The Seeker | Page 7

on this very morning. Two days before had he in an absent moment beheld a vision of this horse poised near the door of the attic; but when he ran to make report of it below, thinking to astound people by his power of insight, Clytemnestra, bidding him wait in the kitchen where she was baking, had hurried to the spot and found only some rolls of blue cambric. She had rather shamed him for giving her such a start. A few rolls of shiny blue cambric against a white wall did not, she assured him, make a rocking-horse; and, what was more, they never would. Now the vision came back with a significance that set him all a-thrill. Next time Clytie would pay attention to him. He laughed to think of her confusion now.
But here again, at the very zenith of a shout, was he frozen to silence by a vision--this time one too obviously of no ponderable fabric. There in the corner, almost at his hand, seemed to be a thing that he had dreamed of possessing only after he entered Heaven--a candy cane: one of fearful length, thick of girth, vast of crook, and wide in the spiral stripe that seemed to run a living flame before his ravished eyes, beginning at the bottom and winding around and around the whole dizzy height. Fearfully in nerve-braced silence he leaned far out of his bed to bring against this amazing apparition one cool, impartial forefinger of skeptic research. It did not vanish; it resisted his touch. Then his heart fainted with rapture, for he knew the unimagined had become history.
Standing before the windows of the great, he had gazed long at these creations. They were suspended on a wire across the window in various lengths, from little ones to sizes too awesome to compute. On one occasion so long had he stood motionless, so deep the trance of his contemplation, that the winter cold had cruelly bitten his ears and toes. He had not supposed that these things were for mere vulgar ownership. He had known of boys who had guns and building-blocks and rocking-horses as well as candy in the lesser degrees; but never had he known, never had he been able to hear of one who had owned a thing like this. Indeed, among the boys he knew, it was believed that they were not even to be seen save on their wire at Christmas time in the windows of the rich. One boy had hinted that the "set" would not be broken even if a person should appear with money enough to buy a single one. And here before him was the finest of them all, receding neither from his gaze or his touch, one as long as the longest of which Heaven had hitherto vouchsafed him a chilling vision through glass; here was the same fascinating union of transcendent merit with a playful suggestion of downright utility. And he had blurted out to Clytie that the news of there being no Santa Claus was all over town! He was ashamed, and the moment became for him one of chastening in which he humbled his unbelieving spirit before this symbol of a more than earthly goodness--a symbol in whose presence, while as yet no accident had rendered it less than perfect, he would never cease to feel the spiritual uplift of one who has weighed the fruits of faith and found them not wanting.
He issued from some bottomless stupor of ecstacy to hear the door open to Allan's shouts; then to see the opening nicely filled again by the figure of Clytemnestra, who looked over at them with eager, shining eyes. He was at first powerless to do more than say "Oh, Clytie!" with little impotent pointings toward the candy cane. But the action now in order served to restore him to a state of working sanity. There was washing and dressing after Clytie had the fire crackling; the forgetting of some treasures to remember others; and the conveyance of them all down stairs to the big sitting-room where the sun came in over the geraniums in the bay-window, and where the Franklin heater made the air tropic. The rocking-horse was led and pushed by both boys; but to Clytie's responsible hand alone was intrusted the more than earthly candy cane.
Downstairs there was the grandfather to greet--erect, fresh-shaven, flashing kind eyes from under stern brows. He seemed to be awkwardly pleased with their pleasure, yet scarce able to be one with them; as if that inner white spirit of his fluttered more than its wont to be free, yet found only tiny exits for its furtive flashes of light.
Breakfast was a chattering and explosive meal, a severe trial, indeed, to the patience of the littler