It was easy for little Louis to accept the story of the Christ-child as a fairy tale; his life was so full of marvels this Christmas-tide. It was a drop of bitterness, of course, that George had not been asked to accompany him to Freddy’s Tree; but, to say the truth, George was not a particularly refined or attractive-looking child. He was large for his age, and heavily built; slow of speech and movement, with whitish hair, pale blue eyes, and features inchoate, of a modelling seemingly unfinished. There were not wanting signs and tokens that George might develop into a fine man; but at the moment he was unattractive, and Alice had not reached the point of choosing her guests on the broad ground of a common humanity. Indeed she was not prevented, either by common humanity or the further consideration of kinship, from reflecting with a secret glee, which she was careful not to reveal to her husband, that the presence of Louis, the shoemaker’s son, would only be condoned by the remainder of her guests because he was still—only a baby.
For Alice had bidden, not only the Garyulies and the Joblillies, but also the Grand Panjandrum himself with the little round button at top.
“Of course,” said Mrs. Henry Randolph, “you have a right to ask whom you please to your own house, and the child is only a baby, too young to presume, at present,” with awful emphasis; “but I am sorry to see you infected by the levelling tendencies of the age. Do you not know that even in heaven there are distinctions of rank?”
“I don’t know anything about it,” said Alice.
“Why, I’m sure we read of Thrones, Dominions, Principalities, and Powers.”
“And I suppose the Thrones decline to call on the Dominions, and the Principalities speak of the Powers as ‘that sort of people,’” said Alice. “Jennie, if I believed as you do, I’d—well, I’d rather be a heathen.”
“I hope you never may be a heathen, my dear”—
“Oh! come, you’re both right and both wrong. People who argue always are,” interposed the hearty, jovial voice of Mr. Randolph. He was a tall, fine-looking man, with clear brown eyes, remarkably keen, and rather lacking in tenderness, but of a certain restless quickness as they swept from one face to another. His features were regular, and his manner genial, while his laugh was equal to that immortal one of Scrooge’s nephew. Henry Randolph was a man of enormous popularity, and so trusted by his friends that even the knowledge that he had availed himself of the terms of his father’s will to keep back his sister’s portion did not shake their faith. He must have such good reasons, they said.
In truth, his reasons were of the very best. He was a man who speculated largely, and for the most part successfully; but, just at the time of Alice’s marriage, his losses had been so heavy that to resign the control of such a large amount would have been to him financial ruin, while, with it at his command, he could in a short time make good his loss. The temptation to refuse his consent to the marriage, and thus make the money legally his, was doubled by his real objection to Dr. Richards as an irreligious man, whose views upon social and political matters were also open to exception. He honestly wished his sister to accompany the family abroad, as, even if her marriage were not thereby definitely broken off, it would at least be deferred sufficiently long to serve his purpose financially.
Now, of all this Frederick Richards was perfectly aware; that is, he knew—as every one did—of the sudden collapse of the scheme which crippled Mr. Randolph, and swallowed whole innumerable smaller fortunes, and, through some murmur of the reeds such as betrayed King Midas’ secret, learned that Henry Randolph was a loser to a large amount. But to Alice the doctor said nothing; only, when the family returned to Micklegard, and the offer was made to let bygones be bygones, and restore to Alice the fortune her father had left her, Dr. Richards quietly refused.
Why?
It is hard to make his motives comprehensible to those who regard wealth as the supreme good.
The grandfather of Henry and Alice Randolph had made his fortune by means which, even in that day and generation, were regarded with scorn and horror. He was a slave-trader; but his only daughter, surrounded by luxury and educated at a Northern school, never suspected by what iniquitous means her wealth was acquired. To her, her father had always been the man he had become after his runaway marriage with the daughter of an aristocratic family, and his purchase of an estate in the far South,—handsome, jovial, and, to her, always tenderly indulgent. Her marriage to a representative of one of the “old families” strengthened her belief in herself as one of the chosen few for whose benefit the world was made and ordered; and her husband did not behold in the pearls and rubies upon his bride’s fair neck the blood and tears of suffering human beings, though somewhat distressfully aware of the not over-creditable manner in which his father-in-law had “made his money.” A convenient term this of “making money,” by the by. One might call it the great nineteenth-century petitio principii; for what a man makes might certainly be considered as his by all social and moral laws, while that which he merely acquires is suggestive of all sorts of confusing possibilities. Yet, if he makes, of what does he make, and whence came his material? Unless he makes also that, can he be said really to own the thing finally produced?
All which would have appeared to Henry Randolph very empty and unprofitable speculation,—mere sound, signifying nothing. Certainly, if one had accused him of insensibility to such suffering as he did not actually see, there are few of us who could afford to cast a stone at him; and he would have said of himself that to cases of real distress his heart and purse were always open; yet, to Frederick Richards’s mind, an invisible, semi-tangible hardness, under the manufacturer’s generous, cordial exterior, was always accounted for and excused by his grandfather’s occupation. That his own Alice had, as he firmly believed, escaped such a core to her loving heart (like the earth’s inmost hypothetical solid centre), was a freak of heredity for which he did not profess to be able to account. Yet, even Alice did not entirely concur in her husband’s opinion about the fortune, as was indeed most natural. She yielded to his feeling upon the matter; but her own was by no means what it would have been had the fruit of speculation been “lifted” bodily from a bank vault, or the slave-trader’s chattels been of pure Caucasian parentage. Also the money would have been in many ways a convenience, and, in case of “anything happening” to herself or the doctor, would have given her an ease of mind in regard to Freddy, which she was by no means able to derive from the thought of an overruling Providence.
What Henry Randolph thought of his brother-in-law, we had better not inquire; what he said was this,—
“Well, it’s his own affair; and if he can afford to despise such a sum of money, he is better off than I am,” which in a sense was true, since Dr. Richards had as much as he wanted.
The amount in question, however, was carefully “left” to Alice in her brother’s will, he being, according to his lights, a just man, whenever speculation would allow him; and, meanwhile, the two families were on studiously cordial terms, and were assembled on Christmas Eve to hail the lighting of the tree Ygdrasil.
It was Dr. Richards who told the story before the doors were opened, with Freddy in his arm-chair beside him, Frank and Harry Randolph on the floor at his feet, Louis in the place of honor on his knee, and Pinkie leaning forward from her father’s arms to listen. Pinkie, alias Rosalie, alias Pink Rosebud, was a wilful little maiden not three years old. She had the dark clear skin, brown eyes, and chestnut curls of the Randolphs, and bore indeed so strong a resemblance to Freddy, that her brilliant color and strong, active limbs sent many a pang to his parents’ hearts. But there was no envy in the pain, and the child was well-nigh as dear to both as if she had been their own.
The boys were comparatively very unimportant members of the Randolph household. Mrs. Randolph was what is called an excellent mother, and brought up her boys very strictly, and without petting or indulgence. Therefore they were best described collectively, at least in her presence, where there was little to distinguish them, except that Frank had taken a line of his own in being fair and blue-eyed. For the rest, both were painfully shy, silent, and awkward, though well-looking and well-dressed.
Little Louis, on the other hand, was perhaps too young to be shy, or perhaps had lived too freely and happily with his father to dread the criticism of his elders. At all events, as he sat on the doctor’s kind knee, and heard of the dragon Nidhug and the beautiful Nornas, and the golden and silver fruit of the great world-tree, there was nothing in his sparkling eyes, nothing in his sweet, childish face and neat, becoming dress, to indicate that the Nornas had been otherwise than kindly disposed at his birth.
Freddy and he had taken to each other at once.
“Can’t you walk one bit?”
“Haven’t you any mamma at all?” they had asked; and then the fair, rosy face and the pale, dark one had met and kissed each other.
After the gifts had been distributed and compared, there was singing of Christmas carols; for all the Randolphs had fine musical and artistic talent, and the boys forgot themselves and their mother’s presence more readily in music than in any other employment or amusement. Harry, indeed, was the leading soprano of the choir to which both belonged; and as all gathered around the piano, where Alice presided, they were a perfect picture of a happy, united, and religious family. And these are some of the words that they sang:—
“It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth
To touch their harps of gold.
‘Peace on the earth, good-will to men,
From Heaven’s all-gracious King,’
The world in solemn stillness lay
To hear the angels sing.
But with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long,
Beneath the angel strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man at war with man hears not
The love-song that they bring;
Oh! hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.
And ye, beneath life’s crushing load
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing.
Oh, rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing!
For lo! the days are hastening on,
By prophet bards foretold,
When with the ever-circling years
Comes round the age of gold;
When Peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world give back the song
Which now the angels sing.”
“What a tissue of rotten lies Christianity is!” thought Dr. Richards (who could not sing), leaning in his favorite attitude upon the mantel-piece, and listening to Henry Randolph’s fine bass, as it bore up the flute-like notes of his son. “There is Randolph, now, by a turn of his pen to-morrow will make ‘life’s crushing load’ heavier, maybe, to hundreds, and his own pockets heavier at the same time, and then will square accounts with his conscience by giving fifty dollars to some charity. Faugh!”
But at this moment an exclamation from Mrs. Randolph interrupted him. Louis and Pinkie, while the singing was under way, had got together into a corner, where they were discovered to be embracing one another in a very pretty baby fashion.
“But I tisses F’eddy,” observed Pinkie.
“It is very different,” remarked Mrs. Randolph. “Freddy is your cousin; but this little boy is no relation, and is besides in quite a different state of life.”
“Fut is state of life?” asked Pinkie. “Is it tause he tan yun ayound and F’eddy tant?”
“You’ll understand when you are older, dear,” said her mother; but whether Pinkie would have been satisfied with this answer was rendered forever doubtful by the announcement of the carriage.
“Good-by, child,” said the great lady, patting Louis’ golden head; “I wish you every good fortune that is proper for you to have. I was your mother’s best friend, if she had only known it, and would have saved her from the misery that afterwards, in the righteous Providence of God, overtook her.”
“What is misery?” asked little Louis, wistfully; “is it dying? My papa says she died ’cause we was poor, and the millionnaires wouldn’t ’vide. Are you a millionnaire, and would you ’vide?”
“Quite a promising young Socialist,” observed Mr. Randolph. “His father must be a dangerous man.”
But Louis did not hear him; he was listening eagerly to the lady.
“My dear, life and death are the gift of God. Your mother broke his laws, and he punished her”—
“Jennie! Jennie! don’t speak so to the child.”
“He should hear it from some one, Alice, and there is no one else likely to tell him. Heaven knows how kindly I feel towards poor Dora, but I dare not palliate her sin. ‘Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers’ are the words of Scripture, and poor Dora has paid the penalty for disregarding them; happier so than if she had seen her sin visited upon others.”
“Jennie, my dear Jennie, indeed the horses will catch their death; you forget how cold it is,” cried her husband, in an agony.
Doctor Richards saw them gravely to the door, then returned to the parlor, where Alice, with white lips, was restlessly putting chairs in place, and tidying books and ornaments; and Louis was standing where he had been left, with flushed face and clinched baby hands.
“If God killed my mamma,” said Louis, as the doctor entered, “then I hate God!”
“Hush, Louis,” said the doctor. “I must take you home, little boy. After all, Alice, it don’t do to mix—states of life.”
“It would, if people were human,” she said in a stifled voice.
“Ah!” he said; “but some people are only—millionnaires.”
“Is God a millionnaire?” asked Louis, as they drove away.
“Mrs. Randolph thinks so,” said the doctor; “but there’s no such person, Louis, it’s all a myth—that is, a fairy-tale.”
“I fink everyfing is a fairy-tale,” said Louis to himself with a sigh of relief; “and I’m glad about it, too; for it’s nice to be a Christ-child, but I don’t want to be God and kill people.”
When Dr. Richards returned he found Alice waiting for him in his study. Freddy, she said, had dropped asleep at once, after the evening’s fatigue.
“I am glad,” said the doctor; “I feared the excitement might keep him awake.”
“Yes,” she said, and then, suddenly, all the storm within her broke forth.
“Fred,” she cried, “help me! Is there a God? and is he so cruel? Would he punish my child for his mother’s sin?”
“My dear,” he said very gently, “why ask me? you know my opinion on these matters. And you have no very high esteem for Mrs. Randolph that her words should have such weight.”
“It is my own conscience!” she cried wildly. “Fred, I will tell you even though it will give you pain. It has rung in my ears night and day, ‘The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children.’”
“Poor little girl,” he said tenderly, stroking her hair. “I hoped at least, Alice, that your religion made you happier.”
“My religion! mine! Oh! what is my religion! I feel like little Louis, Fred, that I hate”—
“Hush!” he said, “you will be sorry presently, when this excitement has passed away. Go to bed, like a good girl, and forget it all.”
“If I only could!” she sighed; “but I won’t pray, Fred; I can’t, to a God of punishment.”
He did not reply, except by a kiss, but, when the door had closed behind her, smiled a little bitterly.
“The mystery of pain,” he thought, “she said we should solve it together, hoping all the while to convert me, as I knew very well. And her solution is, a God of punishment!”
He turned up his reading-lamp and took up the latest medical treatise, which, though it recommended very harsh remedies, he did not decline to believe in.
Dr. Richards was a devotee of physical science, not a philologist, and it therefore did not occur to him that, etymologically, Punishment is much the same word as Purification.