Читать книгу Christmas Stories Rediscovered - Sarah Orne Jewett - Страница 9

A CHRISTMAS RESCUE, by Albert Bigelow Paine (1861-1937)

Imaginative play is the subject of this, the only story in the collection that was actually written for children. In this turn-of-the-century tale, a child’s wounded feelings are healed just in time for Christmas. Interestingly, the author, Albert Bigelow Paine, was employed as Mark Twain’s secretary, and wrote his authorized biography in 1912.

He had never really left home before, though he had threat­ened to do so many times. But on the day before Christmas he felt just obliged to go. This was the way of it.

Sister Alice, who was a great deal older than he was, being sixteen and graduated from a cooking-class, was making a lot of things in the kitchen. She hadn’t learned in cooking-school how to have little boys around when she was making things, so when he wanted to dig out the cake-leavings, just as he did when his mother baked, sister Alice, who of course felt very grown up, said “No!” quite severely. And when he wanted a piece of pie-crust to wad up and hammer out flat and bake on the corner of the cook-stove, she said “No!” again, not remembering that she was ever little herself, and then got quite cross, per­haps because her cake looked as if it might “fall,” and told him to go out of the kitchen, and stay out until she was all through!

He did go out of the kitchen, and went to the nursery to play “Indians” with little Dot. But when he swooped down on little Dot’s best doll, the only one that had lasted through from last Christmas, and was going to scalp her, and torture her, and burn her at the stake, little Dot screamed almost as loudly as if it were she who was to have all these things done to her, and ran to tell her mother, who was ironing in the laundry and very busy, and who sent back word that he was to put that doll down instantly, or he would be put to bed for two days and there would be no Christmas in that house for anybody!

It was then he said that he would go. There was no place for him in that house, anyway. So he put on his thick overcoat and arctic shoes, and his cap that pulled down over his ears. Then he took his pistol, that didn’t have any caps left, and his best agate taw, and told little Dot that he was going to Africa to fight tigers, and that on Christmas morning they would find him lying all dead, and that they would be very sorry!

Little Dot was already sorry, and began to whimper, but was afraid to tell her mother again, for fear he would go even farther than Africa, and that they would find him even deader and sooner than he had said. So she watched him through the window until she saw him go into the barn. Then she slipped out to get sister Alice to help her on with her coat and overshoes. Then she hurried after Dick, and pulled open the big slatted barn door, and found him bravely snapping his pistol at the mules.

“I’m killing tigers!” he said fiercely. I am Dick Daring, the king of the jungle! I shall be found here dead and eaten up alive on Christmas morning!”

The mules didn’t know they were being killed, or that they were to have a live boy for breakfast. They kept on pulling wisps of hay from their mangers.

“Oh, Dick, isn’t it cold in Africa!”

Little Dot shivered and doubled her mittened hands into her sleeves.

“No; Africa is a hot climate, where tigers, elephants, and poisonous serpents abound!”

“But it is cold here, Dick. I’m ‘mos’ froze! Dick, Alice is making cookies!”

Dick let at least two tigers get away. Then he said sadly:

“I won’t need any cookies. I shall be dead on the Russian steppes on Christmas morning. If Africa isn’t cold enough I guess Russia is!”

He had rushed over to the little cutter in the corner, and leaping up in the seat, began shooting wildly from the back end.

“The wolves! The wolves!” he shouted. “They are close behind, and I can’t slay them all!”

“Dick! Oh, Dick!”

“They will eat me! They will eat me all up! There will be only a red stain on the snow on Christmas morning.”

“Dick, Alice is making two little cakes! I saw them!”

The wolf-killing stopped for at least five seconds. Perhaps the wolves were all dead. Then the killer said tragically, and with a tremble in his voice:

“It’s too late. I’m going to the North Pole. You can have the cake, Dot, and I forgive you about the doll.”

Little Dot was already whimpering from the cold and from being rather scared, but she did want to see what Dick would do next. He jumped out of the cutter and ran over to a heavy post at the farther end of the barn.

“This is the north pole,” he said, as he dragged bunches of hay about him. “I am in my winter hut. I shall be found dead and starved on Chr—in the spring, I mean. It will be too late then for cakes and cookies. Dick Daring, the great explorer, will be dead!”

“Dick!” Little Dot had made her way tearfully to the north pole, and was looking at the great explorer buried in the hay. “Oh, Dick, Alice has made two little mince-pies, and they’re—they’re done, and she said we might have ’em now!”

Dick Daring, the explorer, crouched in his hut a moment longer. Then he sat straight up.

“Oh, Dot” he said, “let’s play that you’re a relief expedition, and that you came just in time to save me on Christmas morning!”