A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens Part 41

"I want flowers," Pete said, pointing to the basket. "Give me flowers--I pay."

"Oh, ye wanter buy sum of them artyficial flowers, do ye? This is a pooty time o' night ter come flower huntin,' ain't it? Jest pick out yer flowers, an' then climb out!"--and he held the basket out at arm's length for Pete to select.

Pete took a great red rose, and a white flower. There was not very much of a stock to select from, but Pete, with "Injun" instinct, selected the largest and gaudiest.

"Them is wurth about ten shillins," figured up the merchant, taking the money from Pete's hand.

Pete carefully placed the flowers in the pocket of his ragged coat, and started for the door. The milliner's man, rendered affable by the most surprising bargain he had just made, naturally wished to retain the patronage of such a model customer.

"Want anything in our line, Injun, jest call round an' we'll please ye.

Only come a little afore bed-time when ye come again." But Pete slunk out at the door and did not hear him.

Pete's money was nearly gone, but he had a scheme in his head. He slunk in at the back door of the bar-room, and obtained his jug, and what whiskey he could buy with the rest of his money. Then up the street he ran again, out of town, stopping only once at the pump to fill the jug to the top with water. Resolutely fastening in the stopper, and not even raising the jug to his mouth, he started for camp at his long, swinging trot, with the jug in his hand. Mile after mile was pa.s.sed over, yet Pete did not stop till Jeff Hunt's cabin came in sight. Hiding his jug behind a log, he crept up to the window and looked in.

The light was burning on the table, while Mrs. Hunt sat nodding over her work. She had been mending the clothes so that Pete could take them back with him. Tired out, she had fallen asleep. The box of frozen plants still stood by the table. Pete grinned as he saw them, thinking of the great flowers in his pocket. Marie was asleep. Over her head were hung long cl.u.s.ters of moss, with ma.s.ses of ground pine and red berries.

Pete stole to the door and went in. Mrs. Hunt woke with a start, but at sight of Pete smiled in her weary way. Pete made up his bundle of clothes, and then pulled out the great red rose and the white flower. He laid them on the table with--"Flowers fer little gal. Sick. Make her think Crissmus. Good flowers. All color. No fade. No smell. No wear out." Then, catching up his bundle, he slunk away without waiting for Mrs. Hunt's thanks.

When Bill Gammon woke in the morning, he found the jug at the foot of his bunk. But Pete was nowhere to be seen. He had left the jug and fled.

The Christmas celebration at Carter's was a very tame affair. Many were the curses showered upon Pete, and had that worthy been present, I doubt if even the thought of the famous miracle would have sustained him in the beating he would have received. But if Pete's conduct produced such a sad effect upon the festivities at Carter's, the joy it caused at Jeff Hunt's cabin made matters even. The glad Christmas sun, glad with the promise of the "old, old story," came dancing and sparkling over the trees, and looked down in wonderful tenderness upon the humble cabin.

The first bright beams fell upon the bed where little Marie was lying.

They showed her the rose and the white flower nestling in the evergreens. The children came and stood in wonder before the rude flowers. How wonderful they were! Where could they have come from?

The face of the little girl was more patient than before. The eyes seemed more tender, and yet not so sad. Perhaps the glad sun, the same good sun that had looked upon that far-away tomb from which the stone had rolled, whispered to her, as it played about her face, how soon the stone would roll from her life; how soon she would forget all her care and trouble, and enter the land of sunshine and flowers. It may be that the good old Christmas sun even hunted out poor despised Pete, and told him something of its happiness. I am sure he deserved it. Let us hope so at any rate.

MY CHRISTMAS DINNER.

It was on the twentieth of December last that I received an invitation from my friend, Mr. Phiggins, to dine with him in Mark Lane, on Christmas Day. I had several reasons for declining this proposition. The first was that Mr. P. makes it a rule, at all these festivals, to empty the entire contents of his counting-house into his little dining parlor; and you consequently sit down to dinner with six white-waistcoated clerks, let loose upon a turkey. The second was that I am not sufficiently well read in cotton and sugar, to enter with any spirit into the subject of conversation. And the third was, and is, that I never drink Cape wine. But by far the most prevailing reason remains to be told. I had been antic.i.p.ating for some days, and was hourly in the hope of receiving, an invitation to spend my Christmas Day in a most irresistible quarter. I was expecting, indeed, the felicity of eating plum-pudding with an angel; and, on the strength of my imaginary engagement, I returned a polite note to Mr. P., reducing him to the necessity of advertising for another candidate for Cape and turkey.

The twenty-first came. Another invitation--to dine with a regiment of roast-beef eaters, at Clapham. I declined this also, for the above reason, and for one other, _viz._, that, on dining there ten Christmas Days ago, it was discovered, on sitting down, that one little accompaniment of the roast beef had been entirely overlooked. Would it be believed!--but I will not stay to mystify--I merely mention the fact.

They had forgotten the horseradish.

The next day arrived, and with it a neat epistle, sealed with violet-colored wax, from Upper Brook street. "Dine with the ladies--at home on Christmas Day." Very tempting, it is true; but not exactly the letter I was longing for. I began, however, to debate within myself upon the policy of securing this bird in hand, instead of waiting for the two that were still hopping about the bush, when the consultation was suddenly brought to a close, by a prophetic view of the portfolio of drawings fresh from boarding-school--moths and roses on embossed paper;--to say nothing of the alb.u.m, in which I stood engaged to write an elegy on a Java sparrow, that had been the favorite in the family for three days. I rung for gilt-edged, pleaded a world of polite regret, and again declined.

The twenty-third dawned; time was getting on rather rapidly; but no card came. I began to despair of any more invitations, and to repent of my refusals. Breakfast was hardly over, however, when the servant brought up--not a letter--but an aunt and a brace of cousins from Bayswater.

They would listen to no excuse; consanguinity required me, and Christmas was not my own. Now my cousins kept no alb.u.ms; they are really as pretty as cousins can be; and when violent hands, with white kid gloves, are laid on one, it is sometimes difficult to effect an escape with becoming elegance. I could not, however, give up my darling hope of a pleasanter prospect. They fought with me in fifty engagements--that I pretended to have made. I showed them the Court Guide, with ten names obliterated--being those of persons who had _not_ asked me to mince-meat and mistletoe; and I ultimately gained my cause by quartering the remains of an infectious fever on the sensitive fears of my aunt, and by dividing a rheumatism and a sprained ankle between my sympathetic cousins.

As soon as they were gone, I walked out, sauntering involuntarily in the direction of the only house in which I felt I could spend a "happy"

Christmas. As I approached, a porter brought a large hamper to the door.

"A present from the country," thought I, "yes, they _do_ dine at home; they must ask me; they know that I am in town." Immediately afterward a servant issued with a letter; he took the nearest way to my lodgings, and I hurried back by another street to receive the so-much-wished-for invitation. I was in a state of delirious delight.

I arrived--but there was no letter. I sat down to wait, in a spirit of calmer enjoyment than I had experienced for some days; and in less than half an hour a note was brought to me. At length, the desired despatch had come; it seemed written on the leaf of a lily with a pen dipped in dew. I opened it--and had nearly fainted with disappointment. It was from a stock-broker, who begins an anecdote of Mr. Rothschild before dinner, and finishes it with the fourth bottle--and who makes his eight children stay up to supper and snap-dragon. In macadamizing a stray stone in one of his periodical puddings, I once lost a tooth, and with it an heiress of some reputation. I wrote a most irritable apology, and despatched my warmest regards in a whirlwind.

December the twenty-fourth--I began to count the hours, and uttered many poetical things about the wings of Time. Alack! no letter came;--yes, I received a note from a distinguished dramatist, requesting the honor, etc. But I was too cunning for this, and practiced wisdom for once. I happened to reflect that his pantomime was to make its appearance on the night after, and that his object was to perpetrate the whole programme upon me. Regret that I could not have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Paulo, and the rest of the _literati_ to be then and there a.s.sembled, was of course immediately expressed.

My mind became restless and agitated. I felt, amidst all these invitations, cruelly neglected. They served, indeed, but to increase my uneasiness, as they opened prospects of happiness in which I could take no share. They discovered a most tempting dessert, composed of forbidden fruit. I took down "Childe Harold," and read myself into a sublime contempt of mankind. I began to perceive that merriment is only malice in disguise, and that the chief cardinal virtue is misanthropy.

I sat "nursing my wrath," till it scorched me; when the arrival of another epistle suddenly charmed me from this state of delicious melancholy and delightful endurance of wrong. I sickened as I surveyed, and trembled as I opened it. It was dated----, but no matter; it was not _the_ letter. In such a frenzy as mine, raging to behold the object of my admiration condescend, not to _eat_ a custard, but to render it invisible--to be invited perhaps to a tart fabricated by her own ethereal fingers; with such possibilities before me, how could I think of joining a "friendly party,"--where I should inevitably sit next to a deaf lady, who had been, when a little girl, patted on the head by Wilkes, or my Lord North, she could not recollect which--had taken tea with the author of "Junius," but had forgotten his name--and who once asked me "whether Mr. Munden's monument was in Westminster Abbey or St.

Paul's?"--I seized a pen, and presented my compliments. I hesitated--for the peril of precariousness of my situation flashed on my mind; but hope had still left me a straw to catch at, and I at length succeeded in resisting this late and terrible temptation.

After the first burst of excitement, I sunk into still deeper despondency. My spirit became a prey to anxiety and remorse. I could not eat; dinner was removed with unlifted covers. I went out. The world seemed to have acquired a new face; nothing was to be seen but raisins and rounds of beef. I wandered about like Lear--I had given up all! I felt myself grated against the world like a nutmeg. It grew dark--I sustained a still gloomier shock. Every chance seemed to have expired, and everybody seemed to have a delightful engagement for the next day. I alone was disengaged--I felt like the Last Man! To-morrow appeared to have already commenced its career; mankind had antic.i.p.ated the future; "and coming mince pies cast their shadows before."

In this state of desolation and dismay, I called--I could not help it--at the house to which I had so fondly antic.i.p.ated an invitation, and a welcome. My protest must here however be recorded, that though I called in the hope of being asked, it was my fixed determination not to avail myself of so protracted a piece of politeness. No: my triumph would have been to have annihilated them with an engagement made in September, payable three months after date. With these feelings, I gave an agitated knock--they were stoning the plums, and did not immediately attend. I rung--how unlike a dinner bell it sounded! A girl at length made her appearance, and, with a mouthful of citron, informed me that the family had gone to spend their Christmas Eve in Portland Place. I rushed down the steps, I hardly knew whither. My first impulse was to go to some wharf and inquire what vessels were starting for America. But it was a cold night--I went home and threw myself on my miserable couch. In other words, I went to bed.

I dozed and dreamed away the hours till day-break. Sometimes I fancied myself seated in a roaring circle, roasting chestnuts at a blazing log: at others, that I had fallen into the Serpentine while skating, and that the Humane Society were piling upon me a Pelion, or rather a Vesuvius of blankets. I awoke a little refreshed. Alas! it was the twenty-fifth of the month--It was Christmas Day! Let the reader, if he possess the imagination of Milton, conceive my sensations.

I swallowed an atom of dry toast--nothing could calm the fever of my soul. I stirred the fire and read Zimmermann alternately. Even reason--the last remedy one has recourse to in such cases--came at length to my relief: I argued myself into a philosophic fit. But, unluckily, just as the Lethean tide within me was at its height, my landlady broke in upon my lethargy, and chased away by a single word all the little sprites and pleasures that were acting as my physicians, and prescribing balm for my wounds. She paid me the usual compliment, and then--"Do you dine at home to-day, sir?" abruptly inquired she. Here was a question. No Spanish inquisitor ever inflicted such complete dismay in so short a sentence. Had she given me a Sphynx to expound, a Gordian tangle to untwist; had she set me a lesson in algebra, or asked me the way to Brobdingnag; had she desired me to show her the North Pole, or the meaning of a melodrama:--any or all of these I might have accomplished. But to request me to define my dinner--to inquire into its lat.i.tude--to compel me to fathom that sea of appet.i.te which I now felt rushing through my frame--to ask me to dive into futurity, and become the prophet of pies and preserves!--My heart died within me at the impossibility of a reply.

She had repeated the question before I could collect my senses around me. Then, for the first time it occurred to me that, in the event of my having no engagement abroad, my landlady meant to invite me! "There will at least be the two daughters," I whispered to myself; "and after all, Lucy Matthews is a charming girl, and touches the harp divinely. She has a very small, pretty hand, I recollect; only her fingers are so punctured by the needle--and I rather think she bites her nails. No, I will not even now give up my hope. It was yesterday but a straw--to-day it is but the thistledown; but I will cling to it to the last moment.

There are still four hours left; they will not dine till six. One desperate struggle, and the peril is past; let me not be seduced by this last golden apple, and I may yet win my race." The struggle was made--"I should not dine at home." This was the only phrase left me, for I could not say that "I should dine out." Alas! that an event should be at the same time so doubtful and so desirable. I only begged that if any letter arrived, it might be brought to me immediately.

The last plank, the last splinter, had now given way beneath me. I was floating about with no hope but the chance of something almost impossible. They had "left me alone," not with my glory, but with an appet.i.te that resembled an avalanche seeking whom it might devour. I had pa.s.sed one dinnerless day, and half of another; yet the promised land was as far from sight as ever. I recounted the chances I had missed. The dinners I might have enjoyed, pa.s.sed in a dioramic view before my eyes.

Mr. Phiggins and his six clerks--the Clapham beef-eaters--the charms of Upper Brook street--my pretty cousins, and the pantomime writer--the stock broker, whose stories one forgets, and the elderly lady who forgets her stories--they all marched by me, a procession of apparitions. Even my landlady's invitation, though unborn, was not forgotten in summing up my sacrifices. And for what?

Four o'clock. Hope was perfectly ridiculous. I had been walking upon the hair-bridge over a gulf, and could not get into Elysium after all. I had been catching moonbeams, and running after notes of music. Despair was my only convenient refuge; no chance remained, unless something should drop from the clouds. In this last particular I was not disappointed; for, on looking up, I perceived a heavy shower of snow, yet I was obliged to venture forth; for being supposed to dine out, I could not of course remain at home. Where to go I knew not: I was like my first father--"the world was all before me." I flung my coat round me, and hurried forth with the feelings of a bandit longing for a stiletto. At the foot of the stairs, I staggered against two or three smiling rascals, priding themselves upon their punctuality. They had just arrived--to make the tour of Turkey. How I hated them!--As I rushed by the parlor, a single glance disclosed to me a blazing fire, with Lucy and several lovely creatures in a semi-circle. Fancy, too, gave me a glimpse of a sprig of mistletoe--I vanished from the house, like a spectre at day-break.

How long I wandered about is doubtful. At last I happened to look through a kitchen window, with an area in front, and saw a villain with a fork in his hand, throwing himself back in his chair choked with ecstasy. Another was feasting with a graver air; he seemed to be swallowing a bit of Paradise, and criticising its flavor. This was too much for mortality--my appet.i.te fastened upon me like an alligator. I darted from the spot; and only a few yards further discerned a house with rather an elegant exterior, and with some ham in the window that looked perfectly sublime. There was no time for consideration--to hesitate was to perish. I entered; it was indeed "a banquet-hall deserted." The very waiters had gone home to their friends. There, however, I found a fire; and there--to sum up all my folly and felicity in a single word--I DINED.

THE POOR TRAVELER.

BY CHARLES d.i.c.kENS.

[d.i.c.kens' introduction to this story describes his going to Rochester on Christmas Eve and seeing there a quaint old charity, which provided for the entertainment of "six poor travelers who not being rogues or proctors might receive gratis for one night lodging, entertainment and fourpence each." In honor of the day a special meal is provided for the travelers then in the charity.

After the meal, when the travelers have gathered around the fire, their entertainer gives them the reason for the unwonted feast as "Christmas Eve, my friends, when the Shepherds, who were poor travelers, too, in their way, heard the Angels sing, 'On earth, peace: Good will toward men.'" Then each traveler was invited to relate a story, and among those told was the following.]

In the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine, a relative of mine came limping down, on foot, to the town of Chatham. He was a poor traveler, with not a farthing in his pocket.

My relative came down to Chatham to enlist in a cavalry regiment, if a cavalry regiment would have him; if not, to take King George's shilling from any corporal or sergeant who would put a bunch of ribbons in his hat. His object was to get shot; but he thought he might as well ride to death as be at the trouble of walking.

My relative's Christian name was Richard, but he was better known as d.i.c.k. He dropped his own surname on the road down, and took up that of Doubled.i.c.k. He was pa.s.sed as Richard Doubled.i.c.k; age, twenty-two; height, five foot ten; native place, Exmouth, which he had never been near in his life. There was no cavalry in Chatham when he limped over the bridge with half a shoe to his dusty feet, so he enlisted into a regiment of the line, and was glad to get drunk and forget all about it.

You are to know that this relative of mine had gone wrong, and run wild.

His heart was in the right place, but it was sealed up. He had been betrothed to a good and beautiful girl, whom he had loved better than she--or perhaps even he--believed; but in an evil hour he had given her cause to say to him solemnly, "Richard, I will never marry any other man. I will live single for your sake, but Mary Marshall's lips"--her name was Mary Marshall--"never address another word to you on earth. Go, Richard! Heaven forgive you!" This finished him. This brought him down to Chatham. This made him Private Richard Doubled.i.c.k, with a determination to be shot.

There was not a more dissipated and reckless soldier in Chatham barracks, in the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine, than Private Richard Doubled.i.c.k. He a.s.sociated with the dregs of every regiment; he was as seldom sober as he could be, and was constantly under punishment. It became clear to the whole barracks that Private Richard Doubled.i.c.k would very soon be flogged.

Now the Captain of Richard Doubled.i.c.k's company was a young gentleman not above five years his senior, whose eyes had an expression in them which affected Private Richard Doubled.i.c.k in a very remarkable way. They were bright, handsome, dark eyes,--what are called laughing eyes generally, and, when serious, rather steady than severe,--but they were the only eyes now left in his narrowed world that Private Richard Doubled.i.c.k could not stand. Unabashed by evil report and punishment, defiant of everything else and everybody else, he had but to know that those eyes looked at him for a moment, and he felt ashamed. He could not so much as salute Captain Taunton in the street like any other officer. He was reproached and confused,--troubled by the mere possibility of the Captain's looking at him. In his worst moments, he would rather turn back, and go any distance out of his way, than encounter those two handsome, dark, bright eyes.