Carmichael's Christmas Spirit.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14250, 22 December 1909, Page 8 (Supplement)

Carmichael's Christmas Spirit.

BY CHARLES BELMONT DAVIS.

tHE bachelor apartments of Henry Carmichael long had been mildly celebrated among the many young women who counted themselves his friends. It was not tho unusual luxury of the rooms,, although there was quite enough' of that ,> even for a young man with a carefully invested fortune and no real responsibilities; but- Carmichael had in many ways strongly impressed upon the place his own personality. During his thirty years of life ho Iliad travelled far and in many' different directions, ; and had met many people. Inherited wealth and position, to which ho had added geography, had supplied him with numberless chance acquaintances and a few friends, and long since ho had adopted" the excellent practice never to keep a letter or destroy a photograph. Thus the story of his life—it 50 pleased h's young women friends to believe—was somewhere to be found carefully framed, and more or less carefully autographed, about, the little study wherein he read the morning papers and wrote and accepter invitations to dinners. The only difficulty was to find the photograph among (he many, and the variety of the subjects and their constant kaleidoscopic change from ostentatious conspicuousness to almost total eclipse added no little zest, to the game. The gallery of feminine beauty covered the walls, interfered with the, face of the clock on the mantel over the fireplace, cramped his writing desk, and suffocated the big centre table. There were heavily-framed photographs of women in flowered brocades that looked like mezzo tints, women who ruled modern society in New York and London and Paris; little photographs of young girls in simple dinner dresses or short duck skirts and sailor hats, who would rule too some day in their mothers' places ; pictures of women of the Paris stage and the cafe concerts, signed with the most sincere expressions of regard and undying affection; little and big photo-graphs-of every kind of the present-day Broadway favourites, from skittish soubrettes and smiling ingenues to holloweyed leading women and ponderous dramatic sopranos from the Metropolitan. Mixed with the incongruous collection was here and" there a picture of a handsome Englishwoman, who from her signature T>f one name and a coronet could easily be detected as a person of title ; and the gallery even boasted of one woman who would 6ome day, if she lived, wear a real crown. On this particular Christmas eve Carmichael came into hia study and smilingly glanced about at the array of photographic friends, and then, assuming a more serious aspect, went ipto the diningroom and looked over fhe carefully-arrang-ed table. * His knowing eye travelled quickly over the enow-white damask, the thin, tall glasses with their tapering stems, the heavy silver, and the great bunch of American beauties rising above a massive loving-cup, which he himself had won at golf. With a smile of content the young man returned once more : to the study, lit a cigarette, and waited. , , - , He did not have long to wait; for as the clock chimed eight Miss Rita Maynard was shown in, and Carmichael greeted her with the effusion of a very old and admiring friend. "Am I the very first?" she asked. Carmichael paid no heed to her question but took one of her hands in each of his, and, spreading them apart, looked with undisguised admiration at the broad clear brow, the crisp curling hair, the slanting eyes, the pink cheeks with their wonderful contour* the full rounded throat, and the ivory shoulders. "Rita, you know," he said at last, dropping her hands, "it isn't right to look like that. I saw you the other night some place,' and thought then that you'd hung up an entirely new record for beauty ; but—really you know if I looked in my glass and saw something like that I should 'feel just as much pleased as if I had written a great novel or composed a national anthem." "How about the dressmaker?" and Miss Maynard glanced with a little 6mile of pride down at the straight filmy white dress. " Beautiful!" he said. " And of course that all helps; but really you oughtn't to 50 to a bachelor apartment looking like that; it's not safe." Miss Maynard crossed over to the fireplace and, resting both hands on the mantelshelf, looked at the long row of photographs. "I'm not afraid," she said. "Indeed, Harry, I don't know any place where one feels so well chaperoned as here—dowagers and ducheeeea all about one, and simple innocent little girls who ought to be in short frocks instead of ball dresses; and .then all, these stage ladies who would fight for you if you looked at, another woman—that is, if you're willing to believe half they write on their photographs. What became of the girl you used to have here in front of the clock? She was a very impressive blonde as I remember her/ looked like a young matron. The present one seems to have rather dark hair and an angel child smirk. Who if she?" Carmichael went over to the fireplace and took up the photograph and, looking at it carefully, drew his lips in a straight line. "That's a very nice girl," ht said. "The features of the blonde matron got harder and harder every day. 1 don't know whether it was leaning against those jangling chimes, or just marrieci life;-but I had to sky her. He waved his hand in the direction of the panel over the doorway. "There she is, be tween Mettie Carlisle, the lady in th( bathing-suit, and Lady Margaret Donald the British personage with her hair in £ mop. And she'll stay there too. Any body that has to be hung with a stepla'd der has reached her final niche in mj gallery. She never can be a headline! again." "What an awful fate!" Miss Maynarc sighed. "It was very good of you to asi us to-night. Who are us'?" " Well, there are the Jim Hoaglands and the Arthur Lowrys, and Ladyard anc his wife, and the Henrys, and you anc Iten of us." "My!" said Miss Maynard, " but thai crowd does make one feel terribly un married! Every time 1 look about thf table I shall feel that I've shirked mj responsibilities." "Not at all; I asked them on pur pose. They're all married, and naturallj all play bridge. After dinner I'm goinj to have two tables in the library, and yoi and I. can come out here and talk i: over." "The dinner?" she asked, raising hei eyebrows. "Rita," he said, "if you look like tha ( I'm likely to talk and rave about any thing!" "Even me, Harry?" "Even you, Rita, even you." And then the other guests began t( arrive, and for the. time being Carmichae saw little of Miss Maynard. "This dinner," said Carmichael wher they were all seated at table, " is th« result of a purely selfish idea of mine t< bring a little of what is called the Christ mas spirit into a poor bachelor's apart ment. I can't call it a home, becaus* any bachelor apartment is a disgrace t< the name. I suppose you good marriec women would have preferred a few un attached young men to chat with you and you old men would have rather likec to sit between very foolish young girls but 1 wanted only old friends and thi kind who might leave a little of th< «roma of home about the place after yoi hud «ono back to your Christmas-trees

Rita's presence needs no excuse. She is the only jetine fille here; first, because she is my oldest friend, for we played together jus children, and second, because she doesn't play bridge now. "Is this a speech?" asked Hoagland. "Because if it. is I should think this would be the psychological moment to drink somebody's health —Miss Maynard s by all moans preferred." "All right," said Carmichael, "but before 1 conclude my rhetoric I want to warn you that you bridge-players had better fix your points now, because while the oinner' is to bo short it will bo rather rich and conducive to largo stakes." After this Carmichael gave way to the others, and th"«* dinner passed on as happily as small, well-appointed dinners among friends are apt to do. Being but a small party, the conversation was general, so that every story, even every new and old joke, had its hearers, and before the end everyone had drunk jokingly to the good health of everyone else ; that, is, except in the case of the toast to Carmichael. This was proposed by Rita Maynard, and perhaps it was on account of the wonderful beauty of the girl, as she stood with her uplifted glass, or perhaps it. was that in her voice and in her manner there was a certain note of sincerity ; but whatever it was. the. toast was quite different from the others. " I propose," she had said, with a certain hesitation in her words, "that we drink to the good health and happiness of our host, and also to his hope that he may find a little of the Christmas spirit to-night- after we have gone. For all the kindly things he has done during his lifetime, I think he deserves it more than anyone I know." True to the host's word, the dinner was a short one, and it was not much later than nine when the tables had been sot for bridge, the game was well under way, and Miss Maynard and Carmichael had returned to the little study. " Did you ever see the view from these windows on a winter night like this?" Carmichael asked, and pulled back the curtains. The girl crossed tho room to his side, and for some moments • they stood at the high French windows silently looking out on the park, a great stretch of newly-fallen snow, and the trees sheathed in ice. and every twig and branch glistening in the white glare of the electric lights. " No," she said, "I don't think I ever have. You know this is the first time 1 have been here this year. It's quite wonderful, isn't it? Harry, we don't see nearly enough of each other in winter." " I know. It. really seems as if we could get together only in summer, doesn't it? But I think that is usually the "ay with one's real friends. That was a nice little speech you made, Rita, very nice." .And he dropped his hand to his side and gave hers a gentle pressure. "I suppose," he continued, "if you really wanted to you could get the true Christmas spirit out there in the snow 110 ? Even now there may be some poor devil freezing in the park yonder, and you wouldn't have to look very far through the tenements over on the West Side to get a chance to make a hit as Santa Claus, would you?" Miss Maynard walked over to the fire and settled back in a deep easy chair, with the tips of her satin slippers resting on the fender. "Is that your idea of tho Christmas spirit?" she asked. Carmichael still stood looking out at the snow and beating -a slow tattoo on the window-pane with his knuckles. "Oh, I don't know just what I do mean. I suppose the real significance of the day has all gone, so far as I am concerned; but it's left a sort of general desire to want to do something for somebody for no particular reason. The young man came over and sat on a low stool at the girl's feet with his back to the fire. "It's just one of those bugaboos that all we bachelors fall heir to. For some reason I never can separate the idea of home and Christmas. You can hang up all the red-ribboned wreaths you choose, find you can dress your married friends' trees for your married friends' children, and you can eat your married friends' Christmas dinners; but. it isn't reallyChristmas, because it isn't really home." Miss Maynard glanced about the room. " Some people would coll this a pretty good home; and you seem to have plenty of friends," she added, nodding her head at the Jong row of photographs on the shelf over the fireplace. "Those photographs? They're a bluff. You know what I mean, Rita.*'

"Of course I know what you mean, and I'm glad of it. Sometimes, Harry, I'm only afraid you won't feel that way about things. I know there are a lot of foolish women who make a fuss over you, and I fear sometimes you can't stand it, and that it will make you different. Are all these photographs bluffs?" Carmichael nodded. Pretty much. You know how it is. Men affect women so differently. There are some men, generally very fine citizens, whom women fly from, and there are others they want to fly with, and still others they want to have tea with when their husbands are down town and to give their photographs to. I'm in the last class. Then, I suppose, they have heard of my gallery of international beauties, and wish to be represented." Miss Maynard picked up from the table at her side a largo photograph of herself in a silver frame and looked at it quite impersonally. "A bluff?" she asked, holding it up so that Carmichael could see it. "No," he said, that is the only, picture that 1 insist must never bo moved. It's a permanent quantity—always been in the same place for years." "Always in the same place for years?" the girl repeated slowly. " Who changes the others, then, with 60 much taste, and creates all this mystery in the breasts .of your young lady friends 2"-

"My man does all that." Carmichael answered promptly, " and it s one of his most cherished perquisites. _It doesn t cost me anything, and it gives him a great deal of pleasure. He's terribly fickle, though—he features two or three a week some weeks. And what ho sees in some of them I cannot understand, and vet it seems a little familiar for me to ask him. There was a band-painted photograph of a Viennese soubretto that he was crazy about. He set her up against | mv ink-well first, and when I threw her into ho waste-paper basket lie fished her out and leaned her against the lamp on the table there. It lit her up like a spritlight. I hid her behind books and in closets and in every out. of the way corner in the place; but tho next day there she would be with her tinted beauty presiding over the dining-room or the bath-room or any old place, till 1 had to cremate her in the grate." " It's little wonder then," said Miss Maynaid, "that- no onejias ever been able to find the real one." Carmichael smiled and clasped his hands about his knees. _ "Ah!" he repeated, " the real one, eh ?" The girl sat up straight "in her chair, Mid in imitation of her host, clasped her hands about ior knees and then looked him fairly in the eyes. " es. tell me, please, Harry: I'm such an old friend. Which is the one?" Carmichael smiled up at the girl, and then sl« wlv pulled himself to his feet. " Von don't mind if I smoke, do you? " Miss Maynard shook her head, and the young man crossed the room to find a cigar, and then returned to his place at the lire. He took a match-box from his pocket, and as he slowly lit his cigar the red light from the hearth fell full on his face. "After all, Rita," he said, "what's the UFO?" The girl impulsively put out her hand and laid it 011 his arm. "Why. Harry," she whispered, " I'm so sorry! 1 didn't understand. You know we've eeon so little of each other lately. I thought they were ' allyou know —just, bluffs." The girl tossed her head toward the pictures over the fireplace. "Well," he said "so they are; the one is the only one that isnt' here. Don't you believe, Rita, that every man who writes knows one story he never writes, and every painter one picture that lis would rather starve than put on canvas? I do. " Hut she used to be here," he went on. "There was a little picture of her on the table over there, and another on the top of the desk, and one on the mantel, and there was a big one on tho piano. Wherever you looked you could see her. She was everywhere; at least, so it seemed to me. And there was another in my bureau. She looked particularly bright in that one, and sort of piquant and very cheery, and every morning when 1 got* up I used to say goodmorning to her." Miss Maynard leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees and holding her chin between the palms of her hands. " You knew her very well," she asked, "and for a long time?" Carmichael nodded, " Yes, for quite a long time—too long, I suppose." "What —what was she like, Harry? Do you mind? ' Carmichael stared at the fire and shook his heed. "No, of course I don't mind," lie said; that is, to you. 1 like to talk about her."

For some moments he hesitated, and then went on again. " It's hard, in a way, because it's so difficult to give an idea of personality, and that's about all that really counts, isn't it? She was very pretty, too, in a way —her expression was always changing; it seemed as it' it reflected every shade of every thought and idea she had, and she certainly had wonderful thoughts and ideas. I think she had the cleverest, cleanest grasp of things, and the broadest and most sane philosophy of life of any woman or man I have ever known. I suppose it was because she had .had a rather hard time of it, and experience had taught her much that many girls never know. She had what the artist folk call temperament too, and with her intelligence ought to have made the greatest actress of our day." '"She was on the stage?" Miss Maynard asked. "Yes. still is." " Isn't she clever—l mean on the stage?" Carmichael shook his head. " No, and never will be. I imagine. With all her intelligence and good looks v . she lacks the one essential thing—the trick tho actors call getting it over the footlights." "Then why—" "Why," interrupted Carmichael —"why? Oh, just because she is independent and doesn't want to admit failure. I don't think the stage meant anything to her but her lent and board; but she liked to

pay thos6 herself, and I think the success of other women, with only half her talents, annoyed her and hurt her pride, and she had a great deal of that." For some moments there was silence, while Carmichael twisted his cigar slowly between his lips, and the girl still sat looking into the fire with her chin resting between her hands. It was she who broke the silence. " Who were her friends?" "I don't know. I don't know that she had any real friends. The first time I met her was at a sort of Bohemian supper, and I couldn't understand exactly why she was there at all. She worried me a good deal for a time ; that is, until I got to know her. I thought at first that she must be ignorant of their moral point of view. I knew from everything about her that she couldn't possibly share it. And then afterward I talked to her about- it, and her knowledge was just as much greater than mine as her charity was. Why, Rita, she saw people just as we would see things through that magnifying glass over there on the tabic. For a long time after that she used to come here in the afternoon and sit at the tea-table and drink tea, and I would drink Scotch and smoke and listen to her. It was wonderful bow she accepted her share of life always with a smile on her lips."-

"Still," said the girl, "her, share was more or less what she made it. After all, her lot might have been different; that is, if I understand you—l mean how much you cared." " Yes, it might have been different," Carmichael said; "but she chose her failure on the stage and the hall bedroom and the one dress and the one hat. I tell you. Rita, the hall bedroom and the one dress have had almost as much effect on some girls' lives in this town as mothers' prayers. What do you think?" For answer Miss Maynard sat back in the deep chair and, looking at Carmichael, slowly shook her head. "1 think," she said, "there must have been some other reason. Admitting that she had the highest. motives in the world, it. is difficult to understand why she should have chosen tli:> hall bedroom instead of all this." The girl glanced about the room and then back at Carmichael. "Of course, Harry, if you were an ogre, it would have been different, but you are not. an ogre; in fact, 1 understand all mothers and most daughters call yon eligible. It really seems as ii' she might have brought herself to care a little." " Perhaps," said Carmichael, slowly weighing his words, "she cared too much. She had an absurd idea of the world that you, for instance, belong to probably because she knew so little of it. 1 think you represented to her everything that a 'woman ought to be—at least the type of woman 1 ought to marry." "I?" "Yes, you. 1 had talked to her a lot about you, and—'

"And the one photograph," Miss Maynard interrupted, " that was never moved?'' CTirmichael nodded. "I suppose so. She said that her visits here were nothing but a bundle of failed letters tied with a ribbon and hid away in the bureau draw at the actors' boarding-housetho kind of letters that a woman marks ' Hum without opening,' and reads only when her husband is down town and she is discouraged and wants to bring on a good cry." "And what was the end of all this? There's always an end." "The end was that she was very ill, and I did everything that a man who had a certain amount of brains and a good deal of money could do for a woman. Tho fact that she was sick made it possible, where it wasn't possible before." "And then?" the girl said. And then I found out, just as every man find:; out when a woman he cares for is really ill. It's the only perfectly sure test I know. And when she was quite well and at work again, and her pride had come back, I asked her to tea. After tea, I told her my discovery. It was a very important one to me; but not to her, it seemed. Then I collected all iter photographs, and we sat here just as you and I are sitting here to-night, and one by one I tore the photographs in two and put them in the fire ana they burned up. I told her that I was a strong man/ and liked a fight; but I knew when I was beaten. It was a case of marrying me or saying good-bye. That evening I went out to my cottage at Rye, _ where 1 made the caretaker cook for a friend and me for two days. For those two days 1 did exactly what I had always read about men doing in novels and what 1 had seen them do on the stage. I tramped up and down and talked and raved about her to the man whom I had brought along for tho purpose, and he was just as sympathetic as I know ha"A'as going to be. At tho end of two days I had exhausted myself and my friend, and I came back here, to the blank spaces where her photographs used to be and to the wicker chair where she used to sit. "That is all a year ago, and since those two days until to-night I have never spoken to anyone about her; but the blank spaces are still blank spaces, although they have been filled with many faces, and the spirit of home which she brought here in those days is just as lacking to me as if the rooms were stripped and the packing-boxes were standing in the hall." t " And you've never seen her since?" "Yes. Several times 011 the stage, and once, just the other day, I met her in the street." " Did vou speak to her?" " No; 'but I wanted to take her an my arms and carry her away—anywhere. There was such a tired look in her eyes, and her face was so peaked, and she seemed terribly worn and poor." "And you didn't speak to her? "No; she would have preferred it that way. I know her so well, Rita." " Perhaps—one never knows. Women have been known change." Carmichael looked up and smilingly shook his head. "Not this woman," lie said. "Is she playing here now?" Miss Maynard asked. " I suppose it absurdly curious of me; but I should like to f>eo her after all that you have told me." "Yes, she's playing down the street at the Majestic. Her name is Alice Yorko, and she plays the part of a younger sister, and her performance is just as bad as the play. " I've seen it a dozen more, and ought to know. Its terrible. Miss Maynard smiled cheerfully. " Come on* Harry. I hear the others coming, and must be" going home; it's nearly eleven o'clock now. Are you going to the club or any place that I can drop you? " No, thank you, Rita," lie said. _ " I'm going to read ii. bit and go to bed." They were joined a moment later by the bridge players, who impressively thanked Cariiiiohaei for his true hospitality in leaving them so interruptedly alone to their game. And then they told him individually and in chorus how much they had enjoyed the dinner', and everyone bade everyone else good night and exchanged the best of wishes for a merry Christmas. For just a moment after the others had left the room Rita Maynard lingered while Carmichael arranged her cloak for her. " Thank you 60 much, Harry!" she whispered. "It was such a good friendly talk. Don't think too long of the blank spaces. Good night and good luck." Five minutes later Miss Maynard's automobile drew up at the stage door of the Majestic theatre, and tho doorkeeper was to overcome by the radiant beauty of the

young woman and the richness of her mantle that for once he forgot to be churlish and promptly led her to the deserted stage. The performance had b3en over for some little time; but the doorkeeper was .quite .sure that Miss Yarke was still in her dress--room. In any case he would make sure, and so he diluted the spiral staircase which led to the dressing-rooms and told Miss Yorkc that the most beautiful. society lady he had ever seen was waiting for her with an automobile. Tho two women mot on the dimly lit stage, and, perhaps it was from the unusual surroundings, or for one reason or another, it was only the visitor that showed any signs of embarrassment. "I'm Miss Maynard," she began, "and mv only excuse for coming to see you tonight. is that I am a very old friend ot a friend of yours— Carmichael." Miss Yu'rke smiled brightly and put out her hand. " I am very glad to meet you, ,sho said. "Mr. Carmichael is, or was, a great friend oi mine." For a moment the actress waited, while Miss Maynard mentally groped about for the word's with which to explain her mission. The poise of tho girl, and something in the oise of her manner and the frankness with which she met her glance, was a little confusing. " Have you anything to do—now, I mean?" Miss Maynard asked. Miss Yorke shook her head. " Nothing," «ho said.

"Well, if you don't think it too great an impertinence, I'm going to ask if you won't take a little drive with mo through

the park. I want to say something to you so much, and I could say it so much better to you there than here." . "I'd love to go," Miss Yorko said, and smilingly glanced about at the heavy set pieces, the rows of flat scenes piled up against rough brick walls, and the watch light with its single gas flame burning dimly in tho centre of the stage. "I'm afraid it is rather confusing to you here. Shall we go?" Just what was said between tho two girls in Miss Maynard's automobile that night as they raced over the snow-covered loads of the deserted park has never been, and in all probability never will be, known. And the reason for this no doubt is that although until that night they had been strangers to one another, each must have told the other something that she heretofore had kept in her own heart and never told. But. be that as it may, at least tho result of that talk is now well known. At the hour when Santa Clans was at his busiest, filling stockings with candy and toys and hanging gold stars and little* pink cupids 011 Christmas trees all over tho big city, Rita Maynard's automobile stopped once more that night at the home of Henry Carmichael. Tho two girls went up to the floor of his apartment together, and when Carmichael hinieelf came to the door in answer to their ring, he found them standing together, with Rita Maynard's arm about the shoulders of her new friend. For just a moment Carmichael stood in the doorway a little dazed; and then he understood, and held out his arms to her. " Harry," Miss Maynard said, " I've brought "you a little of the Christmas spirit you were talking about." And then she gently urged Alice Yorke toward the doorway. "I'll wait for you in the car; don't bo long." When she had left Mies Yorke at the actress' boarding-house on the West Side, and her work was done, and well done, Rita Maynard started for her own home. With her cloak drawn tightly about her throat and shoulders, she sat, with folded arms, her head resting against the cushions, and with wide open eyes staring at the design of the brocade with which the top of tho automobile was lined. It was just midnight when she reached her destination, and the bells were ringing out the news which has meant so many things to so many people for so many years. The girl got. out of the automobile, and had almst reached the steps of her home, when the clamour of the bells seemed to bring her back to herself and her surroundings, and she turned back toward tho chauffeur. " Good night, Davis," she said, " and a Merry Christmas to you." The chauffeur smiled broaoiy, nodded, and touched his cap. " Thank you, miss," he paid ; "and a Merry Christmas to you, too." For a moment the girl hesitated while tho two words of thanks which she would have spoken died in her throat, and with uncertain steps and misty eyes she went slowly on up the steps of her home.