As if that were not enough for one day, in the afternoon Johnetta Ackerley called. She saw Mrs. Budlong at an upper window and waved to her as she came along the walk. When the cook arrived upstairs like a grand piano moving in, Mrs. Budlong said in an icy tone:
"Not at home."
"But I told her you was. And she seen you at the windy."
"Not!—at!—home!"
"But I'm after telling her—"
Mrs. Budlong could be as stern as steel with her husband or her servants. She cowed Brigida into lumbering downstairs with the message. Mrs. Budlong went to the window to triumph over her victim's retreat in a panic of confusion.
Instead, she heard a light patter of footsteps and Johnetta Ackerley hurried into the room.
"Oh, my dear, are you ill? Pardon my coming right up, but the cook takes so long and I was so worried for fear you were—but you aren't, are you?"
Mrs. Budlong was at bay. She glared at the intruder and threw up her chin. Johnetta stared at her aghast.
"Why, my dear! you aren't mad at me, are you?"
Mrs. Budlong smiled bitterly, and said nothing. Johnetta shrilled:
"Why, what have I done?"
As a matter of fact, what had she done? All that Mrs. Budlong could think of was her husband's unused suggestion for a war with Sally Swezey. She spoke through locked teeth:
"It's not what you've done but what you've said."
"Why, what have I said?"
"You know well enough what you've been saying behind my back, and you needn't think that people don't come and tell me. I name no names, but I know! Oh, I know!"
Now, of course, everybody says things behind everybody else's back that nobody would care to have repeated to anybody. Through Johnetta Ackerley's memory dashed a hundred caustic comments she had made on Mrs. Budlong. She blushed and sighed, turned away and closed the door after her, like the last line of an elegy.
A surge of triumph swept over Mrs. Budlong. Success at last.
Then the door opened and Johnetta reappeared on the sill with a look of angelic contrition.
"I hardly know what to say," she said. "Of course, I must admit I did rather forget myself. It was at the last meeting of the Progressive Euchre Club and everybody was criticizing you for having solid gold prizes when they were at your house. They said it was vulgar ostentation. I didn't say anything for the longest time, but finally when they all said your money had gone to your head, hadn't it, I admit I did mumble, 'It seems so.' But it is only what everybody else says all the time, and I assure you I didn't really mean it. Of course nobody can behave just the same after they are a millionaire as they did before. But I am awfully fond of you and—and—"
"It was most disloyal," said Mrs. Budlong. "And to think that after tearing me to pieces behind my back, you could come and call on me."
It was a fine speech, but after she heard herself say it, Mrs. Budlong had a sinking feeling that if she herself had never called on anybody she had not criticized she would have stayed at home all her life. But Johnetta Ackerley took another line. She threw herself on Mrs. Budlong's mercy, and if Mrs. Budlong boasted of anything more than another it was her mercy.
"I have just been at the church," said Johnetta, "helping to decorate it for Christmas week, and I was hanging up a big motto 'Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men' and I think it ought to apply to women, too. I grovel in apology and I pray you to forgive me. You can't refuse your forgiveness when I implore it, can you?"
Mrs. Budlong wanted to but could not and the two women fell about each other's throats and exchanged moan for moan. As they were comfortably dabbing each other's tears from their cheeks and sniffing their own and laughing cosily after the rain, Johnetta giggled and sobbed at once:
"The idea of your thinking I didn't just love you—and me working my fingers to the bone making a Christmas present for you!"
In the Civil War there were over two thousand battles and the details could not be reported in a lifetime. But their result can be stated in a phrase. The same brevity must apply to the campaigns, the stratagems, ballistics and tactics of Mrs. Budlong: numberless efforts at secession ended as a lost cause.
There was one more desperate struggle. While only a few days stood between her and her famous Christmas afternoons, she and her dour husband were having a bitter council of war. She had another attack of inspiration.
"I have it! the very thing! Why haven't we thought of it before?Quarantine!"
"Quarantine?" echoed Mr. Budlong as if the word were gibberish.
"Yes. If we had something contagious in the house and a quarantine on, people couldn't come here with their odious gifts and they would be so afraid to get ours that they'd be much obliged to us for not sending them any."
For the first time in years Mr. Budlong paid Mrs. Budlong a sincere homage:
"You're a genius. It takes a woman to squirm out of a difficulty after all."
He was so excited he actually kissed her—and he hadn't finished his evening paper at that!
This overjoyed her so far that she fairly glowed.
"Oh, I'm so glad you approve, Ulie dear. And you'll help me, won't you?"
"You bet I will, ducky dove."
"That's glorious. Now which will you pretend to have, yellow fever or smallpox or—"
"Which willIpretend to have? Do you mean to say that you expect ME to go bed with a fatal disease?"
"It doesn't have to be fatal, my love. Just so long as it's contagious, you know."
"Well, of all th—what's to happen to my business?"
"Why, you can call it a vacation. And you can pretend to get well after Christmas; or you can have the doctor say it wasn't yellow fever after all."
"But I stay in bed for several days, eh?"
"Oh, you can move round all you want, just so 's't you don't go outdoors, and keep away from the windows."
Mr. Budlong's admiration was reverting to its normal state. He growled:
"You women would be an awful joke, if you were only a little funnier.If you're so keen on this quarantine business you quarantine yourself.You can have yellow fever, or scarlet, or green or any color youlike—robin's egg blue fever for all I care."
"But, my darling, I can't be having those things! You know I don't believe in them this year, since I became a—oh, it wouldn't do at all for Me. But You could have it because You believe in diseases."
"You bet I do, and I believe you've got softening of the brain." He paced the floor in an effort to keep up with his temper. Eventually he stopped short. He remembered that his son had failed to help the family out in its distress. He said:
"Let Ulie have something."
Mrs. Budlong felt a certain superstitious uneasiness, but was finally won over, and Ulie was unanimously elected the scapegoat—or in more modern form, the goat.
Ulie was in bed at the time sleeping like an innocent cherub and smiling in his sleep. He was dreaming of a great invention: he would set a figure-4 trap near his fireplace and snare Santa Claus by the foot. Then from a safe ambush under the bed, he would assail the old gentleman with his nigger-shooter till he laid him low, whereupon he could rifle the entire pack at his leisure, and select what he wanted. Ulie had not been attending Sabbath School in vain. The lesson of the week concerned David and Goliath.
Prom such dreams as these Ulie woke the next morning to be told that he need not leave his bed. He had scarlet fever and must keep close under his cover.
"Scarlet nothin'!" was Ulie's reply. "I gotter go to a meetin' of the Youth's Helpin' Hand Socirety this afternoon and I'll be darned if I stay in any dog-on bed."
Mr. Budlong finally persuaded him—Ulie wasn't dressed yet and it hurts worse on the bare hide. Then Mr. Budlong hurried down town to bribe a doctor and borrow a red placard of the board of health. He was just rounding the corner on the way home when he caught sight of Ulie descending from the window by means of a knotted sheet. Ulie had only a nightgown on, and owing to the heavy wind it wasn't much on.
He dropped to the ground before Mr. Budlong could reach him, then darted away across lots barefooted through the snow towards the Detwillers'. Mr. Budlong treed him just before he reached the neighbors. But the boy would not come down till his father promised immunity both from punishment and from scarlet fever.
The Detwillers were arriving on the run, so the father promised, hid the scarlet fever propaganda in his inside pocket, wrapped Ulie in his own overcoat and carried him home. There was so much dread of pneumonia that the guilty parents could not include Ulie in any more schemes. And they could think of no schemes. The day before the Day Before Christmas found them in a panic. The Day Before found them grimly resolved to stand siege.
On the blessed Eve they sat before their cheerless fire-front and stared at the packages that had been pouring in all day long. The old postman had staggered under the final load and hinted so broadly for a Christmas present that he got one—the first breach in their solemn resolve.
They had excepted Ulie, of course, from the embargo. But they had been in such a flurry that they had postponed him till they forgot him entirely. The doorbell was rung so incessantly throughout the evening that the cook sat on the hall stairs to be handy. She piled the packages up on the piano till they spilled off. The piano lamp was gradually sinking beneath the encroaching tide. Presents were brought in wagons, carriages, buggies, carts, by coachmen, gardeners, cooks, maids, messenger boys, and children of all ages and dimensions.
On any other occasion Mrs. Budlong would have been running here and there, peeking into parcels and restraining her curiosity till the next day out of sheer joy in curiosity. Now she opened never a bundle. She could only think of the morrow when all of these donors found that reciprocity had gone down to defeat. The Budlongs avoided each other's eyes. They were thinking the same thing. The strain endured till it tested their metal to the breaking point. When three enormous packages were brought to the door by the Detwillers' hired man, Mrs. Budlong broke out hysterically:
"I just can't stand it."
"Hell!" roared Mr. Budlong. "Get on your hat and coat. We'll go down and buy everything that's left in town."
Holiday bargains in Carthage were not brilliant. After being pawed over for several weeks, they were depressing indeed. When the Budlongs strode into Strouther and Streckfuss's, it was nearly ten o'clock at night. The sales-wretches, mostly pathetic spinsters of both sexes, were gaunt and jaded. They yawned incessantly and held on to the counters.
Even Messrs. Strouther and Streckfuss had the nap worn off their plushy sleekness. They were surveying the wreckage, and dolefully realizing that some of the Christmas bills would not be paid by the Fourth of July.
When the Budlongs made their irruption, they were not received cordially. Word had gone abroad that the Budlongs were buying all their Christmas presents out of town. They must be, for they bought none in. This treachery to home industry was bitterly resented. Then Budlong galvanized everybody with a cry like a flash of lightning:
"I want to buy nearly everything in the shop. Get busy."
It was too late to select. Mr. and Mrs. Budlong with their lengthy list in hand sprinted up one aisle and down another, pointing, prodding, rarely pausing to say "How much?" but monotonously chanting: "Gimme this! Gimme that! Gimme two of these! Gimme six of them! Gimme that! Gimme this! Gimme them!"
They bought glaring garden jars and ghastly vases, scarf pins that would disturb the peace, silly bisque figurines for mantels and what-nots, combs and brushes that would raise the hair on end instead of allaying it, oxidized silverized lead pencils, button hooks, tooth brushes, nail files, cuticle knives, pin cushions, ink stands, paper weights, picture frames, bits of lace and intimate white things with ribbons in them—Mr. Budlong turned away while she priced these.
Strouther and Streckfuss were in a panic of joy at the situation. They managed in the excitement to work off a number of old horrors that had been refused for years and years—ancient, dust-stained landmarks on the shelves. Mr. Strouther showed the things, Mr. Streckfuss wrote the list of purchases,—he made many mistakes in prices, but strangely never to his own damage; and the entire staff of assistants followed, taking down, and wrapping up, and rushing parcels to the door, where they were bundled onto a wagon.
Mr. Budlong should have been a medieval general. He pillaged that store with the thoroughness of the Crusaders looting Constantinople.
The town clock was striking midnight as the Budlongs dragged themselves home. There was much yet to be done. Parcels must be opened, price tags removed, gifts done up in pink tissue paper and gold twine, cards must be inscribed and inserted and the parcels rewrapped and addressed. The Strouther and Streckfuss driver had been hired at an exorbitant cost to sit up and deliver the gifts. The horses had not been consulted. They leaned on each other and slept, dreaming of oats.
The Budlong parlor was soon a hideous scene. The husband would open a bundle and sing out, "Who's this big immense pink and purple cuspidor for?"
"That's a jardineer," Mrs. Budlong would gasp. "It's a return for that horrible cat those hateful Disneys are going to inflict on me. Here's the card."
She handed him a holly-wreathed pasteboard on which she had written,"For Mr. and Mrs. Disney with most affectionate Yuletide greetings."
She indited cards as fast as she could think up phrases. She sought for variety, but the effort was maddening. She wrote, "Very merry Christmas," "The merriest of Xmases," "A merry merry Yuletide," "A Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year," "Christmas Greetings," "Xmas Greetings," "Yuletide Greetings," "Wishing you a—" "With loving wishes for—" "Affectionate," and so on and so on and on and on. She scribbled and scrawled till slumber drugged her and her pen went crazy. When she fell asleep she was writing "A Yuly Newmas and a Happy X-Year to Swally Sezey."
The delivery man pounded on the door and wild-eyed Budlong let him in from the night. The man whispered that he'd have to start at once if he was to make the rounds before his horses laid down on him.
Mr. Budlong called his wife, but she did not answer. He shook her and she threatened to roll off the chair on to a divan. Mr. Budlong straightened her out and gazed at her in hopeless pity. He stared at the chaos of bundles.
He seized the pack of cards from his wife's chubby fingers and ran here and there jabbing pasteboards into bundles, regardless.
That is how Myra Eppley acquired an ash tray lined with cigar bands, and why old Mr. Clute was amazed to receive a card offering him Mrs. Budlong's "loving and affectionate greetings." He was more amazed when he opened the bundle. It had ribbons in it.
There were other amazements in town the next morning. In fact, it was the amazingest Christmas Carthage had ever had.
As fast as Mr. Budlong stuffed cards into bundles, he loaded bundles into the driver's arms as if they were sticks of wood. The driver stacked them up in his wagon. He made seven trips in all and some of the cards fell out and were stuck in still wronger bundles than before. But both the driver and Mr. Budlong were too sleepy to care. The driver finally mounted his seat and called out from the dark:
"Say, Mr. Budlong, where do I leave these packages—on the porch, or doI ring the bell?"
"Chuck 'em through the windows! The more glass you break the betterI'll like it."
"All right, sir. Get ap! Good night, sir, and wishing you a MerryChristmas!"
"Merry ———" said Mr. Budlong, reaching for a rock. But even the stones were frozen to the ground and the driver escaped. As Mr. Budlong closed his front door, a thread of crimson spun out along the East as if somebody were going to wrap the whole world up in a red string. He did not want it. He yawned at it.
An hour or so later, Ulie awoke and sat up with a start. To his intense confusion, he bumped the top of his little skull on the bottom of his little bed.
He was calling for help when he realized that he had fallen asleep in his ambush. He peered forth to see if he had snared Santa Claus.
The figure-4 trap was erect and intact, but empty. He crawled out and ran to the row of stockings he had hung on the mantelpiece as a decoy.
The stockings were empty.
With a shriek of disappointed rage, Ulie dashed into his parents' room to protest.
Their bed was empty.
He ran through the house, stumbled down stairs and into the back parlor. His father was snoring on a mattress of Yuletide parcels. His mother was curled up on a divan under the smoking piano lamp. Her hands were clutching strands of gold cord and her hair was pillowed in pink tissue paper. She was burbling in her sleep.
Little Ulie bent down to hear what she was saying. He made out faintly;
"Mishing you a Werry Muschris and a Nappy Hoosier."
End of Project Gutenberg's Mrs. Budlong's Christmas Presents, by Rupert Hughes