Winter Evening Tales - Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (pocket ebook reader .TXT) 📗

duty to do right, not because it gave her pleasure to do it. When they had been married three years the war broke out, and soon afterward Alexander Morrison was drafted for the army. Sallie, who was daily expecting her second child, refused all consolation; and, indeed, their case looked hard enough.

At first the possibility of a substitute had suggested itself; but a family consultation soon showed that this was impossible without hopelessly straitening both houses. Everyone knows that dreary silence which follows a long discussion, that has only confirmed the fear of an irremediable misfortune. Davie broke it in this case in a very unexpected manner.

"Let me go in your place, Sandy. I'd like to do it, my lad. Maybe I'd find your uncle. Who knows? What do you say, old wife? We've had more than twenty years together. It is pretty hard for Sandy and Sallie, now, isn't it?"

He spoke with a bright face and in a cheerful voice, as if he really was asking a favor for himself; and, though he did not try to put his offer into fine, heroic words, nothing could have been finer or more heroic than the perfect self-abnegation of his manner.

The poor old wife shed a few bitter tears; but she also had been practicing self-denial for a lifetime, and the end of it was that Davie went to weary marches and lonely watches, and Sandy staid at home.

This was the break-up of Davie's life. His wife went to live with Sandy and Sallie, and the furniture was mostly sold.

Few people could have taken these events as Davie did. He even affected to be rather smitten with the military fever, and, when the parting came, left wife and son and home with a cheerful bravery that was sad enough to the one old heart who had counted its cost.

In Davie's loving, simple nature there was doubtless a strong vein of romance. He was really in hopes that he might come across his long-lost brother. He had no very clear idea as to localities and distances, and he had read so many marvelous war stories that all things seemed possible in its atmosphere. But reality and romance are wide enough apart.

Davie's military experience was a very dull and weary one. He grew poorer and poorer, lost heart and hope, and could only find comfort for all his sacrifices in the thought that "at least he had spared poor Sandy."

Neither was his home-coming what he had pictured it in many a reverie. There was no wife to meet him--she had been three months in the grave when he got back to New York--and going to his daughter-in-law's home was not--well, it was not like going to his own house.

Sallie was not cross or cruel, and she was grateful to Davie, but she did not love the old man.

He soon found that the attempt to take up again his trade was hopeless. He had grown very old with three years' exposure and hard duty. Other men could do twice the work he could, and do it better. He must step out from the ranks of skilled mechanics and take such humble positions as his failing strength permitted him to fill.

Sandy objected strongly to this at first. "He could work for both," he said, "and he thought father had deserved his rest."

But Davie shook his head--"he must earn his own loaf, and he must earn it now, just as he could. Any honest way was honorable enough." He was still cheerful and hopeful, but it was noticeable that he never spoke of his brother Sandy now; he had buried that golden expectation with many others. Then began for Davie Morrison the darkest period of his life. I am not going to write its history.

It is not pleasant to tell of a family sinking lower and lower in spite of its brave and almost desperate efforts to keep its place--not pleasant to tell of the steps that gradually brought it to that pass, when the struggle was despairingly abandoned, and the conflict narrowed down to a fight with actual cold and hunger.

It is not pleasant, mainly, because in such a struggle many a lonely claim is pitilessly set aside. In the daily shifts of bare life, the tender words that bring tender acts are forgotten. Gaunt looks, threadbare clothes, hard day-labor, sharp endurance of their children's wants, made Sandy and Sallie Morrison often very hard to those to whom they once were very tender.

David had noticed it for many months. He could see that Sallie counted grudgingly the few pennies he occasionally required. His little newspaper business had been declining for some years; people took fewer papers, and some did not pay for those they did take. He made little losses that were great ones to him, and Sallie had long been saying it would "be far better for father to give up the business to Jamie; he is now sixteen and bright enough to look after his own."

This alternative David could not bear to think of; and yet all through the summer the fear had constantly been before him. He knew how Sallie's plans always ended; Sandy was sure to give into them sooner or later, and he wondered if into their minds had ever come the terrible thought which haunted his own--would they commit him, then, to the care of public charities?

"We have no time to love each other," he muttered, sadly, "and my bite and sup is hard to spare when there is not enough to go round. I'll speak to Sandy myself about it--poor lad! It will come hard on him to say the first word."

The thought once realized began to take shape in his mind, and that night, contrary to his usual custom, he could not go to sleep. Sandy came in early, and the children went wearily off to bed. Then Sallie began to talk on the very subject which lay so heavy on his own heart, and he could tell from the tone of the conversation that it was one that had been discussed many times before.

"He only made bare expenses last week and there's a loss of seventy cents this week already. Oh, Sandy, Sandy! there is no use putting off what is sure to come. Little Davie had to do without a drink of coffee to-night, and his bread, you know, comes off theirs at every meal. It is very hard on us all!"

"I don't think the children mind it, Sallie. Every one of them loves the old man--God bless him! He was a good father to me."

"I would love him, too, Sandy, if I did not see him eating my children's bread. And neither he nor they get enough. Sandy, do take him down to-morrow, and tell him as you go the strait we are in. He will be better off; he will get better food and every other comfort. You must do it, Sandy; I can bear this no longer."

"It's getting near Christmas, Sallie. Maybe he'll get New Year's presents enough to put things straight. Last year they were nearly eighteen dollars, you know."

"Don't you see that Jamie could get that just as well? Jamie can take the business and make something of it. Father is letting it get worse and worse every week. We should have one less to feed, and Jamie's earnings besides. Sandy, it has got to be! Do it while we can make something by the step."

"It is a mean, dastardly step, Sallie. God will never forgive me if I take it," and David could hear that his son's voice trembled.

In fact, great tears were silently dropping from Sandy's eyes, and his father knew it, and pitied him, and thanked God that the lad's heart was yet so tender. And after this he felt strangely calm, and dropped into a happy sleep.

In the morning he remembered all. He had not heard the end of the argument, but he knew that Sallie would succeed; and he was neither astonished nor dismayed when Sandy came home in the middle of the day and asked him to "go down the avenue a bit."

He had determined to speak first and spare Sandy the shame and the sorrow of it; but something would not let him do it. In the first place, a singular lightness of heart came over him; he noticed all the gay preparations for Christmas, and the cries and bustle of the streets gave him a new sense of exhilaration. Sandy fell almost unconsciously into his humor. He had a few cents in his pocket, and he suddenly determined to go into a cheap restaurant and have a good warm meal with his father.

Davie was delighted at the proposal and gay as a child; old memories of days long past crowded into both men's minds, and they ate and drank, and then wandered on almost happily. Davie knew very well where they were going, but he determined now to put off saying a word until the last moment. He had Sandy all to himself for this hour; they might never have such another; Davie was determined to take all the sweetness of it.

As they got lower down the avenue, Sandy became more and more silent; his eyes looked straight before him, but they were brimful of tears, and the smile with which he answered Davie's pleasant prattle was almost more pitiful than tears.

At length they came in sight of a certain building, and Sandy gave a start and shook himself like a man waking out of a sleep. His words were sharp, his voice almost like that of a man in mortal danger, as he turned Davie quickly round, and said:

"We must go back now, father. I will not go another step this road--no, by heaven! though I die for it!"

"Just a little further, Sandy."

And Davie's thin, childlike face had an inquiry in it that Sandy very well understood.

"No, no, father, no further on this road, please God!"

Then he hailed a passing car, and put the old man tenderly in it, and resolutely turned his back upon the hated point to which he had been going.

Of course he thought of Sallie as they rode home, and the children and the trouble there was likely to be. But somehow it seemed a light thing to him. He could not helping nodding cheerfully now and then to the father whom he had so nearly lost; and, perhaps, never in all their lives had they been so precious to each other as when, hand-in-hand, they climbed the dark tenement stair together.

Before thy reached the door they heard Sallie push a chair aside hastily, and come to meet them. She had been crying, too, and her very first words were, "Oh, father!' I am so glad!--so glad!"

She did not say what for, but Davie took her words very gratefully, and he made no remark, though he knew she went into debt at the grocery for the little extras with which she celebrated his return at supper. He understood, however, that the danger was passed, and he went to sleep that night thanking God for the love that had stood so hard a trial and come out conqueror.

The next day life took up its dreary tasks again, but in Davie's heart there was a strange presentiment of change, and it almost angered the poor, troubled, taxed wife to see him so thoughtlessly playing with the children. But the memory of the wrong she had nursed against him still