped in the midst of a hilly snow-covered waste, where they went through another weary wait for another dismal local train that was to carry them to Trehenna. And in this train there were no hot-water cans, so that the compartment was as cold as death. McCurdie fretted and shook his fist in the direction of Trehenna.

“And when we get there we have still a twenty miles’ motor-drive to Foullis Castle. It’s a fool name and we’re fools to be going there.”

“I shall die of bronchitis,” wailed Professor Biggleswade.

“A man dies when it is appointed for him to die,” said Lord Boyne, in his tired way; and he went on smoking long black cigars.

“It’s not the dying that worries me,” said McCurdie. “That’s a mere mechanical process which every organic being from a king to a cauliflower has to pass through. It’s the being forced against my will and my reason to come on this accursed journey, which something tells me will become more and more accursed as we go on, that is driving me to distraction.”

“What will be, will be,” said Boyne.

“I can’t see where the comfort of that reflection comes in,” said Biggleswade.

“And yet you’ve traveled in the East,” said Boyne. “I suppose you know the Valley of the Tigris as well as any man living.”

“Yes,” said the Professor, “I can say I dug my way from Tekrit to Bagdad and left not a stone unexamined.”

“Perhaps, after all,” Boyne remarked, “that’s not quite the way to know the East.”

“I never wanted to know the modern East,” returned the Professor. “What is there in it of interest compared with the mighty civilizations that have gone before?”

McCurdie took a pull from his flask.

“I’m glad I thought of having a refill at Plymouth,” said he.

At last, after many stops at little lonely stations they arrived at Trehenna. The guard opened the door and they stepped out on to the snow-covered platform. An oil lamp hung from the tiny pent-house roof that, structurally, was Trehenna Station. They looked around at the silent gloom of white undulating moorland, and it seemed a place where no man lived and only ghosts could have a bleak and unsheltered being. A porter came up and helped the guard with the luggage. Then they realized that the station was built on a small embankment, for, looking over the railing, they saw below the two great lamps of a motor car. A fur-clad chauffeur met them at the bottom of the stairs. He clapped his hands together and informed them cheerily that he had been waiting for four hours. It was the bitterest winter in these parts within the memory of man, said he, and he himself had not seen snow there for five years. Then he settled the three travelers in the great roomy touring car covered with a Cape cart hood, wrapped them up in many rugs and started.

After a few moments, the huddling together of their bodies—for, the Professor being a spare man, there was room for them all on the back seat—the pile of rugs, the serviceable and all but air-tight hood, induced a pleasant warmth and a pleasant drowsiness. Where they were being driven they knew not. The perfectly upholstered seat eased their limbs, the easy swinging motion of the car soothed their spirits. They felt that already they had reached the luxuriously appointed home which, after all, they knew awaited them. McCurdie no longer railed, Professor Biggleswade forgot the dangers of bronchitis, and Lord Boyne twisted the stump of a black cigar between his lips without any desire to relight it. A tiny electric lamp inside the hood made the darkness of the world to right and left and in front of the talc windows still darker. McCurdie and Biggleswade fell into a doze. Lord Boyne chewed the end of his cigar. The car sped on through an unseen wilderness.

Suddenly there was a horrid jolt and a lurch and a leap and a rebound and then the car stood still, quivering like a ship that has been struck by a heavy sea. The three men were pitched and tossed and thrown sprawling over one another onto the bottom of the car. Biggleswade screamed. McCurdie cursed. Boyne scrambled from the confusion of rugs and limbs and, tearing open the side of the Cape cart hood, jumped out. The chauffeur had also just leaped from his seat. It was pitch dark save for the great shaft of light down the snowy road cast by the acetylene lamps. The snow had ceased falling.

“What’s gone wrong?”

“It sounds like the axle,” said the chauffeur ruefully.

He unshipped a lamp and examined the car, which had wedged itself against a great drift of snow on the off side. Meanwhile McCurdie and Biggleswade had alighted.

“Yes, it’s the axle,” said the chauffeur.

“Then we’re done,” remarked Boyne.

“I’m afraid so, my lord.”

“What’s the matter? Can’t we get on?” asked Biggleswade in his querulous voice.

McCurdie laughed. “How can we get on with a broken axle? The thing’s as useless as a man with a broken back. Gad, I was right. I said it was going to be an infernal journey.”

The little Professor wrung his hands. “But what’s to be done?” he cried.

“Tramp it,” said Lord Boyne, lighting a fresh cigar.

“It’s ten miles,” said the chauffeur.

“It would be the death of me,” the Professor wailed.

“I utterly refuse to walk ten miles through a Polar waste with a gouty foot,” McCurdie declared wrathfully.

The chauffeur offered a solution of the difficulty. He would set out alone for Foullis Castle—five miles further on was an inn where he could obtain a horse and trap—and would return for the three gentlemen with another car. In the meanwhile they could take shelter in a little house which they had just passed, some half mile up the road. This was agreed to. The chauffeur went on cheerily enough with a lamp, and the three travelers with another lamp started off in the opposite direction. As far as they could see they were in a long, desolate valley, a sort of No Man’s Land, deathly silent. The eastern sky had cleared somewhat, and they faced a loose rack through which one pale star was dimly visible.

“I’m a man of science,” said McCurdie as they trudged through the snow, “and I dismiss the supernatural as contrary to reason; but I have Highland blood in my veins that plays me exasperating tricks. My reason tells me that this place is only a commonplace moor, yet it seems like a Valley of Bones haunted by malignant spirits who have lured us here to our destruction. There’s something guiding us now. It’s just uncanny.”

“Why on earth did we ever come?” croaked Biggleswade.

Lord Boyne answered: “The Koran says, ‘Nothing can befall us but what God hath destined for us.’ So why worry?”

“Because I’m not a Mohammedan,” retorted Biggleswade.

“You might be worse,” said Boyne.

Presently the dim outline of the little house grew perceptible. A faint light shone from the window. It stood unfenced by any kind of hedge or railing a few feet away from the road in a little hollow beneath some rising ground. As far as they could discern in the darkness when they drew near, the house was a mean, dilapidated hovel. A guttering candle stood on the inner sill of the small window and afforded a vague view into a mean interior. Boyne held up the lamp so that its rays fell full on the door. As he did so, an exclamation broke from his lips and he hurried forward, followed by the others. A man’s body lay huddled together on the snow by the threshold. He was dressed like a peasant, in old corduroy trousers and rough coat, and a handkerchief was knotted round his neck. In his hand he grasped the neck of a broken bottle. Boyne set the lamp on the ground and the three bent down together over the man. Close by the neck lay the rest of the broken bottle, whose contents had evidently run out into the snow.

“Drunk?” asked Biggleswade.

Boyne felt the man and laid his hand on his heart.

“No,” said he, “dead.”

McCurdie leaped to his full height. “I told you the place was uncanny!” he cried. “It’s fey.” Then he hammered wildly at the door.

There was no response. He hammered again till it rattled. This time a faint prolonged sound like the wailing of a strange sea-creature was heard from within the house. McCurdie turned round, his teeth chattering.

“Did ye hear that, Boyne?”

“Perhaps it’s a dog,” said the Professor.

Lord Boyne, the man of action, pushed them aside and tried the door-handle. It yielded, the door stood open, and the gust of cold wind entering the house extinguished the candle within. They entered and found themselves in a miserable stone-paved kitchen, furnished with poverty-stricken meagerness—a wooden chair or two, a dirty table, some broken crockery, old cooking utensils, a flyblown missionary society almanac, and a fireless grate. Boyne set the lamp on the table.

“We must bring him in,” said he.

They returned to the threshold, and as they were bending over to grip the dead man the same sound filled the air, but this time louder, more intense, a cry of great agony. The sweat dripped from McCurdie’s forehead. They lifted the dead man and brought him into the room, and after laying him on a dirty strip of carpet they did their best to straighten the stiff limbs. Biggleswade put on the table a bundle which he had picked up outside. It contained some poor provisions—a loaf, a piece of fat bacon, and a paper of tea. As far as they could guess (and as they learned later they guessed rightly) the man was the master of the house, who, coming home blind drunk from some distant inn, had fallen at his own threshold and got frozen to death. As they could not unclasp his fingers from the broken bottle neck they had to let him clutch it as a dead warrior clutches the hilt of his broken sword.

Then suddenly the whole place was rent with another and yet another long, soul-piercing moan of anguish.

“There’s a second room,” said Boyne, pointing to a door. “The sound comes from there.”