Pike came to see him one day, his arms full of a bundle, which turned out to be an accordion for Sophy.
"Christmas, you know," he said, taking off the brown paper, while he was cursing the Cotton States the hardest, and gravely kneading at the keys, and stretching it until he made as much discord as five Congressmen. "I think Sophy will like that," he said, looking at it sideways, and tying it up carefully.
"I am sure she will," said Holmes,—and did not think the man a fool for one moment.
Always going back, this Holmes, when he was alone, to the certainty that home-comings or children's kisses or Christmas feasts were not for such as he,—never could be, though he sought for the old time in bitterness of heart; and so, dully remembering his resolve, and waiting for Christmas eve, when he might end it all. Not one of the myriads of happy children listened more intently to the clock clanging off hour after hour than the silent, stern man who had no hope in that day that was coming.
He learned to watch even for poor Lois coming up the corridor every day,—being the only tie that bound the solitary man to the inner world of love and warmth. The deformed little body was quite alive with Christmas now, and brought its glow with her, in her weak way. Different from the others, he saw with a curious interest. The day was more real to her than to them. Not because, only, the care she had of everybody, and everybody had of her seemed to reach its culmination of kindly thought for the Christmas time; not because, as she sat talking slowly, stopping for breath, her great fear seemed to be that she would not have gifts enough to go round; but deeper than that,—the day was real to her. As if it were actually true that the Master in whom she believed was freshly born into the world once a year, to waken all that was genial and noble and pure in the turbid, worn-out hearts; as if new honour and pride and love did flash into the realms below heaven with the breaking of Christmas morn. It was a beautiful faith; he almost wished it were his. A beautiful faith! it gave a meaning to the old custom of gifts and kind words. LOVE coming into the world!—the idea pleased his artistic taste, being simple and sublime. Lois used to tell him, while she feebly tried to set his room in order, of all her plans,—of how Sam Polston was to be married on New-Year's,—but most of all of the Christmas coming out at the old school-master's: how the old house had been scrubbed from top to bottom, was fairly glowing with shining paint and hot fires,—how Margret and her mother worked, in terror lest the old man should find out how poor and bare it was,—how he and Joel had some secret enterprise on foot at the far end of the plantation out in the swamp, and were gone nearly all day.
She ceased coming at last. One of the sisters went out to see her, and told him she was too weak to walk, but meant to be better soon,—quite well by the holidays. He wished the poor thing had told him what she wanted of him,—wished it anxiously, with a dull presentiment of evil.
The days went by, cold and slow. He watched grimly the preparations the hospital physician was silently making in his case, for fever, inflammation.
"I must be strong enough to go out cured on Christmas eve," he said to him one day, coolly.
The old doctor glanced up shrewdly. He was an old Alsatian, very plain-spoken.
"You say so?" he mumbled. "Chut! Then you will go. There are some—bull-dog, men. They do what they please,—they never die unless they choose, begar! We know them in our practice, Herr Holmes!"