The Christmas Guest

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Title:     The Christmas Guest
Author: Myra Kelly [More Titles by Kelly]

On the day before Christmas eve John Sedyard closed his desk, dismissed his two clerks and his stenographer two hours earlier than usual, and set out in quest of adventure and a present for his sister Edith. John Sedyard had a habit of succeeding in all he set forth to do but the complete and surprising success which attended him in this quest was a notch above even his high average.

Earlier in the month, his stenographer had secured the annual pledges of his affection for all the relatives, friends and dependants to whom he was in the habit of giving presents: all except his mother, his unmarried sister, Edith, who still lived at home, and his fiancee, Mary Van Plank. The gifts for these three, he had decided, must be of his own choice and purchase. He had provided for his mother and for Mary earlier in the week. Neither excitement nor adventure had attended upon the purchase of their gifts. Something for the house or the table was always the trick for elderly ladies who presided over large establishments and gave their whole souls to the managing of them. He bought for his mother a set of colonial silver candlesticks. For Mary, he bought a comb of gold--all gold, like her own lovely hair. The dark tortoise shell of the one she wore always seemed an incongruous note in her fair crown. But Edith was as yet unpresented, and it was on her account that Mr. Sedyard deserted his office and delighted his subordinates at three o'clock in the afternoon.

Edith was much more difficult than the other two had been. She was strong-minded, much given to churchwork and committees. Neither the home, as represented by the candlesticks, nor self-adornment as typified by the golden comb could be expected to appeal to her communistic, altruistic nature. And Sedyard, having experienced two inspirations, could think of nothing but combs and candlesticks. So he threw himself into the current, which swept along Broadway, trusting that some accident would suggest a suitable offering. Meanwhile, he revelled in the crowd, good-humored, holiday-making, holly-decked, which carried him uptown, past Wanamaker's and Grace Church, swirled him across old "dead man's curve," and down the Fourteenth Street side of Union Square. Here the shops were smaller, not so overwhelming, and here he was stopped by seeing a red auction flag. Looking in over the heads of the assembled crowd, he saw that the auctioneer was holding up a feather-crowned hat and addressing his audience after the manner of his kind:

"Buy a hat for your wife. A waste-paper basket by night and a hat by day. Genuine ostrich feathers growing on it. Becoming to all styles of feminine beauty. What am I bid on this sure tickler of the feminine palate? Three dollars? Why, ladies and gents, the dooty on it alone was twelve. It's a Paris hat, ladies. Your sister, your mother, your maiden aunt--"

Sedyard hearkened, but absently, to the fellow's words, but his problem was solved. He would buy Edith something to look pretty in. She was a pretty girl and in danger of forgetting it. And she had been decent, John reflected, awfully decent about Mary. He knew that the entente cordiale which existed between Mary and his mother was largely due to Edith, and he knew, too, that Edith, an authority on modern-housing and model-living, surely but silently disapproved of Mary's living alone in a three-roomed studio and devoting her days to painting, when there was so much rescue work to be done in the world.

"I get my uplift," Mary would explain when Edith urged these things upon her, "from the elevator. Living on the eighth floor, dear, I cannot but help seeing the world from a very different angle."

Yes, John reflected as he chuckled in retrospect over such conversations, Edith had certainly been awfully decent.

During these meditations several articles of feminine apparel had come and gone under the hammer. The crowd had decreased somewhat and his position now commanded a clear view of the auctioneer's platform, and he realized that the fierce light of the arc lamps beat down upon as charming a costume as he had seen for many a day. All of corn-flower blue it was, a chiffon gown, a big chiffon muff and a plumed hat. Oh! if he had been allowed to do such shopping for Mary! how quickly he would have entered into the lists of bidders! Mary's eyes were just that heavenly shade of blue, but Mary's pride was as great as her poverty, and the time when he could shower his now useless wealth upon her was not yet. And then his loyal memory told him that Edith was blue-eyed like all the Sedyards and he knew that his sister's Christmas gifts stood before him. He failed, however, to discern in the bland presence of the lay figure, upon which they were disposed to such advantage, the companion of one of the most varied adventures in his long career.

The chiffon finery was rather too much for the Fourteenth Street audience. The bidding languished. The auctioneer's pleadings fell upon deaf ears. In vain his assistant, a deft-fingered man with a beard, twirled the waxen-faced figure to show the "semi-princesse back" and the "near-Empire front." Corn-blue chiffon and panne velvet are not much worn in Fourteenth Street. The auctioneer grew desperate. "Twenty-five dollars," he repeated with such scorn that the timid woman who had made the bid wished herself at home and in bed. "Twenty-five dollars!"

"Throw in the girl, why don't you?" suggested a facetious youth, chiefly remarkable for a nose, a necktie and a diamond ring. "She's a peach all right, all right. She's got a smile that won't come off."

"All right, I'll throw her in," cried the desperate auctioneer. "What am I bid for this here afternoon costume complete with lady."

"Twenty-seven fifty," said a woman whom three years of banting would still have left too fat to get into it.

"Twenty-eight," whispered the first bidder.

"Thirty," said John Sedyard.

There was some other desultory bidding but in a few moments Sedyard found himself minus fifty-four dollars and plus a chiffon gown and muff, a hat all drooping plumes and a graceful female form, golden-haired, bewitching, with a smile sweetly blended of surprise, incipient idiocy and allure.

"She's a queen all right, all right," the sophisticated youth cheered him. "Git onto them lovely wax-like hands. Say, you know honest, on the level, she's worth the whole price of admission."

John, still chaperoned by this sagacious and helpful youth, made his way to the clerk's desk and proceeded to give his name and address and request that his purchases should be delivered in the morning.

"Deliver nothin'," said the clerk pleasantly. "Do you suppose we'd 'a let you have the goods at that price if we could 'a stored 'em overnight? Our lease is up," he continued consulting his Ingersoll watch, "in just fifteen minutes. In a quarter of an hour we hand over the keys and what's left of the fixtures to the landlord. He's let the store for to-morrow to a Christmas-tree ornaments merchant."

"Then I suppose I'll have to get an expressman. Where is the nearest, do you know?"

"Expressman!" exclaimed the sharp youth. "Well, I guess the nearest would be about Three Hundred and Fifty-second Street and then he'd have a load and a jag. No, sir, it's the faithful cab for yours. There's a row of cabs just on the edge of the square. I could go over and get you a hansom."

"Thank you," said John, "I wish you would." But a glance at his languishing companion made him add, "I guess you had better make it a four-wheeler. Hansom-riding would be pretty cold for a lady without a coat."

"All right," said the sharp youth. "You bring her out on the sidewalk and I'll get the hurry-up wagon. Say!" he halted to suggest, "you know what you'll look like, don't you?--riding around with that smile. When the lights flush you, you'll look just like a bridal party from Hoboken."

Leaving this word of comfort behind him, he proceeded to imperil his life among trolley cars and traffic, while John engaged the lady and urged her to motion.

He discovered that, supported at the waistline, she could be wheeled very nicely. He forced the muff over her upraised right hand, so that it somewhat concealed her face, and through an aisle respectfully cleared by the onlookers he led her to the open air. There he propped her against the show-window and turned in search of the cab and his new friend. In doing so he came face to face with an old one.

"Why, hello John!" said Frederick Trevor, a man who had an office in his building and an interest in his sister. "Who would have thought of meeting you here?"

"Or you," retorted John. "But since you are here, you can help me in a little difficulty."

"Not now, old chap," said Frederick, "I'm in a bit of a hurry. See you about it to-morrow. Well, so long. Don't let me keep you from your friend."

"Friend!" stormed John and then following the directions of Trevor's eyes, he descried a blue-clad, golden-haired young lady lolling against the window, trying with a giant chiffon muff to smother a fit of hilarious laughter. One arched and smiling eye showed above the muff and the whole figure was instinct with Bacchanalian mirth. "Why that's," he began to explain, but young Trevor had vanished into the crowd.

Presently the cab with the smart youth inside drew up to the curb and Sedyard, with a new self-consciousness, put his arm around the blue figure and trundled her across the sidewalk. The cabman threw his rug across his horse's quarters and lumbered down to assist at the embarkation of so fair a passenger. The smart youth held the door encouragingly open and John proceeded, with much more strength than he had expected to use, to heave the passenger aboard.

Even these preliminaries had attracted the nucleus of a crowd and the smart youth grew restive.

"Aw, say Maudie," he urged when the lady stuck rigid catty-cornerwise across the cab with her blue feathers pressed against the roof in one corner, and her bird-cage skirt arrangement protruding beyond the door-sill. "Aw, say Maudie, set down, why don't you, and take your Trilbys in. This gent is going to take you carriage riding."

"What's the matter with her anyway," demanded the cabman. "Don't she know how to set in a carriage?"

"No, she doesn't, she's only a wax figure," said John, "but I bought her and now I'm determined to take her home. She'd better go up on the box with you."

"What! her?" demanded the outraged Jehu. "Say, what do you take me for anyway? Do you suppose I ain't got no friends just 'cause I drive a cab? Why! I wouldn't drive up Broadway with them goo-goo eyes settin' beside me, not for nothing you could offer, I wouldn't."

By this time the crowd had reached very respectable proportions although there was nothing to see except the end of a blue gown hanging out of the cab's open door. The sharp youth, the cabman and John took turns in trying to adjust the lady to her environment. The rigidity and fragility of her arms and head made this very difficult, and presently there rolled upon the scene a policeman, large, Irish and chivalrous. It took Patrolman McDonogh but a second, but one glance at the tableaux and one whisper from the crowd to understand that a kidnapping atrocity was in progress.

With wrath in his eye, he shouldered aside Sedyard and the cabman, grabbed the smart youth, whose turn at persuasion was then on, and threw him into the face of the crowd.

"Oh! but you're the villyans," he admonished them, and then addressed the captive maid in reassuring tones.

"You're all right, Miss, now. You're no longer defenceless in this wicked city. The arrum of the law is around you," he cried, encircling her waist with that substantial member. "You're safe at last, come here to me out of that."

"Oh! noble, noble man," cried an emotional woman in the crowd. "If all officers were like you!"

Heartened by these words the noble, noble man exerted the arm of the law and plucked the maiden out of the cab amid great excitement and applause. But above the general murmur the shrill voice of the sharp youth rent the air:

"Fathead," he cried, "you've broke her neck. Can't you see how her head's goin' round and round?"

At this the emotional woman dropped to the sidewalk. "Lady fainted here, officer," cried a gentleman. But the noble, noble officer had no time for faints, and the lady was obliged to revive with only the assistance of the cold stones and curiosity.

For the shrill voice had spoken truth. Something had given away in Maudie's mysterious anatomy; the fair head, the changeless smile and the drooping plumes made three complete revolutions and nestled confidingly upon the shoulder of the Law.

"Here, none o' that," yelled Patrolman McDonogh quite reversing his earlier diagnosis of the situation. "None of your flim-flams, if you please. You go quiet and paceable with this gentleman. A little ride in the air is what you need."

"That's right, officer," Sedyard interrupted. "That's how to talk to her. I can't do a thing with her."

"Brute!" cried the emotional woman now happily restored. "It's officers like him that disgraces the force."

Patrolman McDonogh turned to identify this blasphemer and Maudie's head, deprived of its support, made another revolution and then dropped coyly to her left shoulder. She looked so unspeakable in that attitude that the cabman felt called upon to offer a little professional advice:

"She needs a checkrein," he declared, "an' she needs it bad," a remark which so incensed Patrolman McDonogh that Sedyard decided to explain:

"Just disperse those people, will you," said he, "I want to talk to you."

The sharp youth relieved the officer of law of his fair burden and posed her in a natural attitude of waiting beside the cab. McDonogh cleared the sidewalk and hearkened to Sedyard's tale.

"So you see," said John in conclusion, "what I'm up against. I really didn't want the dummy when I bought it and you can bet I'm tired of it now. What I wanted was the clothes, and I guess the thing for me to do is just to take them in the cab and leave the figure here."

"What!" thundered McDonogh. "You're going to leave a dummy without her clothes here on my beat? Not if I see ye first, ye ain't, and if ye try it on I'll run ye in."

"Say! I'll tell you what you want," piped up the still buoyant, smart youth. "You need one of them open taxicabs.

"He needs a hearse," corrected the disgruntled cabman. "Somethin' she can lay down in comfortable an' take in the sights through the windows."

"Now, he needs a taxi. He can leave her stand in the back all right, but I guess," he warned John, "you'll have to sit in with her and hold her head on."

And thus it was that Maudie left the scene. She left, too, the smart youth, the cabman and the noble, noble officer. And as the taxi bumped over the trolley tracks she, despite all Sedyard's efforts, turned her head and smiled out at them straight over her near-princesse back.

"Gee!" said the smart youth, "ain't she the friendliest bunch of calico."

"This case," said the noble Patrolman McDonogh with unpunctual inspiration, "had ought to be looked into by rights."

"Chauffeur," said John Sedyard to the shadowy form before him, "just pick out the darkest streets, will you?"

"Yes, sir," answered the chauffeur looking up into the bland smile and the outstretched hand above him. "I'll make it if I can but if we get stopped, don't blame me."

A year later, or so it seemed to John Sedyard, the taxicab, panting with indignation at the insults and interferences to which it had been subjected, turned into Sedyard's eminently respectable block and drew up before his eminently handsome house.

He paid and propitiated the chauffeur, took his lovely burden in his arms and staggered up the steps with the half regretful feeling of one who steps out of the country of adventure back to prosaic things. He found his latchkey, opened his door and drew Maudie into the hall. And on the landing half-way up the stairs stood his sister Edith, evidently the bearer of some pleasant tidings.

Maudie's smile flashed up at her from John's shoulder. Edith stared, stiffened, and retraced her steps. John wheeled the figure into the reception-room and thus addressed it:

"Listen to me, you dumbhead. You may think this adventure is over. Well, so did I, but I tell you now it's only just beginning. If you are not mighty careful you will be wrecking a home. So keep your mouth shut," he charged her, "and do nothing till you hear from me!"

Maudie smiled archly, coyly, confidentially, and he went upstairs.

In the sitting-room, he found gathered together his mother, his sister and Dick Van Plank, Mary's young brother and a student at Columbia. John was supported through Edith's first remark and the look with which she accompanied it by the memory of her goodness to Mary and by the anticipation of the fun which Maudie might be made to provide.

"I wish to say, John," she began, before any one else had time to speak, "that I've said nothing to mother or Dick, and I think it would be better if you didn't. I can attend to the case if you leave it to me."

"Like you," said John shortly. "Who told you she is a 'case.' Mother," he went on addressing that gentle knitter by the fire, "I want you to come downstairs."

"She shall do nothing of the kind!" cried Edith, and as Mrs. Sedyard looked interrogatively from one to another of her children, her daughter swept on. "John must be crazy, I saw him come in with a--a person--who never ought to be in a house like this."

"I'd like to know why not?" stormed John. "You don't know a thing about her. I don't know much for that matter, but when I came across her down on Union Square, just turned out of a shop where she had been working, mother, I made up my mind that I would bring her right straight home, and that Edith would be decent to her. You can see that Edith does not intend to be."

"But my dear boy," faltered Mrs. Sedyard, "was not that a very reckless thing to do? I know of an institution where you could send her."

"Oh! yes, yes," said John. "And I suppose I might have handed her over to a policeman," he added, thinking of his attempt in this direction, "but I didn't. The sight of her so gentle and uncomplaining in that awful situation at this time of general rejoicing was too much for me."

He felt this to be so fine a flight and its effect upon Dick was so remarkable, that he went on in a voice, as his mother always remembered, "that positively trembled at times."

"How was I, a man strong and well-dowered, to pass heartlessly by like the Good Samaritan--"

"There's something wrong with that," Dick interposed.

But John was not to be deflected. "What, mother, would you have thought of your son if he left that beautiful figure--for she is beautiful--"

"You don't say," said Dick.

"To be buffeted by the waves of 'dead man's curve?'"

"Oh, how awful!" murmured the old lady. "How perfectly dreadful."

It was at this point that Dick Van Plank unostentatiously left the room.

"But I didn't do it, mother," cried John, thumping his chest and anxious to make his full effect before the return of an enlightened and possibly enlightening Dick. "No, I thought of this big house, with only us three in it, and I said 'I'll bring her home.' Edith will love her. Edith will give her friendship, advice, guidance. She will even give her something to wear instead of the unsuitable things she has on. And what do I find?" He paused and looked around dramatically and warningly as Dick, with a beautified grin, returned. "Does Edith open her heart to her? No. Does Edith open her arms to her? No. All that Edith opens to her is the door which leads--who can tell where, whither?"

"I can tell," said Dick, "it leads right straight to my little diggings. If Edith throws her out, I'll take her in."

"Oh, noble, noble man," ejaculated John remembering the emotional woman, "but ah! that must not be. I took her hand in mine--by the way, did I tell you, she has beautiful little hands, not at all what I should have expected."

"You did not," said Dick. "And now that'll be about all from you. You're just about through."

"My opinion is," said Edith darkly, "that you are both either crazy or worse."

"Go down and see her for yourself," urged Dick, "so quiet, so reserved--hush! hark! she's coming up. Now be nice to her whatever you feel! I'll be taking her away in a minute or two."

But it was Mary Van Plank who came in. Mary, all blooming and glowing from the cold.

"Who's that in the reception-room?" she asked when the greetings were over and she was warming her slender hands before the fire. "She's the prettiest dear. She was standing at the window and she smiled so sweetly at me as I came up the steps."

John looked at Dick.

"Yes," admitted that unabashed delinquent, "I left her at the window when I came up."

"Alas! poor child," sighed John, looking out into the night. "She'll be there soon."

"What is she going out for at this time?" Mary demanded. "I quite thought that she, too, had come to dinner. Who is she, Mrs. Sedyard?"

Upon her mother's helpless silence, Edith broke in with the story as she felt she knew it. Union Square, the discharged shopgirl, John's quixotic conduct. And John watched Mary with a lover's eye. He had not intended that she should be involved. A moment of her displeasure, even upon mistaken grounds, was no part of his idea of a joke.

But there was no displeasure in Mary's lovely face.

"Why, of course, he brought her home," she echoed Edith's indignant peroration. "What else could he do?"

"Well, for one thing he could have taken her to the Margaret Louise Home, that branch of the Y.W.C.A., on Sixteenth Street, only a few blocks from where he found her."

"Oh! Edith," Mary remonstrated. "The Maggie Lou! And you know they would not admit her. Who would take a friendless girl to any sort of an institution at this season? John couldn't have done it! I think he's an old dear to bring her right straight home. Let's go down and talk to her. She must be wondering why we all leave her so long alone."

"No, you don't," said Dick. "Edith didn't tell you the whole story. The girl," and he drew himself up to a dignity based on John's, "is under my protection."

"Your protection!" repeated his amazed sister.

"Precisely. My protection. Edith declines to receive this helpless child. Therefore, I have offered her the shelter of my roof."

"His roof," explained Mary to Mrs. Sedyard, "is the floor of the hall bedroom above his. It measures about nine by six. So the thing to do, since of course, Dick is only talking nonsense, is to let me take the girl around to the studio until John and I can plan an uninstitutional future for her."

"You may do just as you please," said Edith coldly. "I have given my opinion as to what should be done with her. It has been considered, by persons more experienced than you, the opinion of an expert. Girls of her history and standards are not desirable inmates for well-ordered homes. I shall have nothing to do with her."

"How about it, Mary?" asked her brother. "Are you willing to risk her in the high-art atmosphere of the studio?"

"I'm glad to," Mary answered. "It's not often that one gets a chance of being a little useful, and doesn't the Christmas Carol say, 'Good will to men.' I'm going down to see her now."

"You're a darling," cried John. "True blue right through. Now, we'll all go down and arrange the transfer. But, first, I want to give Edith one more chance. Do you finally and unreservedly--"

"I do," said Edith promptly.

"And you, Mary, are you sure of yourself? Suppose that, when you see her, you change your mind?"

"I've given my word,", she answered. "I promise to take her."

"That's all I want," said John.

* * * * *

"How could you, John? How could you?" sobbed Edith. "How could you tell us--?"

"I told you nothing but the absolute truth. I meant her to be your Christmas present, but you have resigned her 'with all her works and all her pomps' to Mary."

"Ah! but if I refuse to take her from Edith?" Mary suggested.

"Then I get her," answered Dick blithely, "and she'd be safer with me. I know what you two girls are thinking of. You are going to borrow her clothes and make a Cinderella of her. They are what you care about. But I love her for herself, her useless hands, her golden hair, her lovely smile--well, no, I guess we'll cut out the smile," he corrected when Maudie, agitated by the appraising hands of the two girls, swung her head completely round and beamed impartially upon the whole assembly. "It don't look just sincere to me."

But there was no insincerity about Maudie. She was just as sweet-tempered as she looked. Uncomplainingly, she allowed herself to be despoiled of her finery and wrapped in a sheet while Mary wriggled ecstatically in the heavenly blue dress, pinned the plumed hat on her own bright head and threw the muff into a corner of the darkened drawing-room when she found that it interfered with the free expression of her gratitude to John.

And some months later when the trousseau was in progress, the once despised Christmas guest, now a member in good-standing of Mary's household, did tireless service, smilingly, in the sewing-room.

[The end]
Myra Kelly's short story: Christmas Guest

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