The Second Christmas Megapack Read online

  “Mother said you’d like it,” said the beaming George, ducking his head suddenly and kicking out his legs from behind.

  “And you’ll pay the five dollars?” supplemented Clytie anxiously.

  “Surely!” said Langshaw. The glances of the parents met in one of the highest pleasures that life affords: the approval together of the good action of their dear child. “George can go out and get this ten-dollar bill changed.”

  “If you can’t spare it, father—” suggested the boy with some new sense of manliness, hanging back.

  “I’m glad to be able to spare it,” said the father soberly. “It’s a good deal of money,” he added. “I suppose, of course, you’ll put it in the bank, George?”

  “Now you mustn’t ask what he’s going to do with it,” said Clytie.

  “Oh, isn’t it much!” cried little Mary.

  “Dear me, there’s the doorbell,” said Clytie. “Who can it be at this hour? Run, George, and see!”

  “It’s a letter for you, mother,” announced George, reappearing. “There’s a man in the hall, waiting for an answer.”

  “It looks like a bill,” said Clytie nervously, tearing open the envelope; “but I don’t owe any bill. Why, it’s two and a quarter, from the tailor, for fixing over my old suit last fall! I’m positive I paid it weeks ago. There’s some mistake.”

  “He says he’s been here three times, but you were out.”

  “Have you any money for it, Clytie?” asked her husband.

  Clytie looked as if a thunderbolt had struck her.

  “Yes, I have; but—oh, I don’t want to take it for that! I need every penny I’ve got.”

  “Well, there’s no need of feeling so badly about it,” said Langshaw resignedly.

  “Give the ten-dollar bill to the man, George, and see if he can change it.” He couldn’t resist a slight masculine touch of severity at her incapacity. “I wish you’d tend to these things at the time, Clytie, or let me know about them.” He took the money when George returned. “Here’s your dollar now, Mary—don’t lose it again!—and your five, George. You might as well take another dollar yourself, Clytie, for extras.”

  He pocketed the remainder of the change carelessly. After his first pang at the encroachment on the reserve fund the rod had sunk so far out of sight that it was almost as if it had never been. He had, of course, known all along that he would not buy it. Even the sting of the “Amount due” quickly evaporated.

  Little Mary gave a jump that bumped her brown curly head against him.

  “You don’t know what I’m going to give you for Christmas!” she cried joyously.

  II.

  Langshaw was one of those men who have an inherited capacity for enjoying Christmas. He lent it his attention with zest, choosing the turkey himself with critical care as he went through the big market in town, from whence he brought also wreaths and branches of holly that seemed to have larger and redder berries than could be bought in the village. On Christmas Eve he put up the greens that decorated the parlour and dining-room—a ceremony that required large preparations with a step-ladder, a hammer, tacks, and string, the removal of his coat, and a lighted pipe in one corner of his mouth; and which proceeded with such painstaking slowness on account of his coming down from the ladder every other moment to view the artistic effect of the arrangements, that it was only by sticking the last branches up any old way at Clytie’s wild appeal that he ever got it finished at all.

  Then he helped her fill the stockings, his own fingers carefully giving the crowning effect of orange and cornucopia in each one, and arranging the large packages below, after tiptoeing down the stairs with them so as not to wake the officially sleeping children, who were patently stark awake, thrashing or coughing in their little beds. The sturdy George had never been known to sleep on Christmas Eve, always coming down the next day esthetically pale and with abnormally large eyes, to the feast of rapture.

  On this Saturday—Christmas Eve’s eve—when Langshaw finally reached home, laden with all the “last things” and the impossible packages of tortuous shapes left by fond relatives at his office for the children—one pocket of his overcoat weighted with the love-box of really good candy for Clytie—it was evident as soon as he opened the hall door that something unusual was going on upstairs. Wild shrieks of “It’s father! It’s father!” rent the air.

  “It’s father!”

  “Fardie! Fardie, don’t come up!”

  “Father, don’t come up!”

  “Father, it’s your present!”

  There was hasty scurrying of feet, racing to and fro, and further shrieks. Langshaw waited, smiling.

  It was evidently a “boughten” gift, then; the last had been a water pitcher, much needed in the household. He braced himself fondly for immense enthusiasm over this.

  An expression of intense excitement was visible on each face when finally he was allowed to enter the upper room. Mary and Baby rushed at him to clasp his leg, while his wife leaned over to kiss him as he whispered:

  “I brought out a lot of truck; it’s all in the closet in the hall.”

  George, standing with his hands in his pockets, proclaimed loudly, with sparkling eyes:

  “You nearly saw your present! It’s from mother and us. Come here, Baby, and pull brother’s leg. Say, father, do you like cut glass?”

  “O-oh!” came in ecstatic chorus from the other two, as at a delightful joke.

  “It’s a secret!” announced Baby, her yellow hair falling over one round, blue eye.

  “I believe it’s a pony,” said the father. “I’m sure I heard a pony up here!”

  Shouts of renewed joy greeted the jest.

  All the next day, Christmas Eve itself, whenever two or three of the family were gathered together there were secret whisperings, more scurryings, and frenzied warnings for the father not to come into the room. In spite of himself, Langshaw began to get a little curious as to the tobacco jar or the fire shovel, or whatever should be his portion. He not only felt resigned to not having the trout-rod, but a sort of wonder also rose in him that he had been bewitched—even momentarily—into thinking he could have it. What did it matter anyway?

  “It’s worth it, old girl, isn’t it?” he said cryptically as he and Clytie met once unexpectedly in the hall, and he put his arm round her.

  “Yes!” answered his wife, her dark eyes lustrous. Sometimes she didn’t look much older than little Mary. “One thing, though, I must say: I do hope, dear, that—the children have been thinking so much of our present to you and saving up so for it—I do hope, Joe, that if you are pleased you’ll show it. So far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter; but sometimes—when, of course, I know how pleased you really are—you don’t show it at once to others. That’s why I hope you’ll show it tomorrow if—”

  “Great Scott! Clytie, let up on it! What do you want me to do—jump up and down and make a fool of myself?” asked her husband scornfully. “You leave me alone!”

  It was Langshaw’s firm rule, vainly protested even by his wife, that the household should have breakfast on Christmas Day before tackling the stockings—a hurried mockery of a meal, to be sure, yet to his masculine idea a reënforcement of food for the infant stomach before the long, hurtling joy of the day. The stockings and the piles under them were taken in order, according to age—the youngest first and the others waiting in rapt interest and admiration until their turn arrived—a pretty ceremony.

  In the delicious revelry of Baby’s joy, as her trembling, fat little fingers pulled forth dolls and their like, all else was forgotten until it was Mary’s turn, and then George’s, and then the mother’s. And then, when he had forgotten all about it: “Now father!” There was seemingly a breathless moment while all eyes turned to him. “It’s father’s turn now; father’s going to have his presents. Father, sit down here on the sofa—it’s your turn now.”

  There were only a blue cornucopia and an orange and a bottle of olives in his stocking, a Christmas
card from his sister Ella, a necktie from grandmamma, and nothing, as his quick eye had noted, under it on the floor; but now George importantly stooped down, drew a narrow package from under the sofa and laid it beside his father, pulling off the paper. Inside was a slim, longish, gray linen bag. Langshaw studied it for a moment before opening it.

  “Well, I’ll be jiggered!” he breathed, with a strange glance round at the waiting group and an odd, crooked smile. “I’ll be jiggered!”

  There in its neatly grooved sections lay the rod, ready to be put together—not a rod, but, as his eye almost unbelievingly reassured him, the rod—the ticket of the shop adorning it—in all its beauty of golden shellac and delicate tip. His fingers touched the pieces reverently.

  “Well, will you look at that! How did you ever think of getting it?”

  “How did I think of it? Because you talked about it all the time,” said his wife scornfully, with her arms round his neck from behind, while the children flung themselves upon him. “Oh, I know you thought you didn’t; but you did just the same. George heard you, too. We got Mr. Wickersham to pick it out. He said it was the one you wanted. And the reel—you haven’t noticed that box there—the reel is the right kind, he says; and the line is silk—the best. There’s the book of flies too—six. Baby’s crazy over them! Mr. Wickersham said it was all just what you ought to have. We’ve been saving up for the longest time; but we had to wait, you see, for George’s deportment before the things could be bought. If it isn’t right—”

  “Right? Say, this is the finest present I ever had!” said Langshaw with glittering eyes and that little crooked smile. “It just beats everything!”

  He rose, scattering his adoring family, and, walking to the window, threw it open to the frosty December air and called across to a neighbor standing on the walk.

  “Want to come over here, Hendon? Got something to show you. Will you look at this! Present from my wife and the kids—been saving up for it. It’s a peach, I’ll tell you that! I’m going to take George off fishing this spring—What? Well, come over later, when you’ve got time to take a good look at it.”

  “Do you like it, father?” came from three different voices at once.

  “Do I like it? You can just bet I do,” said Langshaw emphatically. He bent and kissed the three upturned faces, and leaned toward his wife afterward to press her sweet waiting lips with his; but his eyes, as if drawn by a magnet, were only on the rod—not the mere bundle of sticks he might have bought, but transformed into one blossoming with love.

  “And do you know, we hardly saw a thing of him all day!” Clytie proudly recounted afterward to her sister. “My dear, he would hardly take time to eat his dinner or speak to any one; he was out in the back yard with Henry Wickersham and Mr. Hendon until dark, flapping that rod in circles—the silliest thing! He nearly sent a hook into George’s eye once. George acted as bewitched as he did. Joe kept telling every single person who came along that it was ’a present from his wife and the kids.’ He certainly showed that he was pleased.”

  “It’s been a pretty nice day, hasn’t it?” Langshaw said to his wife that Christmas night when the children were at last in bed. “Best Christmas I ever had! To think of you and the kids doing all this for me.”

  His hand rested lovingly on the rod, now once again swathed in the gray linen bag. He would have been the last to realize that, in his humble way, he typified a diviner Fatherhood to the little family who trusted in his care for them—for all things came of him, and of his own had they given him.

  AND ALL THE EARTH A GRAVE, by C.C. MacApp

  There’s nothing wrong with dying—it just hasn’t ever had the proper sales pitch!

  It all began when the new bookkeeping machine of a large Midwestern coffin manufacturer slipped a cog, or blew a transistor, or something. It was fantastic that the error—one of two decimal places—should enjoy a straight run of okays, human and mechanical, clear down the line; but when the figures clacked out at the last clacking-out station, there it was. The figures were now sacred; immutable; and it is doubtful whether the President of the concern or the Chairman of the Board would have dared question them—even if either of those two gentlemen had been in town.

  As for the Advertising Manager, the last thing he wanted to do was question them. He carried them (they were the budget for the coming fiscal year) into his office, staggering a little on the way, and dropped dazedly into his chair. They showed the budget for his own department as exactly one hundred times what he’d been expecting. That is to say, fifty times what he’d put in for.

  When the initial shock began to wear off, his face assumed an expression of intense thought. In about five minutes he leaped from his chair, dashed out of the office with a shouted syllable or two for his secretary, and got his car out of the parking lot. At home, he tossed clothes into a travelling bag and barged toward the door, giving his wife a quick kiss and an equally quick explanation. He didn’t bother to call the airport. He meant to be on the next plane east, and no nonsense about it.…

  * * * *

  With one thing and another, the economy hadn’t been exactly in overdrive that year, and predictions for the Christmas season were gloomy. Early retail figures bore them out. Gift buying dribbled along feebly until Thanksgiving, despite brave speeches by the Administration. The holiday passed more in self-pity than in thankfulness among owners of gift-oriented businesses.

  Then, on Friday following Thanksgiving, the coffin ads struck.

  Struck may be too mild a word. People on the streets saw feverishly-working crews (at holiday rates!) slapping up posters on billboards. The first poster was a dilly. A toothy and toothsome young woman leaned over a coffin she’d been unwrapping. She smiled as if she’d just received overtures of matrimony from an eighty-year-old billionaire. There was a Christmas tree in the background, and the coffin was appropriately wrapped. So was she. She looked as if she had just gotten out of bed, or were ready to get into it. For amorous young men, and some not so young, the message was plain. The motto, “The Gift That Will Last More Than a Lifetime”, seemed hardly to the point.

  Those at home were assailed on TV with a variety of bright and clever skits of the same import. Some of them hinted that, if the young lady’s gratitude were really precipitous, and the bedroom too far away, the coffin might be comfy.

  Of course the more settled elements of the population were not neglected. For the older married man, there was a blow directly between the eyes: “Do You Want Your Widow to Be Half-Safe?” And, for the spinster without immediate hopes, “I Dreamt I Was Caught Dead Without My Virginform Casket!”

  Newspapers, magazines and every other medium added to the assault, never letting it cool. It was the most horrendous campaign, for sheer concentration, that had ever battered at the public mind. The public reeled, blinked, shook its head to clear it, gawked, and rushed out to buy.

  Christmas was not going to be a failure after all. Department store managers who had, grudgingly and under strong sales pressure, made space for a single coffin somewhere at the rear of the store, now rushed to the telephones like touts with a direct pronouncement from a horse. Everyone who possibly could got into the act. Grocery supermarkets put in casket departments. The Association of Pharmaceutical Retailers, who felt they had some claim to priority, tried to get court injunctions to keep caskets out of service stations, but were unsuccessful because the judges were all out buying caskets. Beauty parlors showed real ingenuity in merchandising. Roads and streets clogged with delivery trucks, rented trailers, and whatever else could haul a coffin. The Stock Market went completely mad. Strikes were declared and settled within hours. Congress was called into session early. The President got authority to ration lumber and other materials suddenly in starvation-short supply. State laws were passed against cremation, under heavy lobby pressure. A new racket, called boxjacking, blossomed overnight.

  The Advertising Manager who had put the thing over had been fighting with all the formidable
weapons of his breed to make his plant managers build up a stockpile. They had, but it went like a toupee in a wind tunnel. Competitive coffin manufacturers were caught napping, but by Wednesday after Thanksgiving they, along with the original one, were on a twenty-four hour, seven-day basis. Still only a fraction of the demand could be met. Jet passenger planes were stripped of their seats, supplied with Yankee gold, and sent to plunder the world of its coffins.

  It might be supposed that Christmas goods other than caskets would take a bad dumping. That was not so. Such was the upsurge of prosperity, and such was the shortage of coffins, that nearly everything—with a few exceptions—enjoyed the biggest season on record.

  On Christmas Eve the frenzy slumped to a crawl, though on Christmas morning there were still optimists out prowling the empty stores. The nation sat down to breathe. Mostly it sat on coffins, because there wasn’t space in the living rooms for any other furniture.

  There was hardly an individual in the United States who didn’t have, in case of sudden sharp pains in the chest, several boxes to choose from. As for the rest of the world, it had better not die just now or it would be literally a case of dust to dust.

  * * * *

  Of course everyone expected a doozy of a slump after Christmas. But our Advertising Manager, who by now was of course Sales Manager and First Vice President also, wasn’t settling for any boom-and-bust. He’d been a frustrated victim of his choice of industries for so many years that now, with his teeth in something, he was going to give it the old bite. He gave people a short breathing spell to arrange their coffin payments and move the presents out of the front rooms. Then, late in January, his new campaign came down like a hundred-megatonner.