the country and have lunch at some secluded inn. Leona would have no audience to perform for today, he thought with satisfaction.
As he entered the lobby of the Plaza, he glanced furtively around, putting his hand to his throat as though to adjust his tie. Leona had not yet arrived. He took up his stand by a window and waited to see her come down the street.
Leona had arrived at the Plaza a few seconds before Charles, and had gone straight through the lobby and down the hall to the flower shop, where she bought two of the glowing black-red carnations that he loved. One of these she pinned on her lapel, smiling at her own reflection as she did so. Perhaps it was a little naughty of her to have copied his shirt without asking his permission. But after all she had the suit; why not the shirt, too? Charles liked women to look absolutely perfect. How amused and pleased he would be when he saw her. Perhaps even a little flattered. She touched the narrow bow tie lightly, then took the second carnation and walked back to the lobby. There he was, waiting by the window. She called a bellboy and handed him the carnation and a dollar bill, and pointed to Charles, and whispered for a minute.
Crossing the busy lobby, the bellboy, who was very serious about his work, repeated to himself what he had been instructed to do and say. “First I say, ‘Is this the gentleman in the pink-and-white striped shirt?’ Then I give him the flower. Then I say, ‘The lady in the pink-and-white striped shirt awaits your pleasure, sir.’” He held the carnation very carefully, fearful that the stem would snap.
Watching the boy approach Charles, Leona laughed excitedly. Dear Charles, she thought. I just can’t wait to see his face when he turns around.
Waifs, Isobel Bailey called her Christmas Day guests. This year she had three coming, three waifs—a woman, an elderly man, and a young man—respectable people, well brought up, gentle-looking, neatly dressed, to all appearances the same as everybody else, but lost just the same. She had a private list of such people, not written down, and she drew on it every year as the holiday season descended. Her list of waifs did not grow shorter. Indeed, it seemed to lengthen as the years went by, and she was still young, only thirty-one. What makes a waif, she thought (most often as winter came on, always at Christmas); what begins it? When do people get that fatal separate look? Are waifs born?
Once she had thought that it was their lack of poise that marked them—because who ever saw a poised waif? You see them defiant, stiff, rude, silent, but aren’t they always bewildered? Still, bewilderment was not a state reserved for waifs only. Neither was it, she decided, a matter of having no money, though money seemed to have a great deal to do with it. Sometimes you could actually see people change into waifs, right before your eyes. Girls suddenly became old maids, or at least they developed an incurably single look. Cheerful, bustling women became dazed widows. Men lost their grip and became unsure-looking. It wasn’t any one thing that made a waif. Isobel was sure of that. It wasn’t being crippled, or being in disgrace, or even not being married. It was a shameful thing to be a waif, but it was also mysterious. There was no accounting for it or defining it, and over and over again she was drawn back to her original idea—that waifs were simply people who had been squeezed off the train because there was no room for them. They had lost their tickets. Some of them never had owned a ticket. Perhaps their parents had failed to equip them with a ticket. Poor things, they were stranded. During ordinary days of the year, they could hide their plight. But at Christmas, when the train drew up for that hour of recollection and revelation, how the waifs stood out, burning in their solitude. Every Christmas Day (said Isobel to herself, smiling whimsically) was a station on the journey of life. There on the windy platform the waifs gathered in shame, to look in at the fortunate ones in the warm, lighted train. Not all of them stared in, she knew; some looked away. She, Isobel, looked them all over and decided which ones to invite into her own lighted carriage. She liked to think that she occupied a first-class carriage—their red brick house in Herbert’s Retreat, solid, charming, waxed and polished, well heated, filled with flowers, stocked with glass and silver and clean towels.
Isobel believed implicitly in law, order, and organization. She believed strongly in organized charity. She gave regular donations to charity, and she served willingly and conscientiously on several committees. She felt it was only fair that she should help those less fortunate than herself, though there was a point where she drew the line. She never gave money casually on the street, and her maids had strict orders to shut the door to beggars. “There are places where these people can apply for help,” she said.
It was different with the Christmas waifs. For one thing, they were not only outside society, they were outside organized charity. They were included in no one’s plans. And it was in the spirit of Christmas that she invited them to her table. They were part of the tradition and ceremony of Christmas, which she loved. She enjoyed decking out the tree, and eating the turkey and plum pudding, and making quick, gay calls at the houses of friends, and going to big parties, and giving and receiving presents. She and Edwin usually accepted an invitation for Christmas night, and sometimes they sent out cards for a late, small supper, but the afternoon belonged to the waifs. She and Edwin had so much, she felt it was only right. She felt that it was beautifully appropriate that she should open her house to the homeless on Christmas Day, the most complete day of the year, when everything stopped swirling and the pattern became plain.
Isobel’s friends were vaguely conscious of her custom of inviting waifs to spend Christmas afternoon. When they heard that she had entertained “poor Miss T.” or “poor discouraged Mr. F.” at her table, they shook their heads and reflected that Isobel’s kindness was real. It wasn’t assumed, they said wonderingly. She really was kind.
The first of this year’s waifs to arrive was Miss Amy Ellis, who made blouses for Isobel and little silk smocks for Susan, Isobel’s five-year-old daughter. Isobel had never seen Miss Ellis except in her workroom, where she wore, summer and winter, an airy, arty smock of natural-color pongee. Today, she wore a black silk dress that was draped into a cowl around her shoulders, leaving her arms bare. And Miss Ellis’s arms, Isobel saw at once, with a lightning flash of intuition, were the key to Miss Ellis’s character, and to her life. Thin, stringy, cold, and white, stretched stiff with emptiness—they were what made her look like a waif. Could it be that Miss Ellis was a waif because of her arms? It was a thought. Miss Ellis’s legs matched her arms, certainly, and it was easy to see, through the thin stuff of her dress, that her shoulders were too high and pointed. Her neck crept disconsolately down into a hollow and discolored throat. Her greeny-gold hair was combed into a limp short cap, betraying the same arty spirit that inspired her to wear the pongee smock. Her earrings, which dangled, had been hammered out of some coal-like substance. Her deep, lashless eyes showed that she was all pride and no spirit. She was hopeless. But it had all started with her arms, surely. They gave her away.
Miss Ellis had brought violets for Isobel, a new detective story for Edwin, and a doll’s smock for Susan. She sat down in a corner of the sofa, crossed her ankles, expressed pleasure at the sight of the fire, and accepted a martini from Edwin. Edwin Bailey was thirty-seven and a successful corporation lawyer. His handshake was warm and firm, and his glance was alert. His blond hair was fine and straight, and his stomach looked as flat and hard as though he had a board thrust down inside his trousers. He was tall and temperate. The darkest feeling he acknowledged was contempt. Habitually he viewed the world—his own world and the world reflected in the newspapers—with tolerance. He was unaware of his wife’s theories about Christmas waifs, but he would have accepted them unquestioningly, as he accepted everything about Isobel. “My wife is the most mature human being I have ever met,” he said sometimes. Then, too, Isobel was never jealous, because jealousy was childish. And she was never angry. “But if you understand, really understand, you simply cannot be angry with people,” she would say, laughing.
Now she set about charming Miss Ellis, and Edwin had settled back lazily to watch them when the second waif, Vincent Lace, appeared in the doorway. He sprinted impetuously across the carpet and, without glancing to the right or to the left, fell on both knees before Susan, who was curled on