 Chapter 1 of Beasley's Christmas Party by Booth Tarkington The maple-bordered street was as still as a country Sunday, so quiet that there seemed an echo to my footsteps. It was four o'clock in the morning, clear October moonlight misted through the thinning foliage to the shadowy sidewalk, and lay like a transparent silver fog upon the house of my admiration, as I strode along, returning from my first night's work on the Wainwright morning dispatch. I had already marked that house as the finest, to my taste, in Wainwright, though hitherto, on my excursions to this metropolis, the State Capital, I was not without a certain native jealousy that Spencerville, the county seat where I lived, had nothing so good. Now, however, I approached its perluse with a pleasure in it quite unalloyed, for I was at last myself a resident, albeit only of one day's standing, of Wainwright, and the house, though I had not even an idea of who lived there, part of my possessions as a citizen. Moreover, I might enjoy the warmer pride of a next-door neighbor, for Mrs. Applethoats, where I had taken a room, was just beyond. This was the quietest part of Wainwright. Business stopped short of it, and the fashionable residence section had overleaped this forgotten backwater, leaving it undisturbed and unchanging, with that look about it which is the quality of few urban quarters, and eventually of none, as a town grows to be a city, the look of still being a neighborhood. This friendliness of appearance was largely the emanation of the homely and beautiful house which so greatly pleased my fancy. It might be difficult to say why I thought it was the finest house in Wainwright, for a simpler structure would be hard to imagine. It was merely a big old-fashioned brick house, painted brown and very plain, set well away from the street among some splendid forest trees, with a fair spread of flat lawn. But it gave back a great deal for your glance, just as some people do. It was a large house, as I say, yet it looked not like a mansion, but like a home, and made you wish that you lived in it. Or, driving by of an evening, you would have liked to hitch your horse and go in. It spoke so surely of hardy old-fashioned people living there, who would welcome you merrily. It looked like a house where there were a grandfather and a grandmother, where holidays were warmly kept, where there were boisterous family reunions to which uncles and aunts who had been born there would return from no matter what distances. A house where big turkeys would be on the table often, where one called the hired man, and named either Abner or Ole, would crack walnuts upon a flat iron clutched between his knees on the back porch. It looked like a house where they played charades, where there would be long streamers of evergreen and dozens of wreaths of holly at Christmas time, where there were tearful happy weddings and great throwings of rice after little brides from the front broad steps. In a word, it was the sort of a house to make the hearts of spinsters and bachelors very lonely and wistful. And that is about as near as I can come to my reason for thinking at the finest house in Wainwright. The moon hung kindly above its level roof in the silence of that October morning as I checked my gate to loiter along the picket fence. But suddenly the house showed a light of its own. The spurt of a match took my eye to one of the upper windows, then a steadier glow of orange told me that a lamp was lighted. The window was opened, and a man looked out and whistled loudly. I stopped, thinking that he meant to attract my attention, that something might be wrong, that perhaps someone was needed to go for a doctor. My mistake was immediately evident, however. I stood in the shadow of the trees bordering the sidewalk, and the man at the window had not seen me. Boy! Boy! he called softly. Where are you, simple Doria? He leaned from the window looking downward. Why there you are, he exclaimed, and turned to address some invisible person within the room. He's right there, underneath the window. I'll bring him up. He leaned out again. Wait there, simple Doria, he called. I'll be down in a jiffy and let you in. Puzzled I stared at the vacant lawn before me. The clear moonlight revealed it rightly, and it was empty of any living presence. There were no bushes, nor shrubberies, nor even shadows that could have been mistaken for a boy, if simple Doria was a boy. There was no dog in sight, there was no cat, there was nothing beneath the window except thick, close-cropped grass. A light shone in the hallway behind the broad front doors. One of these was opened and revealed in silhouette the tall, thin figure of a man in a long old-fashioned dressing gown. Simple Doria, he said, addressing the night air with considerable severity. I don't know what to make of you. You might have caught your death of cold roving out at such an hour. But there, he continued more indulgently. Wipe your feet on the mat and come in. You're safe now. He closed the door and I heard him call to someone upstairs as he rearranged the fastenings. Simple Doria's all right, only a little chilled. I'll bring him up to your fire. I went on my way in a condition of astonishment that engendered almost a doubt of my eyes, for if my sight was unimpaired in myself not subject to optical or mental delusion, neither boy nor dog nor bird nor cat nor any other object of this visible world had entered that open door. Was my finest house then a place of call for wandering ghosts who came home to roost at four in the morning? It was only a step to Mrs. Applethwaite's. I let myself in with the key that good lady had given me, stole up to my room, went to my window, and stared across the yard at the house next door. The front window in the second story I decided necessarily belonged to that room in which the lamp had been lighted, but all was dark there now. I went to bed and dreamed that I was out at sea in a fog, having embarked on a transparent vessel whose preposterous name, inscribed upon glass life-belts, depending here and there from an invisible rail, was Simple Doria. Chapter 2 of Beasley's Christmas Party by Booth Tarkington Mrs. Applethwaite's was a commodious old house, the greater part of it about the same age I judged as its neighbor, but the late Mr. Applethwaite had caught the mansard fever of the late seventies, and the building disease once fastened upon him had never known a convalescence, but rather a series of relapses, the tokens of which, in the nature of a cupola and a couple of framed turrets, were terrifyingly apparent. These romantic misplacements seemed to me not inharmonious with the library, a cheerful and pleasantly shabby apartment downstairs, where I found, over a substratum of history, encyclopedia, and family Bible, some worn old volumes of Goatie's Ladies' Book, an early edition of Cooper's Works, Scott, Bulwer, Macaulay, Byron, and Tennyson, complete. Some odd volumes of Victor Hugo of the Elder Dumas of Flaubert, of Goatie, and of Balzac, Clarissa, Lala Rook, the Alhambra, Bula, Huarda, Lucille, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Ben Hur, Trilby, She, Little Lord Fauntleroy, and, of a later decade, there were novels about those delicately tangled emotions experienced by the supreme few, and stories of adventurous royalty, tales of clean-limbed young American manhood, and some thin volumes of rather precious verse. To as amid these romantic scenes that I awaited the sound of the lunch bell, which for me was the announcement of breakfast, when I arose from my first night's slumbers under Mrs. Aperthwaite's roof, and I wondered if the books were a fair mirror of Mrs. Aperthwaite's mind. I have been told that Mrs. Aperthwaite had a daughter. Mrs. Aperthwaite herself, in her youth, might have sat to an illustrator of Scott or Bulwer. Even now you could see she had come as near being romantically beautiful, as was consistently proper for such a timid gentle little gentle woman as she was. Reduced by her husband's insolvency, coincident with his demise, to keeping borders, she did it gracefully, as if the urgency there too were only a spirit of quiet hospitality. It should be added in haste that she set an excellent table. Moreover, the guests who gathered at her board were of a very attractive description, as I decided the instant my eye fell upon the lady who sat opposite me at lunch. I knew at once that she was Mrs. Aperthwaite. She went so, as they say, with her mother. Nothing could have been more suitable. Mrs. Aperthwaite was the kind of woman whom you would expect to have a beautiful daughter, and Mrs. Aperthwaite more than fulfilled her mother's promise. I guessed her to be more than Juliet Capulet's age, indeed, yet still between that and the perfect age of woman. She was of a larger, fuller, more striking type than Mrs. Aperthwaite, a bolder type, one might put it, though she might have been a great deal bolder than Mrs. Aperthwaite without being bold. Certainly she was handsome enough to make it difficult for a young fellow to keep from staring at her. She had an abundance of very soft dark hair, worn almost severely, as if its profusion necessitated repression. And I am compelled to admit that her fine eyes expressed a distant contemplation, obviously of habit out of mood, so pronounced that one of her enemies, if she had any, might have described them as dreamy. Only one other of my own sex was present at the lunch table, a Mr. Dowden, an elderly lawyer and politician, of whom I had heard, and to whom Mrs. Aperthwaite, coming in after the rest of us were seated, introduced me. She made the presentation general, and I had the experience of receiving a nod and a slow glance, in which there was a sort of dusky, estimating brilliance from the beautiful lady opposite me. It might have been better mannered for me to address myself to Mr. Dowden, or one of the very nice elderly women who were my fellow guests, than to open a conversation with Mrs. Aperthwaite, but I did not stop to think of that. You have a splendid old house next door to you here, Mrs. Aperthwaite, I said. It's a privilege to find it in view for my window. There was a faint stir as of some consternation in the little company. The elderly ladies stopped talking abruptly and exchanged glances, though this was not of my observation at the moment, I think, but recurred to my consciousness later when I had perceived my blunder. May I ask who lives there? I pursued. Mrs. Aperthwaite allowed her noticeable lashes to cover her eyes for an instant, and looked up again. I'm Mr. Beasley, she said. Not the honorable David Beasley, I exclaimed. Yes, she returned with a certain gravity which I afterwards wished had checked me. Do you know him? Not in person, I explained. You see, I've written a good deal about him. I was with the Spencerville Journal until a few days ago, and even in the country we know who's who in politics over the state. Beasley's the man that went to Congress and never made a speech, never made even a motion to adjourn, but got everything his district wanted. There's talk of him now for Governor. Indeed. And so it's the honorable David Beasley who lives in that splendid place. How curious that is. Why? asked Mrs. Aperthwaite. It seems too big for one man, I answered, and I've always had the impression Mr. Beasley was a bachelor. Yes, she said rather slowly, he is. But of course he doesn't live there all alone, I supposed, aloud. Probably, he has. No, there's no one else except a couple of colored servants. What a crime, I exclaimed. If there ever was a house meant for a large family, that one is. Can't you almost hear it trying out for heaps and heaps of romping children? I should think. I was interrupted by a loud cough from Mr. Doudin, so abrupt and artificial that his intention to check the flow of my innocent prattle was embarrassingly obvious, even to me. Can you tell me, he said, leaning forward and following up the interruption as hastily as possible, what the farmers were getting for their wheat when you left Spencerville? Ninety-four cents, I answered, and felt my ears growing red with mortification. Too late I remembered that the newcomer in a community should guard his tongue among the natives, until he has unraveled the scheme of their relationships, alliances, feuds, and private wars, a precept not unlike the classic injunction. Yes, my darling daughter, hung your clothes on a hickory limb, but don't go near the water. However, in my confusion I warmly regretted my failure to follow it, and resolve not to blunder again. Mr. Doudin thanked me for the information for which he had no real desire, and the elderly ladies again taking up, with all too evident relief, their various mild debates, he inquired if I played bridge. But I forget, he added, of course you'll be at the dispatch office in the evenings and can't be here, after which he immediately began to question me about my work, making his determination to give me no opportunity again to mention the honorable David Beasley unnecessarily conspicuous as I thought. I could only conclude that some unpleasantness had arisen between himself and Beasley, probably of political origin, since they were both in politics, and of personal and consequently bitter development, and that Mr. Doudin found the mention of Beasley not only unpleasant to himself, but a possible embarrassment to the ladies, who I supposed were aware of the quarrel, on his account. After lunch, not having to report at the office immediately, I took unto myself the solace of a cigar, which kept me in company during a stroll about Mrs. Aberthwaite's capacious yard. In the rear I found an old-fashioned rose garden, the bushes long since bloomless, and now brown with autumn, and I pasted its graveled paths up and down, at the same time favouring Mr. Beasley's house with a covert study that would have done credit to a porch climber. For the sting of my blunder at the table was quiescent, or at least neutralized, under the itch of a curiosity far from satisfied concerning the interesting premises next door. The gentleman in the dressing-gown, I was sure, could have been no other than the honourable David Beasley himself. He came not in eye-shot now, neither he nor any other. There was no sign of life about the place. That portion of his yard which lay behind the house was not within my vision, it is true, his property being here separated from Mrs. Aberthwaite's by a board fence higher than a tall man could reach. But there was no sound from the other side of this partition, save that caused by the quiet movement of rusty leaves in the breeze. My cigar was at half length when the green lattice door of Mrs. Aberthwaite's back porch was opened, and Mrs. Aberthwaite, bearing a saucer of milk, issued therefrom, followed hastily by a very white fat cat with a pink ribbon round its neck, a vibrant nose, and fixed ferocious eyes uplifted to the saucer. The lady and her cat offered to view a group as pretty as a popular painting. It was even improved when, stooping, Mrs. Aberthwaite set the saucer upon the ground, and continuing in that posture stroked the cat, to bend so far as a test of a woman's grace I have observed. She turned her face toward me and smiled, I'm almost at the age you see. What age, I asked stupidly enough. When we take two cats, she said, rising, spinster hood we like to call it, single blessedness. That is your kind heart. You decline to make one of us happy, to the despair of all the rest. She laughed at this, though with no genuine mirth I marked, and let my 1830 attempt at gallantry pass without other retort. You seemed interested in the old place yonder, she indicated Mr. Beasley's house with a nod. Oh, I understood my blunder, I said quickly. I wish I had known the subject was embarrassing or unpleasant to Mr. Dowden. What make you think that? Surely, I said, you saw how pointedly he cut me off. Yes, she returned thoughtfully. He rather did, it's true. At least I see how you got that impression. She seemed amuse upon this, letting her eyes fall, then raising them allowed her far away gaze to rest upon the house beyond the fence and said, It is an interesting old place. And Mr. Beasley himself, I began. Oh, she said, he isn't interesting, that's his trouble. You mean his trouble not to? She interrupted me, speaking with sudden surprising energy. I mean he's a man of no imagination. No imagination, I exclaimed. Not in the world, not one ounce of imagination, not one grain. Then who, I cried, or what, is simple Doria? Simple what? she said, plainly mystified. Simple Doria. Simple Doria? she repeated and laughed. What in the world is that? You never heard of it before? Never in my life. You've lived next door to Mr. Beasley a long time, haven't you? All my life. And I suppose you must know him pretty well. What next, she said, smiling. You said he lived there all alone, I went on tentatively. Except for an old-colored couple, his servants. Can you tell me, I hesitated, has he ever been thought, well, queer? Never, she answered emphatically. Never anything so exciting, merely deadly and hopelessly commonplace. She picked up the saucer, now exceedingly empty, and set it upon a shelf by the lattice door. What was it about? What was that name? Simple Doria? I will tell you, I said, and I related in detail the singular performance of which I had been a witness in the late moonlight before that morning's dawn. As I talked, we half unconsciously moved across the lawn together, finally seating ourselves upon a bench beyond the rose beds and near the high fence. The interest my companion exhibited in the narration might have surprised me, had my nocturnal experience itself been less surprising. She interrupted me now and then with little half-checked ejaculations of acute wonder, but sat for the most part with her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand. Her face turned eagerly to mine, and her lips parted in half-breathless attention. There was nothing far away about her eyes now, they were widely and intently alert. When I finished, she shook her head slowly, as if quite dumb-founded, and altered her position, leading against the back of the bench and gazing straight before her without speaking. It was plain that her neighbor's extraordinary behavior had revealed a phase of his character novel enough to be startling. One explanation might be just barely possible, I said. If it is, it is the most remarkable case of sonambulism on record. Did you ever hear of Mr. Beasley's walking in his? She touched me lightly, but peremptorily, on the arm in warning, and I stopped. On the other side of the board fence a door opened creakily, and there sounded a loud and cheerful voice, that of the gentleman in the dressing gown. Here we come, it said, me and Big Bill hemorously. I want to show Bill I can jump, and anyway three times as far as he can. Come on, Bill. Is that Mr. Beasley's voice? I asked, under my breath. Ms. Aperthwaite nodded in affirmation. Could he have heard me? No, she whispered. He's just come out of the house. And then to herself, who under heaven is Bill hemorously? I never heard of him. Of course, Bill, said the voice beyond the fence, if you're afraid I'll beat you too badly, you've still got time to back out. I did understand you to kind of hint that you were considerable of a jumper, but if, what, would you say, Bill? There ensued a moment's complete silence. Oh, all right, the voice then continued. You say you're in this to win, do you? Well, so am I, Bill hemorously, so am I. We'll go first. Me? All right. From the edge of the walk here now, then. One, two, three. Ha! A sound came to our ears of someone landing heavily, and at full length it seemed, on the turf, followed by a slight rusty groan in the same voice. Oh, don't you laugh, Bill hemorously. I haven't jumped as much as I ought to these last 20 years. I reckon I've kind of lost the hang of it. Ha! There were indications that Mr. Beasley was picking himself up and brushing his trousers with his hands. Now, it's your turn, Bill. What say? Silence again, followed by, yes, I'll make Simple Doria get out of the way. Come here, Simple Doria. Now, Bill, put your heels together on the edge of the walk. That's right. All ready? Now, then. One for the money, two for the show, three to make ready, and four for go. Another silence. My jingo! Bill hemorously, you've beat me. Ha! Ha! That was a jump. What say? Silence once more. You say you can do even better than that? Come, Bill, don't brag. Oh, you say you've often jumped farther? You say that was up in Scotland where you had a springboard. Oh, all right. Let's see how far you can jump when you really try. There. Heels on the walk again. That's right. Swing your arms. One, two, three. There you go. Another silence. Zing! Well, sir, I'll be eternally snitched to flinders if you didn't do it that time, Bill hemorously. I see I never really saw any jumping before in all my born days. It's eleven feet if it's an inch. What? You say you...? I heard no more, for Miss Aperthwaite, her face flushed and her eyes shining beckoned me imperiously to follow her, and departed so hurriedly that it might be said she ran. I don't know, said I, keeping at her elbow, whether it's more like Alice or the interlocutor's conversation at a minstrel show. Hush! she warned me, though we were already at a safe distance and did not speak again until we had reached the front walk. There she paused, and I noted that she was trembling, and, no doubt correctly, judged her emotion to be that of consternation. There was no one there, she exclaimed. He was all by himself. It was just the same as what you saw last night. Evidently. Did it sound to you? There was a little odd tremor in her voice that I found very appealing. Did it sound to you like a person who'd lost his mind? I don't know, I said. I don't know at all what to make of it. He couldn't have been. Her eyes grew very wide. Intoxicated? No, I'm sure it wasn't that. Then I don't know what to make of it either. All that while talk about Bill Hammersley and Simple Doria and springboards in Scotland and and an eleven-foot jump, I suggested. Why, there's no more at Bill Hammersley, she cried, with a gesture of excited emphasis than there is a Simple Doria. So it appears, I agreed. He's lived there all alone, she said solemnly, in that big house so long, just sitting there evening after evening all by himself, never going out, never reading anything, not even thinking, but just sitting and sitting and sitting and sitting. Well, she broke off suddenly, shook the frown from her forehead and made me the offer of a dazzling smile. There's no use bothering one's own head about it. I'm glad to have a fellow witness, I said. It's so eerie I might have concluded there was something the matter with me. You're going to your work, she asked, as I turned toward the gate. I'm very glad I don't have to go to mine. Yours, I inquired rather blankly. I teach algebra and plain geometry at the high school, said this surprising young woman. Thank heaven it's Saturday. I'm reading Les Miserables for the seventh time, and I'm going to have a real orgy over Gervais and the barricade this afternoon. End of Chapter 2, Recording by Arnold Banner Clemens, North Carolina Chapter 3 of Beasley's Christmas Party by Booth Tarkington This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. I do not know why it should have astonished me to find that Miss Eparth Waite was a teacher of mathematics, except that, to my inexperienced eye, she didn't look it. She looked more like Charlotte Corday. I had the pleasure of seeing her opposite me at lunch the next day, when Mr. Dowden kept me occupied with Spencerville politics, obviously from fear that I would break out again. But no stroll in the garden with her rewarded me afterward, as I dimly hoped, for she disappeared before I left the table, and I did not see her again for a fortnight. On weekdays she did not return to the house for lunch. My only meal at Mrs. Eparth Waite's. I dined at a restaurant near the dispatch office, and she was out of town for a little visit. Her mother informed us over the following Saturday and Sunday. She was not altogether out of my thoughts, however. Indeed, she almost divided them with the honorable David Beasley. A better view which I was afforded of this gentleman did not lessen my interest in him. Increased it, rather. It also served to make the extraordinary didos of which he had been the virtuoso, and I, the audience, more than ever profoundly inexplicable. My glimpse of him in the lighted doorway had given me the vaguest impression of his appearance. But one afternoon, a few days after my interview with Mrs. Eparth Waite, I was starting for the office, and met him full face on as he was turning in at his gate. I took as careful invoice of him as I could, without conspicuously glaring. There was something remarkably taking, as we say, about this man. Something easy and genial and quizzical and careless. He was the kind of person you liked to meet on the street, whose cheerful passing sends you on feeling indefinably a little gayer than you did. He was tall, thin, even gaunt, perhaps, and his face was long, rather pale and shrewd and gentle. Something in his oddity not unremindful of the late Saul Smith Russell. His hat was tilted back a little, the slightest bit to one side, and the sparse brownish hair above his high forehead was going to be gray before long. He looked about forty. The truth is, I had expected to see a cousin German to Don Coyote. I had thought to detect signs and gleams of wildness, however slight. Something a little off. One glance of that kindly and humorous eye told me such expectation had been nonsense. Odd he might have been. Gadzugs, he looked at. But queer? Never. The fact that Ms. Apartheid could picture such a man as this sitting and sitting and sitting himself into any form of mania or madness whatever spoke loudly of her own imagination, indeed. The key to simple Doria was to be sought under some other math. As I began to know some of my co-laborers on the dispatch and to pick up acquaintances here and there about town, I sometimes made Mr. Beasley the subject of inquiry. Everybody knew him. Oh yes, I know Dave Beasley would come the reply, nearly always with a chuckling sort of laugh. I gathered that he had a name for easygoing, which amounted to eccentricity. It was said that what the ward-healers and camp-followers got out of him in campaign times made the political managers cry. He was the first and readyest prey for every fraud and swindler that came to Wainwright, I heard. And yet, in spite of this and of his hatred of speech-making, he's as silent as Grant, said one informant, he had a large practice and was one of the most successful lawyers in the state. One story they told of him, or, as they were more apt to put it, on him, was repeated so often that I saw it had become one of the town's traditions. One bitter evening in February they related, he was approached upon the street by a ragged whining and shivering old reprobate, notorious for the various ingenuities by which he had worn out the patience of the charity organizations. He asked Beasley for a dime. Beasley had no money in his pockets, but gave the man his overcoat, went home without any himself, and spent six weeks in bed with a bad case of pneumonia as the direct result. His beneficiary sold the overcoat and invested the proceeds in a five-day spree in the closing scenes of which a couple of brickbats were featured to high spectacular effect. One he sent through a jeweler's show window in an attempt to intimidate some wholly imaginary pursuers. The other he projected at a perfectly actual policeman who was endeavoring to soothe him. The victim of Beasley's charity and the officer were then born to the hospital and company. It was due in part to recollections of this legend and others of a similar character that people laughed when they said, oh yes, I know Dave Beasley. All together, I should say, Beasley was about the most popular man in Wainwright. I could discover nowhere anything, however, to shed the faintest light upon the mystery of Bill Hammersley and Simple Doria. It was not until the Sunday of Miss Aperthwaite's absence that the revelation came. That afternoon I went to call upon the widow of a second cousin of mine. She lived in a cottage, not far from Mrs. Aperthwaite's, upon the same street. I found her sitting on a pleasant veranda with boxes of flowering plants along the railing, though Indian summer was now close upon departure. She was rocking meditatively and held a finger in a Morocco volume, apparently a verse, though I suspected she had been better entertained in the observation of the people and vehicles decorously passing along the sunlit thoroughfare within her view. We exchanged inevitable questions and news of mutual relatives. I had told her how I liked my work and what I thought of Wainwright, and she was congratulating me upon having found so pleasant a place to live as Mrs. Aperthwaite's when she interrupted herself to smile and nod a cordial greeting to two gentlemen driving by in a pheaton. They waved their hats to her gaily, then leaned back comfortably against the cushions, and if ever two men were obviously and incontestably on the best of terms with each other, these two were. They were David Beasley and Mr. Dowden. I do wish, said my cousin, resuming her rocking, I do wish dear David Beasley would get a new trap of some kind. That old pheaton of his is a disgrace. I suppose you haven't met him? Of course, living at Mrs. Aperthwaite's you wouldn't be apt to. But what is he doing with Mr. Dowden? I asked. She lifted her eyebrows. Why taking him for a drive, I suppose? No. I mean, how did they happen to be together? Why shouldn't they be their old friends? They are? And in answer to her look of surprise I explained that I had begun to speak of Beasley at Mrs. Aperthwaite's and described the abruptness with which Dowden had changed the subject. I see, my cousin nodded, comprehendingly. That's simple enough. George Dowden didn't want you to speak of Beasley there. I suppose it may have been a little embarrassing for everybody, especially if Ann Aperthwaite heard you. Ann? That's Mrs. Aperthwaite? Yes, I was speaking directly to her. Why shouldn't she have heard me? She talked of him herself a little later and at some length, too. She did? My cousin stopped rocking and fixed me with her glittering eye. Well, of all? Is it so surprising? The lady gave her boat to the waves again. Ann Aperthwaite thinks about him still, she said, with something like vindictiveness. I've always suspected it. She thought you were new to the place and didn't know anything about it all, or anybody to mention it to. That's it. I'm still new to the place, I urged, and still don't know anything about it all. The use to be engaged was her succinct and emphatic answer. I found it but too illuminating. Oh, I cried. I was an innocent, wasn't I? I'm glad she does think of him, said my cousin. It serves her right. I only hope he won't find it out because he's a poor, faithful creature. He'd jump at the chance to take her back, and she doesn't deserve him. How long has it been, I asked, since they used to be engaged. Oh, a good while. Five or six years ago, I think. Maybe more. Time skips along. Ann Aperthwaite's no chicken, you know. Such was the lady's expression. They got engaged just after she came home from college, and of all the idiotically romantic girls. But she's a teacher, I interrupted, of mathematics. Yes, she nodded wisely. I always thought that explained it. The romance is a reaction from algebra. I never knew a person connected with mathematics or astronomy or statistics or any of those exact things who didn't have a crazy streak in them somewhere. They've got to blow off steam and be foolish to make up for putting in so much of their time at hard sense. But don't you think that I dislike Ann Aperthwaite? She's always been one of my best friends. That's why I feel out liberty to abuse her, and I always will abuse her when I think of how she treated poor David Beasley. How did she treat him? Through him over out of a clear sky one night? That's all. Just sent him home and broke his heart. That is, it would have been broken if he'd had any kind of disposition except the one the Lord blessed him with. Just all optimism and cheerfulness and make the best of itness. He's never cared for anybody else, and I guess he never will. What did she do it for? Nothing. My cousin shot the indignant words from her lips. Nothing in the wide world. But there must have been. Listen to me, she interrupted, and tell me if you ever heard anything queerer in your life. They'd been engaged. Heaven knows how long, over two years, probably nearer three, and always she kept putting it off. Wouldn't begin to get ready, wouldn't set a day for the wedding. Then Mr. Aperthwaite died and left her and her mother stranded high and dry with nothing to live on. David had everything in the world to give her, and still she wouldn't. And then one day she came up here and told me she'd broken it off, said she couldn't stand it to be engaged to David Beasley another minute. But why? Because my cousin's tone was shrill with her despair of expressing this attire she would have put into it because she said he was a man of no imagination. She still says so, I remarked thoughtfully. Then it's time she got a little imagination herself, snapped my companion. David Beasley's the quietest man God has made, but everybody knows what he is. There are some rare people in this world that aren't all talk. There are some still rarer ones that still scarcely ever talk at all, and David Beasley is one of them. I don't know whether it's because he can't talk, or he can, and hates to. I only know he doesn't, and I'm glad of it, and thank the Lord he's put a few like that into this talky world. David Beasley's smile is better than acres of other people's talk. My Providence, wouldn't anybody just to look at him know that he does better than talk? He thinks. The trouble with Anne Apartheid was that she was too young to see it. She was so full of novels and poetry and dreaminess, and highfalutin nonsense she couldn't see anything as it really was. She'd study her mirror and see such a heroine of romance there that she just couldn't bear to have a fiancé who hadn't any chance of turning out to be the crown prince of Kenosha in disguise. At the very least to suit her, he'd have had to wear a well-trimmed van dyke, and coup sonnets in the gloaming, or read on a balcony to her by a red lamp. Poor David, outside of his law books I don't believe he'd ever read anything but Robinson Crusoe and the Bible and Mark Twain. Oh, you should have heard her talk about it. I couldn't bear it. I couldn't bear it another day, she said. I couldn't stand it. In all the time I've known him, I don't believe he's ever asked me a single question except when he asked if I'd marry him. He never says anything, never speaks at all, she said. You don't know a blessing when you see it, I told her. Blessing, she said. There's nothing in the man. He has no depth. He hasn't any more imagination than the chair he sits and sits and sits in. Half the time he answers what I say to him by nodding and saying, mm-hmm, with that same old foolish, contented smile of his, I'd have gone mad if it had lasted any longer. I asked her if she thought married life consisted very largely of conversations between husband and wife, and she answered that even married life ought to have some poetry in it, some romance, she said, some soul. And he just comes and sits, she said, and sits, and sits, and sits, and sits, and sits, and I can't bear it any longer, and I've told him so. Poor Mr. Beasley, I said. I think poor Ann Aparthwaite retorted my cousin, I'd like to know if there's anything nicer than just to sit and sit and sit and sit and sit with as lovely a man as that, a man who understands things and thinks and listens and smiles instead of everlastingly talking. As it happens, I remarked, I've heard Mr. Beasley talk. Why, of course, he talks, she returned, when there's any real use of it, and he talks to children. He's that kind of man. I meant a particular instance I began, meaning to see if she could give me any clue to Bill Hemmersley and Sippledoria, but at that moment the gate clicked under the hand of another caller. My cousin rose to greet him, and presently I took my leave without having been able to get back upon the subject of Beasley. Thus once more baffled I returned to Mrs. Aparthwaite's, and within the hour came into full possession of the very heart of that dark and subtle mystery which overhung the house next door, and so perplexed my soul. End of Chapter 3, Recording by Arnold Banner Clemens, North Carolina Chapter 4 of Beasley's Christmas Party by Booth Tarkington This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Finding that I had still some leisure before me, I got a book from my room and repaired to the bench in the garden, but I did not read. I had but opened the book when my attention was arrested by sounds from the other side of the high fence, low and tremulous croonings of distinctly African derivation. I met my sister in the morning. She has a wagon up the hill so slow. Sister, you must get a rassle in due time before it heavenly doors close. It was the voice of an aged Negro, and the simultaneous slight creaking of a small hub and axle seemed to indicate that he was pushing or pulling a child's wagon or perambulator up and down the walk from the kitchen door to the stable. While he proffered soothing music, over and over he repeated the chant, though with variations, encountering in turn his brother, his daughter, each of his parents, his uncle, his cousin, and his second cousin, one after the other ascending the same slope with the same perilous leisure. Lay still, honey, he interrupted his injunctions to the second cousin. Desk keep on a-napping and a-breathing to flesh air. Desk was going to make you good and well again. Then there spoke the strangest voice that ever fell upon my ear. It was not like a child's. Neither was it like a very old person's voice. It might have been a grasshopper's. It was so thin and little, and made of such tiny waivers and quavers and creakings. I want, said this elf in the voice, I want Bill Hammersley. The shabby fat in which had passed my cousin's house was drawing up to the curb near Beasley's gate. Evidently the old negro saw it. Hi, dar, he exclaimed. Look at that. He and Bill are coming, Yana. That's exactly on the dot and to the very spot and instinct when you choir for him, honey. Dot, come, Miss Dave, right on the minute, and you can bet you last hundred dollars he's got that Bill Hammersley with him. Come along, honey child. I's go to pull you round and decide yard for to meet him. The small wagon creaked away, the chant resuming as it went. Mr. Dowden jumped out of the faotin with a wave of his hand to the driver. Beasley himself, who clucked to the horse and drove through his open carriage gates and down the drive on the other side of the house where he was lost to my view. Dowden entering our own gate nodded in a friendly fashion to me, and I advanced to meet him. Some day I want to take you over next door, he said, cordially, as I came up. You ought to know Beasley, especially as I hear you're doing some political reporting. Dave Beasley's going to be the next governor of this state, you know. He laughed, offered me a cigar, and we sat down together on the front steps. From all I hear, I rejoined, you ought to know who'll get it. It was said in town that Dowden would come pretty near having the nomination in his pocket. I expect you thought I shifted the subject pretty briskly the other day. He glanced at me quizzically from under the brim of his black-felt hat. I meant to tell you about that, but the opportunity didn't occur. You see, I understand, I interrupted, I've heard the story. You thought it might be embarrassing to miss Aperthwaite. I expect I was pretty clumsy about it, said Dowden, cheerfully. Well, well. He flicked his cigar with a smothered ejaculation that was half a sigh and half a laugh. It's a mighty strange case. Here they keep on living next door to each other, year after year, each going on alone, when they might just as well. He left the sentence unfinished, save for a vocal click of compassion. They bow when they happen to meet. But they haven't exchanged a word since the night she sent him away, long ago. He shook his head, then his countenance cleared and he chuckled. Well, sir, Dave's got something at home to keep him busy enough these days, I expect. Do you mind telling me, I inquired, is its name Simple Doria? Mr. Dowden threw back his head and laughed loudly. Lord, no! What on earth may you think that? I told him. It was my second success with this narrative. However, there was a difference. My former auditor listened with flushed and breathless excitement, whereas the present one laughed consumedly throughout. Especially he laughed with a great laughter at the picture of Beasley's coming down at four in the morning to open the door for nothing on sea or land or in the waters under the earth. I gave account also of the miraculous jumping contest, though I did not mention Ms. Apartheid's having been with me, and of the elfin voice I had just now overheard demanding billhammersly. So I expect you must have decided, he chuckled, when I concluded, that David Beasley has gone just plum, plain, insane. Not a bit of it. Nobody could look at him and not know better than that. You're right there, said Doudon, heartily, and now I'll tell you all there is to it. You see, Dave grew up with a cousin of his named Hamilton Swift. They were boys together, went to the same school, and then to college. I don't believe there was ever a high word spoken between them. Nobody in this life ever got a quarrel out of Dave Beasley, and Hamilton Swift was a mighty good sort of a fellow, too. He went east to live, after they got out of college, yet they always managed to get together once a year, generally about Christmas time. You couldn't pass them on the street without hearing their laughter ringing out louder than the sleigh bells, maybe over some old joke between them or some fool thing they did, perhaps, when they were boys. But finally Hamilton Swift's business took him over to the other side of the water to live, and he married an English girl, an orphan without any kin. That was about seven years ago. Well, sir, this last summer he and his wife were taking a trip down in Switzerland, and they were both drowned, tipped over out of a rowboat in Lake Lucerne, and word came that Hamilton Swift's will appointed Dave Guardian of the one child they had, a little boy, Hamilton Swift Junior's his name. He was sent across the ocean in charge of a doctor, and Dave went on to New York to meet him. He brought him home here the very day before you passed the house, and saw poor Dave getting up at four in the morning to let that ghost in. And a mighty funny ghost, simple Doria, is. I began to understand, I said, and to feel pretty silly, too. Not at all, he rejoined heartily. That little chap's freaks would mystify anybody, especially with Dave Humorigum the ridiculous way he does. Hamilton Swift Junior is the curiousest child I ever saw, and the good Lord knows he made all children powerful and mysterious. This poor little cuss has a complication of infirmities that have kept him on his back most of his life, never knowing other children, never playing or anything. And he's got ideas and ways that I never saw the beat of. He was born sick, as I understand it. His bones and nerves and insides are all wrong, somehow. But it's supposed he gets a little better from year to year. He wears a pretty elaborate set of braces, and he's subject to attacks, too. I don't know the name of him, and loses what little voice he has sometimes. All but a whisper. He had one, I know, the day after Beasley brought him home, and that was probably the reason you thought Dave was carrying on all to himself about that jumping match out in the backyard. The boy must have been lying there in the little wagon they have for him, while Dave cuts up shines with Bill Hemmersley. Of course, most children have make-believe friends and companions, especially if they haven't any brothers or sisters. But this lonely little fella's got his people worked out in his mind and materialized beyond any I ever heard of. Dave got well acquainted with him on the train on the way home, and they certainly are giving him a lively time. Getting him up at four in the morning. Mr. Dowd and his mirth overcame him for a moment. When he had mastered it, he continued, Simple Doria, now where do you suppose he got that name? Well, anyway, Simple Doria is supposed to be Hamilton Swift Jr.'s Saint Bernard dog. Beasley had to bathe him the other day, he told me. And Bill Hemmersley is supposed to be a boy of Hamilton Swift Jr.'s own age, but very big and strong. He has rosy cheeks, and he can do more in athletics than a whole college track team. That's the reason he outjumped Dave so far, you see. End of Chapter 4 Recording by Arnold Banner Clemens, North Carolina Chapter 5 of Beasley's Christmas Party by Booth Tarkington This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Miss Aperthwaite was at home the following Saturday. I found her in the library with Les Miserables on her knee when I came down from my room a little before lunchtime, and she looked up and gave me a smile that made me feel sorry for anyone she had ceased to smile upon. I wanted to tell you, I said, with a little awkwardness but plenty of truth. I found out that I'm an awful fool. But that's something, she returned encouragingly, at least the beginning of wisdom. I mean about Mr. Beasley. The mystery I was absurd enough to find in Simple Doria. I wanted to tell you. Oh, I know, she said. And although she laughed with an effective carelessness, that look which I had thought far away returned to her eyes as she spoke. There was a certain inscrutability about Miss Aperthwaite sometimes. It should be added as if she did not like to be too easily read. I've heard all about it. Mr. Beasley's been appointed trustee or something for poor Hamilton Swift's son. A pitiful little invalid boy who invents all sorts of characters. The old Darkie from over there told our cook about Bill Hammersley and Simple Doria. So, you see, I understand. I'm glad you do, I said. A little hardness, one might even have thought it bitterness, became apparent in her expression. And I'm glad there's somebody in that house at last with a little imagination. From everything I have heard, I returned, summoning sufficient boldness. It would be difficult to say which has more, Mr. Beasley or the child. Her glance fell from mine at this, but not quickly enough to conceal a sudden half-stardled look of trouble. I can think of no other way to express it, that leaped into it. And she rose, for the lunch bell was ringing. I'm just finishing the death of Jean Valjean, you know, in Les Miserables, she said, as we moved to the door. I'm always afraid I'll cry over that. I try not to, because it makes my eyes red. And in truth there was a vague rumor of tears about her eyes, not as if she had shed them, but more as if she were going to, though I had not noticed it when I came in. That afternoon, when I reached the dispatch office, I was commissioned to obtain certain political information from the Honorable David Beasley, an assignment I accepted with eagerness, notwithstanding the commissuration it brought me from one or two of my fellows in the reporter's room. You won't get anything out of him, they said, and they were true prophets. I found him looking over some documents in his office, a reflective, unlighted cigar in the corner of his mouth, his chair tilted back and his feet on a window sill. He nodded upon my statement of the affair that brought me, and without shifting his position gave me a look of slow but wholly friendly scrutiny over his shoulder, and bade me sit down. I began at once to put the questions I was told to ask him, interrogations, he seemed to believe, satisfactorily answered by slowly and ruminatively stroking the left side of his chin with two long fingers of his right hand, the while he smiled in genial contemplation of a tarred roof beyond the window. Now and then he would give me a mild and drawing word or two, not brilliantly illuminative, it may be remarked. Well, about that, he began once, and came immediately to a full stop. Yes, I said, hopefully, my pencil poised. About that, I guess. Yes, Mr. Beasley, I encouraged him, for he seemed to have dried up permanently. Well, sir, I guess, hadn't you better see someone else about that? This with the air of a man who would be but too fluent and copious upon any subject in the world, except the one particular point. I never met anybody else who looked so pleasantly communicative and managed to say so little. In fact, he didn't say anything at all, and I guess that this faculty was not without its value in his political career, disastrous as it had proved to his private happiness. His habit of silence, moreover, was not cultivated. You could see that the secret of it was just that he was born quiet. My notebook remained noteless, and finally at some odd evasion of his, accomplished by a monosyllable, I laughed outright, and he did too. He joined catcher nations with me heartily, and with the twinkling quizzicalness that somehow gave me the idea that he might be thinking rather apologetically to himself. Yes, sir, that old Beasley man is certainly a mighty funny critter. When I went away a few moments later and left him still intermittently chuckling, the impression remained with me that he had had some such deprecatory and surreptitious thought. Two or three days after that, as I started downtown from Mrs. Aparthwaite's, Beasley came out of his gate, bound in the same direction. He gave me a look of gay recognition, and offered his hand, saying, well, up in this neighborhood, as if that were a matter of considerable astonishment. I mentioned that I was a neighbor, and we walked on together. I don't think he spoke again except for a, well, sir, or two of genial surprise at something I said, and now and then, you don't tell me, which he had a most eloquent way of exclaiming. But he listened visibly to my own talk, and laughed at everything that I meant for funny. I never knew anybody who gave one a greater responsiveness. He seemed to be with you every instant, and how he made you feel it was the true mystery of Beasley, this silent man who never talked, except, as my cousin said, to children. It happened that I thus met him, as we were both starting downtown, and walked on with him, several days in succession. In a word, it became a habit. Then, one afternoon, as I turned to leave him at the dispatch office, he asked me if I wouldn't drop in at his house the next day for a cigar, before we started. I did, and he asked me if I wouldn't come again the day after that. So this became a habit, too. A fortnight he lapsed before I met Hamilton Swift, Jr., for he, poor little father of dream children, could be no spectator of track events upon the lawn but lay in his bed upstairs. However, he grew better at last, and my presentation took place. We had just finished our cigars in Beasley's airy old-fashioned sitting room, and were rising to go, when there came the faint creaking of small wheels from the hall. Beasley turned to me with the apologetic and monosyllabic chuckle that was distinctly his alone. I've got a little chap here, he said, then went to the door. Bob. The old Darkie appeared in the doorway, pushing a little wagon like a reclining chair on wheels, and in it sat Hamilton Swift, Jr. My first impression of him was that he was all eyes. I couldn't look at anything else for a time, and was hardly conscious of the rest of that wheezing, peaked little face and the undersized wisp of a body with its pathetic adjuncts of metal and leather. I think they were the brightest eyes I ever saw, as keen and intelligent as a wicked old woman's, with all as trustful and cheery as the eyes of a setter pup. Hooray! Thus the honorable Mr. Beasley waving a handkerchief thrice around his head and thrice cheering. And the child, in that cricket's voice of his, replied, Bravo! This was the form of salutation familiarly in use between them. Beasley followed it by inquiring, Who's with us today? I'm Mr. Swift, chirped the little fellow. Mr. Swift, if you please, Cousin David Beasley. Beasley executed a formal bow. There was a gentleman here who'd like to meet you, and he presented me with some grave phrases commendatory of my general character, addressing the child as Mr. Swift, whereupon Mr. Swift gave me a ghostly little hand and professed himself glad to meet me. And besides me, he added to Beasley, there's Bill Hemersley and Mr. Corley Lindbridge. A faint perplexity manifested itself upon Beasley's face at this, a shadow which cleared at once when I asked if I might not be permitted to meet these personages, remarking that I had heard from Dowden of Bill Hemersley, though until now a stranger to the fame of Mr. Corley Lindbridge. Beasley performed the ceremony with intentional elegance, while the boy's great eyes swept glowingly from his cousin's face to mine and back again. I bowed and shook hands with the air, once to my left and once to my right. And simple Doria, cried Mr. Swift, he'll enjoy simple Doria. Above all things, I said. Can he shake hands? Some dogs can. Watch him. Mr. Swift lifted a commanding finger. Simple Doria, shake hands. I knelt beside the wagon and shook an imaginary big paw. At this, Mr. Swift again shook hands with me and allowed me to perceive, in his luminous regard, a solemn commendation and approval. In this wise was my initiation into the beautiful old house and the cordiality of its inmates completed. And I became a familiar of David Beasley and his ward, with the privilege to go and come as I pleased. There was always gay and friendly welcome. I always came for the cigar after lunch, sometimes for lunch itself, sometimes I dined there, instead of downtown. And there and then, when it happened that an errand or assignment took me that way in the afternoon, I would run an end visit a while with Hamilton Swift Jr. and his circle of friends. There were days, of course, when his attacks were upon him, and only Beasley and the doctor and old Bob saw him. I do not know what the boy's mental condition was at such times, but when he was better and could be wheeled about the house again to receive callers, he displayed an almost dismaying activity of mind. It was active enough, certainly, to keep far ahead of my own. And he was masterful. Still, Beasley and Doudin and I were never directly chidden for insubordination, though made to wince painfully by the look of troubled surprise that met us when we were not quick enough to catch his meaning. The order of the day with him always began with the Hooray and Bravo of greeting, after which we were to inquire, who's with us today, whereupon he would make known the character in which he elected to be received for the occasion. If he announced himself as Mr. Swift, everything was to be very grown up and decorous indeed. Formalities and distances were observed, and Mr. Corley Lindbridge, an elderly personage of great dignity and distinction as a mountain climber, was much oftener included in the conversation than Bill Hammersley. If, however, he declared himself to be Hamilton Swift, Jr., which was his happiest mood, Bill Hammersley and simple Doria were in the ascendant, and there were games and contests. Doudin, Beasley, and I all slid down the banisters on one of Hamilton's Swift, Jr.'s days, at which really picturesque spectacle the boy almost tried with laughter. An old Bob and his wife, who came running from the kitchen, did cry. He had a third appellation for himself, just little Hamilton. But this was only when the creaky voice could hardly chirp at all, and the wheezing face was drawn to one side with suffering. When he told us he was just little Hamilton, we were very quiet. Once for ten days his invisibles all went away on a visit. Hamilton Swift, Jr., had become interested in bears. While this lasted all of Beasley's trousers were, as Doudin said, a sight. For that matter Doudin himself was quite hoarse in court, from growling so much. The bears were dismissed abruptly. Bill Hammersley and Mr. Corley Lindbridge and Simple Doria came trooping back, and with them they brought that wonderful family, the Hunchburgs. Beasley had just opened the front door, returning at noon from his office, when Hamilton Swift, Jr.'s voice came piping from the library, where he was reclining in his wagon by the window. Cousin David Beasley, Cousin David, come running, he cried. Come running, the Hunchburgs are here. Of course Cousin David Beasley came running, and was immediately introduced to the whole Hunchburg family, a ceremony which old Bob, who was with the boy, had previously undergone with courtly grace. They like Bob, explained Hamilton. Don't you, Mr. Hunchburg? Yes, he says they do extremely. He used such words as extremely often. Indeed, as Doudin said, he talked like a child in a book, which was due, I daresay, to his English mother. And I'm sure, the boy went on, that all the family will admire Cousin David. Yes, Mr. Hunchburg says he thinks they will. And then, as Bob told me, he went almost out of his head with joy when Beasley offered Mr. Hunchburg a cigar and struck a match for him to light it. But war, exclaimed the old Darkie, war and enema to good Lord, due to child, get damn names. He'd like to scare me. That was a subject often debated between Doudin and me. There was nothing in Wainwright that could have suggested them, and it did not seem probable he could have remembered them from over the water. In my opinion they were the inventions of that busy and lonely little brain. I met the Hunchburg family myself the day after their arrival, and Beasley by that time had become so well acquainted with them that he could remember all their names and helped in the introductions. There was Mr. Hunchburg, evidently the child's favorite, for he was described as the possessor of every engaging virtue, and there was that lively matron, Mrs. Hunchburg. There were the Hunchburg young gentlemen, Tom, Noble and Grandi, and the young ladies, Miss Queen, Miss Marble and Miss Molana, all exceedingly gay and pretty. There was also Colonel Hunchburg and Uncle. Finally there was Aunt Cooley Hunchburg, a somewhat decrepit but very amiable old lady. Mr. Corley Lindbridge happened to be calling at the same time, and as it appeared to be Beasley's duty to keep the conversation going, and constantly to include all of the party in its general flow, it struck me that he had truly, as Doughton said, enough to keep him busy. The Hunchburgs had lately moved away right from Constantinople, I learned. They had decided not to live in town, however, having purchased a fine farm out in the country, and on account of the distance were able to call at Beasley's only about eight times a day, and seldom more than twice in the evening. Whenever a mystic telephone announced that they were on the way, the child would have himself wheeled to a window, and when they came in sight he would try out in wild delight, while Beasley hastened to open the front door and admit them. They were so real to the child, and Beasley treated them with such consistent seriousness that between the two of them I sometimes began to feel that there actually were such people, and to have moments of half-surprise that I couldn't see them, particularly as each of the Hunchburgs developed a character entirely his own to the last peculiarity, such as the aged Aunt Cooley Hunchburg's deafness, on which account Beasley never once forgot to raise his voice when he addressed her. Indeed the details of actuality in all this appeared to bring as great a delight to the man as to the child. Certainly he built them up with infinite care. On one occasion when Mr. Hunchburg and I happened to be calling, Hamilton remarked with surprise that Simple Doria had come into the room without licking his hand as he usually did, and had crept under the table. Mr. Hunchburg volunteered the information, through Beasley, that upon his approach to the house he had seen Simple Doria chasing a cat. It was then debated whether chastisement was in order, but finally decided that Simple Doria's surreptitious manner of entrance and his hiding under the table were sufficient indication that he well understood his baseness, and would never let it happen again. And so Beasley, having coaxed him out from under the table, the offender sat up and begged, and was forgiven. I could almost feel the splendid shaggy head under my hand when, in turn, I padded Simple Doria to show that the reconciliation was unanimous. End of Chapter 5. Recording by Arnold Banner, Clemens, North Carolina. Chapter 6 of Beasley's Christmas Party by Booth Tarkington. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Autumn trailed the last leaves behind her flying brown robes one night. We woke to a scurry of snow next morning, and it was winter. Downtown along the sidewalks the merchants set lines of poles covered them with evergreen and ran streamers of green overhead to encourage the festival shopping. Salvation Army Santa Clauses stamped their feet and rang bells on the corners, and pink-faced children fixed their noses immovably to display windows. For them the season of seasons the time of times was at hand. To a certain new reporter on the dispatch the stir and gaiety of the streets meant little more than that the days had come when it was night in the afternoon, and that he was given fewer political assignments. This was annoying because Beasley's candidacy for the governorship had given me a personal interest in the political situation. The nominating convention of his party would meet in the spring. The nomination was certain to carry the election also, and thus far Beasley showed more strength than any other man in the field. Things are looking his way, said Doudin. He's always working hard for the party, not on the stump, of course, he laughed. But the boys understand there are more important things than speech-making. His record in Congress gave him the confidence of everybody in the state, and besides that people always trust a quiet man. I tell you if nothing happens he'll get it. I'm for Beasley, another politician explained in an interview, because he's Dave Beasley. Yes, sir, I'm for him. You know the boys say if a man is only for you in this state there isn't much in it, and he may go back on it, but if he's for you he means it. Well, I'm for Beasley. There were other candidates, of course, none of them formidable. But I was surprised to learn of the existence of a small but energetic faction opposing our friend in Wainwright, his own town. What are you surprised about, inquired Doudin? Don't you know what our folks are like, yet? If St. Paul lived in Wainwright you suppose he could run for Constable, without some of his near neighbors getting out to try and down him? The head in front, and backbone, too, of the opposition to Beasley, was a close-fisted, hard-knuckled, risen-from-the-soil sort of man, one named Simeon Peck. He possessed no inconsiderable influence, I heard, was a hard worker, and vigorously seconded by an energetic lieutenant, a young man named Grist. These and others they had been able to draw to their faction were bitterly and eagerly opposed to Beasley's nomination, and worked without ceasing to prevent it. I quote the invaluable Mr. Doudin again. Grist's against us because he had a quarrel with a clerk in Beasley's office, and wanted Beasley to discharge him, and Beasley wouldn't. Simeon Peck's against us out of just plain wrong-headedness, and because he never was for anything nor for anybody in his life. I had a talk with the old mutton head the other day. He said our candidate ought to be a farmer, a man of the common people. And when I asked him where he'd find anybody more a man of the common people than Beasley, he said Beasley was too much of a society man to suit him. The idea of Dave as a society man was too much for me, and I laughed in Simeon Peck's face. But that didn't stop Simeon Peck. Just look at the style he lives in, he yelped. Ain't he fairly lapped in luxury? Look at that big house he lives in. Look at the way he goes around in that fountain of his, and a nigger to drive him half the time. I had to holler again, and of course that made Simeon twice as mad as he started out to be, and he went off swearing he'd show me before the campaign was over. The only trouble he engrossed in that crowd could give us would be by finding out something against Dave, and they can't do that because there isn't anything to find out. I shared his confidence on this latter score, but was somewhat less sanguine on some others. There were only two newspapers of any political influence in Wainwright. The Dispatch and the Journal, both operated in the interest of Beasley's party, and neither had come out for him. The gossip I heard about our office led me to think that each was waiting to see what headway Simeon Peck and his faction would make. The Journal especially, I knew, had some inclination to coquette with Peck, Grist and Company. All together their faction was not entirely to be despised. Thus my thoughts were a great deal more occupied with Beasley's chances than with the holiday spirit that now, with furs and bells and wreathing mists of snow, breathed good cheer over the town. So little indeed had this spirit touched me that, one evening when one of my colleagues, standing before the great fire in the reporter's room, yawned, and said he'd be glad when tomorrow was over. I asked him what was the particular trouble with tomorrow. Christmas, he explained languidly, all we sow tedious, like Sunday. It makes me homesick, said another, a melancholy little man who was forever bragging of his native Duluth. Christmas, I repeated, tomorrow. It was Christmas Eve and I had not known it. I leaned back in my chair in sudden loneliness. What pictures coming before me of long ago Christmas Eve's at home? Old Christmas Eve's when there was a tree. My name was called. The Night City Editor had an assignment for me. Go up to Sim Pex on Madison Street, he said. He thinks he's got something on David Beasley, but won't say anything more over the telephone. See what there is in it. I picked up my hat and coat and left the office at a speed which must have given my superior the highest conception of my journalistic zeal. At a telephone station on the next corner I called up Mrs. Aparthwaite's house and asked for dowden. What are you doing? I demanded, when his voice had responded. Playing bridge, he answered. Are you going out anywhere? No. What's the trouble? I'll tell you later. I may want to see you before I go back to the office. All right. I'll be here all evening. I hung up the receiver and made off in my errand. Downtown the streets were crowded with the packaged laden people, bending heads and shoulders to the bitter wind, which swept a blinding, sleet-like snow horizontally against them. At corners it struck so tumultuous a blow upon the chest of the pedestrians that for a moment it would halt them. And you could hear them gasping half-smothered, ah, like bathers in a heavy surf. Yet there was a gaiety in this eager gale. The crowds pressed anxiously yet happily up and down the street in their generous search for things to give away. It was not the rich who struggled through the storm to-night. These were people who carried their own bundles home. You saw them, toilers and savers, tired mothers and fathers, worn with the grinding thrift of all the year. But now for this one night careless of how hard saved the money, reckless of everything but the joy of giving it to bring the children joy on the one great to-morrow. So they bent their heads to the freezing wind, their arms laden with daring bundles, and their hearts uplifted with the tremulous happiness of giving more than they could afford. Meanwhile, Mr. Simian Peck, honest man, had chosen this season to work harm, if he might, to the gentlest of his fellow men. I found Mr. Peck waiting for me at his house. There were four other men with him, one of whom I recognized as grist, a squat young man with slippery-looking black hair, and a lambroquinn mustache. They were donning their coats and hats in the hall when I arrived. From the dispatch, hey! Mr. Peck gave me greeting, as he wound a knit comforter about his neck. That's good. We'd most give you up. This here's Mr. Grist, and Mr. Henry P. Cullop, and Mr. Gus Schulmeyer. Three men that feel the same way about Dave Beasley that I do—that other young fellow—he waved a mittened hand to the fourth man. He's from the journal—likely you're acquainted. The young man from the journal was unknown to me, or over I was far from overjoyed at his presence. I've got you newspaper men here, continued Mr. Peck, because I'm going to show you something about Dave Beasley that'll open a good many folks' eyes when it's in print. Well, what is it? I asked rather sharply. Just hold your horses a little bit, he retorted, grist in me nose, and so to Mr. Cullop and Mr. Schulmeyer, and I'm going to take them and you two reporters to look at it. Already? Then come on. He threw open the door, stooped to the Gus that took him by the throat, and led the way out into the storm. What is he up to, I gasped, to the journal man, as we followed in a straggling line. I don't know any more than you do, he returned. He thinks he's got something that'll queer Beasley. Peck's an old fool, but it's just possible he's got hold of something. Nearly everybody has one thing at least that they don't want found out. It may be a good story. Lord, what a night! I pushed ahead to the leader's side. See here, Mr. Peck, I began, but he cut me off. You listen to me, young man, I'm giving you some news for your paper, and I'm getting at it my own way, but I'll get at it, don't you worry. I'm going to let some folk around here know what kind of a feller Dave Beasley really is. Yes, and I'm going to show George Dowden he can't laugh at me. You're going to show Mr. Dowden, I said. You mean you're going to take him on this expedition, too? Take him! Mr. Peck emitted an acrid mark of laughter. I guess he's at Beasley's all right. No, he isn't. He's at home, Mrs. Aparthwaite's playing cards. What? I happen to know that he'll be there all evening. Mr. Peck smote his palms together. Grist, he called over his shoulder, and his colleagues struggled forward. Listen to this, even Dowden ain't at Beasley's. Ain't the Lord working for us tonight? Why don't you take Dowden with you, I urged, if there's anything you want to show him? By George I will, shouted Peck. I've got him with the hair short now. That's right, said Grist. Gentlemen! Peck turned to the others. When we get to Mrs. Aparthwaite's just stop outside along the fence a minute, I reckon we'll pick up a recruit. Shivering we took up our way again in single file, stumbling through drifts that had deepened incredibly within the hour. The wind was straight against us, and so stingingly sharp and so laden with the driving snow, that when we reached Mrs. Aparthwaite's gate, which we approached from the north, not passing Beasley's, my eyes were so full of smarting tears I could see only blurred planes of light dancing vaguely in the darkness, instead of brightly lit windows. Now, said Peck, panting and turning his back to the wind, the rest of you gentlemen wait out here, you two newspaper men, you come with me. He opened the gate and went in, the journal reporter and I following, all three of us wiping our half-blinded eyes. When we reached the shelter of the front porch I took the key from my pocket and opened the door. I live here, I explained to Mr. Peck. All right, he said, just step in and tell George Dowden that Sim Pecks out here and wants to see him at the door a minute. Be quick. I went into the library and there sat Dowden, contemplatively playing bridge with two of the elderly ladies and Miss Aparthwaite. The last mentioned person quite took my breath away. In honour of the Christmas Eve, I supposed, she wore an evening dress of black lace and the only word for what she looked has suffered such a misuse that one hesitates over it. Yet that is what she was, regal, and no less. There was a sort of splendour about her. It detracted nothing from this that her expression was a little sad, something not uncommon with her lately, a certain melancholy, faint but detectable, like breath on a mirror. I had attributed it to Jean Valjean, though perhaps tonight it might have been due merely to bridge. What is it, asked Dowden, when after an apology for disturbing the game I had drawn him out in the hall. I motioned toward the front door. Simmy and Peck, he thinks he's got something on Mr. Beasley. He's waiting to see you. Dowden uttered a sharp, half-coherent exclamation and stepped quickly to the door. Peck, he said, as he jerked it open. Oh, I'm here, declared that gentleman, stepping into view. I've come around to let you know that you couldn't laugh like a horse at me no more, George Dowden. So you weren't invited, either. Invited? said Dowden. Where? Over to the ball your friend is given. What friend? Dave Beasley. So you ain't quite good enough to dance with his high society friends. What are you talking about? Dowden demanded impatiently. I reckon you won't be quite so strong for Beasley, responded Peck, with a vindictive little giggle, when he find he can use you in his business, but when it comes to entertaining—oh, no, you ain't quite the boy. I'd appreciate your explaining, said Dowden. It's kind of cold standing here. Peck laughed shrilly. Then I reckon you better get your hat and coat and come along. Can't do us no harm, and might be an eye-opener for you. Grist and Gus Schulmeyer and Hank Cullops waiting out yonder at the gate. We've been having a kind of consultation at my house over something Grist's seen at Beasley's a little earlier in the evening. What did Grist see? Hacks! Hacks driving up to Beasley's house? A whole lot of them. Grist was down the street a piece and it was pretty dark, but he could see the lamps and hear the doors slam as the people got out. Besides, the whole place is lit up from cellar to attic. Grist came on to my house and told me about it, and I'd begun using the telephone. Called up all the men that count in the party, found most of them at home too. I asked them if they was invited to this ball tonight, and not one of them was. They're only in politics. They ain't high society enough to be asked to Mr. Beasley's dancing parties. But I would've thought he'd let you in. Anyways, for the second table. Mr. Peck shrilled out his acrid exultant laugh again. I got these fellers from the newspapers, and all I want is to get this here ball in print tomorrow, and see what the boys that do the work at the primaries have to say about it, and what their wives'll say about the man that's too high toned to have him at his house. I'll bet Beasley thought he was going to keep these do-ins quiet. Afraid the farmers might not believe he's just the plain man he sets up to be. Afraid that folks like you that ain't invited might turn against him. I'll fool him. We're going to see what there is to see, and I'm going to have these boys from the newspapers write a full account of it. If you want to come along, I expect it'll do you a power of good. I'll go, said Doudon quickly. He got his coat and hat from a table in the hall, and we rejoined the huddled and shivering group at the gate. Got my recruit, chants, shrilled Peck, slapping Doudon boisterously on the shoulders. I reckon he'll get a change of heart tonight. And now, sheltering my eyes from the stinging wind, I saw what I had been too blind to see as we approached Mrs. Aparthwaite's. Beasley's house was illuminated. Every window, upstairs and down, was a glow with rosy light. That was luminously evident, although the shades were lowered. Look at that! Peck turned to Doudon giggling triumphantly. What'd I tell you? How'd you feel about it now? But where are the hacks? asked Doudon gravely. "'Folks all come,' answered Mr. Peck with complete assurance. Won't be no more hacks till they begin to go home.' We plunged ahead as far as the corner of Beasley's fence, where Peck stopped us again, and we drew together slapping our hands and stamping our feet. Peck was delighted, a thoroughly happy man. His sour giggle of exultation had become continuous, and the same jovial break was audible in Grist's voice, as he said to the journal reporter and me, "'Go ahead boys, get your story, we'll wait here for you.' The journal reporter started toward the gate. He had gone perhaps twenty feet when Simmy and Peck whistled in sharp warning. The reporter stopped short in his tracks. Beasley's front door was thrown open, and there stood Beasley himself in evening dress, bowing and smiling, but not at us, for he did not see us. The bright hall behind him was beautiful with evergreen streamers and wreaths, and great flowering plants and jars. A strain of dance music wandered out to us as the door opened. But there was nobody except David Beasley in sight, which certainly seemed peculiar for a ball. "'Rest of them inside, dancing,' explained Mr. Peck, crouching behind the picket fence, "'I'll bet the house is more than half full of low-neck women.' "'Shh!' said Grist. Listen.' Beasley had begun to speak, and his voice, loud and clear, sounded over the wind. "'Come right in, Colonel,' he said. "'I'd have sent a carriage for you if you hadn't telephoned me this afternoon that your rheumatism was so bad, and you didn't expect to be able to come.' "'I'm glad you're well again. Yes, they're all here, and the ladies are getting up a quadril in the sitting-room.' "'It was at this moment that I received upon the calf of the right leg a kick, the ecstatic violence of which led me to attribute it to Mr. Doudin.' "'Gentlemen's dressing-room upstairs to the right, Colonel,' called Beasley, as he closed the door. "'There was a pause of odd silence among us. I improved it by returning the kick to Mr. Doudin. He made no acknowledgment of its reception other than to sink his chin a little deeper into the collar of his ulster.' "'By the Almighty,' said Simeon Peck, hoarsely. "'Oh, what was Dave Beasley talking to? There wasn't nobody there.' "'Get out,' grist bad him, but his tone was perturbed. He's seen that reporter. He was giving us the laugh. "'He's crazy,' exclaimed Peck vehemently. "'Immediately all four members of his party began to talk at the same time. Mr. Schollmeyer agreeing with Grist and Mr. Cullop holding with Peck that Beasley had surely become insane, while the journal-man returning was certain that he had not been seen. Argument became a wrangle, excitement over the remarkable scene we had witnessed, and perhaps a certain sharpness partially engendered by the risk of freezing led to some bitterness. High words were flung upon the wind. Eventually Simeon Peck got the floor to himself for a moment. "'See here, boys, there's no use getting mad amongst ourselves,' he vociferated. "'One thing we're all agreed on. Nobody here never seen such a damn peculiar performance as we just seen in their whole lives before. Therefore, all or no, ball, there's something mighty wrong about this business. Ain't that so?' They said it was. "'Well, then, there's only one thing to do. Let's find out what it is.' "'You bet we will.' "'I wouldn't send no one in there alone,' Peck went on excitedly, with a crazy man. "'Besides, I want to see what's going on myself.' "'So do we. This was unanimous.' "'Then let's see if there ain't some way to do it. Perhaps he ain't pulled all the shades down on the other side of the house. Lots of people forget to do that.' There was but one mind in the party regarding this proposal. The next minute saw us all cautiously sneaking into the side-yard, a ragged line of bent and flapping figures black against the snow. Simeon Peck's expectations were fulfilled, more than fulfilled. Not only were all the shades of the big three-face bay window of the sitting-room lifted, but, evidently on account of the too-great generosity of a huge log fire that blazed in the old-fashioned chimney-place, one of the windows was half-raised as well. Here in the shadow just beyond the rosy oblongs of light that fell upon the snow we gathered and looked freely within. Part of the room was clear to our view, though about half of it was shut off from us by the very king of all Christmas trees, glittering with dozens and dozens of candles, sumptuous in silver, sparkling in gold, and laden with heaven alone knows how many in what delectable enticements. Opposite the tree is back against the wall sat old Bob, clad in a dress of state, part of which consisted of a swallow-tail coat with an overgrown chrysanthemum in the button-hole, a red neck-tie, and a pink and silver liberty cap of tissue paper. He was scraping a fiddle, like old times come again, and the tune he played was—'Oh, my Liza, poor gal!' My feet shuffled to it in the snow. No one except old Bob was to be seen in the room, but we watched him and listened breathlessly. When he finished, Liza, he laid the fiddle across his knee, wiped his face with a new and brilliant blue silk handkerchief, and said—'Now come the big speech!' The Honorable David Beasley, carrying a small mahogany table, stepped out from beyond the Christmas tree, advanced to the center of the room, set the table down, disappeared for a moment, and returned with a white-water pitcher and a glass. He placed these upon the table, bowed gracefully several times, then spoke. Ladies and gentlemen! There he paused. Well, said Mr. Simeon Peck slowly, don't this beat hell! Look out! the journal reporter twitched his sleeve. Ladies present! Where, said I? He leaned nearer me and spoke in a low tone. Just behind us! She followed us over from your boarding-house. She's been standing around near us all along. I suppose she was Doudin's daughter, probably. He hasn't any daughter, I said, and stepped back to the hooded figure I had been too absorbed in our quest to notice. It was Miss Aparthwaite. She had thrown a loose cloak over her head and shoulders, but enveloped in it as she was and crested and epauletted with white I knew her at once. There is no mistaking her, even in a blizzard. She caught my hand with a strong quick pressure. And bending her head to mine, said, close to my ear, I heard everything that man said in our hallway. You left the library door open when you called Mr. Doudin out. So I returned maliciously. You couldn't help following? She released my hand gently to my surprise. Hush! she whispered. He's saying something. Ladies and gentlemen! said Beasley again, and stopped again. Doudin's voice sounded hysterically in my right ear. Miss Aparthwaite had whispered in my left. The only speech he ever made in his life, and he's stuck. But Beasley wasn't. He was only deliberating. Ladies and gentlemen! he began. Mr. and Mrs. Hunchberg, Colonel Hunchberg, and Aunt Cooley Hunchberg, Miss Molana, Miss Queen, and Miss Marble Hunchberg, Mr. Noble, Mr. Tom, and Mr. Grandi Hunchberg, Mr. Cooley Lindbridge and Master Hammersley. You see before you tonight, my person, merely the representative of your real host, Mr. Swift. Mr. Swift has expressed a wish that there should be a speech, and has deputed me to make it. He requests that the subject he has assigned me should be treated in as dignified a manner as is possible, considering the orator. Ladies and gentlemen! he took a sip of water. I will now address you upon the following subject. Why we call Christmas time the best time. Christmas time is the best time because it is the kindest time. Nobody ever felt very happy without feeling very kind, and nobody ever felt very kind without feeling at least a little happy. So, of course, either way about, the happiest time is the kindest time. That's this time. The most beautiful things our eyes can see are the stars, and for that reason, and in remembrance of one star, we set candles on the tree to be stars in the house. So we make Christmas time a time of stars indoors, and they shine warmly against the cold outdoors, that is, like the cold of other seasons, not so kind. We set our hundred candles on the tree and keep them bright throughout the Christmas time, for while they shine upon us, we have liked to see this life not as a battle, but as the march of a mighty fellowship. Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you. He bowed to right and left, as to an audience politely applauding, and lifting the table and its burden with true, while old Bob again said his fiddle to his chin and scraped the preliminary measures of a quadrill. Beasley was back in an instant, shouting as he came, Take your partners, balance all! And then in there and all by himself he danced a quadrill, performing at one and the same time for four lively couples. Never in my life have I seen such gyrations and capers as were cut by that long-legged, loose-jointed, miraculously flying figure. He was in the wildest motion without cessation, never the fraction of an instant still, calling the figures at the top of his voice and dancing them simultaneously. His expression anxious but polite, as is the habit of other dancers, his hands extended as if to swing his partner or corner or opposite lady, and his feet lifting high and flapping down in an old-fashioned step. First four, forward and back, he shouted, forward and salute, balanced to corners, swing partners, grand right and left. I think the combination of abandon and decorum with which he performed that grand right and left was the funniest thing I have ever seen, but I didn't laugh at it. Neither did Miss Aparthwaite. Now, do you believe me? Peck was arguing fiercely with Mr. Schollmeyer. Is he crazy or ain't he? He is, grist agreed, hoarsely. He is a stark raven-staring, roaring lunatic, and the niggers humor in him. They were all staring open-mouthed in aghast into the lighted room. Do you see where it puts us? Simian Peck's rasping voice rose high. I guess I do, said Grist. We come out to buy a barn and got a house and lot for the same money. It's the greatest night's work you've ever done, Sim Peck. I guess it is. Shake on it, Sim. They shook hands, exalted with triumph. This'll do the work, giggled Peck. It's about 2,000 percent better than the story we started to get. Why, Dave Beasley'll be in a padded cell in a month. It'll be all over town tomorrow, and he'll have as much chance for governors that nigger in there. In his ecstasy he smote Doudin deliriously on the ribs. What do you think of your candidate now? Wait, said Doudin. Who came in the hacks that Grist saw? This staggered Mr. Peck. He rubbed his mitt and over his woolen cap as if scratching his head. Why, he said slowly, who in Halifax did come in them hacks? The hunch-burgs, said I. Who's the hunch-burgs? Where? Listen, said Doudin. First couple face out, shouted Beasley, facing out with an invisible lady on his akimbo to arm, while old Bob sawed madly at a new coon in town. Second couple fall in. Beasley wheeled about and enacted the second couple. Third couple, he fell in behind himself again. Fourth couple, if you please, balance, all. I beg your pardon, Miss Molana. I'm afraid I stepped in your train. Sashay, all. After the sashay, the noblest and most dashing bit of gymnastics displayed in the whole quadrill, he bowed profoundly to his invisible partner and came to a pause wiping his streaming face. Old Bob dexterously swung a new coon into the stately measures of a triumphal march. And now, Beasley announced in stentorian tones, if the ladies will be so kind as to take the gentleman's arms, we will proceed to the dining-room in partake of a slight collation. Thereupon came a slender piping of joy from that part of the room screen from us by the tree. Oh, cousin David Beasley, that was the beautifulest quadrill ever danced in the world! And please, won't you take Mrs. Hunchberg out to supper? Then into the vision of our paralyzed and dumbfounded watchers came the little wagon pulled by the old-colored woman, Bob's wife, in her best, and there propped upon pillows lay Hamilton Swift, Jr., his soul shining rapture out of his great eyes, a bright spot of color on each of his thin cheeks. He lifted himself on one elbow, and for an instant something seemed to be wrong with the brace under his chin. Beasley sprang to him and adjusted it tenderly, and he bowed elaborately toward the mantelpiece. Mrs. Hunchberg, he said, may I have the honor, and offered his arm. And I must have Mr. Hunchberg, chirped Hamilton, he must walk with me. He tells me, said Beasley, he'll be mighty glad to, and there's a plate of bones for simple Doria. You lead the way, cried the child, you and Mrs. Hunchberg. Are we all in line? Beasley glanced back over his shoulder. Hooray! Now let us on! Oh, there! Bravo! applauded Mr. Swift. And Beasley, his head thrown back and his chest out proudly led the way, stepping nobly and in time to the exhilarating measures. Hamilton Swift, Jr., towed by the beaming old mammy, followed in his wagon, his thin little arm uplifted, and his fingers curled as if they held a trusted hand. When they reached the door, old Bob rose, turned in after them, and still fiddling, played the procession and himself down the hall. And so they marched away, and we were left staring into the empty room. My soul, said the journal reporter, gasping, and he did all that just to please the little sick kid. I can't figure it out, murmured Sim Peck piteously. I can, said the journal reporter. This story will be all over town tomorrow. He glanced at me and I nodded. It will be all over town, he continued, though not in any of the papers, and I don't believe it's going to hurt Dave Beasley's chances any. Mr. Peck and his companions turned toward the street. They went silently. The young man from the journal overtook them. Thank you for sending me, he said cordially. You've given me a treat. I'm fur-beasley. Dadden put his hand on my shoulder. He had not observed the third figure still remaining. Well, sir, he remarked, shaking the snow from his coat. They were right about one thing. It certainly was mighty low down of Dave not to invite me, and you too, to his Christmas party. Let him go to thunder with his old invitations. I'm going in anyway. Come on, I'm plum-froze. There was a side door just beyond the bay window, and Dadden went to it and rang, loud and long. It was Beasley himself who opened it. What in the name, he began, as the ready light fell upon Dadden's face and upon me, standing a little way behind. What are you two, snow-banks? What on earth are you fellas doing out here? We've come to your Christmas party, you old horse-thief. Thus Mr. Dadden. Hooray! said Beasley. Dadden turned to me. Aren't you coming? What are you waiting for, old fellow? said Beasley. I waited a moment longer, and then it happened. She came out of the shadow and went to the foot of the steps, her cloak falling from her shoulders as she passed me. I picked it up. She lifted her arms pleadingly, though her head was bent with what seemed to me a beautiful sort of shame. She stood there with the snow driving against her and did not speak. Beasley drew his hand slowly across his eyes to see if they were really there, I think. David, she said at last, you got so many lovely people in your house tonight. Isn't there room for, for just one fool? It's Christmas time.