The Christmas Story

by E. W. Hornung

 

THE CHRISTMAS STORY

By

E. W. HORNUNG.

I.

“Throne Hotel, Harrogate,
“September 7th, 1911.

"MY DEAR BRUCE,—The day before yesterday I finished that thing for the Christmas number of the Vivid, after nearly a fortnight’s hard grind; late last night I destroyed it all but a redeeming bit that may come in for something else. You must make my peace with the Vivid, like the good agent and the still better pal that you always are to me. I don’t know what they will say at being let in like this at the last moment; but I know what I should have said in their place if another author had traded on his contract to shoot in such stuff as I have been grinding out down here against the grain. It wouldn’t have done, Bruce, not at any price per thousand words; and I don’t mind telling you (or your telling them, if you like) that I wanted their money at least as much as they can possibly have wanted my name or yarn. But there are limits imposed upon the most mercenary of us, not only by the saving vanity of the artisan, but by the lowest and most calculating sort of self-interest. If I had forced this thing upon the Vivid, I should not have been able to hold up my head while their Christmas Number was on the stalls, and they would never have given me another contract.

“I wish to goodness I had never accepted this one, or at least that I had not been such a fool as to take on the job in this penitential spot, in the intervals of a cure which most people find quite hard enough work in itself. It doesn’t give the cure a chance, while the cure is simply fatal to one’s work. I don’t mean to inflict a long screed upon you, but you are my only correspondent in these days, and I should like just to give you a sample of them in further extenuation of my breach of treaty.

“At 7.15 I am called from a couch against which I have no complaint to make; but no cup of tea assists me to my legs, and I only get my letters and the papers on my way to the Old Pump Room at eight o’clock. Oh, that Old Pump Room, and the first whiff of it when the wind is the other way! A foul libation of sulphur hot and strong, twenty minutes of one’s letters and the band, another deadly draught and then back to breakfast with what appetite one may. I glower from my solitary table. and think I never saw a body of people who appealed so little to my gregarious instincts; but if they honour me with a thought, I am sure it is quite as unflattering as my impression of them. Indeed, I should expect to suffer heavily from an impartial comparison, for they keep up their spirits but I make no attempt in that direction. I doubt if I have ever been detected smiling in this hotel. I see my neighbours through sulphuric glasses, and they see me under the influence of sulphur, probably conning my programme for the day. This, of course, includes another drink to cut up my morning, and then some highly elaborate bath or skilled man-handling to cut it short an hour before lunch. In the afternoon my doctor would have me take an enormous walk and climb some legendary rocks, which I have not been man enough to find as yet. After tea I am grist for some new mill in the Royal Baths; after dinner I am a dead man, and the thing I tore up last night was a dead man’s effort.

“Yet I began with all the will in the world; my very first act, or more correctly my last before the cure began to kill me, was to hire a great brute of a desk and a swivel-chair for my room; on these I was to indite my little masterpiece for the Christmas number of the Vivid. But you see what my days have been; let me only add that, in the odd moments I do spend at my hireling desk, first all the coaches and char-a-bancs of Harrogate start from under my window for the outlying resorts, compelling me to shut it in spite of the heat, and when they are gone a popular Punch and Judy show gives a daily matinée on the green across the road. Five minutes ago a band was playing selections from the ‘Pirates of Penzance,’ and as I write a sentimental cornet is blurting out ‘Killarney’ with explosive feeling. Can you wonder that in these conditions I have done a long week’s work for the wastepaper basket? I hope the Vivid people know that my loss is greater than theirs; they can easily fill my place, but my vain effort is both time and money lost. Also I almost wish that these good folk downstairs knew what a load I have been carrying all these dreary days; then perhaps they might realise how a man may glower and glower, and yet not be quite such a villain as he looks.

“I never meant to let myself go like this, Bruce; it only shows that I really do want to write, if a congenial idea would but come in time. And that’s past praying for now, I fear; wasn’t it the day after. to-morrow that we promised to deliver the MS? I suppose I have a note of that somewhere; but everything except the addled tale itself lies buried beneath the dust of my defeat. I never was more haunted and hunted by anything in all my literary life; the last few days I have been going about like a person in a bad dream, and doing the most absent-minded things. I always was given that way, but I thought I had plumbed my nadir the other morning when I threw my book into the clothes-basket and marched downstairs with my dirty pocket-handkerchief under my arm! Luckily for me, the first person I saw was an old friend who has just turned up at this hotel; she put me right, and I had my first sound laugh since I got here. It is a great thing to strike a friend in a place like this. I believe you once met a soldier man named Vereker, an old school-fellow of mine, at my rooms in town? Well, this is his sister, and we were tremendous pals when I used to stay with him in the holidays a thousand years ago; now she’s here with their old father, a decrepit curmudgeon who chains her to his side, but tells me between ourselves that she’s engaged to be married. She doesn’t mention it herself, or wear a ring, or look the part in the least. I must take her on about it when I get a chance.

“By Jove! I saw her in the road this instant as I looked up from my hired desk. Good-bye, Bruce! I must dash out and post this at once. Remember that you’re about my only friend; don’t be hard on me for letting you in with the Vivid, and do make my peace with them if you can.

“Yours ever,
“P.A.

“N.B.—I’d have a fresh shot if they could give me another week and I could only get an idea.”

II

.

“Throne Hotel, Harrogate,
“September 7th, 1911.

“Dear Bruce,—I do believe I’ve got it! If so it’s a great deal more (or less) than I deserve for one of the rottenest things I ever did in all my days.

“I was just saying I was absent-minded—I mean in the letter I only finished a few minutes ago, though now you'll get this with it—but I’ve lowered my own record since then. I should say I had even beaten the man who went up to dress for dinner at a country house, never came down, and was found fast asleep in bed with the light out. Did I tell you about him in my last? I know I was beginning to, but I believe I went off about Ruth Vereker instead; it was she who told me the story for my consolation the other morning. But she shall never hear the one I’m going to tell you now.

“I dashed down to post your letter—the other one—and I rather thought I should run across Miss Vereker on the way. She was coming along the road when I left my room; but I was fool enough to stop to light a cigarette in the hall, thinking of course that she was on the way in. She cannot have been on her way in, because she never came in, and when I went out I could see nothing of her—anywhere. It was very annoying, because it was a chance of getting her apart from the old man and having a gossip about prehistoric times. However, I had come down to post your letter, and I could have sworn I did post it, in the pillar-box on the edge of the green, just opposite. It was not until] I got up here again that I found your letter still in my hand, but no cigarette between my lips! I could not have been more shocked and ashamed if I had caught myself with the letter actually between my teeth!

“Of course, I had posted the infernal lighted cigarette, and no doubt it will burn a hole in an envelope or so. I must be thankful that nobody seems to have seen me do it, for who would believe that one could play such a trick unintentionally? No great harm is likely to be done; it isn’t as though I had put in lighted matches; but don’t you see the possibilities of the thing? These pillar-boxes must get pretty hot in the sun; that one was, now I think of it; and suppose the things inside got like tinder, suppose some thin envelope—I know it sounds ridiculous, but I think I'll just have a look out and see. …

“Bruce! Bruce! How I wish to goodness I could get you here by writing down your name! I shall never be able to tell you in a letter what I’ve been through since I last laid down my pen. Yet for the sake of practice, and in case you care to submit the idea to the Vivid (without giving me away), I mean to try.

“I got up and looked out; the pillar-box is only just over the way, almost absolutely underneath my window; and—smoke was coming out of the slot! It was only just beginning, but in a minute it was quite thick, and in less than half a minute it had been seen by the people down below. An old gentleman saw it first—I was just in time to see the old gentleman. He had come out to post a letter, and he was greeted by a puff of smoke from the pillar-box! He started back as though the thing had sworn at him; and, indeed, it had a grotesquely human look about it that even I could appreciate in my horror. We all know mouths like letter-boxes, but here was a letter-box exactly like a mouth opened wide to blow a satisfactory cloud. Later in the proceedings, when the smoke came fast and furious, lit by leaping flames, it reminded me of a negro I once saw swallowing lighted fusees at the Law Courts end of old Holywell Street.

“Meanwhile the old gentleman had shouted for help, police, the fire-brigade, and everything else that he could lay his tongue to except a can of water. In a few seconds he had succeeded in collecting a crowd as excited and as helpless as himself. The Punch and Judy show, in the act of starting a fresh performance, lost its entire audience, who, however, were accompanied to the scene by Toby and the actor-manager with the squeaker in his mouth. A motor stopped in passing, and the occupants roared with laughter, without getting out or doing a thing. No policeman appeared; no policeman have I ever seen (or recognised as such) in happy Harrogate. And there was I looking down upon the grotesque jumble from my upper window—I, the incredibly unwitting author of it all!

“What was I to do? What would you have done? I started to go down, not to confess my fault, only to hear what they were saying; but on the stairs it struck me that somebody might have seen me after all, that I might conceivably be recognised as the culprit and denounced coram populo. I was not going to run the risk of that. I turned tail and came slinking up again, and here I still am with all the sensations of a hunted criminal. It may be that I shall treat that perennial type with some freshness, the next time I come to handle him.

“In the single minute of my absence the affair had entered on a new phase; our sturdy little Yorkshire porter had made his appearance with the can of water which had seemed the one thing needful. Yet it is not so easy to pour water into a pillar-box; the slot slopes the wrong way, and the porter could only dash cans of water at the gaping mouth, and more ran down outside than in. Relays of cans were requisitioned before that pillar-box ceased to belch forth smoke and steam; and by that time it seemed to me that the fire had practically burnt itself out. At all events, when a postman arrived (I hear they telephoned at last to the post-office from this hotel) the correspondence extracted was a charred litter, so far as I could see from my rather excellent coign of vantage; some of it fluttered away in black flakes, and I hear that practically everything in the box was destroyed. I have just been down to lunch, and dis- cussed the matter with many to whom I fear I had never even nodded before. But there is nothing like a little excitement for bringing people together; only I shuddered to think what they would have said or done had they dreamt that the entire conflagration was my handiwork. There was the keenest possible indignation against the author of the outrage, whoever he might be; I was obliged to join in it to some extent myself, or run the risk of incurring suspicion by my apathy. My old friend Squire Vereker was particularly scandalised and incensed; he thumped the floor with the stick on which he leans, and said he would give something to see the ruffian flogged within an inch of his life.

“'That’s what we want in these days,' said he: 'the cat, and plenty of it, instead of which there’s hardly any. This modern craze of coddling criminals is all confounded nonsense. It breeds ’em, sir; they thrive and multiply on it. If I wasn’t on my last legs I’d like to have the flogging of this hound myself.'

“'They've got to catch him first,' I suggested, with an unpleasant attack of goose-skin under my clothes.

“'So they have, sir, and I don't suppose they’ll do it. They never seem to me to catch anybody nowadays. I only hope the rascal won’t fall in with Ruth; she’s gone off on a long walk by herself—went without her lunch, if you please, and left me to get mine by myself. She might as well be married and done with me.'

“The rascal asked in which direction she had gone, but that the old curmudgeon could not say; nor has it anything to do with the case, my dear Bruce, though I feel more than ever that she must be having a precious thin time of it with the exacting old gentleman. The point is, however, that here I have a jolly good idea of the very kind I was wanting all along. It would make at least a very much better story than the one I destroyed. That’s one reason why I’ve written it at such length for your benefit; you might get whole chunks typewritten (again, of course, without giving me away) and try them on the Vivid. It’s not what they asked for, and they needn’t have it if they don’t like; but, if they do, let me have all this back and I can work it up in no time. It’s simply a question of treatment now.

“What would you say? The more or less innocent criminal is always a fascinating fellow, though I can’t profess to handle him like Anstey in ‘The Black Poodle,’ or Wells in some of his short stories. Still, that sort of thing at due distance. Suppose I had gone down into the street, and suppose somebody had spotted me as the dastardly offender playing a gratuitously double part? Should I have taken to my heels, and if so in what direction? Far afield in the heroine’s passing motor-car, or back into the hotel, up in the lift, and so out upon the roof? The essentially innocent soul, in the grotesquely desperate situation; that’s what we want, of course with the right sort of heroine to help him out in the end. Ruth Vereker would be the very one for the job. I would consult her about it, only I don’t want her to know I was such an abject idiot, or to think that I wouldn’t have owned up if there had seemed any point in it. On the whole I think I'll go and try to find those wonderful rocks my doctor keeps preaching about. I feel like a walk for once, and they might be a very good place for my man to fly to. She would follow him there. But now I think I’ve given you as much as you can master to-morrow morning if you’re going to look after any other fellow’s work as well as mine. I shall still let my first letter go on its own, but I’ll mark it I., and this one II., so that you may get hold of the right end of the stick first. And then I hope the wrong end won’t seem as wrong as it might have been.

“But this time I go to the General Post Office. And I shall only light up on my way to those rocks.

“Yours,
“Philip.”

III.

“Throne Hotel, Harrogate,
“September 8th, 1911.

“Dear Old Bruce,—What wondrous weather we are still having! I have shoved this delightful desk close up to the open window, to see a bit more of what’s going on, and really the life and spirit of this place are most exhilarating. The last char-a-banc has just departed for the day; if I had not better fish to fry I might have made one of its merry load. The Punch and Judy man is mustering his first audience; it would be too much to say that his squeak attracts me, but I do not resent it as I did. And I have just thrown half-a-crown to a harpist in a flat-brimmed bowler, a fiddler of more than faulty intonation, and a lady vocalist in a feather boa who has been singing me songs of Araby in a way that would indeed have charmed me to a tear this time yesterday. But all’s well with Harrogate and me this morning, and really the people in this hotel are as nice a crowd as one could wish to meet in a casual sort of way. You perceive, of course, that I have worked out my new idea to my own satisfaction? Well, I should say I have! I am wrong, however, for it has worked itself out in a fashion that would never have occurred to me in my most deliberately ingenious moments. Fact, my dear fellow, has once more demonstrated its superiority to fiction even of the ultra-Wells or imitation-Anstey type.

“In spite of all the thousands of words I fired at you yesterday, you must bear with another thousand if you want to know the astounding conclusion of the whole matter. But don’t you show this lot to the Vivid. It is for the private eye of the pal whom I value more than any agent.

“I posted both my other letters, as I told you I should, at the Post Office here while the afternoon of yesterday was still young; then I set off for those wretched rocks of which you have heard so much. You will hear no more of them; they have not seen me yet I had won through the Valley Gardens, and the encampment of curists listening to the band in their tent-chairs, when on the asphalt slope between the Gardens and the Moor I met Miss Vereker face to face. I was naturally pleased, after the way I had just missed her in the morning; my only trouble was that she was so near home, and rather fidgety about her father, though I was able to assure her that he was all right. She said she must get back to give him his tea after his rest; but I told her I thought he had not retired so soon as usual after lunch, as there had been some little excitement in the hotel owing to a very small fire in the vicinity. I was afraid I was going to be pressed for particulars, but Ruth seemed somewhat full of her own affairs, though I could not help thinking that in a way she was glad to see me. I was naturally delighted to have fallen in with her; and yet she seemed surprised when I importuned her to turn back for the least little stroll on the Moor.

“‘But don’t you want to think about your story, Phil?’

“‘No, thank you! I’ve torn that story up. I want to forget about it. I’m going to do another one instead, if they’ll give me time.’

“‘But aren’t you almost too conscientious?’

“‘Not a bit. It’s mere policy not to supply an order with stuff that one knows is bad. Besides, it was making an old man of me, that story. You don’t know what it is to tinker and tinker away, and yet to feel at the back of your head that you’re doing no good all the time.’

“Ruth had given in, and we were walking now in the direction of the Moor; but we went so far without further speech, and something in her figure and carriage, her colouring and her hair, had spirited me back so many years that I had lost my own thread before she took it up.

“‘I’m glad it was only that,’ she said.

“‘What do you mean?’

“‘You didn’t seem the least bit glad to see us again. I thought you’d forgotten us at first.’

“‘Forgotten you!’ I cried. ‘That only shows what a beast that infernal story was making of me. My wretched work always does drive me to one extreme or the other; if it had been going well you’d have heard about nothing else, and found me the most awful bore.’

“‘I don’t think I should. I haven't had so many opportunities of hearing you talk about your work. It’s about a hundred years since we met.’

“‘I shouldn’t have forgotten you if it were a thousand. Besides, I heard all about you from Dick last time he was home from India. Do you remember the first time I came to stay with him in the holidays?’

“‘I’ve got the verses you sent me afterwards about everything we'd done.’

“‘You haven’t! I remember having an awful row with Dick because I would always go about with you.’

“‘Do you remember the day we hid from him in the loft?’

“‘Rather! Poor old Dick! I didn’t quite play the game by him, But it all seems like yesterday.’

“And it really did, Bruce, for we had been the most tremendous pals in our early days, and for years afterwards, until her brother went to India; but since then we have hardly ever met until this time. Yet it all came back, here on the Moor; we called up memory against memory, and laugh for laugh, exactly as though it were a game; and all the years since the end of those days seemed to drop out of our lives, or mine at least, and give me back my youth. You may say I flatter and deceive myself; you may say what you like! I never felt a younger man than yesterday afternoon, and I never sat beside a younger woman than Ruth Vereker, with her wonderful colouring and her gold-brown hair, as crisp and bonny as the day she put it up.

“I must tell you that this so-called Moor is a sort of miniature heath, only planted with tiny clumps of trees as well; and we sat under one, on a seat thoughtfully provided by the local corporation, and as carefully covered with the names and initials of local louts. It wasn’t in the least secluded or romantic; a train runs close at hand, cars hoot nearer still, nurses and children with harsh Yorkshire accents lurk behind every bush if they are not actually sitting beside you. We had our seat to ourselves; so far we were fortunate; and a hideous reservoir, with a row of raw villas inverted in its glassy depths, might have been a magic blend of Venice and Vallombrosa as seen between a neighbouring clump of birches and a more distant ridge of pines.

It was with a kind of thud that we came back to Harrogate and 1911.

“‘Why on earth did you get engaged, Ruth?’

“Was it that her colouring gained in brilliance, or merely that the afternoon sun swept the cheek nearer mine?

“‘Who told you I was engaged?’ she asked.

“‘Your father. Isn’t it true?’

“‘Only just.’

heathOnly just!’ I echoed. ‘It must be one thing or the other, Ruth?’

“‘Then it’s true enough, I suppose,’ she said. ‘I—I couldn’t keep him waiting any longer—and now I’ve done it!’

“She looked adorably unhappy about it all.

“‘When did you do it?’ I demanded.

“‘Only this morning,’ she sighed.

“What?’ I cried. ‘Is the fellow here in Harrogate?’

“She shook her head.

“‘Then where is he, and who is he, Ruth? Is he an old friend,’ I asked, jealously, ‘who can talk over old days as well as I can? If so, I may remember him,’ I had the wit to say hastily.

“‘He is an old friend,’ she answered, ‘but of course not in the sense that you are, Phil. We weren't children together. He lives abroad, and I sent him his answer this morning.’

“I leapt to my legs.

“‘You posted it?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘About twelve o’clock—opposite the hotel?’

“‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘It’s done!’

“‘It isn’t!’ I cried. ‘Your letter never went; it was destroyed, with everything else that was in that pillar-box at that time; didn’t I tell you there had been a fire? That was the one I meant, and—and it isn’t done Ruth—and it never shall be!’

“That, my dear Bruce, is the end of the story I began to tell you yesterday, little dreaming what the end was to be. This much I owe you, and have leave to tell you word for word. The rest is silence, until you come down and see her for yourself. But you will plainly see that I cannot give it to the Vivid after all—unless—but to-morrow is Saturday, and a fine train leaves St. Pancras at 11.30. Come!

“Phil.”