Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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Cosmopolitan, November 1933, with "Precious Jeopardy
"Precious Jeopardy,"
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston &New York, 1933
"Precious Jeopardy,"
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston &New York, 1933
A new and magnificent story of the Christmas season by
the famous author of "Green Light" and "White Banners."
THE house was quiet but awake.
Polly and Junior had gone very willingly to bed at ten.
For the first time without assistance Shirley had unwrapped the tissue paper from the perennial baubles and displayed them to their best advantage on the tree which by custom occupied a corner of the dining-room.
Once almost audibly she had said to herself, 'How silly of us!' and her lips had parted to call, 'Phil, dear, I'm ready for you now!' but at that instant his newspaper had rattled savagely and she had resumed her lonesome task without speaking.
Always they had exchanged their gifts on Christmas Eve after Phil had made a long ceremony of decorating the tree while she handed him the trinkets.
A bit of tender sentiment, which they pretended to esteem lightly, attached to a few of these tarnished trifles. Phil had called them their household gods. Each year a dozen new glitters were added to the stock of staples, but the children preferred these old ones whose annual reappearance provided a continuity of interest in the tree as an institution.
Shirley always knew what manner of drollery Phil would be mumbling through his pipestem as he stretched his long, sleeve-rolled arms to reach the topmost spike where the frowsy fairy, who had captivated Polly at four, insisted on presiding over the magnificent spectacle. And there was a brown deer whose missing antler had been bitten off by Junior when a baby.
After they had finished, Shirley would bring the gaily wrapped gifts which the children were to have in the morning and make two alluring piles of them beneath the tree. Meantime, Phil would have slipped away to find the gift he had for her.
Seated cross-legged on the rug before the grate in the living-room, they would open their packages, Phil apologizing boyishly for the bungle he had made of his ribbons.
It had always been a very dear occasion. They teased each other a little and grinned when one said, 'Just what I wanted!' but each knew that the other knew they were again reconsecrating themselves to a deep devotion.
At eleven-thirty Shirley heard him moving restlessly about, heard him knock the ashes from his pipe, looked up and saw him standing in the doorway.
'I wasn't quite up to it this time, Shirley,' explained Phil, after a distressing silence.
Unable promptly to arrive at the right answer, Shirley counterfeited a smile.
Elaborating a yawn, he ran his long fingers nervously through his tousled hair and fumbled jerkily with his watch. 'I think I'll turn in now,' he said, retreating.
'Very well, dear, if you're tired,' she replied, resolutely steadying her voice. 'I'll be through, presently.'
Her eyelids had smarted and her throat ached as he turned away, but there were no tears. Absently she gathered up the litter and stowed it in the battered boxes, made what brave show she could of the ten-cent-store gifts she had bought for the children—the cheap beads and a pungent, sticky picture-book for Polly, the gaudy top and colored crayons for Junior; and turned out the lights.
If only Phil weren't so proud! Why hadn't he played up to this unhappy situation manfully? Mightn't he have bought her a little box of stationery or a short-stemmed rose? She would have given him the pocket-diary, so artfully done up in last season's fancy wrappings, and they could have made a lark of their predicament. Such an adventure in comradely candor might have cleared the air of its suffocating constraints... Poor, dear, miserable Phil!
There was a subdued murmur of the children's voices as she tiptoed past their door, Polly's muffled tone, maternal, reassuring, a quaint imitation of her own increasingly redundant 'There, there; it will all come right, very soon. Don't fret. Other people have it much worse.'
Resisting the sudden impulse to push open the door and kiss their troubled little faces, she proceeded to her own room, not daring to risk their pensive response to a caress.
Partially disrobed now, Shirley sat at the vanity table confronting her heavy eyes.
Except at the very tip-ends which still slightly resisted the mechanical sweep of her monogrammed silver brush—one costly item of a former Christmas gift from Phil—the permanent was all gone, and she was glad of it. It was a relief. She hated it.
She had had it done one afternoon in mid-August. Quite without premeditation she had plunged into that epoch-making profligacy. Hot and weary, she had caught a dismaying reflection of her haggard face and unkempt hair from a long mirror in Folsom's Basement. A wave of revulsion swept her away from the rubbishy counter, littered with pawed-over rayons, and into the crowded elevator.
No sooner had the torturing little thing-a-bobs been applied, and she was left to swelter and suffer, than the worthily bestowed remorse set in. What indeed had possessed her to commit this idiotic extravagance in the face of their desperate plight?
Well—if you were obliged to carol melodiously every morning that things were sure to be better before long, you had to prove your radiant faith somehow; didn't you?... Of course you didn't—you wretched little fool!
But—you couldn't afford to let yourself run down, and take a dangerous chance of losing your husband's admiration; could you? That's a good one! It's a lot of admiration you'll get when you confess you've emptied your purse to prettify yourself while Phil is half wild with worry over the next installment on his life insurance.
It was the permanent that had introduced the new era of their vexatious life. Nothing had been quite the same since. All the previously sublimated anxieties and secret forebodings now rudely clamored for recognition.
As she sat there, wielding her heavy brush, Shirley reconstructed every word and gesture of the scene they had put on, that sultry August evening at dinner.
'Like it?' she had inquired, turning her profile.
Phil had reluctantly lifted his cloudy eyes from his plate with a vague, brief smile.
'Very pretty,' he said dryly. 'By the way, Shirley, I glanced over the grocery bill today. Donovan's hadn't credited you with those broken eggs.'
Broken eggs! Philip Montgomery Garland, skilled engineer, club favorite, prince of good fellows, soul of generosity, making an ado about broken eggs! Shirley re-experienced the shock, her brown eyes widening in the glass at the recollection. The brush paused for a moment before resuming its rhythmical stroke through her copper hair.
'But it was only a trifle, dear,' she had replied, wishing the children well away from this threatened disenchantment. 'Half a dozen, maybe.'
'That's three bus tickets!' Phil had growled with an impressive emphasis that gave them, at the very least, the value of three suspension bridges.
'Are we poor, Daddy?' Junior's freckled nose was wrinkled with childish concern.
'No—we're not poor,' Shirley had answered decisively, 'but your father is quite right in hoping we will not be wasteful.'
Phil had grinned unpleasantly, implying he could add something to that if he liked.
'May I be excused now, Mother?' requested Polly. (Dear Polly—pretty wise little woman for a ten-year-old.) 'I've my puzzle-picture almost done.'
'Better finish your pudding,' Phil had advised crisply.
'Really, Daddy, I don't want any more.'
'In that case you should have asked for a smaller helping.'
Polly stared wide-eyed, rubbed her lip reflectively with the bowl of her spoon, and stole a wistful glance at her mother.
'Run along, child,' Shirley had said lightly. 'You too, Junior, if you've had enough.'
Phil had suspected a double meaning and challenged her with a quick look of inquiry as the children scuttled away.
'I'm sorry,' she said softly. 'You should know I didn't intend to be sarcastic.'
He had lighted a cigarette nervously, ostentatious with the discarding of his match as if, when he tossed it contemptuously away, he threw all the rest of the world along with it.
'Well—everybody but the big boys took another cut today. Twenty per cent, this time. Brinkman was let out. I'm likely to face the firing-squad almost any time.'
'Is there anything I can do, dear?'
'Yes—economize! Pare our expenses to the bone!'
'I'm dreadfully ashamed, Phil.'
Perhaps—if he had smiled ever so little and dismissed her chagrin with a toss of the hand; perhaps—if she had risen instantly and come to him, gently rubbing a flushed, repentant face against his worried head; but the incident had closed on that dissonant chord. Nothing had been quite the same with them since that badly managed moment.
He had slept in the guest-room adjoining theirs, that night, clumsily explaining that he would probably read until all hours. Gradually the guest-room closet filled with his clothing and the chiffonier was untidy with an accumulation of his collars, ties, and trinkets. One Sunday forenoon in October he had put things to rights, stowing his belongings in the drawers. After that, though neither of them talked about it, Phil was not a mere transient in the guest-room but a permanent tenant. Whatever they might do about it if someone came to visit them could be decided when the emergency arose. From that day on, Phil had become more sedate, taciturn, studiously courteous, bafflingly remote.
All the little endearments—the pat on her shoulder, the tips of his fingers swept lightly across her cheek as they passed at close quarters in the hallway, the furtive pantomime of a kiss across the breakfast-table accompanied by a dreamily reminiscent look that speeded the heart a little and made one glance at the children out of the tail of one's eye hoping to find them busy with their porridge—all these cherished moments were as irrecoverable as if they had never been.
Frightened over the prospect that Christmas might find them utterly without a little margin of cash for inexpensive gifts—(Phil had lost his position on the first of December)—Shirley had contrived to tuck away a few dollars. A week ago, the collector for the Gas and Electric Company had been so urgent that she had disgorged her little hoarding.
'I'm afraid,' she had ventured, when reporting the incident, 'I'm afraid we're not going to be able to give the children anything at Christmastime.'
'Within a few weeks,' he had muttered, from behind his paper, we may be lucky if we can give them anything at meal-time.'
Shirley put down the brush quietly and listened with every nerve at full torsion. A suppressed moan had come from Phil's room. What dreadful thing might he have done to himself! Suddenly dizzy and weak, she moved unsteadily to the door, and opened it.
Phil was sitting on the floor, in his pyjamas, gravely inspecting the sole of his bare foot.
'What is it, dear?' she whispered, kneeling beside him, her trembling hand on his slumped shoulder.
'Get me those steel pliers, Shirley: you know—the thing that looks like a pair of forceps, in my toolkit. I've stepped on a needle... No, no; you can't do it with your fingers. It's very deep in... Hurry; won't you?'
In a moment she had returned. Phil reached over his shoulder for the pliers without looking up. Grasping the slightly protruding end of the needle he gave a long tug, and held it up to the light.
'Half a needle!' he muttered thickly. 'That means the other half of it has broken off in my foot.'
'Shall I call Doctor Jennings?'
'No, no—we'll wait until morning.'
Phil sat dully regarding the steel fragment in his palm, rolling it about with the tip of his forefinger. The big clock in the Saint Andrew's tower impressively boomed twelve. After an interval the chimes began playing, 'It came upon the midnight clear.' Shirley stroked his rumpled hair. He did not stir from his posture of utter dejection.
'Merry Christmas, Phil,' she murmured brokenly.
'Is it? Well—I'm glad if you can think so. I have nothing for you, this time.'
Then, turning his drawn face slightly toward her, but with eyes averted, he extended his open hand, pulled a cynical grin, and added, '—Unless you would like to have this as a remembrance of the joyous occasion.'
Shirley took the tiny piece of steel from the palm he had held up to her with a frigid indifference that mocked every remembered tenderness of a dozen years, bowed her face in her hands, and cried like a little child.
He sat apparently unmoved by her distress.
'Oh, Phil,' she sobbed. 'I wish I could do something for you... My dear—you are breaking our hearts!'
PHIL had toyed with the Bad Idea. For many weeks he had been turning it over and over.
It had been thought respectable in ancient Rome. And nobody in Japan had ever considered it a shame. When an honorable citizen had entered some cul-de-sac too narrow for a graceful U-turn, his friends rejoiced over his lonely valor in driving straight on through the blind end.
Our American prejudice against the Bad Idea, thought Phil, could be easily explained. We had gone daft on socialization and mass-movement. We had so consistently overrated the importance of co-operative effort that the public resented a man's performance of any act on his own hook. The idea itself was not so reprehensible: it became a Bad Idea only when executed modestly.
Performed before an audience, under authentic auspices, it was heroic, romantic, aesthetic. Everybody who was anybody—plus thousands more—approved it, admired it, applauded it.
When the rotund Grand Opera tenor, unwilling any longer to sweat and grunt under a weary life, screamed and gesticulated his way out of it with a high note vibrating in his larynx and a bare bodkin bobbing in his thorax, all the multitude—from the lower boxes to the upper benches—rose as one man. The twenty-two-dollar patrons split their white gloves and barked 'Bravo!' and the seventy-five-cent customers whistled through their fingers and yelled 'Attaboy!'
These same people were swept with shuddering horror when they read of the mental or moral collapse of some unsung and unsinging chap who, without asking anyone's permission or hiring a hall, had privately negotiated with Nirvana.
Of late, however, due to the lethal drought that had seared men's sensibilities, the papers had become rather blasé in reporting such news. So many disturbing things were happening throughout the world that no great excitement prevailed when yet another harassed business man ventured to excuse himself from further participation in the affair.
Phil Garland had arrived at that stage of his thinking about this matter where he no longer passed judgment on the ethics of these events. He said to himself, 'That was quite a decent way to do it,' or, 'This fellow was a bungler,' or, 'What a cad!' He had a cordial feeling toward those who departed without making a big to-do about it, as if they had remarked graciously, 'Someone else may have my place now: I'm leaving.'
But he never had come actually to grips with the Bad Idea, perhaps because five thousand dollars' worth of his life insurance was not yet one year old. There was a clause to that effect: Article 4, under 'Provisions.' He had been economizing so stingily that the thought of throwing away all this money seemed a Worse Idea than the Bad Idea.
After Shirley had retired to her room, unconsoled by the slightest token of tenderness, Phil lay for a long time rigid and wretched endeavoring to account for his cruel attitude toward her.
Why had he made no move to comfort Shirley? What was the nature of this strange cataleptic tension that had gripped him when every chivalrous impulse begged him to express his sincere love for her?
Searching himself, he became aware that this sullen apathy had become an established habit. He had been treating his wife coldly for months, as if his defeat and chagrin were somehow her fault. Perhaps the hospitality he had extended to the Bad Idea had something to do with it.
Well—he could dismiss the Bad Idea now. He could even scorn it and tell himself he wasn't the sort that seeks escape from worry and humiliation by contriving a mean little tragedy. Presently—tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, or next week—he would probably go out in the conventional manner. No questions asked, no suspicions aroused, no embarrassments about arranging for bell, book, and clergy.
He lay relaxed now, almost at peace with himself, remembering all the stories he had ever heard and read about people who had met with little accidents like this one. It was a known fact, he reflected, that a needle would travel painlessly along through the tissues until it pierced the wall of a trunk-line vein; thence, quickly, to the heart. It might take a day or two, a week or two. You would have no warning, no illness; sound as a nut at noon, dead as a stone by midnight. And that was the way it ought to be—for everybody.
His meditations cheered him immeasurably. It was a great relief to grope out from under the shadow of the Bad Idea. He began to reconstruct the family as it might be constituted within the next few days. The pinch would be eliminated. Polly and Junior would be ever so much better off. They would grieve, but children forget quickly.
As for Shirley, she was only thirty-six and a very attractive woman. Doubtless she would marry again. Why, indeed, shouldn't she?
Phil turned the hot pillow over and lay on his left side. His foot throbbed. Obviously the needle was already tunneling along in quest of easier going.
It would be a quiet wedding. Ted Brinkman, maybe. The three of them had been great friends. He had never been jealous. Ted and Shirley might have been brother and sister. Naturally, Brinkman would be on hand within fifteen minutes. Brinkman would send the telegrams and attend to all the details.
'No—we don't like that collar on him,' Brinkman would say. 'He never wore one like that. Better change it.'
Phil rolled over on his right side, punched the ends of the pillow, drew up his left knee and felt gingerly of his foot. It hurt; not with a dull ache but a sharp pain. He knew what that meant.
Shirley would say, 'I don't know what we ever would have done, Ted.'
'Phil would have done the same for me, Shirley.' 'I know—of course... You had better stay for lunch. It's just ready.'
'Thanks—if you're sure it's no bother.'
'Take Phil's chair, won't you? He'd want you to?
'Perhaps Junior should sit there. He's the—'
Junior would hang back, tearfully. 'I can't, Mother.'
'Very well, darling. Uncle Ted will sit there, this time.'
And the next time. And the time after that.
But wouldn't Shirley be jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire? Ted Brinkman had no job. To be sure, he had made a joke of his predicament. It was easy for a bachelor to be funny about overdue bills and empty pockets.
Perhaps Shirley wouldn't mind skimping with someone who could grin over their frugalities. But—Ted Brinkman! My word! What could Shirley be thinking about? She didn't like Contract that well, and there was little else they had in common. She took no interest in wrestling matches or billiard tournaments or horse races. Shirley was a bookish girl. And Brinkman? Huh! Ted Brinkman didn't know whether Ibsen had written 'The New World Symphony' or painted 'The Horse Fair.' When Shirley had remarked, one Sunday at dinner, that John Galsworthy was dead, Ted had remarked, 'Maybe they'll ask Kipling to be poet laureate now.'
That was one thing about Shirley and himself: they had liked the same things. They had the same tastes in music, books, pictures, plays. By Jove—if this depression ever came to an end, and they got back to normal living, he would see to it that the dear girl went to everything—everything!
The needle gave him another savage gouge, just to remind him that it was too late to organize a campaign for the promotion of Shirley's happiness. Somebody else would have to attend to that. Brinkman, perhaps. But—Brinkman? My word—of all people—Brinkman!
There was one thing he thought he could do, however. It would be silly to make a program for the future, but it was not out of the question to plan a course of action for tomorrow morning. Likely he would still be alive. He sincerely hoped so. It would be bad to leave Shirley with a torturing memory guaranteed to last a lifetime.
No—if he found himself alive in the morning he would see to it that the day was made pleasant for them. He would ignore the fact that they had no money and concentrate on the fact that they still had one another. He would show himself friendly. There would be no sulking. What a piker he had been! Whatever had ailed him ... moping about ... meeting their wistful queries with surly scowls and gruff monosyllables.
He wished he could be sure of one more day.
At seven he was roused by a timid, tentative turning of the doorknob. Immediately the entire picture of his new and strange relation to the scheme of things was etched vividly on his consciousness. By Jove—he was still alive! That was good.
He looked into Polly's round blue eyes peering at him through the slender crack. His heart thumped. Polly was going to make it easy to do.
'Come on in, baby,' he called unsteadily, reaching out a hand. 'You wanted to wish Daddy a Merry Christmas, didn't you?'
She nodded, a bit shyly, twisting his hair in her slim fingers.
'And to thank you for the beads. They're ever so nice. I like red ones.'
'Polly—we're going to have some fun today. All four of us. We're going skating in the park.'
'Oh—Daddy! Honestly? Does Mother know?'
'Not yet. Where's Junior?'
'In bed with Mother. Shall I call him?'
'Perhaps we'd better join them.'
'Oh—let's!' She romped ahead of him, leaving the connecting door open. He heard her excitedly reporting the news. Stepping out, he tried his weight on the foot. The pain was slight. Perhaps the needle was so far along now that the pressure did not affect it much.
He glanced at himself in the glass, happy to note that his eyes did not reproach him. It had been a long time since he had faced them squarely. Tugging on his dressing-gown he went through the doorway.
'Shall we make it a foursome?' he asked, smiling into Shirley's bewildered eyes.
She reached over the children and turned down the covers. He slipped in beside Polly. For a long moment, not a word was spoken. Shirley's palm lay pressed against his cheek. He turned his face, and kissed it.
'Moth-err!' Junior's reproving little squeak rasped through the silence. 'Daddy's here with us! Can't you say Merry Christmas?'
'Don't be silly, Junior,' muttered Polly, eager to be of some service. 'Daddy knows it's Merry Christmas ... Don't you?'
'Yes, dear,' replied Phil thickly.
Shirley's palm, trembling slightly, pressed hard against his cheek. It was wet.
'What did Dr. Jennings say, Phil?'
'He got it out.'
'Oh—I'm so glad. I've been worried. Did it hurt?'
'Not much.' He patted her shoulder. 'It's all right now.'
She looked up into his face, smiling, her hands on his arms, her brown eyes shuttling back and forth from one to the other of his blue ones. It was an enchanting little trick of Shirley's. Often when he held her in his arms she would let her gaze ramble caressingly over his face; his eyes, one at a time; his lips, his forehead, his chin; and back again to his eyes—considered separately. Phil loved her for it, though sometimes it was just a bit disconcerting to be invoiced so specifically, item by item, even when done in the utmost tenderness. It was disconcerting now, for he had lied to her.
Immediately after their hilarious breakfast, Shirley had fairly pushed him out of the house, refusing to listen to his talk of delaying a call on the doctor. He had wanted it put off until afternoon.
'We mustn't disappoint the children, dear,' Phil had argued. 'He might chisel me a little, you know. In that case, I couldn't skate. Let's not spoil their day.'
But Shirley had been adamant. What did a little disappointment amount to compared with the danger of waiting an hour longer than necessary.
It was a glorious morning! Phil Garland had never noticed what a wealth of delicate lavenders and purples tinted the shadows of trees and shrubs on gleaming snow. There was a tonic in the air more stimulating than ozone.
His senses seemed abnormally keen. It was a great thing to be alive. The bare fact of living had never struck him with such vividness. Might it not be possible, he reasoned, that jeopardy sharpens the wits? It was said to be true of the drowning. After resuscitation, they could not remember, much less report, what they had heard and felt and seen, but they retained a knowledge of the bare fact that they had experienced a mental activity which they were quite incapable of in the ordinary ways of life.
People spiraling dizzily out of consciousness, in the dentist's chair, savored briefly certain ecstasies of keen sensitivity which they knew could not be retained or recovered. Life was so extremely good, Out There on the Border, that for one priceless instant they bathed their souls in a shimmering glory, not of this world, at all. They laughed. Their laughter awoke them. And they found themselves slumped weakly over a porcelain pan, with nothing left but the memory of a leaping heart and the fleeting joy of wings not meant for worms.
Perhaps Nature had intended that any hazard of life should carry some high compensation, as if She said, 'Here's a pleasant medicine for your worry. We'll speed and sharpen things up for you—you who only think you have been alive... How do you like living—really living?... Want to go back now?'
This uncanny awareness, this sublime sensitiveness had been growing more acute ever since Phil had wakened in the early morning. It would have been quite impossible, yesterday, to have roused with this sense of well-being. Today it had been easy, spontaneous. He had wanted to show his love for Shirley and romp with the children. He had caught himself staring at them, half inclined to be envious of their sure hold on life, but aware that he was even more fortunate in his insecurity.
More than three blocks had been covered now. Another would bring him to Dr. Jennings's door. He met and passed the elder Morris girl who, to his surprise, smiled gaily and wished him a Merry Christmas. Phil had always thought her rather glum and upstage, especially of late. It was funny how Christmas would thaw people out. Or did Eleanor Morris see that something had happened to him?
Now he would give it up—whatever it was—and return to the dumps. Dr. Jennings would insist upon an X-ray picture. After several hours—the children's Christmas fun having been spoiled—there would be a report on the X-ray findings. They would put him into the hospital. Hospitals always thought up a great lot of things to charge you for; the bed, the nurses, the fee for the operating-room, the fee for the X-ray fellow, the fee for the surgeon, the fee for the anaesthetist, the fee for the blood-counter. He already owed Dr. Jennings two hundred dollars for Junior's tonsils. They would hack his foot to ribbons, and lay him up expensively for three weeks; provided, of course, the needle did not come promptly to the rescue. He felt now that it would. This strange speeding-up of his sensations indicated that he was already close to the Edge.
He had reached the corner now. These six stone steps would put him on Dr. Jennings's rubber doormat.
A tall chap, about his own age, who had been standing by the lamp-post, sauntered toward him. He was shabby, but not a bum.
'Could you spare me a quarter?' he asked quietly.
'No,' said Phil regretfully, 'I haven't that much.' It was the first time he had been importuned for alms since his own discharge from employment.
The amateur beggar rubbed his chin, stared hard for a moment, and grinned.
'Christmas is a bad day to be broke,' he remarked companionably. 'Got any little folks at your house?'
'Yes,' said Phil. 'Have you?'
'No—thank God. Could you use a dollar?'
Phil shook his head.
'You haven't quite come to it yet,' observed the stranger. 'It wasn't easy for me. Believe me—I wouldn't have asked anyone on the street for a quarter, one year ago today.'
'I believe you,' said Phil. 'Would you mind telling me whether you would have offered a stranger on the street a dollar, last Christmas?'
'I doubt it. But this sort of thing changes your—your—changes the whole—'
'Yes,' agreed Phil. 'I've noticed that.'
The shabby chap nodded, chuckled a little, re-set his shapeless felt hat, and turned away.
'Good-bye,' he said. 'And better luck.'
Phil made an appropriate reply, glanced disinterestedly at Dr. Jennings's door, and started toward home, relieved by his impulsive decision not to tinker with the circumstances which had given his life its fresh significance. If it was the needle that had done it, he would keep the needle. If this was the last day, very well. The resolution warmed him.
He mounted the steps of his house—on which three months' rental was due—with firm confidence that he had done the right thing.
'It's all right now,' said Phil, patting Shirley's arm.
She searched his eyes, separately, as if one of them might tell something that the other withheld, lingered in them for a moment, seemed satisfied, smiled happily, and drew away.
'Come, children!' she called. 'Put on your coats. Daddy's back.' She squeezed his hand. 'Aren't you?' she whispered.
THE next day Phil found a job.
It came about through his new attitude toward Time.
Until his singular accident, he had never seriously considered the thought of casual employment involving only a few hours' work. He had been waiting for a permanent position to open in his own vocational field.
There had been sporadic rumors of a new bridge to span the bay. If the city administration approved it, which was doubtful, the public would vote on a bond issue, unlikely to pass. Should that miracle occur, fifty firms would submit bids, Robbins and Dunbar among them. If they got the contract, Phil might be called back to his desk. His good sense told him there wasn't room for that many ifs in the whole subjunctive mood.
Now that only a day or at most a handful of days remained, the prospect of a problematical position by a year from next April was so silly it made him laugh.
Phil Garland realized that he was achieving an entirely different regard for Time—considered as property. A week ago he had sat before the window with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands viewing the current day as an encumbrance. No convict, doing a five-year stretch, could have had a lower opinion of now. Phil had been borrowing from the future by plastering the present with insupportable mortgages.
Having now been dispossessed of his future, he could borrow nothing more from it, either of promise or threat. He was done with it. There was nothing it could do for him; and, what was still more important, there was nothing it could do to him. This conviction left him free to take a square look at Today, and appraise it on its own merits with no expectations or forebodings to distract his mind.
Of course this was no brand-new idea—the importance of the present hour. As a precept it headed the list of the ancient platitudes. Everybody accepted it as an axiom, but whoever acted as if he believed it was scorned as an opportunist, living from hand to mouth like a monkey.
All the poets had sniffed at Tomorrow, some of them going so far as to declare there was no such thing, though doubtless they were pleased when notified that their verses would be duly paid for on the first of the month.
No—however idealistic the maxim might be when hacked an inch deep into the portico of a college library, if you really wanted to get anywhere you would have to do a deal of dickering with the future. Life was uncertain and no man knew what a day might bring forth, but almost everything you did presupposed your carrying on. Plenty of sound fiduciary institutions were willing to bet you a hundred thousand dollars that you would live for twenty years yet.
It seemed very strange now to know that you had no future. The thought brought you to your feet with an urgent desire to make full use of your remaining hours. A new dignity attached to the job that could be finished in a day.
Because it was the next morning after Christmas—bountiful baskets having made the necessities of the out-of-work less exigent for a couple of days—the Social Agencies' Employment Bureau was almost without clients.
At eleven o'clock only two applicants had appeared, a loquacious old fellow with a black eye and a red nose, and Phil Garland in an old overcoat and a shabby cap befitting the place and his cause.
The plump, good-natured girl behind the tall counter blotted his registration card with considerate little dabs as if she held his name and his need worthy of her courtesy.
'Can you drive a car, Mr. Garland?' she inquired.
Phil hesitated for a long moment and then, realizing that his delay was the equivalent of a reluctant affirmative, said he could drive a truck.
'Did you ever?' she asked skeptically.
'No—but I'm sure I can.'
They both grinned.
'Mr. Percival, 62 Ridge Road, has just telephoned that his chauffeur is sick.'
Phil shook his head, and the girl pursed her lips.
'Then of course you wouldn't want to shovel his paths,' she observed crisply. 'Mr. Percival wants that done too.'
'Gladly,' agreed Phil.
She stared at him mystifiedly.
'Very well.' She handed him a card. 'It's thirty cents an hour. I'll see what else we can find for you. Come back tomorrow.'
He thanked her and was turning away when, lowering her voice, she said, 'You aren't too proud to shovel for Mr. Percival, but you don't like the idea of driving for him. Am I right?'
On impulse, Phil was about to confide. Then it occurred to him that not a soul in the world—not even Shirley—shared his peculiar secret. It had in it the elements of tragedy, but it had made his life strangely luminous. He felt the need of nobody's pity; knew he would be a hypocrite if he accepted it, and would probably be thought a poseur if he rejected it. He suddenly resolved that it should be his own affair. The decision squared his shoulders.
'It isn't a matter of pride,' he said casually, and walked toward the door leaving her curiosity unappeased. She determined, as he disappeared, to have it out of him when he returned tomorrow. He did not return.
Elderly and crotchety James Percival, with nothing better to amuse him—for there was no one to take him out for his customary airing, and his eyes would not permit him to read very long at a time—had been sitting at his library window for more than an hour watching the laborious efforts of a man unaccustomed to wielding a long-handled snow-shovel.
As a generous contributor to the Social Agencies, and therefore entitled to special attentions, Mr. Percival was annoyed. With thousands of idle men tramping the streets, they had been unable to find one who could drive a car. And here was this snow-shoveler! The fellow was trying hard enough, but it was plain to see he was fatigued by his unskilled movements. Judging by their wooden response when he paused to limber them, his fingers in the thin gloves were numb with cold.
Shortly before one—Susan having appeared to consult his wishes about luncheon—Mr. Percival demanded his overcoat, fur cap, and goloshes. With short, prudent steps, and much business with his cane, he puffed and snuffled his way down the carriage-drive. Phil saw him coming, and, straightening an aching spine, awaited his arrival with a mixture of compassion and amusement.
'Ever do that before?' squeaked Mr. Percival, his old face contracted into a million wrinkles as he squinted against the sun.
'Yes, sir—but not very recently,' replied Phil, breathing heavily. 'I took up snow-shoveling too late to be very good at it.'
Mr. Percival grunted and chuckled slightly.
'If it's going too slowly, sir,' added Phil, 'you need not pay me the full wages.'
'Humph! I guess they wouldn't stand much of a cut.'
'Well—when wages get down to thirty cents an hour, it doesn't make much difference what you do to them,' Phil ventured, with a broad grin.
'You seem to be in a pretty good humor about it,' piped Mr. Percival. 'It's lunch time. You'd better come in.' The proffer of hospitality was extended in the rasping tone of utter denunciation.
'Thanks—I'm not hungry.' Phil gave the shovel a thrust.
'You are too!' barked the old man. 'Do as I tell you!'
Phil followed obediently up the drive, through the front door, and into the spacious library where a birch fire blazed. Briefly directing the starched Susan to serve luncheon here for two, and that right quickly, Mr. Percival, with much blowing and grunting, pointed to a deep leather chair flanking the grate and sank heavily into its companion. Meeting an obstruction on the seat, he made a great task of fishing out an open book, viewed it at close range, and, handing it to his guest, said: 'I suppose you never bothered to read "The Diary of John Evelyn."'
'What makes you suppose that?' drawled Phil, with an amiable impudence which he suspected his eccentric employer might relish.
'—Because I'm a snow-shoveler? Or because I'm not a very good one?'
Mr. Percival dismissed this genial badinage with a weary wave of the hand.
'Then I dare say you're acquainted with Sam Pepys, too.'
'Well enough. I wouldn't care to be thought chummy.'
'Evelyn had more sense than Pepys, don't you think?'
'He was much older,' observed Phil. 'Men get more sense.'
His host clasped his mottled hands over an ample stomach and purred comfortably, approving this sentiment.
'Well—don't hanker for old age, my son,' he advised, blinking at the fire. 'There's nothing to it. Most of my cronies are dead. Family scattered—what's left of 'em. Eyes weak, legs wobbly, everything tastes alike. No entertainment but that infernal radio. The doctor promises I'll drop dead, one o' these days'—he tapped his breast significantly—'and that'll be all right with me!'
'Me, too,' agreed Phil companionably.
'You!' snarled Mr. Percival. 'Nonsense! There's nothing the matter with you! A bit of hard luck, perhaps. Unhappy, maybe—though you certainly don't look it.'
'No—that's true,' said Phil thoughtfully. I'm not unhappy.' He crossed his knees and faced his host on terms of admitted social equality. 'Returning to John Evelyn—I think his life in the country made all the difference. A man gets a straighter look at the world in the country. Even Pepys knew that, and wished himself well out of the racket.'
Mr. Percival nodded, and rumbled into a reminiscent monologue.
'Don't I know it?... Some years ago I bought a snug little estate, fifty miles northwest; seven acres of forest, a pleasant stream with sunfish cavorting in it, meadow, orchard, wild roses sprawling over rail fences; house, sheds, barns—all in one piece; delphinium, tender asparagus, beehives, spring water, a pair of guineas, maple syrup, Jerseys, red clover, blue jays... b-u-t—'
The tired old voice articulated a sigh.
'—I was practically alone out there at "Idle Acres," except for the help. Nobody to talk to about anything but what ailed the tractor and the government. The neighbors winked behind my back because I enjoyed the scents and sounds of fields and beasts. I was only a worn-out old man from the city, who didn't know anything about running a farm—and that was all they did know... Every few days I had to rush back to town on business. It was no good. I haven't been there for two years. House standing empty now. Tenants worthless... I'd give a great deal to be out there with somebody I could talk to... See here!' he exclaimed, leaning forward on his elbows—'would you like to live in the country?'
In mid-January, a warm week cleared the roads.
Accompanied by Phil and Shirley, Mr. Percival viewed the re-conditioning of the weather-beaten old house with boyish gusto. Fresh paper and paint were doing wonders.
'I'm getting two dozen hens,' he announced, as they shivered in the doorway of the chicken-house—'old-fashioned hens. We'll set them on their own eggs. That's the only way to raise broilers fit to eat. This idea of buying a lot of day-old peepers that never met their parents, and bringing them up by electricity! Bah! No wonder they're tough as tripe! This place is not going to be a factory and we'll not be a bit scientific. I'd like to let Nature attend to most of it. Our chickens are going to be called "chickens" not "birds." You can always bet on it, whenever a poultry-raiser refers to his chickens as "birds," they'll be stringy and tasteless.'
They sauntered on to the barn, Mr. Percival still declaiming in a high treble as he led the way with careful steps.
'And we're not going to pump the cows with an engine! That's what ails the milk, these days. They drain the lining out of the cow... Ever milk a cow, Mrs. Garland?'
'No,' confessed Shirley, 'but I suppose I could.'
'He! He!' giggled Mr. Percival. 'Don't you be too sure about that!... And we're not going to have a cream separator to knock the daylights out of the milk. And I intend to buy an old churn, the up-and-down kind that you sit down to and straddle, with little globs of yellow butter working up through the hole and clinging to the handle. You get great buttermilk that way—none of this chemical laboratory stuff that tastes like medicine... Ah—this is going to be a rich experience, you'll see!... Know anything about old Sam Johnson, Mrs. Garland?'
'Yes—indeed,' laughed Shirley. 'I was brought up on Boswell's Johnson. My father saw to that.'
'Your father was a gentleman,' declared Mr. Percival, 'and I'll forgive you for not knowing how to milk. But I want to be around when you try it. Then I'll teach you, myself—maybe... Ever read Butler's "Erewhon"?'
Shirley nodded.
'Does it make you tired to read out loud?' he shrilled.
'No—I like to, especially when the other person interrupts occasionally to denounce me for something the author has said.'
'That's the proper spirit!... And we'll pop corn!'
'In the fireplace—over the coals.'
'That reminds me,' shouted Mr. Percival, 'we've got to lay in a supply of wood, and now's the time to do it, before the maple sap begins to run. We'll be too busy then, and after that the spring will be coming fast... Ever split wood, Mr. Garland?... Well—it's a lot of fun. Of course, if you tackle a big, soggy chunk on a warm day it will give you some trouble. The way to do it is to get up about four o'clock on a cold morning when the sticks are frozen hard. Stand it up on end and hit it a plop on the head!... You keep on doing that for half an hour, and then come in to breakfast! Sausage and cakes and syrup! I tell you it makes a lot of difference whether you get ready for breakfast by splitting frozen birch or smoking a cigarette!'
They were leaning on the garden gate now.
'I never saw bigger potatoes in my life than we grew back there in that field. The tenant damaged them a good deal in getting them out; had to do it with a machine, of course; he got so he couldn't stand up and work; had to have something he could sit on and ride. We're not going to have our big potatoes all mollywhopped by machinery! There's a good many rocks out there in that field. I think they grow. Several generations of farmers have cleared all the rocks off it every spring, and there's just as many as before... That's a fine appetizer, too—gathering rocks—better'n a cocktail, and doesn't leave your liver full of copper.'
'Had you ever thought of using some of those rocks to build a little dam across the creek?' asked Phil.
'That's an idea,' agreed Mr. Percival. 'Suppose you could do it?'
'Phil should know,' volunteered Shirley. 'That's right in his line.'
They climbed back into the tall, outmoded limousine, at four, and started back toward the city. Mr. Percival, aglow with excitement, twisted to take a final look as they rounded the bend.
'I believe,' he said solemnly, 'that I'm going to spend the last few days of my life in that sturdy old house, living the way people were meant to live—and here's hoping nothing befalls me until we are settled and have had a taste of spring.'
Shirley, sitting between them, ventured a glance at Phil. He was staring steadily out the window toward the purpling west. She laid her fingers protectively on his arm.
'You may see some interesting sunsets here, Shirley,' he said, without turning.
She bent her head and closed her eyes. A pensive smile played about her lips. Two hot tears seeped through her lashes. They rode in silence for a mile, Phil Garland and old James Percival wondering how many sunsets there would be.
At length, shaking himself loose from his dour reflections, Mr. Percival stertorously cleared his throat.
'And we're not going to feed 'em any prepared food that's manufactured in a slaughter-house,' he growled. 'No hen that's fed such rubbish is capable of laying a fresh egg.'
HE met the tardy summons calmly.
A year ago it would have stirred him to the depths.
It was rather fortunate, he felt, that Shirley had gone to the city for the day. Phil wished now that Mr. Percival had acted on his first impulse and accompanied her, for this would be quite upsetting to the dear old fellow.
Shirley was not to be back until late afternoon. She had promised Polly and Junior to stop at the township school for their closing exercises in celebration of the Christmas recess. The three of them would be driven home together by the taciturn Erickson in Mr. Percival's ancient car, bubbling with holiday hilarity.
Now that the long-delayed call was actually at hand, Phil Garland hardly knew in what attitude to accept it. He had thought himself prepared; had told himself, again and again, that he would be glad. Confronted now by the real fact of his impending freedom, he was bewildered and wanted time to think it over.
For many months a cumulative revival of business activity throughout the land had been paving the way for this letter he had just received from Mr. Dunbar requesting him to report for duty on January third. With what joy and pride would he have welcomed such tidings in those bitter pre-Christmas days last year!
Mr. Percival, commenting on the rapidly falling mercury, had gone out to the barn to put some more straw in Flossie's stall, 'to keep her legs warm.' He would be back presently, wheezing and puffing and stamping cold feet before the big fireplace. It would be a shame to damp his childlike anticipations of Christmas with this notification that the 'Idle Acres' experiment—so contenting to them all—was about to reach an abrupt end. But it would be much less considerate to postpone informing him. If their happy establishment was on the eve of disruption, who had a better right to be forewarned?
Doubtless the old gentleman would return to his town house. It might irk him to go back to the narrow regimen of daily drives in the custody of Erickson and calorie-weighed meals served by the relentless Susan under orders from Dr. Bayard. But he would return in much better health than when he came, carrying a brave coat of tan and a wealth of cherishable memories.
For they had encouraged and abetted Mr. Percival in his every whim. Under his direction they had patiently whittled elder-stalks into sugar-spiles, accepting his theory that maple-sap was damaged by running through the rusty tin tubes customarily used for that purpose. They had made peach marmalade in the big copper kettle over an outdoor hickory fire because—well, it was ever so much tastier made that way. On Tuesdays and Fridays, Mr. Percival had tied the strings of a white apron around his neck and bestridden the antique churn, calling shrilly to Shirley—at the exact moment when any slight blunder of technique might have ruined the whole enterprise—for a wee bit of hot water to be poured gently over the dribbling dasher. 'There you are!' he would say proudly, as Shirley untied his apron. 'None of their old machinery butter for us!'
Sometimes Phil had laughed merrily with Shirley in private over Mr. Percival's naïve struggles to recover the simplicities of his own remote boyhood on a farm.
In his more reflective moments, however—and he had many of them—Phil realized that this consistent program of restoring the rudiments of wholesome living, under the tutorage of one who had all but rounded his cycle, quite suited the mood of a man who, like Damocles, was obliged by strange circumstance to respect the elements rather than the amalgams of thought and conduct. With perhaps just one more day to live, the simple ways of the fathers seemed more fitting than the distracting hurly-burly of contemporary invention. In the hourly presence of Death, the silvery tinkle of the little bell that Mr. Percival had strapped on the slim neck of their sphinx-eyed ewe was more in tune with Phil's internal adagio than the raucous bleat of hotel orchestras.
As he sat there invoicing the new situation in its bearing upon the various members of his household, Phil turned to Shirley's probable attitude toward their return to the routine of city living.
If the inevitable little drudgeries of country life had bored her, Shirley had given no sign. He had never known her to be so devoted to any recreation as the care of her flower-garden. That she had no misgivings about the children's isolation from urban advantages had been proved by the frequency of her comments on the exceptional privileges they enjoyed, particularly in the almost constant company of Mr. Percival who, well versed in woodcraft and a naturalist by instinct, had delighted in serving Polly and Junior as a philosopher and guide in the mysterious carryings-on among the feeble folk of the forest and field. The Pied Piper had not been followed more zealously than Mr. Percival.
Moreover, Shirley had found time to pursue a course of reading—ostensibly for Mr. Percival's nightly entertainment—which, she often remarked, had brought her more satisfaction than the club program, theaters, and concerts in the city. She had annexed an old hand-loom and had woven a significant bit of herself into a tapestry that could be shown to an artist without an apologetic grin.
Phil had not quite fully understood her singular solicitude in regard to himself since their residence at 'Idle Acres.' As a wife, she had never been so completely his mate. But there were momentary flashes of another relationship in which she held him—something almost maternal, brooding, protective. At times he wondered if by some inexplicable instinct Shirley did not know of the peculiar menace that measured his days. Often, when he embraced her, she would clasp her hands over his head as if to protect him from a descending blow. The gesture was significant of her new attitude toward him. It puzzled him, for surely if she had disbelieved him when he told her that Dr. Jennings had removed the fragment of needle, Shirley would have sparred subtly for further reassurance. They had never discussed the needle episode from that hour. Yet—Shirley Garland knew! And sometimes when she passed behind his chair, as he sat reading, she would touch his cheek with the backs of her fingers, ever so lightly but inquiringly, as if she tested his temperature—or, was it that? He did not know.
'This is going to be a very cold night, Philip.' Mr. Percival spread his big-veined brown hands to the fire. 'Any mail?'
'Not for you, sir, this time.'
Phil strolled to the spacious fireplace and, taking down the tobacco-jar from the mantel, filled his pipe deliberately.
'I have had a letter from the office, Mr. Percival. They want me back—a week from next Wednesday. What would you advise me to do?'
'Do!' echoed the old man. 'You hadn't expected to spend the rest of your life out here, had you—active young fellow like you?'
'Well—no,' replied Phil, vastly relieved. 'Truth is—I haven't thought very much about it, lately. We've been so contented. But I don't relish the idea of our leaving you out here alone, and I doubt if you want to go back to town. I think your wishes ought to be consulted.'
'Nonsense.'
Mr. Percival lowered himself lumberingly into his big chair and briefly squinted at the letter Phil handed him, returning it with vigorous nods of approval.
'This weather's going to be too severe for me, anyhow, Philip. I'm not much good at wading snow. Didn't mind it, last February, with spring in sight. But it's pretty hard on an old chap to be boxed up all winter—even under these favorable circumstances. Oh—I could have gone through it, I guess. But, I've been doing some thinking. Wait—I'll show you.'
He rose with an effort and, having disappeared for a moment into his adjacent bedroom, came back with both hands full of gaily printed travel literature.
'Look, Philip. What do you think of this one?' The shaky forefinger traced a red line on the map of an itinerary. 'See?—Azores... Gibraltar... Tunis... Naples. Naples! Haven't seen Naples for twenty years. No reason why I shouldn't, is there? I could go to Glory as directly from Naples as from here, if the old pump gave out. It's easy enough. I board the boat and let the stewards baby me. They know how. Blue sky and warm afternoons—after the second day out. I've been wanting to talk to Shirley and you about it, but—'
Phil smiled appreciatively.
'But you didn't want to leave us here by ourselves; was that it?'
'Of course. I had got you into it.'
It was a memorable Sunday afternoon. All day the snow had fallen steadily, conspiring with the snugness of the old house to provide Mr. Percival and the Garlands a perfect environment for Christmas Eve.
After the one o'clock dinner—there had been a turkey of their own that had ranged the woods and meadow all summer, and vegetables they had hoed, and nuts they had gathered—the family drew up chairs about the cavernous fireplace.
Polly and Junior sat on low stools at Mr. Percival's feet prodding him with insistent queries about goat-dairies, funiculars, saffron-colored sails, and miles of spaghetti drying on trellises in the Italian sunshine. He declared that if he were ten years younger he would take them both along with him on his cruise.
About four, a prodigious, unambushed yawn certified that the ancient raconteur needed some exercise, and Phil invited him to come up to the attic on an unexplained errand, leaving the children devastated with curiosity.
'No—you mustn't ask questions, Junior,' admonished Shirley, as the little fellow followed inquisitively to the foot of the staircase. 'On Christmas Eve, one just waits and lets things happen.'
'You don't, Mother,' refuted Polly. 'Grown-up people always know what's going to happen—on Christmas, and all the time.'
Shirley smiled and shook her head slightly.
'You are a very thoughtful little girl, Polly,' she said gently, 'but you're mistaken about that.'
Phil had improvised a substantial workbench in the attic. For more than a month he had been spending many hours here, every day, having made it known that visitors would not be welcome until he lifted the ban.
Out of his own well-stocked tool-kit he had fashioned a lathe from odds and ends of previously neglected farm-machinery.
He had made a sled for Junior—a red one, with green pin-stripes, the runners shod with steel.
There was a doll's house for Polly, filled with quaint, old-fashioned furniture. Shirley, sharing this much of his secret, had made covers for the tiny beds and upholstered the chairs and davenport.
But the crowning triumph of his handicraft was the walnut sewing-cabinet he had built for Shirley.
'Exquisite!' exclaimed Mr. Percival. 'She'll be delighted! It's the prettiest thing I ever saw. Philip, I had no notion you were so handy with tools.'
'I surprised myself a little,' chuckled Phil. 'It was the first time I had ever seriously tried to do anything like this. Worked it up out of the raw materials. My total outlay for Christmas, this year, was sixty cents. And I never had so much fun in my life.'
'Something more than fun, I suspect,' amended Mr. Percival soberly. 'You've discovered yourself an artist. Why—if you were ever stuck, you could make a decent living this way!'
'Hardly,' doubted Phil. 'If one were doing this sort of thing for money, one would be in a hurry. When I made this piece, I was not filling an order.'
He did not add—though he was strongly tempted to do so—that each day's work had been performed with the consciousness of its probable finality. It was doubtful, reflected Phil, whether he would have been able to create this bit of artistry in any other state of mind. Aware, as he worked, that he might never be permitted to complete the whole of it, he had crafted each part as if it were the end and aim of his endeavor. The perfection of this undeniably beautiful art-form could be explained by the fact that he had never said, 'I'll smooth down this mortise with a little more care—tomorrow.'
'It's chilly up here,' said Mr. Percival. 'If you've shown me everything, we'll go down.'
'Everything for the present, sir,' replied Phil mysteriously, thus doing further damage to Polly's theory that grown-ups have no cause to be inquisitive on Christmas Eve.
It was eleven-thirty. The children had been put to bed in a grand state of excitement. Their stockings dangled from the mantel. Beside them hung a home-knitted gray sock of Mr. Percival's which they had begged from him, though he had not protested very much. He too had gone to his room, promising to be astir early in the morning.
Feeling that good taste suggested his giving them inexpensive presents, in view of the Garlands' financial condition, the good old man had handed Shirley some very simple little toys for Polly and Junior which Erickson had purchased for him in town. She loved him for knowing what to do.
The shapely tree, which Phil had brought in yesterday on his shoulder from the woods, gleamed with the usual display of baubles, Polly's beloved fairy, frumpy but self-confident, topping the pageant.
'I believe that's all, dear,' concluded Shirley, stepping back to admire the effect of the children's gifts piled beneath the tree. 'Shall we exchange our presents now?'
Phil nodded, happily, and made another trip to the attic.
They sat on the floor before the fire, his arm about her shoulders, Shirley making affectionate little murmurs over the beauty of his gift, Phil meditatively stroking the softness of the sweater she had knitted for him.
'Much better than last Christmas, Phil,' said Shirley. 'Remember what you gave me?'
'I was a beast.'
'I still have it, dear. Want to see? Look!'
'No—no—don't remind me of it!'
'But I think very highly of it, Phil. Don't you know that it changed everything for us, so that nothing will ever be quite the same again? It was this needle, dear, that saved our home—and our love.'
Phil shook his head slowly.
'No, darling,' he replied, 'it wasn't this piece of the needle that did it. It was the other half!'
'I know,' she said softly, pressing her cheek against his sleeve.
There was a long silence between them. A clack from the old clock on the mantel warned that it was about to strike.
'Phil, dear, I've another gift for you.'
She laid a small box, gaily wrapped, in his hand, and while he sat awkwardly untying the ribbons Shirley clung to his arm, trembling with emotion.
'You'll forgive me—won't you—dear?' she begged, the detached, half-incoherent phrases tumbling after each other, bewilderingly. 'It was just the next day—I was moving the rug... I wanted to tell you—at once—but—'
Phil dazedly opened the little box and stared at its strange contents—a mere scrap of red velvet, pierced with a tiny fragment of steel.
'—But—you see'—Shirley went on, brokenly—'it had given you back to us... I couldn't risk losing you again, could I?... And it had made you so brave—and kind—and so—so exalted!'
Phil's arm tightened about her shoulders, protectingly. He slowly released a long, pent-up sigh that sounded as if it might have come from a great distance.
The old clock, with much fussiness of buzzing and many irrelevant hammerings off-stage, struck twelve with swift unceremoniousness, as if wisely deciding that the occasion now deserved a bit of welcome relief.
'Well—thanks—Shirley,' stammered Phil. 'I'm glad to have it... Just what I wanted... No—no—no—don't do that, darling!... It's Christmas!'
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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