The Seeker | Page 2

a last muffled caution from the larger
boy on the cot.
"Now, remember! There ain't any, but don't you let on there ain't--else
he won't bring you a single thing!"
Before the despairing soul on the trundle-bed could pierce the
vulnerable heel of this, the door opened slowly to the broad shape of
Clytemnestra. One hand shaded her eyes from the candle she carried,
and she peered into the corner where the two beds were, a flurry of
eagerness in her face, checked by stoic self-mastery.
At once from the older boy came the sounds of one who breathes

labouredly in deep sleep after a hard day. But the littler boy sat
rebelliously up, digging combative fists into eyes that the light tickled.
Clytemnestra warmly rebuked him, first simulating the frown of the
irritated.
"Now, Bernal! Wide awake! My days alive! You act like a wild
Indian's little boy. This'll never do. Now you go right to sleep this
minute, while I watch you. Look how fine and good Allan is." She
spoke low, not to awaken the one virtuous sleeper, who seemed
thereupon to breathe with a more swelling and obtrusive rectitude.
"Clytie--now--_ain't_ there any Santa Claus?"
"Now what a sinful question that is!"
"But is there?"
"Don't he bring you things?"
"Oh, there _ain't_ any!" There was a sullen desperation in this, as of
one done with quibbles. But the woman still paltered wretchedly.
"Well, if you don't lie down and go to sleep quicker'n a wink I bet you
anything he won't bring you a single play-pretty."
There came an unmistakable blare of triumph into the busy snore on the
cot.
But the heart of the skeptic was sunk. This evasion was more
disillusioning than downright confession. A moment the little boy
regarded her, wholly in sorrow, with big eyes that blinked alarmingly.
Then came his last shot; the final bullet which the besieged warrior will
sometimes reserve for his own destruction. There could no longer be
any pretense between them. Bravely he faced her.
"Now--you just needn't try to keep it from me any longer! I know there
ain't any--" One tensely tragic second he paused to gather
himself--"_It's all over town!_" There being nothing further to live for,

he delivered himself to grief--to be tortured and destroyed.
Clytie set the candle on the bureau and came to hover him. Within the
pressing arms and upon the proffered bosom he wept out one of those
griefs that may not be told--that only the heart can understand. Yet,
when the first passion of it was spent she began to reassure him,
begging him not to be misled by idle gossip; to take not even her own
testimony, but to wait and see what he would see. At last he listened
and was a little soothed. It appeared that Santa Claus was one you
might believe in or might not. Even Clytie seemed to be puzzled about
him. He could see that she overflowed with belief in him, yet he could
not make her confess it in plain straight words. The meat of it was that
good children found things on Christmas morning which must have
been left by some one--if not by Santa Claus, then by whom? Did the
little boy believe, for example, that Milo Barrus did it? He was the
village atheist, and so bad a man that he loved to spell God with a little
g.
He mused upon this while his tears dried, finding it plausible. Of course
it couldn't be Milo Barrus, so it must be Santa Claus. Was Clytie certain
some presents would be there in the morning? If he went directly to
sleep, she was.
Hereupon the larger boy on the cot, who had for some moments
listened in forgetful silence, became again virtuously asleep in a public
manner.
But the littler boy must yet have talk. Could the bells of Santa Claus be
heard when he came?
Clytie had known some children, of exceptional merit, it was true, who
claimed to have heard his bells on certain nights when they had gone
early to sleep.
Why would he never leave anything for a child that got up out of bed
and caught him at it? Suppose one had to get up for a drink.
Because it broke the charm.

But if a very, very good child just happened to wake up while he was in
the room, and didn't pay the least attention to him, or even look
sidewise or anything--
Even this were hazardous, it seemed; though if the child were indeed
very good all might not yet be lost.
"Well, won't you leave the light for me? The dark gets in my eyes."
But this was another adverse condition, making everything impossible.
So she chided and reassured him, tucked the