The Seeker.

by Harry Leon Wilson.

BOOK ONE--THE AGE OF FABLE

CHAPTER I

HOW THE CHRISTMAS SAINT WAS PROVED

The whispering died away as they heard heavy steps and saw a line of light under the shut door. Then a last m.u.f.fled caution from the larger boy on the cot.

"Now, remember! There ain't any, but don't you let _on_ there ain't--else he won't bring you a single thing!"

Before the despairing soul on the trundle-bed could pierce the vulnerable heel of this, the door opened slowly to the broad shape of Clytemnestra.

One hand shaded her eyes from the candle she carried, and she peered into the corner where the two beds were, a flurry of eagerness in her face, checked by stoic self-mastery.

At once from the older boy came the sounds of one who breathes labouredly in deep sleep after a hard day. But the littler boy sat rebelliously up, digging combative fists into eyes that the light tickled. Clytemnestra warmly rebuked him, first simulating the frown of the irritated.

"Now, Bernal! Wide awake! My days alive! You act like a wild Indian's little boy. This'll _never_ do. Now you go right to sleep this minute, while I watch you. Look how fine and good Allan is." She spoke low, not to awaken the one virtuous sleeper, who seemed thereupon to breathe with a more swelling and obtrusive rect.i.tude.

"Clytie--now--_ain't_ there any Santa Claus?"

"Now what a sinful question _that_ is!"

"But _is_ there?"

"Don't he bring you things?"

"Oh, there _ain't_ any!" There was a sullen desperation in this, as of one done with quibbles. But the woman still paltered wretchedly.

"Well, if you don't lie down and go to sleep quicker'n a wink I bet you anything he won't bring you a single play-pretty."

There came an unmistakable blare of triumph into the busy snore on the cot.

But the heart of the skeptic was sunk. This evasion was more disillusioning than downright confession. A moment the little boy regarded her, wholly in sorrow, with big eyes that blinked alarmingly. Then came his last shot; the final bullet which the besieged warrior will sometimes reserve for his own destruction. There could no longer be any pretense between them. Bravely he faced her.

"Now--you just needn't try to keep it from me any longer! I _know_ there ain't any--" One tensely tragic second he paused to gather himself--"_It's all over town!_" There being nothing further to live for, he delivered himself to grief--to be tortured and destroyed.

Clytie set the candle on the bureau and came to hover him. Within the pressing arms and upon the proffered bosom he wept out one of those griefs that may not be told--that only the heart can understand. Yet, when the first pa.s.sion of it was spent she began to rea.s.sure him, begging him not to be misled by idle gossip; to take not even her own testimony, but to wait and see what he would see. At last he listened and was a little soothed. It appeared that Santa Claus was one you might believe in or might not. Even Clytie seemed to be puzzled about him. He could see that she overflowed with belief in him, yet he could not make her confess it in plain straight words. The meat of it was that good children found things on Christmas morning which must have been left by some one--if not by Santa Claus, then by whom? Did the little boy believe, for example, that Milo Barrus did it? He was the village atheist, and so bad a man that he loved to spell G.o.d with a little g.

He mused upon this while his tears dried, finding it plausible. Of course it couldn't be Milo Barrus, so it _must_ be Santa Claus. Was Clytie certain some presents would be there in the morning? If he went directly to sleep, she was.

Hereupon the larger boy on the cot, who had for some moments listened in forgetful silence, became again virtuously asleep in a public manner.

But the littler boy must yet have talk. Could the bells of Santa Claus be heard when he came?

Clytie had known some children, of exceptional merit, it was true, who claimed to have heard his bells on certain nights when they had gone early to sleep.

_Why_ would he never leave anything for a child that got up out of bed and caught him at it? Suppose one had to get up for a drink.

Because it broke the charm.

But if a very, _very_ good child just _happened_ to wake up while he was in the room, and didn't pay the least attention to him, or even look sidewise or anything--

Even this were hazardous, it seemed; though if the child were indeed very good all might not yet be lost.

"Well, won't you leave the light for me? The dark gets in my eyes."

But this was another adverse condition, making everything impossible. So she chided and rea.s.sured him, tucked the covers once more about his neck, and left him, with a final comment on the advantage of sleeping at once.

When the room was dark and Clytie's footsteps had sounded down the hall, he called softly to his brother; but that wise child was now truly asleep.

So the littler boy lay musing, having resolved to stay awake and solve the mystery once for all.

From wondering what he might receive he came to wondering if he were good.

His last meditation was upon the Sunday-school book his dear mother had helped him read before they took her away with a new little baby that had never amounted to much; before he and Allan came to Grandfather Delcher's to live--where there was a great deal to eat. The name of the book was "Ben Holt." He remembered this especially because a text often quoted in the story said "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches." He had often wondered why Ben Holt should be considered an especially good name; and why Ben Holt came to choose it instead of the goldpiece he found and returned to the schoolmaster, before he fell sick and was sent away to the country where the merry haymakers were. Of course, there were worse names than Ben Holt. It was surely better than Eygji Watts, whose sanguine parents were said to have named him with the first five letters they drew from a hat containing the alphabet; Ben Holt was a.s.suredly better than Eygji, even had this not been rendered into "Hedge-hog" by careless companions. His last confusion of ideas was a wondering if Bernal Linford was as good a name as Ben Holt, and why he could not remember having chosen it in preference to a goldpiece. Back of this, in his fading consciousness was the high-coloured image of a candy cane, too splendid for earth.

Then, far in the night, as it might have seemed to the little boy, came the step of slippered feet. This time Clytie, satisfying herself that both boys slept, set down her candle and went softly out, leaving the door open. There came back with her one bearing gifts--a tall, dark old man, with a face of many deep lines and severe set, who yet somehow shed kindness, as if he held a spirit of light prisoned within his darkness, so that, while only now and then could a visible ray of it escape through the sombre eye or through a sudden winning quality in the harsh voice, it nevertheless radiated from him sensibly at all times, to belie his sternness and puzzle those who feared him.

Uneasy enough he looked now as Clytie unloaded him of the bundles and bulky toys. In a silence broken only by their breathing they quickly bestowed the gifts--some in the hanging stockings at the fire-place, others beside each bed, in chairs or on the mantel.

Then they were in the hall again, the door closed so that they could speak. The old man took up his own candle from a stand against the wall.

"The little one is like her," he said.

"He's awful cunning and bright, but Allan is the handsomest. Never in my born days did I see so beautiful a boy."

"But he's like the father, line for line." There was a sudden savage roughness in the voice, a sterner set to the shaven upper lip and straight mouth, though he still spoke low. "Like the huckstering, G.o.dless fiddle-player that took her away from me. What a mercy of G.o.d's he'll never see her again--she with the saved and he--what a reckoning for him when he goes!"

"But he was not bad to let you take them."

"He boasted to me that he'd not have done it, except that she begged him with her last breath to promise it. He said the words with great maudlin tears raining down his face, when my own eyes were dry!"

"How good if you can leave them both in the church, preaching the word where you preached it so many years!"

"I mis...o...b.. the father's blood in them--at least, in the older. But it's late. Good night, Clytie--a good Christmas to you."

"More to you, Mr. Delcher! Good night!"

CHAPTER II

AN OLD MAN FACES TWO WAYS