Chapter D

For half a moment longer Laine stared at the paper in his hand, then, with the cigar, it fell to the floor, and he lifted his head as if for breath. Something had snapped, something that had been tense and tight, and his throat seemed closing. Presently his face dropped in his arms. What a fool he had been! He had let the prattle of a child torture and torment him and keep him silent, and now she was gone. After a while he raised his head and wiped his hands, which were moist; and, as he saw the writing on the letter beside him, his heart gave a click so queer that he looked around to see if the door was shut. Quickly he opened the envelope and tried to read: he couldn't see; the words ran into each other, and, going over to a side light, he held the paper close to it.

DEAR MR. LAINE,--Ours is a very old-fashioned, country Christmas, but we will be glad to have you spend it with us if you have not made other arrangements. Uncle Bushrod and I will be at the wharf Wednesday to meet the boat from Fredericksburg, and if you are on it we will bring you home with us, and if not we will be sorry, so come if you can. One or two other friends are coming that day, but most of our guests are here. All the trains from the North stop at Fredericksburg, and the boat that goes down the river leaves any time after 2 P.M., the hour of leaving depending upon the amount of freight, the convenience of the passengers, and the readiness of the captain. As there's a boat only three times a week you can't get here in time for Christmas unless you make the Tuesday boat which should reach Brooke Bank, that's our landing, by ten o'clock Wednesday morning. Do come if you can.

Sincerely, CLAUDIA KEITH.

"If I can! If I can!" With a sudden movement of his hand the letter was put in one pocket, his watch taken out of another, and the button under the light pressed violently. It was eight-forty-five. The last train for Washington left at twelve-thirty, and a local from there reached Fredericksburg at nine-twenty-four the next morning. He knew the schedules well. "I have three hours and forty-five minutes," he said, under his breath. "I'd make it if there were but the forty-five minutes--if there were but ten."

And then it was that Moses, coming in answer to the bell, concluded that his master was not himself. He had left him a few minutes before, unapproachable in his silence, unappreciative of his efforts to please and provide, and now he was giving so many orders at once, calling for this and for that, pulling out clothes and pushing them back, that Moses, who hated to be hurried as only his race can hate, stood helpless, knowing only that something had happened, something he did not understand.

"Did you say your riding-clothes, sir?" he asked, holding a dress-shirt in his hand. "Or did you say--"

"I don't know what I said." Laine knocked over a box of handkerchiefs and threw a white vest on the bed. "Where are my shaving things? I told you I didn't want a trunk. Take the durned thing away. I'll break my neck over it! Where is that English bag--the big one? Get it, will you, and put in my riding-clothes, evening clothes, and one other suit; put in the things I need. You've packed it often enough. Call up Jerdone's private number, and tell him I want all the flowers he's got. Get a move on you, Moses. If you're paralyzed tell me; if not--"

"No, sir. I ain't paralyzed. I just demoralized. Suddenness always did upset me. At dinner you look like you just as lief be dead as livin', and now--"

"You or I will be dead if I miss that twelve-thirty train. Have you called the cab?"

"No, sir. I ain't called no cab. You ain't never call the word cab. You mean--" Moses's hands dropped limply at his side. "You mean you're goin' away for Christmas?"

"That's what I mean!" Laine's voice was exultant, revealing, and he coughed to hide its ring. "By the way, Moses, why don't you go home for Christmas? Didn't you tell me once you came from Virginia? What part?"

"Palmyra, sir. In Fluvanna County, that's where I come from. Excuse me, but I bound to set down. Go _home_? Me go _home_? I couldn't git there and back not to save my life for lessen than twenty-five dollars, and till I git that farm paid for what I been buyin' to go back to and die on I can't go nowhere. That I can't."

Laine looked up from the collection of collars, cravats, and cuffs he was sorting. "Is it the money that's keeping you back, or is it you don't want to go?"

"Don't want to go!" The palms of Moses's hands came together, opened, and came back. "Yesterday I near 'bout bus' open with wantin' to go. My mother she's near 'bout eighty, and she got Miss Lizzie to write me and beg me to come for this here Christmas. Miss Lizzie is old Major Pleasants's youngest old-maid daughter. He's got three of 'em. He was my mother's marster, old Major Pleasants was, and he sold me the land my mother's livin' on now. He didn't charge nothin' much for it, but I had to have a house built, and buy some pigs and some furniture and git a cow, and I bought two of them street-car mules what was in Richmond when they put the 'lectric cars on down there. 'T'was the first city in the United States to have 'em, Richmond was. They thought them mules was wore out, but there ain't no friskier ones in the county than they is, I tell you now. I ain't been home for four years--"

"And your mother is eighty?"

"Yes, sir, that's what they tell me, though she say she don't know herself 'ceptin' she had four chillern which was good size when the war broke out. I belong to the second crop. My mother done had nineteen chillern, the triflinest, good-for-nothin'est lot the Lord ever let live on this earth, if I do say it, and ain't a one of 'em what does a thing for her, savin' 'tis me and Eliza--Eliza she's my sister and lives with her."

"And you'd like to spend Christmas with your mother, you say?"

In the years of his service Moses had never before mentioned family matters, but, having started, he was not likely to stop, and Laine was forced to interrupt,

"Yes, sir. This Christmas I would. Some other Christmases I wouldn't, 'count of a yaller girl what lived on the next place. It was in the summer-time, the last time I was home, and, she bein' a likely-lookin' girl, I seen right much of her every now and then, and I just talk along and tell her 'bout New York and what a grand, lonely place it was, and how my heart got hongry for my own people, and--things like that, you know, but I didn't mean nothin' serious or have any matrimony ideas, and first thing I know she done had me engaged to her. She chase me near 'bout to death, that girl did, but Miss Lizzie say she gone away now and I can come in peace."

Laine took out his pocket-book, put some notes in an envelope, and handed it to Moses. "This is for your ticket and to get some things to take to your mother," he said. "Be back by the thirtieth, and hurry and call that cab for the twelve-thirty train. I've some letters to write before I leave, and there's no time to lose. Tell Caddie I want to see her, and don't forget about that Reilley family, and see that everything gets to them in good shape--a good dinner and all the bundles and plenty for the stockings. Tell Caddie I'm waiting."

Later on, in the library, Laine sealed his last letter and put it on the pile Moses was to mail in the morning. Perhaps he had been a little rash this Christmas. Well, suppose he had. The boys in the office had done well through the year and ought to be told so. By itself a check was a pretty cold thing, and the words he had written to each had been honestly meant. And Miss Button, his stenographer, needed a little trip. Ten days at Atlantic City with her mother would pull her up. She had been looking badly lately--worried about her mother, Weeks had told him. Pity she was so homely. It was pretty unfair the way women had to work at both ends of the line. Weeks, too, could get his wife that fur coat he'd been wanting her to have for three years. What an honest old duck Weeks was!--and who would ever believe him as full of sentiment as a boy of twenty? He had overheard him talking to Miss Dutton about the coat that morning. Fifteen years Weeks had been his secretary, but to-night was the first time he had ever told him in actual words of his appreciation of his faithful service. "I wouldn't want a million if it didn't have some love with it," Claudia had said to him, and before his half-closed eyes she seemed to stand in front of him.

"They are her gifts," he said. "I was blind, and she has made me see."