A Reversible Santa Claus by Meredith Nicholson
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Meredith Nicholson >> A Reversible Santa Claus
A
REVERSIBLE
SANTA CLAUS
BY
MEREDITH NICHOLSON
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
FLORENCE H. MINARD
BOSTON and NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1917
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY MEREDITH NICHOLSON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published October 1917_
By Meredeth Nicholson
A REVERSIBLE SANTA CLAUS. Illustrated.
THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING. Illustrated.
THE POET. Illustrated.
OTHERWISE PHYLLIS. With frontispiece in color.
THE PROVINCIAL AMERICAN AND OTHER PAPERS.
A HOOSIER CHRONICLE. With illustrations.
THE SIEGE OF THE SEVEN SUITORS. With illustrations.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
A Reversible Santa Claus
[Illustration: "DO YOU MIND TELLING ME JUST WHY YOU READ THAT NOTE?"
_(Page 78)_]
Illustrations
"DO YOU MIND TELLING ME JUST WHY YOU READ THAT NOTE?" _Frontispiece_
THE HOPPER GRINNED, PROUD OF HIS SUCCESS,
WHICH MARY AND HUMPY VIEWED WITH GRUDGING ADMIRATION 44
THE FAINT CLICK OF A LATCH MARKED THE PROWLER'S PROXIMITY TO A HEDGE 116
THE THREE MEN GATHERED ROUND THEM, STARING DULLY 150
_From Drawings by F. Minard_
* * * * *
[Illustration]
A Reversible Santa Claus
I
Mr. William B. Aikins, _alias_ "Softy" Hubbard, _alias_ Billy The Hopper,
paused for breath behind a hedge that bordered a quiet lane and peered out
into the highway at a roadster whose tail light advertised its presence to
his felonious gaze. It was Christmas Eve, and after a day of unseasonable
warmth a slow, drizzling rain was whimsically changing to snow.
The Hopper was blowing from two hours' hard travel over rough country. He
had stumbled through woodlands, flattened himself in fence corners to
avoid the eyes of curious motorists speeding homeward or flying about
distributing Christmas gifts, and he was now bent upon committing himself
to an inter-urban trolley line that would afford comfortable
transportation for the remainder of his journey. Twenty miles, he
estimated, still lay between him and his domicile.
The rain had penetrated his clothing and vigorous exercise had not greatly
diminished the chill in his blood. His heart knocked violently against his
ribs and he was dismayed by his shortness of wind. The Hopper was not so
young as in the days when his agility and genius for effecting a quick
"get-away" had earned for him his sobriquet. The last time his Bertillon
measurements were checked (he was subjected to this humiliating
experience in Omaha during the Ak-Sar-Ben carnival three years earlier)
official note was taken of the fact that The Hopper's hair, long carried
in the records as black, was rapidly whitening.
At forty-eight a crook--even so resourceful and versatile a member of the
fraternity as The Hopper--begins to mistrust himself. For the greater part
of his life, when not in durance vile, The Hopper had been in hiding, and
the state or condition of being a fugitive, hunted by keen-eyed agents of
justice, is not, from all accounts, an enviable one. His latest experience
of involuntary servitude had been under the auspices of the State of
Oregon, for a trifling indiscretion in the way of safe-blowing. Having
served his sentence, he skillfully effaced himself by a year's siesta on
a pine-apple plantation in Hawaii. The island climate was not wholly
pleasing to The Hopper, and when pine-apples palled he took passage from
Honolulu as a stoker, reached San Francisco (not greatly chastened in
spirit), and by a series of characteristic hops, skips, and jumps across
the continent landed in Maine by way of the Canadian provinces. The Hopper
needed money. He was not without a certain crude philosophy, and it had
been his dream to acquire by some brilliant _coup_ a sufficient fortune
upon which to retire and live as a decent, law-abiding citizen for the
remainder of his days. This ambition, or at least the means to its
fulfillment, can hardly be defended as praiseworthy, but The Hopper was a
singular character and we must take him as we find him. Many prison
chaplains and jail visitors bearing tracts had striven with little
success to implant moral ideals in the mind and soul of The Hopper, but he
was still to be catalogued among the impenitent; and as he moved southward
through the Commonwealth of Maine he was so oppressed by his poverty, as
contrasted with the world's abundance, that he lifted forty thousand
dollars in a neat bundle from an express car which Providence had
sidetracked, apparently for his personal enrichment, on the upper waters
of the Penobscot. Whereupon he began perforce playing his old game of
artful dodging, exercising his best powers as a hopper and skipper. Forty
thousand dollars is no inconsiderable sum of money, and the success of
this master stroke of his career was not to be jeopardized by careless
moves. By craftily hiding in the big woods and making himself agreeable
to isolated lumberjacks who rarely saw newspapers, he arrived in due
course on Manhattan Island, where with shrewd judgment he avoided the
haunts of his kind while planning a future commensurate with his new
dignity as a capitalist.
He spent a year as a diligent and faithful employee of a garage which
served a fashionable quarter of the metropolis; then, animated by a worthy
desire to continue to lead an honest life, he purchased a chicken farm
fifteen miles as the crow flies from Center Church, New Haven, and boldly
opened a bank account in that academic center in his newly adopted name of
Charles S. Stevens, of Happy Hill Farm. Feeling the need of companionship,
he married a lady somewhat his junior, a shoplifter of the second class,
whom he had known before the vigilance of the metropolitan police
necessitated his removal to the Far West. Mrs. Stevens's inferior talents
as a petty larcenist had led her into many difficulties, and she
gratefully availed herself of The Hopper's offer of his heart and hand.
They had added to their establishment a retired yegg who had lost an eye
by the premature popping of the "soup" (i.e., nitro-glycerin) poured into
the crevices of a country post-office in Missouri. In offering shelter to
Mr. James Whitesides, _alias_ "Humpy" Thompson, The Hopper's motives had
not been wholly unselfish, as Humpy had been entrusted with the herding of
poultry in several penitentiaries and was familiar with the most advanced
scientific thought on chicken culture.
The roadster was headed toward his home and The Hopper contemplated it in
the deepening dusk with greedy eyes. His labors in the New York garage had
familiarized him with automobiles, and while he was not ignorant of the
pains and penalties inflicted upon lawless persons who appropriate motors
illegally, he was the victim of an irresistible temptation to jump into
the machine thus left in the highway, drive as near home as he dared, and
then abandon it. The owner of the roadster was presumably eating his
evening meal in peace in the snug little cottage behind the shrubbery, and
The Hopper was aware of no sound reason why he should not seize the
vehicle and further widen the distance between himself and a
suspicious-looking gentleman he had observed on the New Haven local.
The Hopper's conscience was not altogether at ease, as he had, that
afternoon, possessed himself of a bill-book that was protruding from the
breast-pocket of a dignified citizen whose strap he had shared in a
crowded subway train. Having foresworn crime as a means of livelihood, The
Hopper was chagrined that he had suffered himself to be beguiled into
stealing by the mere propinquity of a piece of red leather. He was angry
at the world as well as himself. People should not go about with
bill-books sticking out of their pockets; it was unfair and unjust to
those weak members of the human race who yield readily to temptation.
He had agreed with Mary when she married him and the chicken farm that
they would respect the Ten Commandments and all statutory laws, State and
Federal, and he was painfully conscious that when he confessed his sin she
would deal severely with him. Even Humpy, now enjoying a peace that he had
rarely known outside the walls of prison, even Humpy would be bitter. The
thought that he was again among the hunted would depress Mary and Humpy,
and he knew that their harshness would be intensified because of his
violation of the unwritten law of the underworld in resorting to
purse-lifting, an infringement upon a branch of felony despicable and
greatly inferior in dignity to safe-blowing.
These reflections spurred The Hopper to action, for the sooner he reached
home the more quickly he could explain his protracted stay in New York (to
which metropolis he had repaired in the hope of making a better price for
eggs with the commission merchants who handled his products), submit
himself to Mary's chastisement, and promise to sin no more. By returning
on Christmas Eve, of all times, again a fugitive, he knew that he would
merit the unsparing condemnation that Mary and Humpy would visit upon him.
It was possible, it was even quite likely, that the short, stocky
gentleman he had seen on the New Haven local was not a "bull"--not really
a detective who had observed the little transaction in the subway; but the
very uncertainty annoyed The Hopper. In his happy and profitable year at
Happy Hill Farm he had learned to prize his personal comfort, and he was
humiliated to find that he had been frightened into leaving the train at
Bansford to continue his journey afoot, and merely because a man had
looked at him a little queerly.
Any Christmas spirit that had taken root in The Hopper's soul had been
disturbed, not to say seriously threatened with extinction, by the
untoward occurrences of the afternoon.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
II
The Hopper waited for a limousine to pass and then crawled out of his
hiding-place, jumped into the roadster, and was at once in motion. He
glanced back, fearing that the owner might have heard his departure, and
then, satisfied of his immediate security, negotiated a difficult turn in
the road and settled himself with a feeling of relief to careful but
expeditious flight. It was at this moment, when he had urged the car to
its highest speed, that a noise startled him--an amazing little chirrupy
sound which corresponded to none of the familiar forewarnings of engine
trouble. With his eyes to the front he listened for a repetition of the
sound. It rose again--it was like a perplexing cheep and chirrup, changing
to a chortle of glee.
"Goo-goo! Goo-goo-goo!"
The car was skimming a dark stretch of road and a superstitious awe fell
upon The Hopper. Murder, he gratefully remembered, had never been among
his crimes, though he had once winged a too-inquisitive policeman in
Kansas City. He glanced over his shoulder, but saw no pursuing ghost in
the snowy highway; then, looking down apprehensively, he detected on the
seat beside him what appeared to be an animate bundle, and, prompted by a
louder "goo-goo," he put out his hand. His fingers touched something warm
and soft and were promptly seized and held by Something.
The Hopper snatched his hand free of the tentacles of the unknown and
shook it violently. The nature of the Something troubled him. He renewed
his experiments, steering with his left hand and exposing the right to
what now seemed to be the grasp of two very small mittened hands.
"Goo-goo! Goody; teep wunnin'!"
"A kid!" The Hopper gasped.
That he had eloped with a child was the blackest of the day's calamities.
He experienced a strange sinking feeling in the stomach. In moments of
apprehension a crook's thoughts run naturally into periods of penal
servitude, and the punishment for kidnaping, The Hopper recalled, was
severe. He stopped the car and inspected his unwelcome fellow passenger
by the light of matches. Two big blue eyes stared at him from a hood and
two mittens were poked into his face. Two small feet, wrapped tightly in a
blanket, kicked at him energetically.
"Detup! Mate um skedaddle!"
Obedient to this command The Hopper made the car skedaddle, but
superstitious dread settled upon him more heavily. He was satisfied now
that from the moment he transferred the strap-hanger's bill-book to his
own pocket he had been hoodooed. Only a jinx of the most malevolent type
could have prompted his hurried exit from a train to dodge an imaginary
"bull." Only the blackest of evil spirits could be responsible for this
involuntary kidnaping!
"Mate um wun! Mate um 'ippity stip!"
The mittened hands reached for the wheel at this juncture and an
unlooked-for "jippity skip" precipitated the young passenger into The
Hopper's lap.
This mishap was attended with the jolliest baby laughter. Gently but with
much firmness The Hopper restored the youngster to an upright position and
supported him until sure he was able to sustain himself.
"Ye better set still, little feller," he admonished.
The little feller seemed in no wise astonished to find himself abroad with
a perfect stranger and his courage and good cheer were not lost upon The
Hopper. He wanted to be severe, to vent his rage for the day's calamities
upon the only human being within range, but in spite of himself he felt no
animosity toward the friendly little bundle of humanity beside him.
Still, he had stolen a baby and it was incumbent upon him to free himself
at once of the appalling burden; but a baby is not so easily disposed of.
He could not, without seriously imperiling his liberty, return to the
cottage. It was the rule of house-breakers, he recalled, to avoid babies.
He had heard it said by burglars of wide experience and unquestioned
wisdom that babies were the most dangerous of all burglar alarms. All
things considered, kidnaping and automobile theft were not a happy
combination with which to appear before a criminal court. The Hopper was
vexed because the child did not cry; if he had shown a bad disposition The
Hopper might have abandoned him; but the youngster was the cheeriest and
most agreeable of traveling companions. Indeed, The Hopper's spirits rose
under his continued "goo-gooing" and chirruping.
"Nice little Shaver!" he said, patting the child's knees.
Little Shaver was so pleased by this friendly demonstration that he threw
up his arms in an effort to embrace The Hopper.
"Bil-lee," he gurgled delightedly.
The Hopper was so astonished at being addressed in his own lawful name by
a strange baby that he barely averted a collision with a passing motor
truck. It was unbelievable that the baby really knew his name, but perhaps
it was a good omen that he had hit upon it. The Hopper's resentment
against the dark fate that seemed to pursue him vanished. Even though he
had stolen a baby, it was a merry, brave little baby who didn't mind at
all being run away with! He dismissed the thought of planting the little
shaver at a door, ringing the bell and running away; this was no way to
treat a friendly child that had done him no injury, and The Hopper highly
resolved to do the square thing by the youngster even at personal
inconvenience and risk.
The snow was now falling in generous Christmasy flakes, and the high speed
the car had again attained was evidently deeply gratifying to the young
person, whose reckless tumbling about made it necessary for The Hopper to
keep a hand on him.
"Steady, little un; steady!" The Hopper kept mumbling.
His wits were busy trying to devise some means of getting rid of the
youngster without exposing himself to the danger of arrest. By this time
some one was undoubtedly busily engaged in searching for both baby and
car; the police far and near would be notified, and would be on the
lookout for a smart roadster containing a stolen child.
"Merry Christmas!" a boy shouted from a farm gate.
"M'y Kwismus!" piped Shaver.
The Hopper decided to run the machine home and there ponder the
disposition of his blithe companion with the care the unusual
circumstances demanded.
"'Urry up; me's goin' 'ome to me's gwanpa's kwismus t'ee!"
"Right ye be, little un; right ye be!" affirmed The Hopper.
The youngster was evidently blessed with a sanguine and confiding nature.
His reference to his grandfather's Christmas tree impinged sharply upon
The Hopper's conscience. Christmas had never figured very prominently in
his scheme of life. About the only Christmases that he recalled with any
pleasure were those that he had spent in prison, and those were marked
only by Christmas dinners varying with the generosity of a series of
wardens.
But Shaver was entitled to all the joys of Christmas, and The Hopper had
no desire to deprive him of them.
"Keep a-larfin', Shaver, keep a-larfin'," said the Hopper. "Ole Hop ain't
a-goin' to hurt ye!"
The Hopper, feeling his way cautiously round the fringes of New Haven,
arrived presently at Happy Hill Farm, where he ran the car in among the
chicken sheds behind the cottage and carefully extinguished the lights.
"Now, Shaver, out ye come!"
Whereupon Shaver obediently jumped into his arms.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
III
The Hopper knocked twice at the back door, waited an instant, and knocked
again. As he completed the signal the door was opened guardedly. A man and
woman surveyed him in hostile silence as he pushed past them, kicked the
door shut, and deposited the blinking child on the kitchen table. Humpy,
the one-eyed, jumped to the windows and jammed the green shades close into
the frames. The woman scowlingly waited for the head of the house to
explain himself, and this, with the perversity of one who knows the
dramatic value of suspense, he was in no haste to do.
"Well," Mary questioned sharply. "What ye got there, Bill?"
The Hopper was regarding Shaver with a grin of benevolent satisfaction.
The youngster had seized a bottle of catsup and was making heroic efforts
to raise it to his mouth, and the Hopper was intensely tickled by Shaver's
efforts to swallow the bottle. Mrs. Stevens, _alias_ Weeping Mary, was not
amused, and her husband's enjoyment of the child's antics irritated her.
"Come out with ut, Bill!" she commanded, seizing the bottle. "What ye been
doin'?"
Shaver's big blue eyes expressed surprise and displeasure at being
deprived of his plaything, but he recovered quickly and reached for a
plate with which he began thumping the table.
"Out with ut, Hop!" snapped Humpy nervously. "Nothin' wuz said about
kidnapin', an' I don't stand for ut!"
"When I heard the machine comin' in the yard I knowed somethin' was wrong
an' I guess it couldn't be no worse," added Mary, beginning to cry. "You
hadn't no right to do ut, Bill. Hookin' a buzz-buzz an' a kid an' when we
wuz playin' the white card! You ought t' 'a' told me, Bill, what ye went
to town fer, an' it bein' Christmas, an' all."
That he should have chosen for his fall the Christmas season of all times
was reprehensible, a fact which Mary and Humpy impressed upon him in the
strongest terms. The Hopper was fully aware of the inopportuneness of his
transgressions, but not to the point of encouraging his wife to abuse
him.
As he clumsily tried to unfasten Shaver's hood, Mary pushed him aside and
with shaking fingers removed the child's wraps. Shaver's cheeks were rosy
from his drive through the cold; he was a plump, healthy little shaver and
The Hopper viewed him with intense pride. Mary held the hood and coat to
the light and inspected them with a sophisticated eye. They were of
excellent quality and workmanship, and she shook her head and sighed
deeply as she placed them carefully on a chair.
"It ain't on the square, Hop," protested Humpy, whose lone eye expressed
the most poignant sorrow at The Hopper's derelictions. Humpy was tall and
lean, with a thin, many-lined face. He was an ill-favored person at best,
and his habit of turning his head constantly as though to compel his
single eye to perform double service gave one an impression of restless
watchfulness.
"Cute little Shaver, ain't 'e? Give Shaver somethin' to eat, Mary. I guess
milk'll be the right ticket considerin' th' size of 'im. How ole you make
'im? Not more'n three, I reckon?"
"Two. He ain't more'n two, that kid."
"A nice little feller; you're a cute un, ain't ye, Shaver?"
Shaver nodded his head solemnly. Having wearied of playing with the plate
he gravely inspected the trio; found something amusing in Humpy's bizarre
countenance and laughed merrily. Finding no response to his friendly
overtures he appealed to Mary.
"Me wants me's paw-widge," he announced.
"Porridge," interpreted Humpy with the air of one whose superior breeding
makes him the proper arbiter of the speech of children of high social
station. Whereupon Shaver appreciatively poked his forefinger into Humpy's
surviving optic.
"I'll see what I got," muttered Mary. "What ye used t' eatin' for supper,
honey?"
The "honey" was a concession, and The Hopper, who was giving Shaver his
watch to play with, bent a commendatory glance upon his spouse.
"Go on an' tell us what ye done," said Mary, doggedly busying herself
about the stove.
The Hopper drew a chair to the table to be within reach of Shaver and
related succinctly his day's adventures.
"A dip!" moaned Mary as he described the seizure of the purse in the
subway.
"You hadn't no right to do ut, Hop!" bleated Humpy, who had tipped his
chair against the wall and was sucking a cold pipe. And then, professional
curiosity overmastering his shocked conscience, he added: "What'd she
measure, Hop?"
The Hopper grinned.
"Flubbed! Nothin' but papers," he confessed ruefully.
Mary and Humpy expressed their indignation and contempt in unequivocal
terms, which they repeated after he told of the suspected "bull" whose
presence on the local had so alarmed him. A frank description of his
flight and of his seizure of the roadster only added to their bitterness.
Humpy rose and paced the floor with the quick, short stride of men
habituated to narrow spaces. The Hopper watched the telltale step so
disagreeably reminiscent of evil times and shrugged his shoulders
impatiently.
"Set down, Hump; ye make me nervous. I got thinkin' to do."
"Ye'd better be quick about doin' ut!" Humpy snorted with an oath.
"Cut the cussin'!" The Hopper admonished sharply. Since his retirement to
private life he had sought diligently to free his speech of profanity and
thieves' slang, as not only unbecoming in a respectable chicken farmer,
but likely to arouse suspicions as to his origin and previous condition of
servitude. "Can't ye see Shaver ain't use to ut? Shaver's a little gent;
he's a reg'ler little juke; that's wot Shaver is."
"The more 'way up he is the worse fer us," whimpered Humpy. "It's
kidnapin', that's wot ut is!"
"That's wot it _ain't_," declared The Hopper, averting a calamity to his
watch, which Shaver was swinging by its chain. "He was took by accident I
tell ye! I'm goin' to take Shaver back to his ma--ain't I, Shaver?"
"Take 'im back!" echoed Mary.
Humpy crumpled up in his chair at this new evidence of The Hopper's
insanity.
"I'm goin' to make a Chris'mas present o' Shaver to his ma," reaffirmed
The Hopper, pinching the nearer ruddy cheek of the merry, contented
guest.
Shaver kicked The Hopper in the stomach and emitted a chortle expressive
of unshakable confidence in The Hopper's ability to restore him to his
lawful owners. This confidence was not, however, manifested toward Mary,
who had prepared with care the only cereal her pantry afforded, and now
approached Shaver, bowl and spoon in hand. Shaver, taken by surprise,
inspected his supper with disdain and spurned it with a vigor that sent
the spoon rattling across the floor.
"Me wants me's paw-widge bowl! Me wants me's _own_ paw-widge bowl!" he
screamed.
Mary expostulated; Humpy offered advice as to the best manner of dealing
with the refractory Shaver, who gave further expression to his resentment
by throwing The Hopper's watch with violence against the wall. That the
table-service of The Hopper's establishment was not to Shaver's liking was
manifested in repeated rejections of the plain white bowl in which Mary
offered the porridge. He demanded his very own porridge bowl with the
increasing vehemence of one who is willing to starve rather than accept so
palpable a substitute. He threw himself back on the table and lay there
kicking and crying. Other needs now occurred to Shaver: he wanted his
papa; he wanted his mamma; he wanted to go to his gwan'pa's. He clamored
for Santa Claus and numerous Christmas trees which, it seemed, had been
promised him at the houses of his kinsfolk. It was amazing and bewildering
that the heart of one so young could desire so many things that were not
immediately attainable. He had begun to suspect that he was among
strangers who were not of his way of life, and this was fraught with the
gravest danger.
"They'll hear 'im hollerin' in China," wailed the pessimistic Humpy,
running about the room and examining the fastenings of doors and windows.
"Folks goin' along the road'll hear 'im, an' it's terms fer the whole
bunch!"