The Seeker | Page 7

habits--bundles that looked as
if a mere twitch at the cord would expose their hidden charms.
The littler boy now wore a unique fur cap that let down to cover the
neck and face, with openings wonderfully contrived for the eyes, nose
and mouth--an easy triumph, surely, over the deadliest cold known to
man. In one hand he flourished a brass-handled knife with both of its
blades open; with the other he clasped a striped trumpet, into the china
mouthpiece of which he had blown the shreds of a caramel, not

meaning to; and here he was made to forget these trifles by discovering
at the farther side of the room a veritable rocking-horse, a creature that
looked not only magnificently willing, but superbly untamable, with a
white mane and tail of celestial flow, with alert, pointed ears of maroon
leather nailed nicely to the right spot. At this marvel he stared in that
silence which is the highest power of joy: a presentiment had been his
that such a horse, curveting on blue rockers, would be found 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