It was a white Yule-tide that year. Late on Christmas Eve I crept carefully and circuitously up to the house next door and deposited our little parcel of gifts in the shadow of the porch. In an hour my tracks were covered. Sleighs passed, in the stealthy fashion of sleighs, the jingle of harness and bells mingling, the muffled figures of the riders looking strangely like stuffed effigies in the white radiance of the reflecting snow. And next morning, when I woke early, snow was still falling. But at breakfast, rather late in honour of the day, the sky was swept to a clean, clear transparent azure, and the sun shone with dazzling brightness on road and roof. Working industriously with our broad wooden shovels to clear a path from the porch to the street, I stole a glance next door. I was rather glum, I remember, to discover no sign of life, and later, over hot whisky, we debated whether we were really well enough acquainted to give presents. It is a habit of ours, however, very hard to break. Our idea is to give something which the recipient will like, and this involves thought, which is the essence and true spirit of giving. Some days before I had been despatched to Chinatown for the express purpose of buying coloured tops, snakes and kites. Bill had made Indian suits for the boys, and Mac had returned from the stores with a coasting sled, and a small pair of roller skates. Miss Fraenkel was to have a copy of Spenser's Faery Queen bound by us in blue leather and stamped with an original design. As Bill often says, we can make anything in the world except money. Curiously enough, it seems to me now, we forgot Mr. Carville. Perhaps that too helps to describe him, for he gave me the impression of being so utterly complete in himself, so very independent of the trivial human weaknesses and needs on which Christmas essentially depends, that a present to him was out of the question. We did not envy him this position. We simply forgot him in the general rush of seasonable sentiment, and put ourselves to all sorts of delightful inconvenience in discovering what his family would like. And when, later in the forenoon, as we were sitting round the studio stove, we heard a clatter of skates in the porch, and a single knock, as though some small person had stood atip-toe to reach the Canterbury Pilgrim, I am not ashamed to say we went down in a body to open the door. Messrs. Giuseppe Mazzini and Benvenuto Cellini stood without, the former with his sled over his shoulder, both muffled to the chin, their red cheeks and bright eyes beautiful to behold.

"Hullo!" I said. "Now, where did you get those?"

Benvenuto looked down critically at the new leather straps of the skates.

"Ma says," began Beppo, as though reciting a lesson, "Ma says, we thank you very much for the things and"—he glanced at his brother, who was watching him—"and we wish you a Merry Christmas."

"Thank you. Same to you," we said, filling the doorway. "Where are you going now?"

"Pine Street," said Beppo.

"Skates not much use now, eh?"

"Oh, he's just tryin' 'em," it was explained.

"Well, good luck. Eat plenty of turkey, and come and see us again soon."

They seemed hesitating about something, looking bashfully at each other and then at us. We all looked down at them benevolently.

"You come too," muttered Beppo, and Ben put his hand into mine with a charming gesture.

It was my turn to hesitate. Mac laughed.

"Come on, old man," he said. "We'll both go."

And we did. For two solid hours, oblivious of churchgoers, we slid down Pine Street and toiled up Pine Street, rejoicing in the keen air, the flying snow, and the delighted shouts of the youngsters.

"Now come in and have some candy," said we.

As we knocked the snow off our boots in the porch Bill came to the door looking pleasantly excited.

"She's here!" she whispered, and we entered, struck suddenly dumb like children, took off our boots and went upstairs to the studio.

Quite naturally, Mrs. Carville had stepped in to thank her neighbour for the little leather Renaissance purse we had made for her. She embarrassed us yet more by rising when we came in. My friend, a most courteous and punctilious gentleman, begged her to be seated. She was wearing her scarlet cloak, and her eloquent dusky features were illumined with conflicting emotions.

"I did not know," she said as I was getting the box of candy. "I did not know that people could be so kind."

"It is Christmas," explained my friend lightly. "And we always like to be jolly, you know. When is Mr. Carville due?"

A swift shadow crossed her face and was gone.

"How can I know?" she replied. "Perhaps next week, perhaps ... but I do not know."

"I was just saying," said Bill hurriedly, "what a pity he couldn't have got in for Christmas."

"Never," said Mrs. Carville, watching the children eating chocolates. "Never can he get in for Christmas. Every year it is the same since we are married. Always, always at sea."

She looked around at us vaguely, as though she feared, somehow, that we did not believe, or understand her. But I think we did. I think we saw suddenly the secret of this lonely woman's soul. We saw it as she looked round at us, the immediate and precipitous chasm between such a life as she led, and the life of one like my friend, ever close to her husband, understanding his whims, his fears, his hopes, his follies and his victories. We saw the desolation of the sea-wife, the long lonely nights, the ever-present apprehension of loss. We understood the pathos of the scaldino. And swift upon this new interpretation we saw the great dangers of such a life to a woman of imperfect culture, strong passion and yet noble aspiration. We saw, too, another and more particular tragedy possible to her, in being forever debarred from her husband's innermost life. That vague look of distress was pregnant with meaning. She wished to say—how much! Yet in English she had not the words. For a moment there was a silence, and then once more she rose, this time to bid us adieu. We were all under an impulse, I have since learned, to press her to stay to dinner. Each was doubtful how the others would take it, and with reason, for this one feast of the year has taken on a sacramental character in recent times. We prefer, without any diminution of our Christian charity and goodwill, to eat it by ourselves. And so Mrs. Carville bade us good-bye, and was followed unwillingly by two young gentlemen who wanted to stay.

"I'll come over this evening and bring Ben and Beppo for an hour, may I?" I said.

"You must not let them be in your way," she replied. The smile of the children was reward for a good deal of inconvenience.

"Mrs. Carville, you mustn't put it that way. We shall always be glad to have them, out of business hours. And to-night is holy to children everywhere. They shall light the candles on our tree. You know what Flaubert once said of children—'a little thing like that in the house is the only thing that matters.'"

Her eyes dropped to the heads of the children in front of her, and her face became suddenly grave, set in a pose of quiet thought.

"Did he say so?" she remarked soberly. "Well, perhaps he was right." And she took the children by the hand and went out.

And we had them back in the evening, which became uproarious. My friend greeted them dressed up as Santa Claus, with an immense cotton-wool beard and motor-goggles. We initiated them into the mysteries of Hunt the Slipper and Musical Chairs. Indeed, when neighbours began to drop in, as they did later on, they interrupted five children playing Nuts in May. Foolish old parlour-tricks we had forgotten since our own early childhood came back to memory and evoked shrieks of laughter. At ten, when I took them, well wrapped up, down our snow-trench and along the sidewalk to their own door, they were in a trance of mingled happiness and fatigue.

"Here they are, safe, Mrs. Carville," I said as she opened the door, "but very sleepy."

"You are very kind," she said. "They must go to bed. But you will come in, and drink a glass of wine? No?"

"Yes," I said, suddenly pushing aside the diffidence that years of literature had bred. "Yes, I will take a glass of wine with you, Mrs. Carville. To the coming year."

"Oh, but," she said, laughing over her shoulder as she led the way into the parlour, "Have you the gift of good fortune that you bring to me for this next year? I hope you have. Here is the wine. My husband gets it when he goes to Ancona. The wine of Umbria. You like it?"

"To next year," I said as she filled two glasses from a large wickered flask. "And what is left of this," I added. She sat on a white chair in front of a wall covered with books, a brilliant, tragic, yet smiling figure of a beautiful woman, charming in the kindly coquetry of the moment. For that is how I interpreted her mood, that she divined my diffidence with feminine quickness and sought innocently enough to help me along. And I made up my mind to take the chance, should it appear, and warn her of what we had feared. She would take it from me, knowing of my diffidence. As she sat there, she filled one of my ideals; the robust and beautiful mother. I will have none of your pale, puling madonnas. I have never been under the influence of women, but I delight in them tall and strong and with the splendid beauty of health and maturity. Against her husband's books, which made a background of colour and gold like old tapestry for her head, she was a wonderful complexity of vigorous, abounding life and still decorative outline. She turned and looked at me after setting down her glass and found me watching her. She smiled in a friendly way.

"You know," she said, "we have bought a home on Staten Island? Well, when we are fixed, you will come and see us—when my husband is home. You will, all?"

"I will anyhow," I said. "I like your husband and I like your two boys, and...."

"And me?" she inquired with a smile that pursed her lips. "You no like me?" I laughed.

"I did not say that," I observed. "How could it be otherwise? Even though you will be offended, I must wonder if you know how much you mean to him."

"To him?" she echoed vaguely, in alarm.

"To your husband," I went on. "You see, he has told me a good deal of his life. And I think you have made all the difference in it. He is not a noisy man, you know, but he made it very clear at times how very much you mean to him."

She was looking at me steadily while I said this, stroking little Ben's head as he slumbered. Her eyes were very bright, and they searched my face relentlessly.

"And you think I do not know that?" she asked slowly.

"You will think me presumptuous to have said so much. You must forgive a shy man who means no ill. Of course, you know that. What I pray for this coming year is that you will not forget it."

There was a long silence, and I fixed my eyes on a brass ash-tray and a row of corn-cobs that stood on a little table by the radiator. At length she rose and gently lifted the children to their feet, holding them close to her.

"You think bad of me, then?" she queried in a curiously toneless voice.

"Who? I?"

"All of you."

"You know we do not. You must blame only me for this. We think bad of you! Listen, Mrs. Carville. My business is with books and you may think I know nothing of the life you and your husband live. But my business is also with humanity. It is for humanity I live, for them I work, and their praise is my reward. I am, in a way, in love with humanity. All the time I want people. They are the only thing that matters. And this gives me a light on a good deal you might think I missed. I know how quickly people break and are carried away. I know the strongest are often the weakest. I know we often give way just when we feel strong. I know something of illusions. So I have spoken. To-morrow you will laugh and say, 'It don't matter what he thinks,' And I still wish you a Happy New Year. Will you wish me one? Because I love people, humanity, so much?" And I made my way, rather overcome by feeling, out to the hall. As I raised the latch to go out, I looked back at her. She stood at the parlour door, the light of the hall-lamp throwing her features into sharp relief.

"Wait," she said softly. I waited.

"You think bad of me?" she said again. "Why, what have I done?"

"No!" I said. "You wrong us. We should not dare ..."

"Surely," she replied, looking at me in an odd, arch manner. "So I was thinking. Good night. It is Christmas. I do not think bad of you. Good night."

And then I was running through the snow.

I did not recount this conversation in all its details to the supper party I found in the studio. I wanted to think it out. I wanted to recall and consider this—to me—very unusual interview with a married woman. I was reminded, as I lay unsleeping that night, of Mr. Carville's enigmatic saying that 'the things in books had always eluded him.' As one with a certain interest in books, I had remembered his words. And it seemed that, if I looked at life honestly, the things in books would elude me too. The problem occupied me for days. I was aghast at my own obtuseness, for I was unable to decide from Mrs. Carville's conduct what her real attitude towards us might be. I did not know whether she were wayward or not. I felt bitterly that such things could not happen in a book, in a best seller.

And when the days passed, white shrouded, and we discussed the theories we had made and demolished, I found to my astonishment that my friends had taken up a remote position on the subject. They were extremely doubtful about my story of the auto. Most likely, said they, it was a late Store delivery van. I had imagined so much. They paid detestable tribute to my imaginative powers. Married people are like this. With disconcerting abruptness, they wheel round together and go off at some incalculable tangent, serenely unconscious of any need for explanation. They made matters worse by harping on my imagination. And they capped all by declaring that I was a bad man and hoped I would keep my evil thoughts to myself at the Festive Season.

It is here that Miss Fraenkel interposed, all unconsciously, and became the cause of our presence at a most singular catastrophe, the collapse of the aeroplane in the snow. For had we not gone out that night to visit Miss Fraenkel and with her see the New Year safely born, we should have had no vivid memory of that terrible descent, nor understood how Fate had woven our neighbours' destinies, and how inexplicably she can drive to ruin at the moment of victory.

My friends had been to New York during the day, I remember, visiting friends in Lexington Avenue, and they mentioned at dinner a report in the paper that Mr. Francis Lord was to fly from the Gottschalk grounds, on the banks of Lake Champlain, to New York and give a demonstration of the aeroplane over the city. New machines had come from England, hope sprang eternal in the reporting breast, and events of staggering scientific import were foreshadowed. Other experts were pessimistic. They claimed their own apparatus was better than D'AubignÉ's and so got a little advertisement for themselves. Other experts again blamed the administration in a vague way. An eminent actress was interviewed and spoke of her new telephone play without adding much to the national stock of wisdom. A famous evangelist of the rough-house type proposed to use the new apparatus for reaching distant settlements.

I don't think we took the news very seriously. We are, as I have said, inured to wonders and inclined to let science do her worst. We belong to that class of people who, although they keep silent on the subject, hate science very heartily. My friend trumpets science loudly enough at times, I know; but he hates her in his heart, for he loves children and birds and flowers, and the colours of the distant hills when evening falls. And like us, he admires Miss Fraenkel, perhaps the most unscientific creature in the United States. He feeds her passion for details of English life in the most shameless way. On this particular evening he entranced her with a description of the Scottish custom of sitting on the plinth of St. Paul's Cathedral in London and welcoming the new year with bottles of whisky. Every Scotsman south of the Tweed was under oath to appear in the churchyard in kilts and tartan-plaid at midnight. Most of them, he added, wore red beards. Miss Fraenkel's fine hazel eyes grew round as she visualized this frightful throng gathered among the graves of the churchyard. It occurred to me that it only showed, after all, how difficult it is to convey in words a just notion of a foreign land, and how easy it is for "travellers' tales" to become incredible fabrications. How would the quiet townships of rural England, where the names of people and places go back to Saxon days, credit us if we told them of our tavern known as Slovitzsky's, where citizens, of all the races of Europe, sang "Auld lang Syne"? Not in kilts, it is true, but in costumes even more surprising to the aforesaid quiet townships. We get a good deal of fun out of Miss Fraenkel, no doubt, but it may be that she, without ever giving away the secret, gets a good deal of fun out of us. Sometimes there is a whimsical glint in her hazel eyes that makes me reflect....

We were chatting quietly, after we had left her, full of good resolutions, and we were climbing Pine Street, the deep snow making the passage difficult, when we heard the strange sound of the rejoicing in New York, twenty miles away. And it was without any thought of coming peril, without any thought of our neighbours, that we paused at the top of the ridge and looked across the valley. Indeed, we spoke of a previous New Year when we had sallied out from our flat and joined the tumultuous citizens in the streets. Above us was the dark blue sky of a wintry midnight, obscured here and there by indeterminate blotches of moving cloud, and far away to the eastward lay a long, low glare pierced by a single white light, the lantern of the Metropolitan Tower in New York.

We paused and stood close together upon the immediate edge of the vacant plot, now several feet deep in snow, our figures throwing long shadows upon the ghostly purity of the covering. And we became aware that we were not watching so much as listening, for on the freshening easterly wind there was borne such a rumour as men are not often permitted to make or to hear. It could scarcely be called a noise; it was rather a terrible and confusing presence translated into sound. So enormous was it, and so distant, that it enfolded us like a foreboding of disaster. It was as though one were listening to the cheering of innumerable myriads on another planet. There was neither cessation to it nor paroxysm, neither surging up nor dying away. It was a continuous and prodigious drone. And the wonder of it was driven, if possible, a notch higher when it was known that this uproar was caused, not by the moans of a lost world falling down through inconceivable spaces to Gehenna, but by the million tin horns which the people of New York deemed a fitting tribute to the New Year. It was a fan-fare in excelsis, defying criticism and distance. It was the apotheosis of Manhattan, a sky-scraper of dizzy sound. It was, moreover, the expression of a primal and singularly innocent joy, the joy of a young nation on beholding a New Year. It was almost as though, in the cataclysm of hideous and unlooked-for calamities, in the vanishing of cities and kingdoms, in the irruption of mountains and the sinking of titanic ships beneath the waves, even the recurrence of the seasons had become an adventure and a matter of supreme wonder.

A million tin horns!

I suppose it was our preoccupation with the solemnity of the hour and the stupendous accompaniment of it that prevented our seeing at first a strange and disquieting signal. My friend suddenly grasped my arm and pointed to a black bank of cloud over Newark, where there shone a tiny constellation of three green lights. And the sound of New York's jubilation was forgotten. With murmured exclamations we stood with our faces raised towards this new yet familiar portent. And as we gazed the green rays were borne beyond the cloud bank and were seen moving more and more rapidly against the dark blue of the star-lit heavens. Moved as by one impulse, we plunged into the snow and took a few steps, as though to gain a nearer view of this strangely beautiful object. Almost immediately it was above us and the thuttering roar of its machinery came dully to our ears in waves and sharp gusts of sound. And we cried "Oh!" involuntarily, for we could see the dark spread of the vans plunging frantically in the air. I remember I stretched out my arms in an impotent gesture of aid, for with the speed of a bird of prey the dark mass lurched in a flat swaying parabola towards the earth, spinning the while upon itself, and striking the deep bed of snow, burst into a mass of blinding flame.

So sudden was the catastrophe that we stood there in the brilliantly illuminated snow, rigid with stupefaction, staring at the intense glare. A patrolman rushed up to us and asked in a scared way what it was. Receiving no reply, he ran forward a few steps, throwing us into temporary shadow, looked round uncertainly, and then struck with a fresh idea, plunged into the road and made for the fire call-box at the corner. And almost as though his presence had been the cause of the fire, it dimmed, flickered, flared and went out, leaving us in darkness. Slowly we moved towards it. The patrolman came back. We reached a black hole in the snow and tripped over twisted snarls of wire. We heard the patrolman asking urgently what had happened.

"It is finished, all finished," I said vaguely.

"Sure," he said, "but what was it anyhow?"

"I think," I replied, "that it was an aeroplane. It came down, you know, and the gasoline caught fire, and...." I found a box of matches and struck a light, but the wind blew it out.

And then other people began to arrive.

The following day was memorable to us, as I have hinted, for it revealed to us the enterprise of a modern free and enlightened press. Bill said no husband of her's should ever take assignments to interview people if that was the way of it. But the day after that was memorable, to me especially. The hue and cry was gone, our little happenings were forgotten and some other home was besieged by the reporters. I had started out on the frozen snow to go to the post-office with some manuscript when I met Beppo and Ben with the sled, bound for a certain slope which they credited with famous tobogganing virtues. They greeted me as if I were one of them; seriously they turned their faces up to mine as they expounded their plans. I was aware of an inward fluttering of pride, for it is no small matter to win the confidence of small children. I went with them towards the hill they spoke of. It lay at the end of an avenue of superb trees whose black, leafless twigs bore their frosting of snow like strings of jewels in the glittering air. The wind blew up the avenue keenly in our faces as we trudged. And then, where the trees ended, the hill fell away at our feet, the valley lay far and wide, the steel-blue river winding below, and in the distance the domes and towers of the Metropolis.

"Look!" I said, stooping down to them and pointing. "Do you know what that is?" They nodded and looked at me smiling. "N'York," they whispered.

"When is father coming home?" I asked.

"Soon," said Beppo. "Ma was cryin' this morning."

"Why," I said in astonishment. "And does she cry when he comes home?"

"Oh, no," he replied slowly. "She cheers up when he comes home. It's the storm, I guess. When the wind blows she cries a good bit."

And the next moment they were flying, face forward, down the hill.

I was roused from the study into which this plunged me by Miss Fraenkel's interest in the catastrophe. As I bought my stamps and posted my letters she continued to discuss its possibilities.

"What a story it would make!" she observed. "A thing like that coming down here, of all places, and nobody expecting it. Like Sherlock Holmes."

"Very," I said. "I must try my hand at it some day."

"And of course," she went on, "you'll have to fix up a love interest. You remember you told me it was absolutely necessary to have one."

"Yes, I'll try that too," I assured her. "And the post-mistress as well. All the best stories have one."

"Don't you dare," she called after me, laughing.

My friend was busy at his easel, blocking out a poster for a breakfast-food.

"Where's Bill?" I asked. With a movement of his head as he reached for his matches, he indicated next door.

Presently she returned, rather pale and at first reluctant to say very much. It came out slowly as she arranged it in her mind.

"She has seen him," she said. "And he wrote to her. It put notions in her head. But she can't explain—in English, you know. She kept saying, 'My heart! Oh, my heart!...' And yet she's glad in a way. It would have been splendid and awful if he had—don't you think? Just fancy!... He was one of those men—I did what I could to soothe her ... He will be home to-morrow, too, if all is well.... Poor thing!"

It is on the point of dusk as we stand at the studio-window and watch him coming up the hill, seeking vaguely for the foot path in the snow. He is wrapped up warmly, and his Derby hat is set firmly upon his down-bent head. The corn-cob pipe smokes on as ever, and he pauses to shake out the ash as he steps down upon the road. At this there is a sudden rush across the street of two small men in scarlet jerseys and caps. He stands and looks down at them, a quizzical smile on his face. Then he looks up and seeing us, makes a grave gesture of salutation. His glance sweeps over to his house, his own inviolate home, and drops once again to his children tugging at his hands. And then, with a reflective air, he steps across to the sidewalk, and walks sedately up to his door.

THE END