now, mr. joseph hooper had excellent cause for being a sour old man, and in a measure was to be pitied because of his attitude toward the young of his species. he had not been well-used by his own children, although it is no more than right to explain that they were hardly what any one save a parent would call children when they turned against him. at that particular period in the history of the hooper family, the youngest of joseph's three children was seventeen, the oldest twenty-two—and it so happens that the crisis came just fifteen years prior to the opening scene in this tale. it did not actually come on christmas eve, but, as a matter of record, on the 2lst of december at about half-past three in the afternoon. at that precise instant a judge sitting on the bench in one of the courtrooms in new york city signed the decree divorcing mrs. joseph hooper from her husband, and four minutes later the lady walked out of the building with her son and two daughters, all of them having deliberately turned their backs upon the miserable defendant in the case. as all of the children were of an age to legally choose the parent with whom they preferred to live, and as they elected to cast off the paternal for the maternal, it readily may be seen that mr. hooper was not entirely without proof that this is a cruel, heartless, ungrateful world and filled with gall.
as a matter of fact, he had not been wholly to blame for the family crash, notwithstanding a rather loose respect on his part for the sanctity of the home. (it was not to be denied that he had strayed into crooked paths and devious ways—and, to do him justice, he did not attempt to deny it: he ventured only to explain it.) according to his version of the affair, the trouble began long before he took to wine and women. it began with his wife's propensity for nagging. being a high-spirited, intelligent person with a mind of his own, mr. hooper didn't like being nagged, and as he rather harshly attempted to put a stop to it just as soon as it dawned upon him that he was being hen-pecked, his wife, not to be outdone, went at it harder than ever. and that is how it all began, and that is why i say that he was not wholly to blame. she was very pretty and very peevish, and they lived a cat and dog life for ten years after the birth of the last child.
mr. hooper took to drink and then took to staying away from home for days at a time. it was at this stage of the affair that the children began to see him through their mother's eyes. certain disclosures were inevitable. in a word, mrs. hooper hired detectives, and finding herself in a splendid position to secure all she wanted in the way of alimony, heralded mr. hooper's shortcomings to the world. the only good that ever came out of the unfortunate transaction, so far as mr. hooper was concerned, was to be found in the blessed realisation that she had actually deprived herself of the right to nag him, and that was something he knew would prove to be a constant source of irritation to her.
but when his children turned against him, he faltered. he had not counted on that. they not only went off to live with their mother, but they virtually wiped him out of their lives, quite as if he had passed away and no longer existed in the flesh. the three of them stood by the mother—as they should have done, we submit, considering mr. hooper's habits—and shuddered quite as profoundly as she when the name of the erring parent was mentioned in their presence. mr. hooper couldn't for the life of him understand this treachery on the part of his pampered offspring, on whom he had lavished everything and to whom he had denied nothing in the way of luxury. it was hard for him to realise that he was as much of a scamp and scapegrace in their young eyes as he was in the eyes of his wife—and the whole of his wife's family, even to the remotest of cousins.
in the bright days of their early married life, before he knew the difference between what he looked upon as affectionate teasing and what he afterwards came to know as persistent nagging, he deeded over to her the house and lot in madison avenue. he did that willingly, cheerfully. two days after the divorce was granted, he paid over to her one hundred thousand dollars alimony. he did that unwillingly, gloomily. and the very next week the stock market went the wrong way for him, and he was cleaned out. he hadn't a dollar left of the comfortable little fortune that had been his. he remained drunk for nearly two months, and when he sobered up in a sanitarium—and took the pledge for the first and last time—he came out of the haze and found that he hadn't a friend left in new york. every man's head was turned away from him, every man's hand was against him.
he sent for his son to come to the cheap hotel in which he was living. the son sent back word that he never wanted to see his face again. whereupon joseph hooper for the first time declared that the sons and daughters of men are curses, and slunk out of new york to say it aloud in the broad, free stretches of the world across which he drifted without aim or purpose for years and years and always farther away from the home he had lost.
he always said to himself—but never so much as a word of it to any one else—that if his wife hadn't driven him to distraction with her nagging he would have avoided the happy though disastrous pitfalls into which he stumbled in his desperate efforts to find appreciation. he would have remained an honourable, faithful spouse to her, and an abstainer—as such things go. he would have shared with her the love and respect of their three children, and he would have staved off bankruptcy with the very hundred thousand dollars that she exacted as spite money. but she was a nagger, and he was no job. there was a modicum of joy in the heart of him, however: having been cleaned out to the last penny, he was in no position to come up monthly with the thousand dollars charged against him by the court for the support and maintenance of two of his children until they reached their majority. he took a savage delight in contemplating the rage of his late wife when she realised that the children would have to be provided for out of the income from the one hundred thousand she had received in a lump sum, and he even thanked god that she was without means beyond this hateful amount. it tickled him to think of her anguish in not being able to spend the income from her alimony on furs and feathers with which to bedeck herself. instead of spending the five thousand on herself she would be obliged to put it on the backs and into the stomachs of her three brats! he chuckled vastly over this bit of good fortune! it was really a splendid joke on her, this smash of his. no doubt the children also hated him the more because of his failure to remain on his feet down in wall street, but he consoled himself with the thought that they would sometimes long for the old days when father did the providing, and wish that things hadn't turned out so badly.
in his hour of disgrace—and we may add degeneration—he possessed but one blood relation who stood by him and pitied him in spite of his faults. that was his nephew, tom bingle, the son of his only sister, many years dead. but even so, he did not deceive himself in respect to the young man's attitude toward him. he realised that tom was kind to him simply because it was his nature to be kind to every one, no matter how unworthy. it wasn't in tom bingle to be mean, not even to his worst enemy. notwithstanding the fact that the young man had just taken unto himself a wife, and was as poor as a church-mouse, the door and the cupboard in his modest little flat were opened cheerfully to the delinquent uncle joe, and be it said to the latter's discredit and shame—he proceeded to impose upon the generosity of his nephew in a manner that should have earned him a booting into the street. but young tom was patient, he was mild, he even seemed to enjoy being put upon by the wretched bankrupt. the thing that touched his heart most of all and caused him to overlook a great many shortcomings, was the cruel, unfilial slap in the face that had been administered by the three children of the man, and the crushing, bewildering effect it had upon him.
it was tom who virtually picked the once fastidious joseph hooper out of the gutter, weeks after the smash, and took him under his puny wing, so to speak, during a somewhat protracted period of regeneration. the broken, shattered man became, for the time being, the bingle burden, and he was not by any means a light or pleasant one. for months old joseph ate of his nephew's food, drained his purse, abused his generosity, ignored his comforts and almost succeeded in driving the young but devoted wife back to the home from which tom had married her.
it was at this juncture that the mild-mannered bookkeeper arose to the dignity of a fine rage, and co-incidentally joseph hooper for the first time realised what an overbearing, disagreeable visitor he had been and departed, but without the slightest ill-feeling toward his benefactors. indeed, he was deeply repentant, deeply apologetic. he ruefully announced that it would never be in his power to repay them for all they had done for him, but, resorting to a sudden whim, declared that he would make them his heirs if they didn't mind being used as a means to convey his final word of defiance to the children who had cast him off. not that he would ever have a dollar to leave to them, but for the satisfaction it would give him to cut the traitors off with the proverbial shilling. beset with the notion that this was an ideal way to show his contempt for his offspring, he went to the safety deposit vault and took there from the worthless document known as his last will and testament and in the presence of witnesses destroyed the thing, thereby disinheriting the erstwhile wife and her children as effectually as if he had really possessed the estate set forth in the instrument.
"i'll make a will in your favour, tom," he said at the time, with a mocking grin, "and in it i will include this miserable carcass of mine, so that you may at least have something to sell to the doctors. and who knows? i may scrape together a few hundred dollars before i die, provided i don't die too soon."
"we will give you a decent burial, uncle joe," said thomas bingle, revolting against the specific. "do you suppose i would sell my uncle to a—"
"haven't you a ray of humour in that head of yours?" demanded his uncle. "can't you see a joke?"
"well, if you were joking," said bingle, relieved, "all well and good, but it didn't sound that way."
"you are a simple soul," was all that joseph said, and then borrowed fifty dollars from his nephew for a fresh start in the world, as he expressed it. with this slender fortune in his purse he set out into a world that knew him not, nor was it known to him.
he came back fifteen years afterward, poorer than when he went away, broken in health, old to the point of decrepitude, bedraggled, unkempt and prideless. and once more thomas bingle took him in and provided the prospective death-bed for him. they made the old derelict as comfortable as it was in their power to do, and sacrificed not a little in order that he might have some of the comforts of life.
he was a very humble, meek old man, and they pitied him. screwing up his courage, mr. bingle went one day to the home of the son of joseph hooper and boldly suggested that, inasmuch as the mother was no longer living, it would not be amiss for him and his sisters to take the father who created them back into the family circle once more, and to ease his declining years. mr. bingle was ordered out of the rich man's office. then he approached the two daughters, both of whom had married well, and met with an even more painful reception. they not only refused to recognise their father but declined to recognise their father's nephew.
a few days afterward, a lawyer came to the bank to see mr. bingle. he informed the bookkeeper that the hooper family had been thinking matters over and were prepared to pay him the sum of seventy-five dollars a month for the care of joseph hooper, or, in other words, they would contribute twenty-five dollars apiece toward sustaining the life of one who was already dead to them. moreover, they stood ready to pay the expenses of his funeral when actual dissolution occurred, but farther than that they could not be expected to go.
mr. bingle flared up—a most unusual thing for him to do. "you tell them that i will take care of uncle joe as long as he lives without a nickel from them and that i'll bury him when he dies."
"out of your own pocket?" exclaimed the lawyer, who knew something of bookkeepers' salaries.
"most certainly not out of anybody else's," said mr. bingle, with dignity. "and you can also tell them that they are a pack of blamed good-for-nothings," he added, with absolutely no dignity.
"my dear sir."
"be sure to tell 'em, will you? if i was a swearing man i'd do better than that but i guess it will do for a starter."
"my clients will insist upon re-imbursing you for—" began the lawyer stiffly, but mr. bingle snapped his fingers disdainfully, much nearer the gentleman's nose than he intended, no doubt, and with a perfectly astonishing result. the legal representative's hat fell off backwards and he actually trod upon it in his haste to give way before the irate little bookkeeper.
"you tell 'em just what i said, that's all you've got to do," said mr. bingle, and then picked up his visitor's hat and pushed the crown into shape with a vicious dig. "here's your hat. good day."
he was so boiling mad all the rest of the afternoon that he could not see the figures clearly, and made countless mistakes, necessitating an extra two hours' work on the books before he could even think of going home.
arriving at the apartment, he found his wife in a state of perturbation, not over his tardiness, but over the extraordinary behaviour of uncle joe. the old man had been out most of the day and had come in at five, growling and cursing with more than ordinary vehemence.
"he is in his bedroom, tom, and i don't know what to make of him. he has had bad news, i think."
"bad news?" cried mr. single. "the very worst news on earth wouldn't seem bad to uncle joe after all he has gone through. i'll go in and see him."
"be careful, dear! i—i—he may be insane. you never can tell what—"
it turned out that the old man had visited his three children during the day, going to each of them as a suppliant and in deep humility. after fifteen years, he broke his resolve and went to them with his only appeal. he wanted to die with his children about him. that was all. he did not ask them to love him, or forgive him. he only asked them to call him father and to let him spend the last weeks of his life within the sound of their voices.
sitting at the supper table, he grimly related his experiences to the distressed bingles.
"i went first to angela's, tom," he said, scowling at the centre-piece. "angela married that mortimer fellow in sixty-first street, you know—clarence mortimer's son. ever seen their home? well, the butler told me to go around to the rear entrance. i gave him my card and told him to take it up to my daughter. i had a fellow in a drug-store write my name neatly on some blank cards, mary. the butler threatened to call the police. he thought i was crazy. but just then old clarence mortimer came up the steps. it seems that he is living with his son, having lost all of his money a few years ago. he recognised me at once, and i knew by the way he shook hands with me that he has been leading a dog's life ever since he went broke. he said he'd speak to angela—and he did. i waited in the hall downstairs. old clarence didn't have the courage to come back himself. a footman brought down word that mrs. mortimer could not see mr. hooper. she was not at home to mr. hooper, and—never would be. that was what her servant was obliged to tell me. so i went away. then i tried elizabeth. she lives in one of those fifteen thousand dollar a year apartments on park avenue. she has three lovely children. they are my grand-children, you know, tom. i saw them in the automobile as i came out of the building and went my way after elizabeth bransone had told me to my face—i managed to get in to see her—had told me that i was a sight, a disgrace, that she couldn't bear to look at me, and that i had better clear out before her husband came in. my own daughter, tom, my own flesh and blood. she informed me that provision would be made for me, but she made it very plain—damnably plain—that i was never to bother her again. so i went away from elizabeth's. there was only one of 'em left, and i hated to tackle him worse than either of the girls. but i did. i went down to his office. he refused to see me at first, but evidently thought it best to get the thing out of his system forever, so he changed his mind and told the office boy to let me in. well, my son geoffrey is a very important person now. he married a maybrick, you know, and he is a partner in old maybrick's firm—steamship agents. geoffrey looked me over. he did it very thoroughly. i told him i'd come to see if he couldn't do something toward helping me to die a respectable, you might say comfortable death. he cut me off short. said he would give me a thousand dollars to leave new york and stay away forever. i—-"
"i trust you did not accept the money," cried mr. bingle in a shocked voice.
"i'm pretty well down and out, tom, but i'd sooner starve than to take money from him in that way. so i told my son to go to the devil."
"good for you!" cried mr. bingle. "and then what?"
"he is a humorous individual, that pompous son of mine," said old joseph, with a chuckle. "he said i ought to be ashamed of myself for advising my own son to go to the devil in view of what a similar excursion had done for me. i managed to subdue my temper—it's a bad one, as you know—and put the matter up to him in plain terms. 'i am your father, geoffrey, when all is said and done. are you going to kick me out into the world when i've got no more than a month or two to live? are you going to allow my body to lie in the potter's field? are you willing to allow this poor nephew of mine to take care of me, to assume the responsibility of seeing that i get a decent burial in a decent—-'"
"oh, uncle joe, you oughtn't even to think of such things," broke in his niece by marriage. "you must think of cheerful—-"
"you are good for years and years—-" began mr. bingle.
"don't interrupt me," said uncle joe irascibly. "i guess i know what i'm talking about. i'm good for a couple of months at the outside. i'm seventy years old and i feel two hundred. why, dammit, old clarence mortimer said i look a hundred. to make the story short, geoffrey said he had arranged to pay you for my keep, no matter how long i lasted, but he thought i was foolish not to take the thousand and go to some quiet little place in the country—and wait. if—if it should happen that i lived longer than the thousand would carry me, he'd see to it that i had more. only he didn't want me hanging around new york. that was the point, d'you see? he very frankly said that he had always sided with his mother against me, and that was all there was to it, so far as he was concerned. and, see here, tom, he said you had been down to see him about me. is that true?"
"well, i—i thought perhaps—er—i might be able to bring about a reconciliation," floundered mr. bingle.
"and you found that in the upper circles it is not considered good form to be reconciled unless it pays, eh? what would be the sense in becoming reconciled to a wreck of a father, who hasn't a dollar in the world, after getting along so nicely for fifteen years without him? no, it isn't done, tom—it's not the thing. geoffrey made no bones about admitting that as far as he is concerned, i have been dead for fifteen years. he—-"
"well then," said mr. bingle, slamming his fist upon the dining-table so violently that the cutlery bounced, "why the dickens does he object to burying you? if i discovered a relative that had been dead for fifteen years, i'd see to it that he was buried, if only for the good of the community."
"he doesn't object to burying me," explained uncle joe. "he implies that he'll do that much for me with pleasure. as a matter of fact, he said that if i'd arrange to have some one notify him when i was literally dead, he would see to it that i was buried. but i told him he needn't bother his head about it, because i was quite sure you would do it even more cheerfully than he and undoubtedly with less secrecy."
"cheerfully?" gasped the bingles.
"cheerfully," repeated uncle joe firmly. "and now, can't we talk about something else? i've done my best to make peace with my son and daughters, and now i wash my hands of 'em. i never intended to weaken in my resolve, but i—i just couldn't help it, tom. i swore i'd never look into their faces again, but, after all, i am their father, you see, and i suppose i'm getting weak and childish in my old age. i gave in, that's all. i thought they might have some little feeling for me, and—" he did not finish the sentence, and as the bingles took that instant to blow their noses and to look so intently at the electric chandelier that their eyes smarted, it was perhaps just as well that he ended his ruminations when he did.
all this happened six weeks prior to christmas eve, and they were six long, trying weeks for the two bingles. the old man was sick two-thirds of the time and had to have a physician. he insisted on having the now famous dr. fiddler, one of the most expensive practitioners in new york, obstinately refusing to listen to reason. fiddler had been the hooper family physician years ago and that was all there was to be said. he would have him. so poor tom bingle sent for the great man, who came and prescribed for his old friend and client. after a week the bingles began to count the number of visits, and grew lean and gaunt-faced over the prospect ahead of them. fiddler's fee was ten dollars a visit—to a friend, he explained, in accounting for the ridiculously low figure—and he came twice a day for nearly two weeks. the bingles did not complain. as mr. bingle said, they took their medicine, even as uncle joe took his—only he thrived on it and they withered. dr. fiddler was very nice about it, however. he assured mr. bingle that he was in no hurry for his money. any time before the first of february would be perfectly satisfactory. he was only too glad to have been instrumental in dragging his old friend, joseph hooper from the very edge of the grave.
"and if he has a recurrence of the—" he began suavely.
"there's no danger of that, is there, doctor? cried mr. bingle, gripping his fingers tightly in his coat pockets.
"don't hesitate a moment, mr. bingle. send for me. you may depend upon it, i will come on the instant. i think your poor uncle has been very badly—er—treated, mr. bingle."
"do you attend the families of his son and daughters—i mean to say, as their regular—"
"no," said dr. fiddler shortly, "i have not that felicity, mr. bingle."
and mr. bingle thought he understood why dr. fiddler felt that uncle
joe had been badly treated.
later on, uncle joe blandly asseverated that it pays to have the best, no matter what it costs. "why, one of these cheap, rattle-brained doctors would have let me die, sure as fate. old fiddler comes high, but he cures. if i should happen to get sick again, tom, send for him without delay, will you?"
mr. bingle said he would, and he meant it. he had jotted down in the back of a little notebook each successive visit of dr. fiddler, and, consulting it from time to time, had no difficulty in realising that he came high. twenty-one visits, at ten dollars a visit, that's what it amounted to, say nothing of the drug bill, the extra-food bill, the night-nurse's wages, and the wear and tear on the nerves of his wife, himself—and melissa. for, it would appear, melissa had nerves as well as the rest of them, and uncle joe was the very worst thing in the world for melissa's nerves. she very frequently said so, and sometimes to his face, although she never neglected him for an instant. in truth, she shared with mrs. bingle the day nursing, and seldom slept well of nights, knowing that the night-nurse was upsetting everything in the kitchen and pantry in her most professional way.
of course uncle joe did not actually get well. he merely recovered. in other words, he survived the attack of influenza and heart trouble, only to go on ailing as he had ailed before. he was quite cheerful about it, too. they used to catch him chuckling to himself as he sat shivering over the fireplace, and he seemed to take especial delight in demanding three eggs for breakfast when every one knew that eggs were seventy-two cents a dozen. the only compensation they had out of the experience—aside from the realisation that they were living up to a principle—was the untiring effort he made to entertain them with stories of his adventures as a tramp! he gracelessly confessed that he had travelled under many names, and that he was known by various soubriquets that would not sound well on fifth avenue but still possessed the splendid virtue of being decorative. there was not the slightest doubt that he had roamed the land over, and there was not even the faintest suspicion that he had profited by travel.
and this brings us up to christmas eve. with february not far away, and uncle joe lamentably liable to have another attack, the bingles curtailed quite considerably in their preparations for the festivities in honour of the five little sykeses. they spent but a third of the customary amount in providing presents, and they were not quite sure that they were wise in spending as much as that. uncle joe went to considerable pains to convince them that they were making fools of themselves in throwing away money that might be needed for his funeral, and absolutely refused to become a party to the affair. he moped in his bedroom, over an oil-stove, and made himself generally unpleasant. as for "the christmas carol," he had but one opinion about it, and this is no place to express it.
when he came into the sitting-room after the departure of the sykeses, breaking in upon the tender reflections of mr. and mrs. single, he represented the ghost who might have been at the feast but was, for some reason, obligingly late.
as he stood over the blaze, rubbing his bony old knuckles, he was a depressing figure indeed. his gloomy eyes had no reflected glow in them; his long, stooped frame suggested nothing so much as a weather-worn scare-crow about which a thousand storms had thrashed. there was no joy in his soul.
"yes," he said, as if they had disputed him without reason, "you ought to be thankful you have no children. what you can see in this tomfoolery about christmas eve is beyond me. better save your money for something worth while, that's what i say. something worth while."
"well, what, for instance?" demanded mr. bingle, suddenly irritated beyond control.
"confound you, tom, do you forget that you owe dr. fiddler more than two hundred dollars?" snapped uncle joe, turning on him.
"oh, i will pay him—i will pay him all right, never fear," replied mr.
bingle, shrinking.
old joseph hooper regarded him keenly for a long time before speaking again. his voice softened and his manner underwent a swift change.
"tom bingle, you are the best man living to-day," he said, a strange huskiness in his voice. "if you were not as good as gold you would kick me out and—and—"
"kick you out, uncle joe!" cried mr. bingle, coming to his feet and laying his hand on the bent shoulder. "god bless you, sir, i—i—i ought to kick you out for saying such a thing!"
and old joseph suddenly laid his arm on the mantelpiece and buried his face upon it, his gaunt figure shaking with sobs.
