A MORALITY
I
MR. AND MRS. CLARENCE
FOUNTAIN
Mrs. Clarence Fountain, backing
into the room, and closing the door noiselessly before
looking round: “Oh, you poor thing!
I can see that you are dead, at the first glance.
I’m dead myself, for that matter.”
She is speaking to her husband, who clings with one
hand to the chimney-piece, and supports his back with
the other; from this hand a little girl’s long
stocking lumpily dangles; Mrs. Fountain, turning round,
observes it. “Not finished yet? But
I don’t wonder! I wonder you’ve even
begun. Well, now, I will take hold with
you.” In token of the aid she is going
to give, Mrs. Fountain sinks into a chair and rolls
a distracted eye over the littered and tumbled room.
“It’s worse than I thought it would be.
You ought to have smoothed the papers out and laid
them in a pile as fast as you unwrapped the things;
that is the way I always do; and wound the strings
up and put them one side. Then you wouldn’t
have had to wade round in them. I suppose I oughtn’t
to have left it to you, but if I had let you
put the children to bed you know you’d have
told them stories and kept them all night over their
prayers. And as it was each of them wanted to
put in a special Christmas clause; I know what kind
of Christmas clause I should have put in if
I’d been frank! I’m not sure it’s
right to keep up the deception. One comfort,
the oldest ones don’t believe in it any more
than we do. Dear! I did think at one time
this afternoon I should have to be brought home in
an ambulance; it would have been a convenience, with
all the packages. I simply marvel at their delivery
wagons getting them here.”
Fountain, coming to the table,
where she sits, and taking up one of the toys with
which it is strewn: “They haven’t
all of them.”
Mrs. Fountain: “What do you mean
by all of them?”
Fountain: “I mean
half.” He takes up a mechanical locomotive
and stuffs it into the stocking he holds.
Mrs. Fountain, staying his
hand: “What are you doing? Putting
Jimmy’s engine into Susy’s stocking!
She’ll be perfectly insulted when she finds
it, for she’ll know you weren’t paying
the least attention, and you can’t blame Santa
Claus for it with her. If that’s
what you’ve been doing with the other stockings
But there aren’t any others. Don’t
tell me you’ve just begun! Well, I could
simply cry.”
Fountain, dropping into the
chair on the other side of the table, under the shelter
of a tall Christmas tree standing on it: “Do
you call unwrapping a whole car-load of truck and
getting it sorted, just beginning? I’ve
been slaving here from the dawn of time, and I had
to have some leisure for the ghosts of my own
Christmases when I was little. I didn’t
have to wade round in the wrappings of my presents
in those days. But it isn’t the sad memories
that take it out of you; it’s the happy ones.
I’ve never had a ghastlier half-hour than I’ve
just spent in the humiliating multiplicity of these
gifts. All the old birthdays and wedding-days
and Fourth of Julys and home-comings and children’s
christenings I’ve ever had came trooping back.
There oughtn’t to be any gay anniversaries;
they should be forbidden by law. If I could only
have recalled a few dangerous fevers and funerals!”
Mrs. Fountain: “Clarence!
Don’t say such a thing; you’ll be punished
for it. I know how you suffer from those gloomy
feelings, and I pity you. You ought to bear up
against them. If I gave way! You must
think about something cheerful in the future when the
happiness of the past afflicts you, and set one against
the other; life isn’t all a vale of tears.
You must keep your mind fixed on the work before you.
I don’t believe it’s the number of the
packages here that’s broken you down. It’s
the shopping that’s worn you out; I’m sure
I’m a mere thread. And I had been at it
from immediately after breakfast; and I lunched in
one of the stores with ten thousand suburbans who had
come pouring in with the first of their unnatural
trains: I did hope I should have some of the
places to myself; but they were every one jammed.
And you came up from your office about four, perfectly
fresh.”
Fountain: “Fresh!
Yes, quite dewy from a day’s fight with the beasts
at Ephesus on the eve of Christmas week.”
Mrs. Fountain: “Well,
don’t be cynical, Clarence, on this, of all
nights of the year. You know how sorry I always
am for what you have to go through down there, and
I suppose it’s worse, as you say, at this season
than any other time of year. It’s the terrible
concentration of everything just before Christmas that
makes it so killing. I really don’t know
which of the places was the worst; the big department
stores or the separate places for jewelry and toys
and books and stationery and antiques; they were all
alike, and all maddening. And the rain outside,
and everybody coming in reeking; though I don’t
believe that sunshine would have been any better;
there’d have been more of them. I declare,
it made my heart ache for those poor creatures behind
the counters, and I don’t know whether I suffered
most for them when they kept up a ghastly cheerfulness
in their attention or were simply insulting in their
indifference. I know they must be all dead by
this time. ‘Going up?’ ‘Going
down?’ ‘Ca-ish!’ ‘Here,
boy!’ I believe it will ring in my ears as long
as I live. And the whiz of those overhead wire
things, and having to wait ages for your change, and
then drag your tatters out of the stores into the
streets! If I hadn’t had you with me at
the last I should certainly have dropped.”
Fountain: “Yes,
and what had become of your good resolutions about
doing all your Christmas shopping in July?”
Mrs. Fountain: “My
good resolutions? Really, Clarence, sometimes
if it were not cruelty to animals I should like to
hit you. My good You know
that you suggested that plan, and it wasn’t even
original with you. The papers have been talking
about it for years; but when you brought it up as
such a new idea, I fell in with it to please you
Fountain: “Now, look out, Lucy!”
Mrs. Fountain: “Yes,
to please you, and to help you forget the Christmas
worry, just as I’ve been doing to-night.
You never spare me.”
Fountain: “Stick
to the record. Why didn’t you do your Christmas
shopping in July?”
Mrs. Fountain: “Why
didn’t I? Did you expect me to do my Christmas
shopping down at Sculpin Beach, where I spent the whole
time from the middle of June till the middle of September?
Why didn’t you do the Christmas shopping
in July? You had the stores under your nose here
from the beginning till the end of summer, with nothing
in the world to hinder you, and not a chick or a child
to look after.”
Fountain: “Oh, I
like that. You think I was leading a life of
complete leisure here, with the thermometer among the
nineties nine-tenths of the time?”
Mrs. Fountain: “I
only know you were bragging in all your letters about
your bath and your club, and the folly of any one going
away from the cool, comfortable town in the summer.
I suppose you’ll say that was to keep me from
feeling badly at leaving you. When it was only
for the children’s sake! I will let you
take them the next time.”
Fountain: “While
you look after my office? And you think the stores
are full of Christmas things in July, I suppose.”
Mrs. Fountain: “I
never thought so; and now I hope you see the folly
of that idea. No, Clarence. We must be logical
in everything. You can’t get rid of Christmas
shopping at Christmas-time.”
Fountain, shouting wrathfully:
“Then I say get rid of Christmas!”
II
MR. FRANK WATKINS, MRS.
FOUNTAIN, FOUNTAIN
Watkins, opening the door for
himself and struggling into the room with an armful
of parcels: “I’m with you there, Clarence.
Christmas is at the root of Christmas shopping, and
Christmas giving, and all the rest of it. Oh,
you needn’t be afraid, Lucy. I didn’t
hear any epithets; just caught the drift of your argument
through the keyhole. I’ve been kicking
at the door ever since you began. Where shall
I dump these things?”
Mrs. Fountain: “Oh,
you poor boy! Here anywhere on
the floor on the sofa on the
table.” She clears several spaces and helps
Watkins unload. “Clarence! I’m
surprised at you. What are you thinking of?”
Fountain: “I’m
thinking that if this goes on, I’ll let somebody
else arrange the presents.”
Watkins: “If I saw
a man coming into my house with a load like this to-night,
I’d throw him into the street. But living
in a ninth-story flat like you, it might hurt him.”
Mrs. Fountain, reading the
inscriptions on the packages: “’For
Benny from his uncle Frank.’ Oh, how sweet
of you, Frank! And here’s a kiss for his
uncle Frank.” She embraces him with as little
interruption as possible. “‘From Uncle
Frank to Jim.’ Oh, I know what that is!”
She feels the package over. “And this is
for ‘Susy from her aunt Sue.’ Oh,
I knew she would remember her namesake. ’For
Maggie. Merry Christmas from Mrs. Watkins.’
’Bridget, with Mrs. Watkins’s best wishes
for a Merry Christmas.’ Both the girls!
But it’s like Sue; she never forgets anybody.
And what’s this for Clarence? I must
know! Not a bath-gown?” Undoing it:
“I simply must see it. Blue!
His very color!” Holding it up: “From
you, Frank?” He nods. “Clarence!”
Watkins: “If Fountain tries to kiss
me, I’ll
Fountain: “I wouldn’t
kiss you for a dozen bath-gowns.” Lifting
it up from the floor where Mrs. Fountain has dropped
it: “It is rather nice.”
Watkins: “Don’t overwhelm
me.”
Mrs. Fountain, dancing about
with a long, soft roll in her hand: “Oh,
oh, oh! She saw me gloating on it at Shumaker’s!
I do wonder if it is.”
Fountain, reaching for it: “Why,
open it
Mrs. Fountain: “You
dare! No, it shall be opened the very last thing
in the morning, now, to punish you! How is poor
Sue? I saw her literally dropping by the way
at Shumaker’s.”
Watkins, making for the door:
“Well, she must have got up again. I left
her registering a vow that if ever she lived to see
another Christmas she would leave the country months
before the shopping began. She called down malédictions
on all the recipients of her gifts and wished them
the worst harm that can befall the wicked.”
Mrs. Fountain: “Poor
Sue! She simply lives to do people good, and I
can understand exactly how she feels toward them.
I’ll be round bright and early to-morrow to
thank her. Why do you go?”
Watkins: “Well,
I can’t stay here all night, and I’d better
let you and Clarence finish up.” He escapes
from her detaining embrace and runs out.
III
MRS. FOUNTAIN,
FOUNTAIN
Mrs. Fountain, intent upon
her roll: “How funny he is! I wonder
if he did hear anything but our scolding voices?
Where were we?”
Fountain: “I had just called you
a serpent.”
Mrs. Fountain, with amusement:
“No, really?” Feeling the parcel:
“If it’s that Spanish lace scarf I can
tell her it was machine lace. I saw it at the
first glance. But poor Sue has no taste.
I suppose I must stand it. But I can’t
bear to think what she’s given the girls and
children. She means well. Did you really
say serpent, Clarence? You never called me just
that before.”
Fountain: “No, but
you called me a laughing hyena, and said I scoffed
at everything sacred.”
Mrs. Fountain: “I
can’t remember using the word hyena, exactly,
though I do think the way you talk about Christmas
is dreadful. But I take back the laughing hyena.”
Fountain: “And I
take back the serpent. I meant dove, anyway.
But it’s this Christmas-time when a man gets
so tired he doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
Mrs. Fountain: “Well,
you’re good, anyway, dearest, whatever
you say; and now I’m going to help you arrange
the things. I suppose there’ll be lots
more to-morrow, but we must get rid of these now.
Don’t you wish nobody would do anything for us?
Just the children dear little souls!
I don’t believe but what we can make Jim and
Susy believe in Santa Claus again; Benny is firm in
the faith; he put him into his prayer. I declare,
his sweetness almost broke my heart.” At
a knock: “Who’s that, I wonder?
Come in! Oh, it’s you, Maggie. Well?”
IV
THE FOUNTAINS, FOUNTAIN’S
SISTERS
Maggie: “It’s
Mr. Fountain’s sisters just telephoned up.”
Mrs. Fountain: “Have
them come up at once, Maggie, of course.”
As Maggie goes out: “Another interruption!
If it’s going to keep on like this! Shouldn’t
you have thought they might have sent their
presents?”
Fountain: “I thought
something like it in Frank’s case; but I didn’t
say it.”
Mrs. Fountain: “And
I don’t know why I say it, now. It’s
because I’m so tired I don’t know what
I am saying. Do forgive me! It’s
this terrible Christmas spirit that gets into me.
But now you’ll see how nice I can be to them.”
At a tap on the door: “Come in! Come
in! Don’t mind our being in all this mess.
So darling of you to come! You can help cheer
Clarence up; you know his Christmas Eve dumps.”
She runs to them and clasps them in her arms with
several half-open packages dangling from her hands
and contrasting their disarray with the neatness of
their silk-ribboned and tissue-papered parcels which
their embrace makes meet at her back. “Minnie!
Aggie! To lug here, when you ought to be at home
in bed dying of fatigue! But it’s just
like you, both of you. Did you ever see anything
like the stores to-day? Do sit down, or swoon
on the floor, or anything. Let me have those
wretched bundles which are simply killing you.”
She looks at the different packages. “‘For
Benny from Grandpa.’ ’For a good girl,
from Susy’s grandmother.’ ‘Jim,
from Aunt Minnie and Aunt Aggie.’ ’Lucy,
with love from Aggie and Minnie.’ And Clarence!
What hearts you have got! Well, I always
say there never were such thoughtful girls, and you
always show such taste and such originality. I
long to get at the things.” She keeps fingering
the large bundle marked with her husband’s name.
“Not not a
Minnie: “Yes, a
bath-robe. Unless you give him a cigar-case it’s
about the only thing you can give a man.”
Aggie: “Minnie thought
of it and I chose it. Blue, because it’s
his color. Try it on, Clarence, and if it’s
too long
Mrs. Fountain: “Yes,
do, dear! Let’s see you with it on.”
While the girls are fussily opening the robe, she
manages to push her brother’s gift behind the
door. Then, without looking round at her husband.
“It isn’t a bit too long. Just the
very ” Looking: “Well,
it can easily be taken up at the hem. I can do
it to-morrow.” She abandons him to his
awkward isolation while she chatters on with his sisters.
“Sit down; I insist! Don’t think
of going. Did you see that frightful pack of
people when the cab horse fell down in front of Shumaker’s?”
Minnie: “See it?”
Aggie: “We were
in the midst of it! I wonder we ever got out alive.
It’s enough to make you wish never to see another
Christmas as long as you live.”
Minnie: “A great
many won’t live. There will be more
grippe, and more pneumonia, and more appendicitis
from those jams of people in the stores!”
Aggie: “The germs must have been
swarming.”
Fountain: “Lucy
was black with them when we got home.”
Mrs. Fountain: “Don’t
pay the slightest attention to him, girls. He’ll
probably be the first to sneeze himself.”
Minnie: “I don’t
know about sneezing. I shall only be too glad
if I don’t have nervous prostration from it.”
Aggie: “I’m
glad we got our motor-car just in time. Any one
that goes in the trolleys now will take their life
in their hand.” The girls rise and move
toward the door. “Well, we must go on now.
We’re making a regular round; you can’t
trust the delivery wagons at a time like this.
Good-by. Merry Christmas to the children.
They’re fast asleep by this time, I suppose.”
Minnie: “I only wish I was!”
Mrs. Fountain: “I
believe you, Minnie. Good-by. Good night.
Good night, Aggie. Clarence, go to the elevator
with them! Or no, he can’t in that ridiculous
bath-gown!” Turning to Fountain as the door closes:
“Now I’ve done it.”
V
MRS. FOUNTAIN,
FOUNTAIN
Fountain: “It isn’t
a thing you could have wished to phrase that way,
exactly.”
Mrs. Fountain: “And
you made me do it. Never thanking them, or anything,
and standing there like I don’t know what, and
leaving the talk all to me. And now, making me
lose my temper again, when I wanted to be so nice
to you. Well, it is no use trying, and from this
on I won’t. Clarence!” She has
opened the parcel addressed to herself and now stands
transfixed with joy and wonder. “See what
the girls have given me! The very necklace I’ve
been longing for at Planets’, and denying myself
for the last fortnight! Well, never will I say
your sisters are mean again.”
Fountain: “You ought to have said
that to them.”
Mrs. Fountain: “It
quite reconciles one to Christmas. What?
Oh, that was rather nasty. You know I
didn’t mean it. I was so excited I didn’t
know what I was saying. I’m sure nobody
ever got on better with sisters-in-law, and that shows
my tact; if I do make a slip, now and then, I can
always get out of it. They will understand.
Do you think it was very nice of them to flaunt their
new motor in my face? But of course anything
your family does is perfect, and always was,
though I must say this necklace is sweet of them.
I wonder they had the taste.” A tap on
the door is heard. “Come in, Maggie!”
Sotto voce. “Take it off.”
She snatches his bath-robe and tosses it behind the
door.
VI
WILBUR HAZARD,
THE FOUNTAINS
Hazard: “I suppose
I can come in, even if I’m not Maggie. Catch,
Fountain.” He tosses a large bundle to Fountain.
“It’s huge, but it isn’t hefty.”
He turns to go out again.
Mrs. Fountain: “Oh,
oh, oh! Don’t go! Come in and help
us. What have you brought Clarence! May
I feel?”
Hazard: “You can
look, if you like. I’m rather proud of it.
There’s only one other thing you can give a
man, and I said, ’No, not a cigar-case.
Fountain smokes enough already, but if a bath-robe
can induce him to wash ’” He
goes out.
Mrs. Fountain, screaming after
him through the open door: “Oh, how good!
Come back and see it on him.” She throws
the bath-robe over Fountain’s shoulders.
Hazard, looking in again:
“Perfect fit, just as the Jew said, and the
very color for Fountain.” He vanishes, shutting
the door behind him.
VII
MRS. FOUNTAIN,
FOUNTAIN
Mrs. Fountain: “How
coarse! Well, my dear, I don’t know where
you picked up your bachelor friends. I hope this
is the last of them.”
Fountain: “Hazard’s
the only one who has survived your rigorous treatment.
But he always had a passion for cold shoulder, poor
fellow. As bath-robes go, this isn’t bad.”
He gets his arms into it, and walks up and down.
“Heigh?”
Mrs. Fountain: “Yes,
it is pretty good. But the worst of Christmas
is that it rouses up all your old friends.”
Fountain: “They
feel so abnormally good, confound them. I suppose
poor old Hazard half killed himself looking this thing
up and building the joke to go with it.”
Mrs. Fountain: “Well,
take it off, now, and come help me with the children’s
presents. You’re quite forgetting about
them, and it’ll be morning and you’ll
have the little wretches swarming in before you can
turn round. Dear little souls! I can sympathize
with their impatience, of course. But what are
you going to do with these bath-robes? You can’t
wear four bath-robes.”
Fountain: “I can
change them every day. But there ought to be seven.
This hood is rather a new wrinkle, though, isn’t
it? I suppose it’s for a voyage, and you
pull it up over your head when you come through the
corridor back to your stateroom. We shall have
to go to Europe, Lucy.”
Mrs. Fountain: “I
would go to Asia, Africa, and Oceanica, to escape
another Christmas. Now if there are any more bath-robes
Come in, Maggie.”
VIII
MAGGIE, THE
FOUNTAINS
Maggie, bringing in a bundle:
“Something a District Messenger brought.
Will you sign for it, ma’am?”
Mrs. Fountain: “You
sign, Clarence. If I know anything about the
look and the feel of a bundle, this is another
bath-robe, but I shall soon see.” While
she is cutting the string and tearing the wrappings
away, Fountain signs and Maggie goes. Mrs. Fountain
shakes out the folds of the robe. “Well,
upon my word, I should think there was conspiracy
to insult you, Clarence. I should like to know
who has had the effrontery What’s
on it?”
Fountain, reading from the
card which had fallen out of the garment to the floor:
“‘With Christmas greetings from Mrs. Arthur
J. Gibby.’”
Mrs. Fountain, dropping the
robe and seizing the card: “Mrs.
Arthur J. Gibby! Well, upon my word, this is
impudence. It’s not only impudence, it’s
indelicacy. And I had always thought she was the
very embodiment of refinement, and I’ve gone
about saying so. Now I shall have to take it
back. The idea of a lady sending a bath-robe to
a gentleman! What next, I wonder! What right
has Mrs. Gibby to send you a bath-robe? Don’t
prevaricate! Remember that the truth is the only
thing that can save you. Matters must have gone
pretty far, when a woman could send you anything so intimate.
What are you staring at with that paper? You
needn’t hope to divert my mind by
Fountain, giving her the paper
in which the robe came: “Seems to be for
Mrs. Clarence Fountain.”
Mrs. Fountain, snatching it
from him: “What! It is, it is!
Oh, poor dear Lilly! How can you ever forgive
me? She saw me looking at it to-day at Shumaker’s,
and it must have come into her head in despair what
else to get me. But it was a perfect inspiration for
it was just what I was longing for. Why” laughing
hysterically while she holds up the robe, and turns
it this way and that “I might have
seen at a glance that it wasn’t a man’s,
with this lace on and this silk hood, and” she
hurries into it, and pulls it forward, looking down
at either side “it’s just the
right length, and if it was made for me it couldn’t
fit me better. What a joke I shall have
with Lilly, when I tell her about it. I sha’n’t
spare myself a bit!”
Fountain: “Then
I hope you’ll spare me. I have some little
delicacy of feeling, and I don’t like the notion
of a lady’s giving me a bath-robe. It’s intimate.
I don’t know where you picked up your girl friends.”
Mrs. Fountain, capering about
joyfully: “Oh, how funny you are, darling!
But go on. I don’t mind it, now. And
you may be glad you’ve got off so easily.
Only now if there are any more bath-robes ”
A timid rap is heard at the door. “Come
in, Maggie!” The door is slowly set ajar, then
flung suddenly wide open, and Jim and Susy in their
night-gowns rush dancing and exulting in.
IX
JIM, SUSY, THE
FOUNTAINS
Susy: “We’ve caught you, we’ve
caught you.”
Jim: “I just bet
it was you, and now I’ve won, haven’t I,
mother?”
Susy: “And I’ve
won, too, haven’t I, father?” Arrested
at sight of her father in the hooded bath-gown:
“He does look like Santa Claus, doesn’t
he, Jimmy? But the real Santa Claus would be all
over snow, and a long, white beard. You can’t
fool us!”
Jim: “You can’t
fool us! We know you, we know you!
And mother dressed up, too! There isn’t
any Mrs. Santa Claus, and that proves it!”
Mrs. Fountain, severely: Dreadful little things! Who said
you might come here? Go straight back to bed, this minute, or Will you send them back, Clarence,
and not stand staring so? What are you thinking
of?”
Fountain, dreamily: “Nothing.
Merely wondering what we shall do when we’ve
got rid of our superstitions. Shall we be the
better for it, or even the wiser?”
Mrs. Fountain: “What
put that question into your head? Christmas, I
suppose; and that’s another reason for wishing
there was no such thing. If I had my way, there
wouldn’t be.”
Jim: “Oh, mother!”
Susy: “No Christmas?”
Mrs. Fountain: “Well,
not for disobedient children who get out of bed and
come in, spoiling everything. If you don’t
go straight back, it will be the last time, Santa
Claus or no Santa Claus.”
Jim: “And if we go right back?”
Susy: “And promise not to come in
any more?”
Mrs. Fountain: “Well,
we’ll see how you keep your promise. If
you don’t, that’s the end of Christmas
in this house.”
Jim: “It’s a bargain, then!
Come on, Susy!”
Susy: “And we do
it for you, mother. And for you, father.
We just came in for fun, anyway.”
Jim: “We just came for a surprise.”
Mrs. Fountain, kissing them
both: “Well, then, if it was only for fun,
we’ll excuse you this time. Run along, now,
that’s good children. Clarence!”
X
MRS. FOUNTAIN,
FOUNTAIN
Fountain: “Well?”
He looks up at her from where he has dropped into
a chair beside the table strewn with opened and unopened
gifts at the foot of the Christmas tree.
Mrs. Fountain: “What are
you mooning about?”
Fountain: “What
if it was all a fake? Those thousands and hundreds
of thousands of churches that pierce the clouds with
their spires; those millions of ministers and missionaries;
those billions of worshipers, sitting and standing
and kneeling, and singing and praying; those nuns
and monks, and brotherhoods and sisterhoods, with
their ideals of self-denial, and their duties to the
sick and poor; those martyrs that died for the one
true faith, and those other martyrs of the other true
faiths whom the one true faith tortured and killed;
those masses and sermons and ceremonies, what if they
were all a delusion, a mistake, a misunderstanding?
What if it were all as unlike the real thing, if there
is any real thing, as this pagan Christmas of ours
is as unlike a Christian Christmas?”
Mrs. Fountain, springing up:
“I knew it! I knew that it was this Christmas
giving that was making you morbid again. Can’t
you shake it off and be cheerful like me?
I’m sure I have to bear twice as much of it
as you have. I’ve been shopping the whole
week, and you’ve been just this one afternoon.”
She begins to catch her breath, and fails in searching
for her handkerchief in the folds of her dress under
the bath-robe.
Fountain, offering his handkerchief: “Take
mine.”
Mrs. Fountain, catching it
from him, and hiding her face in it on the table:
“You ought to help me bear up, and instead of
that you fling yourself on my sympathies and break
me down.” Lifting her face: “And
if it was all a fake, as you say, and an illusion,
what would you do, what would you give people in place
of it?”
Fountain: “I don’t know.”
Mrs. Fountain: “What
would you have in place of Christmas itself?”
Fountain: “I don’t know.”
Mrs. Fountain: “Well,
then, I wouldn’t set myself up to preach down
everything in a blue bath-gown. You’ve
no idea how ridiculous you are.”
Fountain: “Oh, yes,
I have. I can see you. You look like one
of those blue nuns in Rome. But I don’t
remember any lace on them.”
Mrs. Fountain: “Well,
you don’t look like a blue monk, you needn’t
flatter yourself, for there are none. You look
like What are you thinking about?”
Fountain: “Oh, nothing.
What do you suppose is in all these packages here?
Useful things, that we need, that we must have?
You know without looking that it’s the superfluity
of naughtiness in one form or other. And the
givers of these gifts, they had to give them,
just as we’ve had to give dozens of gifts ourselves.
We ought to have put on our cards, ‘With the
season’s bitterest grudges,’ ‘In
hopes of a return,’ ‘With a hopeless sense
of the folly,’ ‘To pay a hateful debt,’
’With impotent rage and despair.’”
Mrs. Fountain: “I
don’t deny it, Clarence. You’re perfectly
right; I almost wish we had put it. How
it would have made them hop! But they’d
have known it was just the way they felt themselves.”
Fountain, going on thoughtfully:
“It’s the cap-sheaf of the social barbarism
we live in, the hideous hypocrisy. It’s
no use to put it on religion. The Jews keep Christmas,
too, and we know what they think of Christianity as
a belief. No, we’ve got to go further back,
to the Pagan Saturnalia Well, I renounce
the whole affair, here and now. I’m going
to spend the rest of the night bundling these things
up, and to-morrow I’m going to spend the day
in a taxi, going round and giving them back to the
fools that sent them.”
Mrs. Fountain: “And
I’m going with you. I hate it as much as
you do Come in, Maggie!”
XI
MAGGIE, MRS. FOUNTAIN,
FOUNTAIN
Maggie: “Something
the elevator-boy says he forgot. It came along
with the last one.”
Mrs. Fountain, taking a bundle
from her: “If this is another bath-robe,
Clarence! It is, as I live. Now if
it is a woman sending it ” She picks
up a card which falls out of the robe as she unfolds
it. “‘Love the Giver,’ indeed!
Now, Clarence, I insist, I demand
Fountain: “Hold
on, hold on, my dear. The last bath-robe that
came from a woman was for you.”
Mrs. Fountain: “So
it was. I don’t know what I was thinking
about; and I do beg your par But this
is a man’s bath-robe!”
Fountain, taking the card which
she mechanically stretches out to him: “And
a man sends it old Fellows. Can’t
you read print? Ambrose J. Fellows, and a message
in writing: ’It was a toss-up between this
and a cigar-case, and the bath-robe won. Hope
you haven’t got any other thoughtful friends.’”
Mrs. Fountain: “Oh,
very brilliant, giving me a start like this! I
shall let Mr. Fellows know What is it,
Maggie? Open the door, please.”
Maggie, opening: “It’s just
a District Messenger.”
Fountain, ironically:
“Oh, only a District Messenger.” He
signs the messenger’s slip, while his wife receives
from Maggie a bundle which she regards with suspicion.
XII
MRS. FOUNTAIN,
FOUNTAIN
Mrs. Fountain: From Uncle Philip for Clarence. Well,
Uncle Philip, if you have sent Clarence Clarence!”
breaking into a whimper: “It is, it is!
It’s another.”
Fountain: “Well,
that only makes the seventh, and just enough for every
day in the week. It’s quite my ideal.
Now, if there’s nothing about a cigar-case
Hello!” He feels in the pocket of the robe and
brings out a cigar-case, from which a slip of paper
falls: “’Couldn’t make up my
mind between them, so send both. Uncle Phil.’
Well, this is the last stroke of Christmas insanity.”
Mrs. Fountain: “His
brain simply reeled under it, and gave way. It
shows what Christmas really comes to with a man of
strong intellect like Uncle Phil.”
Fountain, opening the case:
“Oh, I don’t know! He’s put
some cigars in here in a lucid interval,
probably. There’s hope yet.”
Mrs. Fountain, in despair:
“No, Clarence, there’s no hope. Don’t
flatter yourself. The only way is to bundle back
all their presents and never, never, never give or
receive another one. Come! Let’s begin
tying them up at once; it will take us the rest of
the night.” A knock at the door. “Come,
Maggie.”
XIII
JIM AND SUSY, MRS.
FOUNTAIN, FOUNTAIN
Jim and Susy, pushing in:
“We can’t sleep, mother. May we have
a pillow fight to keep us amused till we’re
drowsy?”
Mrs. Fountain, desolately:
“Yes, go and have your pillow fight. It
doesn’t matter now. We’re sending
the presents all back, anyway.” She begins
frantically wrapping some of the things up.
Susy: “Oh, father, are you sending
them back?”
Jim: “She’s just making believe.
Isn’t she, father?”
Fountain: “Well,
I’m not so sure of that. If she doesn’t
do it, I will.”
Mrs. Fountain, desisting:
“Will you go right back to bed?”
Jim and Susy: “Yes, we will.”
Mrs. Fountain: “And to sleep, instantly?”
Jim and Susy, in succession:
“We won’t keep awake a minute longer.”
Mrs. Fountain: “Very
well, then, we’ll see. Now be off with you.”
As they put their heads together and go out laughing:
“And remember, if you come here another single
time, back go every one of the presents.”
Fountain: “As soon
as ever Santa Claus can find a moment for it.”
Jim, derisively: “Oh, yes, Santa
Claus!”
Susy: “I guess if
you wait for Santa Claus to take them back!”
XIV
MRS. FOUNTAIN,
FOUNTAIN
Mrs. Fountain: “Tiresome
little wretches. Of course we can’t expect
them to keep up the self-deception.”
Fountain: “They’ll
grow to another. When they’re men and women
they’ll pretend that Christmas is delightful,
and go round giving people the presents that they’ve
worn their lives out in buying and getting together.
And they’ll work themselves up into the notion
that they are really enjoying it, when they know at
the bottom of their souls that they loathe the whole
job.”
Mrs. Fountain: “There
you are with your pessimism again! And I had
just begun to feel cheerful about it!”
Fountain: “Since
when? Since I proposed sending this rubbish back
to the givers with our curse?”
Mrs. Fountain: “No,
I was thinking what fun it would be if we could get
up a sort of Christmas game, and do it just among relations
and intimate friends.”
Fountain: “Ah, I
wish you luck of it. Then the thing would begin
to have some reality, and just as in proportion as
people had the worst feelings in giving the presents,
their best feeling would be hurt in getting them back.”
Mrs. Fountain: “Then why did you
ever think of it?”
Fountain: “To keep
from going mad. Come, let’s go on with this
job of sorting the presents, and putting them in the
stockings and hanging them up on the tree and laying
them round the trunk of it. One thing: it’s
for the last time. As soon as Christmas week is
over, I shall inaugurate an educational campaign against
the whole Christmas superstition. It must be
extirpated root and branch, and the extirpation must
begin in the minds of the children; we old fools are
hopeless; we must die in it; but the children can be
saved. We must organize and make a house-to-house
fight; and I’ll begin in our own house.
To-morrow, as soon as the children have made themselves
thoroughly sick with candy and cake and midday dinner,
I will appeal to their reason, and get them to agree
to drop it; to sign the Anti-Christmas pledge; to
Mrs. Fountain: “Clarence! I
have an idea.”
Fountain: “Not a bright one?”
Mrs. Fountain: “Yes,
a bright one, even if you didn’t originate it.
Have Christmas confined entirely to children to
the very youngest to children that believe
firmly in Santa Claus.”
Fountain: “Oh, hello!
Wouldn’t that leave Jim and Susy out? I
couldn’t have them left out.”
Mrs. Fountain: “That’s
true. I didn’t think of that. Well,
say, to children that either believe or pretend
to believe in him. What’s that?”
She stops at a faint, soft sound on the door.
“It’s Maggie with her hands so full she’s
pushing with her elbow. Come in, Maggie, come
in. Come in! Don’t you hear me?
Come in, I say! Oh, it isn’t Maggie, of
course! It’s those worthless, worthless
little wretches, again.” She runs to the
door calling out, “Naughty, naughty, naughty!”
as she runs. Then, flinging the door wide, with
a final cry of “Naughty, I say!”
she discovers a small figure on the threshold, nightgowned
to its feet, and looking up with a frightened, wistful
face. “Why, Benny!” She stoops down
and catches the child in her arms, and presses him
tight to her neck, and bends over, covering his head
with kisses. “What in the world are you
doing here, you poor little lamb? Is mother’s
darling walking in his sleep? What did you want,
my pet? Tell mudda, do! Whisper it in mudda’s
big ear! Can’t you tell mudda? What?
Whisper a little louder, love! We’re not
angry with you, sweetness. Now, try to speak
louder. Is that Santa Claus? No, dearest,
that’s just dadda. Santa Claus hasn’t
come yet, but he will soon. What? Say it
again. Is there any Santa Claus? Why, who
else could have brought all these presents? Presents
for Benny and Jim and Susy and mudda, and seven bath-gowns
for dadda. Isn’t that funny? Seven!
And one for mudda. What? I can’t quite
hear you, pet. Are we going to send the presents
back? Why, who ever heard of such a thing?
Jim said so? And Susy? Well, I will settle
with them, when I come to them. You don’t
want me to? Well, I won’t, then, if Benny
doesn’t want mudda to. I’ll just
give them a kiss apiece, pop in their big ears.
What? You’ve got something for Santa Claus
to give them? What? Where? In your crib?
And shall we go and get it? For mudda too?
And dadda? Oh, my little angel!” She begins
to cry over him, and to kiss him again. “You’ll
break my heart with your loveliness. He wants
to kiss you too, dadda.” She puts the boy
into his father’s arms; then catches him back
and runs from the room with him. Fountain resumes
the work of filling the long stocking he had begun
with; then he takes up a very short sock. He
has that in his hand when Mrs. Fountain comes back,
wiping her eyes. “He’ll go to sleep
now, I guess; he was half dreaming when he came in
here. I should think, when you saw how Benny believed
in it, you’d be ashamed of saying a word against
Christmas.”
Fountain: “Who’s
said anything against it? I’ve just been
arguing for it, and trying to convince you that for
the sake of little children like Benny it ought to
be perpetuated to the end of the world. It began
with the childhood of the race, in the rejuvenescence
of the spirit.”
Mrs. Fountain: “Didn’t
you say that Christmas began with the pagans?
How monstrously you prevaricate!”
Fountain: “That
was merely a figure of speech. And besides, since
you’ve been out with Benny, I’ve been thinking,
and I take back everything I’ve said or thought
against Christmas; I didn’t really think it.
I’ve been going back in my mind to that first
Christmas we had together, and it’s cheered
me up wonderfully.”
Mrs. Fountain, tenderly:
“Have you, dearest? I always think
of it. If you could have seen Benny, how I left
him, just now?”
Fountain: “I shouldn’t
mind seeing him, and I shouldn’t care if I gave
a glance at poor old Jim and Susy. I’d like
to reassure them about not sending back the presents.”
He puts his arm round her and presses her toward the
door.
Mrs. Fountain: “How
sweet you are! And how funny! And good!”
She accentuates each sentiment with a kiss. “And
don’t you suppose I felt sorry for you, making
you go round with me the whole afternoon, and then
leaving you to take the brunt of arranging the presents?
Now I’ll tell you: next year, I
will do my Christmas shopping in July.
It’s the only way.”
Fountain: “No, there’s
a better way. As you were saying, they don’t
have the Christmas things out. The only way is
to do our Christmas shopping the day after Christmas;
everything will be round still, and dog-cheap.
Come, we’ll begin day after to-morrow.”
Mrs. Fountain: “We will, we will!”
Fountain: “Do you think we will?”
Mrs. Fountain: “Well,
we’ll say we will.” They laugh
together, and then he kisses her.
Fountain: “Even
if it goes on in the same old way, as long as we have
each other
Mrs. Fountain: “And the children.”
Fountain: “I forgot the children!”
Mrs. Fountain: “Oh, how delightful
you are!”