Christmas Stories Rediscovered. Sarah Orne Jewett
The child quivered a little in speaking, like a frightened animal:
“They said they buried her, but they didn’t, yer know.”
“Why, what makes you think they didn’t?”
The answer came reluctantly, in a hoarse whisper. Wulfy was evidently making a grand confidence.
“There was a sick man in a gutter. They took him to a horspital. They were glad to get him.”
“Well?”
“He died. They didn’t bury him.”
“Wulfy, what do you mean?”
“They take the poor, sick people, and when they die they—make—castor-oil—out of them.”
Miss Margaret gasped.
“Who told you that wicked story?” she demanded.
“The man on the corner.”
“Now I want to tell you something.” She took his two wee hands and spoke impressively. “That is a wicked lie. Do you understand?”
Wulfy gazed at her blankly, then repeated his statement with serene and sorrowful assurance.
“They make castor-oil of them. He said so, the man on the corner.”
Nor could any amount of persuasion, then or later, shake in Wulfy’s soul the mystic authority of “the man on the corner.”
“But I wish she hadn’t died,” he went on drearily. “A mother’s a good thing to have. Better nor a father. A mother can make yer clothes. A father, he can buy yer clothes, but shoh! what’s the good of that? Costs him fifty cents to buy yer a coat. What’s the good of spendin’ all that money? A mother, she’ll make yer coat; yes, and wash yer clothes too. I wish my mother hadn’t died. Do yer know, my mother, she—used—ter—kiss me.”
* * * *
It was Miss Margaret’s first experience of life in “the slums.” Already she had begun to resent the opprobrium of the title; already felt that the frank and sturdy humanity of her neighbors deserved a more respectful handling. She found character more interesting here than on Fifth Avenue, because less sedulously concealed; at the same time, she recognized as the chief evil of this existence its crushing monotony. There was less room than she expected for the exercise of that somewhat high-strung compassion with which she had left her home. She was at first inclined to lavish a double measure of such compassion on Wulfy, for the sickly little fellow limped the streets all the bitter winter, foraging for himself like the sparrows, with the aid of an occasional two cents from his father. When asked at any hour to describe his last meal the answer came cheerful and invariable, “Coffee and Ca-ake”; these, picked up at the street-booths, formed the staple of the child’s diet. His little shivering body showed here and there through his rags. He suffered much pain at times, and, though silent for the most part about his home-life, it transpired slowly that he did not dare seek the mean shelter of his father’s tenement till after nine at night. And yet, for all this, Miss Margaret soon found that in a sense her compassion was wasted. Wulfy was as happy as the day is long. He would suffer hardship with the unconscious patience of a kitten, and the prevailing mood of his sunny nature was delight at the queer pleasures of street-life. Wulfy had been to school once, and liked it; but having been absent, he was turned out, and his place given to another. No one was to blame. What would you have when thirty applicants are sometimes refused at these public schools in one day for lack of accommodation! Wulfy, under these conditions, could hardly expect to be educated by his country. He had also, at one time, peddled papers, but a member of the S.P.C.C., seeing his shaky little legs, put an end to this occupation from mistaken kindness. So Wulfy became an attendant imp in the street-life of lower New York. He knew by heart all the theater-posters on the Bowery; he haunted the Hebrew booths on Henry Street in the evening, his small, ancient face watching like a child-Mephistopheles the evil that went on by the flare of the kerosene-torches. He joined in the rapture of barrel-bonfires, fleeing with all his small companions when the cry “Cheese it!” warned them that the “cops” were in sight. He was in the thick of every street-scandal, watching not only the row but the “flatteys”—a term which Margaret, highly amused, soon learned to know as the nickname bestowed on detectives by the hoodlums whose sharp eyes would pick out instantly, in spite of civilian garb, the flat-topped boot of the policeman.
There was nothing in the outer aspects of city-life among the poor which Wulfy did not know. There was nothing apart from the limits of that life of which he had ever heard. Full of strange superstitions that had no grace of fancy or of perverted faith; a thorough little materialist, with no vocabulary and no consciousness outside of the life of the body; conversant with evil of which the woman who talked to him hardly knew the name,—Wulfy was yet innocent in heart as the Christ-child. Scraps of child-wonder and desire were interwoven with his wizened knowledge. Every impulse was generous, and his whole nature set to sweetness. He radiated affection; to hear him talk, no little fellow had ever been so favored with friends. Now it was the kind “butcher-lady” who had given him a dinner; now he had gotten an “o’er-coat”—poor, flimsy little o’ercoat, looking as if it had been chewed—“off” of his father, and beamed with filial devotion.
Like all ardent natures, he had one great passion. It was for his sister. Poor waif! His little husky voice poured forth one day the whole pitiful story, while one hand rested confidingly on Miss Margaret’s knee:
“Do you know my sister Milly? She don’t live at home. She’s a bad girl, my sister Milly. She’s twelve years old, an’ you can be a bad girl when you’re twelve. Milly she come home late nights. Why, it was one, two, twelve o’clock an’ she didn’t come home! I’d sit up an’ open the door; father he’d go to bed. But he found out as she come home late, an’ he took her, and sent her off. The place where she lives, it’s a place where bad girls live. My sister Milly’s awful good to me.”
“And do you ever see Milly now?” asked Miss Margaret, crying in her heart over the child’s sorrowful knowledge.
Wulfy’s whole face brightened with an inward radiance that at times changed him from a Japanese doll to a child-angel.
“I’m goin’ to see Milly after Christmas. They’ve promised me I may. I ain’t a-goin’ to let ’em forgit it.”
“Are you glad Christmas is coming?”
“Yes,” with the bright impulse that always came first. “Ye-es—” more dubiously, and with a clouded face. “Santa Claus don’t come to my house, of course.”
“Why not, Wulfy?”
“He only comes to houses where there are mothers. There ain’t no mother at my house. He comes to Jakey’s house. Last he brought Jakey a knife and a drum.”
“Do yer s’pose,” he went on eagerly, “as Santa Claus comes to the house where Milly is? There ain’t no mother there, yer know.”
A vision of the Reform School rose before Miss Margaret.
“I don’t know, Wulfy,” she said gently. “But tell me: if Santa Claus should come to you this year, what would you like to have him bring?”
Wulfy brightened. For once, he looked like a genuine, jolly little boy.
“I’d like a drum, and an orange, and a pony with real hair on wheels, and—and—and a nanny-goat. Only a nanny-goat couldn’t get into the stocking.”
“No,” assented Miss Margaret gravely. “Now, Wulfy, Santa Claus visits this house, I am quite sure, and, if you like, you can come here Christmas eve and hang up your stocking. Would you like that?”
Wulfy’s response was not made in words. Sticking out a spindly leg, he started with beaming face to strip off its grimy, wrinkled and antique casing.
“Not now! Not now!” interposed Miss Margaret hastily. “Christmas eve! and, Wulfy, mind you wash the stocking before you bring it.”
Now