Brotherly House

"It seems to me," said Mr. Stephen Kingsley thoughtfully to himself, as he laid down his younger brother Samuel's letter, "that it would be a very good thing to get Sam and Sylvester together. Judging by this letter--and one I had not long ago from Syl--it must be some three or four years since they've met--voluntarily. And that is too long--altogether too long--for brothers to remain in relations--er--lacking harmony."

He perused the letter again. As he had observed, its general tenor certainly did suggest that the relations between Samuel and Sylvester lacked harmony, and that that was a very mild putting of the case. Samuel's terse phrases left the situation in no doubt whatever.

"I don't like to say it to you, Stephen," the letter ran in one portion, "but Sylvester has acted not only unfairly, but contemptibly. I could have forgiven him the act itself, but the manner of the act--never. It was done too deliberately, too designedly, to be overlooked. I shall not overlook it. I shall----" etc.

In short, the letter had not been pleasant reading. The white-haired brother who read it, lying back among his invalid's pillows, with a wry little twist of pain about his gentle lips as his eyes laboriously followed Samuel's vigorous scrawls and equally vigorous language, felt it to be a matter in which it was time to interfere. Men and brothers of the age of Samuel and Sylvester--neither would see forty-five years again--should not be allowed to feel in this way toward each other if their elder brother could help it.

"He 'doesn't like to say it,'" commented Stephen Kingsley with mild irony, "yet he seems to say it with considerable relish, nevertheless. The question is--what can I do?"

He closed his eyes and lay thinking. After a little he put out his hand and touched an electric bell. Its distant summons presently brought into the room the tall and commanding figure of a woman with iron-gray hair and a capable face. Mrs. Griggs had been Mr. Stephen Kingsley's housekeeper for thirty years; there could be no person more fitting for an elderly bachelor to consult.

Mr. Kingsley opened his eyes and regarded Mrs. Griggs with an air of deliberation. His plans were made. He announced them. As one looked at Mrs. Griggs one would hardly have expected an employer so helpless as he to issue orders to a subject so powerful as she, in so firm a manner. Yet he gave the impression of consulting her, after all.

"Mrs. Griggs," said he, "I am thinking of having a Christmas house-party. Merely the family, you know. Yet that means a considerable number, including--er--all the babies. Should you think we could accommodate them?"

Mrs. Griggs's somewhat stern expression of face grew incredulous. Having served Mr. Kingsley so long, under conditions so peculiar, she was accustomed to take--and was allowed--liberties of speech which would have been sternly forbidden any other person outside the circle of kinship.

"The family!" said she. "You--they--why, there won't more'n half of them come. Your brother Sylvester and your brother Samuel----"

"I understand about Sylvester and Samuel. That is why I want a Christmas house-party."

"Your sister Clara and your sister Isabel----"

"That was not serious. They must be quite over it by now."

"Not over it at all. It's worse. I happen to know what they said to each other the last time they were here. Your sister Clara said----"

"Never mind, Mrs. Griggs. We must surely get them here. The others are certainly on the best of terms."

Mrs. Griggs pursed her lips. "I guess you've forgotten, Mr. Stephen about that old fuss between George's family and William's. They've never been the same since. There's a coolness----"

"We will warm it up. Coolness can't exist in the Christmas warmth. If you feel that you can tuck everybody away somewhere----"

"Mr. Stephen"--Mrs. Griggs's tone was a trifle indignant--"there's eleven sleeping-rooms in this house."

"Are there? I had forgotten. I haven't been upstairs in--twenty years. I can't quite remember whether there are fireplaces in them all."

"All but two--and they have Franklin stoves."

"Have Israel fill all the wood-boxes, Mrs. Griggs. Send him to the woods for ground-pine. I will order holly from the city. Tell Mary and Hannah to begin cooking and baking. But I must write my invitations. It's three weeks yet to Christmas. Plenty of time to plan. Please hand me my writing materials, Mrs. Griggs."

"Mr. Stephen"--the housekeeper's hand lingered on the leather tablet without taking it from the desk across the room--"do you think you'd better try to write all those letters to-day? There's considerable many of the family and--you didn't sleep much last night."

"Didn't I? I shall sleep better to-night, Mrs. Griggs, if the letters are posted. Let me get them off my mind."

Reluctantly she gave him the tablet and his fountain-pen. Then she propped him up among his pillows and lighted a reading-lamp at his elbow; the day was dull and his eyesight not of the keenest--his physical eyesight. The spiritual vision reached far and away, quite out of the world altogether.

The letters went out. With five of them went five others, appendices in the hand of Mrs. Griggs.

At Samuel Kingsley's breakfast-table, twenty-four hours later, letter and appendix produced their effect. But due credit must certainly be given to the appendix. Mr. Stephen Kingsley's letter read thus:

"_Dear Samuel:_

"I am thinking of having a Christmas house-party. It seems a long time since I have seen the family all together. There are at least three new babies among the children. I am asking everybody to come on the day before Christmas--Wednesday--and remain over at least until Friday. Don't refuse me. I should write much more, but must send word to all the others, and you know my eyes.

"Believe me always "Lovingly your brother, STEPHEN."

"Sylvester will be there," was Samuel's comment. He closed his lips tight as he said it. They were firm-set lips beneath a close-trimmed gray moustache. He squared his broad shoulders. "Sylvester will be there--_and I won't_!" his keen, brown eyes added.

Then he opened the appendix.

"_Respected Sir and Friend_," began Mrs. Griggs with dignity, "I take my pen in hand to send you a line in regard to Mr. Stephen's letter, hoping this finds you well and will reach you by the same mail. I hope you and Mrs. Samuel and the family will come as Mr. Stephen wishes, as he has set his mind on having this party, which I think is too much for him, but he will do it. Mr. Stephen is not as strong as he was. Hoping you will come.

Respectfully yours, "SARAH A. GRIGGS."

It could hardly be said that Mrs. Griggs's language possessed to a greater degree than Mr. Kingsley's the quality of persuasion. But one sentence in her letter, together with the fact that she had considered it a matter which called upon her to take her unaccustomed pen in hand at all, gave weight to the invitation. Mr. Samuel Kingsley handed both letters across the table to his wife, with the curt comment that it was a confounded nuisance, and he didn't see what had got into Stephen's head, but he supposed they'd have to consider it.

The other letters met with varied receptions. To all they were a surprise, for Stephen lived well out of town and had been a recluse for so long that nobody was in the habit of taking him much into consideration when it came to affairs social. There could be no question that he was well beloved by every member of his family, and sincerely pitied--when they took time to think about it, which was not often. But, except for brief, infrequent visits at his quiet home, inspired by a sense of duty, few of them felt him in their lives at all.

It interfered decidedly with previous plans, but nobody was quite willing to refuse the invitation--certainly not those to whom Mrs. Griggs, with shrewd grasp of various situations, had ventured to indite her supplementary lines. To each of these her appeal on the score of Mr. Stephen's failing health came as a sting to action and turned the scale. More or less grudgingly, they all wrote that they would come. But not without mental reservations as to courses of procedure when on the spot. George's family need not be familiar with William's. Clara and Isabel would avoid each other all that it was possible to do without attracting the notice of a certain pair of mild blue eyes beneath a crown of thick white hair. And Samuel and Sylvester--would Samuel and Sylvester even so much as shake hands? Those who knew them best doubted it.

But the children were all glad to go. Family quarrels mattered nothing to then. And in the children lay Stephen's hope.

The house was ready. Dignified, even stately, with its tall pillars and lines of fine proportion, representing the best of the architecture of New England's early days, Stephen Kingsley's country home stood awaiting its guests. Far back from the road, its wide front entrance was festooned with hemlock and pine, a stout young tree fastened upon either side. The long-closed blinds of the upper story were all thrown wide; from each square chimney floated a welcoming banner of smoke. Passers-by upon the road that morning, on their way to family reunions of their own, gazed and wondered. It was many a long day since "the old Kingsley place" had worn that hospitable air of habitation.

Inside, activity reigned from cellar to roof-tree--the activity which is the fine flower of many previous days of preparation. Speaking of flowers, they were everywhere. It would seem as if Mr. Kingsley's orders must have stripped the nearest city of scarlet carnations, so lavishly were they combined with the holly and ground-pine of the decorations. Every guest-room smiled with a big bunch of them, reflected cheerily from quaint old mirrors above low dressing-tables. Downstairs they glowed even from obscure corners, lighting up the severely decorous order of the rooms into a vivid suggestion of festivities to come. One big bloom, broken from its stem, had been picked up by Hannah, the cook, and now, tucked securely into her tightly braided black hair, burned hardly more brightly than her cheeks, flushed as they were with excitement and haste.

"It's the cookin' for so many that upsets me," she averred, standing with Mary, the waitress, before a pile of plates and trying to estimate how many would be needed of that particular size. "I was brought up in a big fam'ly myself, but livin' so long in this quiet house and cookin' for one who doesn't eat what a baby would, has made me forget."