Back at School with the Tucker Twins

Tinkling of bells and clink of reindeer chains
As o'er the roofs he sped through his domains,
When youthful eyes had given up the fight
To glimpse for once the rotund, jolly wight,
Who in a trusting world unchallenged reigns.
Last and the greatest of all Gods is he,
Who suffereth little children and is kind;
And when I've rounded out my earthly span
And face at last the Ancient Mystery,
I hope somewhere in Heaven I shall find
Rest on the bosom of that good old man."

When I finished, Father sat so still that I just knew he thought it was trash. I could hardly raise my eyes to see, I was so afraid he was laughing at me. Father, while being the kindest and most lenient man in the world, was very strict about literature and demanded the best. I finally did get my eyes to behave and look up at him and to my amazement I found his were full of tears. He held out his arms to me and I flew to them, thereby upsetting a plate of Sally Lunn muffins that bow-legged Bill was just bringing into the dining room. Zebedee caught them, however, before they touched the ground, so no harm was done.

"Page! You monkey!" was all Father could say, but I knew he liked my sonnet and I was very happy. He told me afterwards when we were alone that he liked it a lot and how I must work to do more and more verse. If I felt like writing, to write, no matter what was to pay.

"I have got so lazy about it myself," he sighed. "When I was a boy I wanted to write all the time and did 'lisp in numbers' to some extent, but I got more and more out of it, did not put my thoughts down, and now I can only think poetry and don't believe I could write a line. Don't let it slip from you, honey."

I had done my part, and now Zebedee was to be diked out as Santa Claus and give the little darkeys a treat that they would remember all their lives. Some of the bulky bundles the guests had brought from Richmond contained presents for our coloured neighbours. I had told Dum and Dee of the way Father and I always spent Christmas morning, and they had remembered when they did their Christmas shopping. They had gone to the five and ten cent store and, with what they declared was a very small outlay, had bought enough toys to gladden the hearts of all the nigs in the county.

"Wouldn't it be more realistic if Mr. Tucker should go to-night?" suggested Wink.

"No, no! 'Twould never do at all!" objected Father violently. "If Tucker goes to-night, I won't have a minute's peace all day to-morrow – What's more, young man," shaking his finger at Wink, "neither will you – I'll force you into service. Why, those little pickaninnies will stuff candy and nuts all night and lick the paint off the jumping-jacks and Noah's arks, and by morning they will be having forty million stomachaches. No, indeed, wait until morning. Let them eat the trash standing and they have a better chance to digest it." So wait we did.

Jo Winn and his cousin, Reginald Kent, came to call after supper, and we all of us turned in to beautify Bracken. The great bunch of mistletoe we hung from the chandelier in the library, and holly and cedar was banked on bookcases and mantel. Dum deftly fashioned wreaths of running cedar and swamp berries, and Mr. Reginald Kent seemed to think he had to assist her to tie every knot. Bunches of holly and swamp berries were in every available vase, and Mammy Susan proudly bore in some blooming narcissus that she had set to sprout just six weeks before so that they would bloom on Christmas day. She had kept them hid from me so I could be surprised.

I wondered how Father would take this interruption of his "ancient and solitary reign," and if he would regret the peaceful, orderly Christmas Eves he and I had always spent together. His quiet library was now pandemonium, and if it was turned up on the day before Christmas, what would it be on Christmas Day? He was sitting by the fire very contentedly, smoking his pipe and talking to Mr. Tucker, who had refused to help us decorate, and as was his way when he, Zebedee, did not want to enter into any of our frolics, he called us: "You young people" and pretended to be quite middle-aged.

"Look at Zebedee!" said Dee to Wink. "Look at him Mr. Tuckering and trying to make out he's grown-up!" Wink, who looked upon Mr. Tucker as quite grown-up, even middle-aged, was rather mystified. I was very glad to see Wink and Dee renewing the friendship that had started between them at Willoughby. They were much more congenial than Wink and I were. If Wink would only stop looking at me like a dying calf and realize that Dee was a thousand times nicer and brighter and prettier than I was! It seemed to me that if it had been nothing more than a matter of noses, he was a goose not to prefer Dee. All the Tuckers had such good noses, straight and aristocratic with lots of character, and my little freckled nez retroussé was so very ordinary.

My nose has always been a source of great annoyance to me, but I felt then that I would be glad to bear my burden if Wink would just see the difference between Dee's nose and mine. I remember what Gwendolen's mother, in "Daniel Deronda," said to her when Gwendolen said what a pretty nose her mother had and how she envied her: "Oh, my dear, any nose will do to be miserable with in this world!" Well, I did not feel that way exactly, but I did feel that any nose would do to be happy with in this world if Wink would just stop "pestering" me. I was always afraid somebody would know he was whispering the silly things to me that he seemed to think I was very cruel not to respond to. I almost knew Zebedee understood, but I had kept very dark about it to all the girls. What irritated me was that I knew all the time what a very intelligent, nice fellow Wink was, and would have liked so much to have the good talks with him that our friendship had begun with at Willoughby; but now sane conversation was out of the question. Tender nothings were the order of the day whenever I found myself alone with Mr. Stephen White. The outcome was that I saw to it that I was alone with him as little as possible. Tender nothings are all right, I fancy, when it is a two-sided affair, but when it is all on one side – deliver me!

Jo Winn followed Dee around with the "faithful dog Tray" expression in his eyes and was pleased as Punch when Dee gave him some difficult task to perform, such as festooning running cedar on the family portraits, hung high against the ceiling as was the way of hanging pictures in antebellum days. Father and I were determined to change their hanging just as soon as we could afford to have the walls done over, but they had to stay where they were until that time as they had hung so long in the same spots that the paper all around them was several shades lighter than behind them.

The decorations finished, we drew up around the fire to tell tales and pop corn and chestnuts until a late hour, when Jo Winn and Reginald Kent made a reluctant departure with assurances that they would see us again the next morning. They had asked to be allowed to make themselves useful in the Santa Claus scheme we had on foot, and we readily agreed to their company.

CHAPTER XVII

SANTA CLAUS

"Well, what on earth are you schemers going to dress me in?" demanded Zebedee at breakfast the next morning. "I have no idea of playing Santa Claus unless I am properly attired."

"Oh, we stayed awake half the night planning a costume for you. You are going to be beautiful, you vain, conceited piece!" exclaimed Dee. "Dr. Allison has a red dressing gown – "

"I knew I would be the goat," said Father ruefully. "My red dressing gown is only ten years old, Tucker, so do be easy on it."

"Oh, we won't hurt it, Doctor," insisted Dum. "We are going to sew imitation ermine all around the bottom and front and sleeves, – and his whiskers – "

"Yes, do tell me about my whiskers! That is the most important factor in a Santa Claus costume."

"They are to be the flap off of an old white muff I had when I was a kid. Mammy Susan is digging it out of the old chest in the attic now."

"And your embonpoint is to be a down cushion out of the library," put in Dee.

"And your hat – my red silk toboggan cap with some of Page's tippet, that matches the muff, sewed in for hair!" from Dum.

"Your boots – Father's duck-hunting rubber ones!"

"Well, among you I reckon I'll be dressed in great shape. I fancy I had better get ready."

"Just as soon as we sew on the ermine."

We got to work, all hands at once, and sewed on the imitation ermine, made of bands of canton flannel with artistically arranged smuts at irregular intervals spotted around it, giving it very much the appearance of ermine.

We adjourned to the library so Mammy Susan could begin on the dining room for Christmas dinner, which was the one great function of the year with Mammy. The table must be set with great precision with all the silver and cut glass that Bracken boasted, which was not any great amount. The best table cloth made its appearance on this occasion, a wonderful heavy damask that had been sent to my mother from England, with napkins to match that would easily have served for table cloths on ordinary occasions. Mammy always kept this linen wrapped in blue tissue paper, and after almost twenty years of use on grand occasions, it was still as beautiful as the day my mother received it as a bridal present.

The library had been one great swirl of tissue paper and red ribbon and Christmas seals, something new for Bracken, as Father and I never thought of doing up our presents to each other at all. But the Tuckers spent almost as much on the things to wrap up the presents with, as they did on the presents, so Zebedee said. With the help of Blanche, who carefully saved every inch of ribbon or string, every piece of paper, no matter how rumpled or torn, and all the Christmas seals, I got the place cleared out enough for us to get to work on Santa Claus' costume.

Father was oblivious to everything as he could not get his nose out of the wonderful book Mr. Tucker and the twins had given him. It was about 4,000 pages of poetry, every well known poem that ever was written almost, with every form of index. He was feverishly looking for half remembered poems of long ago and would hail with delight every now and then something entirely forgotten.

"Listen to this, Tucker! By Jove, I haven't seen this since I used to recite it at school:

"'I am dying, Egypt, dying!
Ebbs the crimson life-tide fast
And the dark Plutonian shadows
Gather on the evening blast;
Let thine arms, O Queen, enfold me,
Hush thy sobs and bow thine ear,
Listen to the great heart-secrets
Thou, and thou alone, must hear.

* * * * *

"'And for thee, star-eyed Egyptian —
Glorious sorceress of the Nile! —
Light the path to Stygian horrors,
With the splendor of thy smile;
Give the Cæsar crowns and arches,
Let his brow the laurel twine:
I can scorn the Senate's triumphs,
Triumphing in love like thine.

"'I am dying, Egypt, dying!
Hark! the insulting foeman's cry;
They are coming – quick, my falchion!
Let me front them ere I die.
Ah, no more amid the battle
Shall my heart exulting swell;
Isis and Osiris guard thee
Cleopatra – Rome – Farewell!'"