Chapter X: Part III (6)

Catherine’s brows were slightly puckered. “Say, Mother, am I going to get my watch? Dad was in such a vile humor, I’m scared. Really I’ll feel like a pauper down there at Miss Bossart’s unless I get something a little bit flossy. And this old watch, I’ve had since I was twelve. There isn’t another round gold one in school. Everything’s platinum now! Heavens, it’s not much to ask for compared to what most of the girls are getting. Jean and Hilda know they’re getting cars of their own! And flocks of them are getting marvelous fur coats.”

“Well, you have your new coat,” Alice reminded her.

“Oh, yes,” Catherine agreed with a faint, deprecating sigh, “such as it is.”

Alice opened her lips for a quick remonstrance and closed them again. Oh, what was the use! The children were always ungrateful. They had no real appreciation these days of what their parents gave them. With them it was take, take, take, and never a thought of value received.

Young Tom looked up from his toast and marmalade with his most winning smile.

“Say, Mums, can you let me have a fiver out of your new pile? I’m in the very dickens of a hole.”

Alice fastened quick eyes upon him. “Where has your allowance gone?” she asked sharply.

“Well, gee, it’s so small to begin with I can hardly see it and then just now round Christmas time there’s always such a darned lot of extras!”

Catherine cut in sweetly: “Such as bouquets of orchids for Miss Doris Kane!”

“Orchids!” Alice almost screamed the word. “Tom, you don’t mean for a minute to tell me you’re sending orchids to a girl! High School children sending orchids! I never in my life heard of anything so wickedly absurd!”

“Well, gosh, Mums, what are you going to do? That’s what all the girls want now for the dances, and a fellow can’t look like a piker! I’ve got to order some for to-night. Lend me five, won’t you, just to run me over? What we ought to have is a charge account at the florist’s. That’s what all the other fellows’ folks have.”

“No doubt,” Alice said sarcastically. “It’s barely possible that some of your friends’ fathers may have more money to pay their bills than your father has. But I suppose you never thought of that! Well, I’ll give you five this time, but I don’t want you ever to ask me again for such a purpose.”

“And now if he’s through,” Catherine broke in, “what about me? Is there any reason why I should be broke while my handsome young brother sends orchids to Doris Kane? You should see what the girls are giving each other for Christmas. It makes me sick to hand out the things I have. They look like a rummage sale compared with the rest! I did want one decent thing for Jean, but I’m terribly short.”

She looked at her mother challengingly.

Alice made a desperate gesture with her hands. “All right,” she said, “you can have it. Of course it doesn’t matter whether I’m short or not! I’m at the place where I don’t care much what happens!”

Her head throbbed miserably as she borrowed the two five-dollar bills from her housekeeping purse and gave them to the children. She had a vivid perception that each thought they should have been tens. Their thanks were scant and careless. They had only received their just due, and scarcely that!

Alice felt sick as she climbed the stairs to the den where she kept her desk. Now for the cards. Christmas was a hard, trying time. She would be glad when it was over.

She began in frantic haste, selecting, addressing, searching her note book and the telephone directory for streets and numbers. Five, ten, fifteen finished, stamped, ready.

Suddenly she picked up an alien from the carefully chosen mass that lay about her, a cheap little card that she knew she had never bought. Either she or the sales girl must have caught it up by mistake with some of the others. It was a commonplace little card of the folder variety that carries a sentimental verse inside. Alice opened it mechanically before tossing it into the waste basket. And there beneath her eyes were these words:

Oh what, my dear, of Christmas cheer could any one wish more,
Than candle-light and you within, and holly at the door!

She stared at the words unbelievingly. Not for thirty years had she thought of that old song. And now suddenly she heard it in her father’s voice, just as he used to sing it Christmas after Christmas as he went through the house with his hammer in one hand and a dangling bough of green in the other.

And holly at the door, and holly at the door!
With candle-light and you within, and holly at the door!

She hummed the old melody under her breath, and then she found herself bending over the desk, face in hands, weeping, while over her swept great waves of homesickness, poignant pangs of yearning for a place and a time that had drifted out of her consciousness.

At last she raised her head and leaned it against the high back of the chair. It seemed almost as though invisible fingers had pressed it there, had closed her eyes, had made the pen drop from her passive hand. All at once she was back in the little town of her childhood where she had not been, and where not even her mind had traveled vividly, these long years.

Christmas time in Martinsville! Christmas in the small frame house that had been home. Mother singing blithely as she stuffed the turkey in the kitchen. Father standing proudly by, watching her every movement. For the turkey was an event. One turkey a year, to be ordered after due consideration from one of the farmers near town, to be received with a small flurry of excitement when it arrived and to be picked and prepared for the oven by Mother’s own skilful fingers.

“I suppose we should ask Miss Amanda for dinner to-morrow. The Smiths usually have her but they’re away this year,” Mother was saying.

Father agreed. “Maybe we’d better. It’s not nice to think of anybody sitting down all by themselves to a cold bite on Christmas!”

“When we have so much,” Mother went on. “You’d better stop and ask her when you go for the mail to-night.”

Footsteps on the porch. Father and Mother break into smiles. “There’s Alice,” they exclaim in unison.

Quick stamping of snow on the scraper, quick opening of the door, a quick rush of cold wind and a quick, joyous child’s voice.

“Mother, the holly’s come; Father, look at this! Isn’t it lovely? Mr. Harris just got in now with the wagon from Wanesburg. And he brought a big box of it. He has wreaths, too, but they’re a quarter apiece. I think the bunch is prettier and it was only a dime. Look at the berries!”

The child’s cheeks are as scarlet as her red toboggan and sweater, that Mother herself had knitted. Her blue eyes are shining and eager, her light hair tossed by the wind.

“Put it up quick, Father, and I’ll get the red ribbon for it.” She flies up stairs, stumbling in her haste.

Suddenly, laughter below, expostulation, hurrying feet in the front hall. “Alice, Alice, don’t open the under drawer of my bureau! You _didn’t_, did you? Mercy, we had such a scare! The ribbon’s in the top drawer, left hand side. Now mind, no looking any where else!”

“And holly at the door....”

Father’s big voice booming out happily.

Alice skips down the stairs. “I never peeped! Honestly. But what can it be you have for me? It’s something to wear! Oh, I can’t wait.”

“And holly at the door....”

Father’s hammer tapping smartly, then the gay swinging green branch with its brave little bow of red. They all have to go out to admire it.

“And, Father, you should see the church! It’s wonderful this year. George Davis and Mr. Parmley climbed up on two ladders and tied the greens to the big cross rafter and fastened a silver star right at the top. It’s never been so pretty. And the tree! Mother, it reaches the ceiling! And Mrs. Davis was putting little white lambs under it and shepherds. We saw it when we were there practicing for to-night. Oh, I _hope_ I don’t forget my speech.”

Immediately, concentrated, proud interest. Father and Mother sit down to listen once again. Alice stands in front of the table, her hands primly by her sides, her face upraised in gentle seriousness.

“The milk-white sheep looked up one night,
And there stood an angel all in white,
And though he spoke no words to them,
He was there on the hills of Bethlehem,
That very first Christmas morning!

“The lowing cattle meekly stood
Near to a manger rough and rude....”

On and on goes the sweet childish voice to the end.

“And the time will come, so the wise men say,
When the wolf and the lamb together shall play,
And a little child shall lead the way,
The child of that first Christmas morning.”

“Pshaw!” says Father, poking the fire to hide the tender mist in his eyes. “You couldn’t forget that if you tried!”

“Of course you couldn’t,” Mother reassures. “Only remember to speak loud enough that they can hear you in the back of the church.”

“And all the girls have new dresses,” Alice exclaims, coming excitedly down to earth again. “And I said I had one too. That wasn’t a fib, was it, Mother? It really is new, for me, even if it is Aunt Jennie’s old one dyed.”

“Of course,” Mother stoutly agrees. “And all the trimmings are new. That light cashmere certainly took the dye well.”

“I don’t see how you got it such a beautiful shade of red. It’s just like the holly!”

“You must remember, my dear,” Father puts in with loving pride, “that your mother is a very wonderful person.”

The soft early dusk of Christmas Eve falls upon Martinsville. Father starts down to the post-office for the mail. Mother prepares a light supper to be eaten in the kitchen because of the general haste. For the big Sunday School entertainment and “treat” is at seven-thirty. Alice sets out with her small pail to go to a neighbor’s for the daily supply of milk.

It is so still in the village street. All white and hushed. Just a little stirring like wings in the church yard pines. The child stops, breathless, clasping her hands to her breast, the small pail dangling unheeded, her whole tender young soul caught up suddenly in a white mystery. Christmas Eve! The baby in the manger. The gold stars looking down just as they were to-night, and the angels sweeping through the sky on soft shining wings, singing _singing_.

It seemed almost as though they would appear any moment there where the stars were brightest, right back of the church steeple.

Why, it was real. It was true! Christmas Eve was happening again, within her, down deep, deep in her heart somewhere, as she stood there all quiet and alone in the snow. The wonderful aching beauty of it! It was as though she and the big wide star-swept night had a secret together. Or perhaps it was she _and God_.

Down the street comes a quick, clear jingle-jangle-jingle. A sleigh has just turned the corner. Alice starts and runs the rest of the way to the neighbors!

“And two quarts, please, Mother says, if you can spare it, because to-morrow’s Christmas!”

She is dressed for the entertainment in the new dyed dress, her long curls showing golden above its rich red. Father and Mother suddenly begin to consult together in low voices in the kitchen. They come out at last impressively.

“Would she rather have one of her presents, not the big one but the other one, now, so she could wear it to-night? Would she?”

Alice stands considering delightedly, blue eyes like stars, “The big present would still be left for to-morrow?” she queries eagerly.

“You bet!” Father assures her.

“Then—I—believe—I’ll—take the other—_now_!”

Mother brings it out. A hair ribbon! Just the color of the dress. Bigger and broader than any she has ever had. It is finally perched like a scarlet tanager above the golden curls!

There is the sound of talking, laughing voices passing outside. Scrunch, scrunch, scrunch, of many feet in the snow. People going to the entertainment. The little church up the street is all alight. It is time to go! They start out in the fresh, frosty air. Father follows her and Mother along the narrow snowy path, humming the Holly Song softly to himself.

All at once there was a shrill persistent ringing. It was not of a church bell or passing sleighs. It kept on ringing. The woman in the chair before the desk littered with Christmas cards came slowly back to her surroundings. She grasped the telephone dazedly. “This is Mrs. Barton. What meeting?... Oh, yes.... No, I can’t come.... I’m—I’m not well.”

She hung up the receiver abruptly. The Committee meeting at eleven! It seemed suddenly far away. Her one longing was to get back again to the past where she had just now been living; to those fresh, sweet realities of long ago. She closed her eyes, terrified lest the illusion was lost completely. But slowly, softly, surely, the little snowy village of Martinsville closed in again around her. She was once more the child, Alice.

She was falling asleep on Christmas Eve. The entertainment had been wonderful. She hadn’t forgotten her speech, not a word, and the girls all thought her dress was lovely and her hair ribbon had felt so big and pretty and floppy on her head, and the Ladies Quartette had sung “O Holy Night” for a surprise. Nobody knew they had been practicing, and it was so beautiful it had hurt her inside. And the treat candy had ever so many more chocolates in it than last year, and it was snowing again and she could hear the faint jingle-jangle-jingle of the sleighs still going up and down Main Street, and she was so happy! And to-morrow would really be Christmas.

Then all at once it was morning. Father and Mother were talking in low, happy voices in their room. She could hear Father creaking softly down the back stairs to start the fire before she got awake. The stockings would be all filled. Goodness, it was hard to wait.

Then at last a great noise in the front hall. Father shouting “Merry Christmas! My Christmas gift! Merry Christmas up there!”

It is time now. She flings her chill little body into her red wrapper and slippers and scurries down the stairs. A big fire in the grate! The three big bulging stockings! Father and Mother stand by until she empties hers first. She feels it with delicious caution. Oranges, apples and nuts in the toe. A funny little bumpy thing above. That would be one of Father’s jokes. But at the top a mysterious soft, squashy package! She withdraws it slowly. She opens one tiny corner, gasps, opens a little more. Then gives a shrill cry. “_Mother!_ It _couldn’t_ be a—a _muff_!”

She pulls it out, amazed ecstasy on her face. “It _is_ a muff! Oh, Father, to think of your getting me a muff.” She clasps the small scrap of cheap fur to her breast. “Oh, Mother, I never was so happy.”

A subdued sound drew louder, became a sharp rap at the door. Martinsville receded. The woman in the chair opened her eyes with a dull realization of the present. Delia stood in the door-way, black and ominous. “What about them bed-room curtains?” she demanded.

Alice Barton rose slowly. With a great effort she brought her mind back to the problems of the day. She led the way to the guest room with Delia after her, grumbling inaudibly. Perhaps her eyes were still misted over with sweet memories, for somehow the curtains did not look so bad. “We’ll let them go as they are, Delia. You have enough extras to do.”

Delia departed in pleased surprise, and Alice sat down in the quiet room before a mirror, and peered into it. Almost she expected to see the child she had once been, the tender, smiling young mouth, the soft, eager eyes, the tumbled curls.

Instead she saw a middle aged face with all the spontaneous light gone out of it. There were hard lines in it which no amount of expensive “facials” had been able to smooth away. There was a bitter, unlovely droop to the lips.

Alice regarded herself steadily. Where along the way had she lost the spirit of that child who had this day come back to her?

The outward changes of her life passed in review. It was soon after that last happy Christmas in Martinsville that the little town had been swept by disease. The old village doctor had neither knowledge nor equipment to restrain it. When it was over, many homes had been desolated, and Alice, a bewildered little orphan, had gone to Aunt Jennie’s in the city.

The changed way of living had been at first startling and then strangely commonplace. She had been fluidly adaptable. She had gone to a fashionable finishing school, had made a smart début, had met Tom, fallen deeply in love and then married him with all the circumstance Aunt Jennie had ordained.

Then had come life in Branchbrook and the beginning for herself of the curious nameless game Aunt Jennie had taught her, of belonging, of keeping up with most; of being ahead of many. A game with no noticeable beginning and no possible end. And of course one had to keep on playing it, for if one stopped it meant being dropped. Life would be insupportable after that.

And yet, would it? The game wasn’t making any of them happy as it was. Back of her own restless home she saw again Father and Mother and the little girl named Alice. They had all been so joyously content with each other, had found life with its few small pleasures so wholesome and sweet to the taste.

The woman rose trembling to her feet. Suppose she stopped playing the game! Suppose she didn’t care whether she belonged or not. What if she tried walking in the simple ways of her mother?

She stood there thinking in new terms, startled out of all her old standards, crying out to the past to guide her. And then suddenly she raised her arms above her head in a gesture of emancipation.

She examined her extra shopping list for which she had asked the money that morning. All the items were expensive courtesies that need not be rendered if considered apart from the game. She crossed them out one by one.

All that day as she went about her duties, she was conscious of an invisible companion: a child with eager, happy eyes walked beside her, watched her as she helped Delia with the big fruit cake, as she fastened a bough of holly to the door with her own hands.

The child was still close to her in the shadows when she lighted the tall candelabra at dusk and drew the tea-table to the fireside. Just the fire-light and candle shine to greet Tom when he came. She sat very still on the big divan, waiting. Would he feel the new quiet that possessed her? Would he forgive her for having made all the other Christmases times of confusion and worry? She wondered.

The children were not home yet when Tom came. He hung his coat in the hall closet and entered the living room heavily. He looked tired. His glance swept over the tall lighted candles, and the shining tea table. “What’s coming off here? A tea-fight?” he said.

Alice stretched her hands toward him.

“You are the only guest, Tom. You and the children.”

The man came nearer in surprise, caught her hands, peered into her face. Then his own softened. “What is it?” he asked.

They sank down together on the divan, hands still clasped tightly, something old and yet new, flooding back and forth between them.

“What is it?” Tom asked again. “There is something ... tell me.”

And then suddenly the woman knew that into her own hard faded eyes there had come again the gladness of youth.

“I had a visit to-day,” she said slowly, “from a little girl of thirty years ago. A little girl I had forgotten. She brought me something precious.”

Tom looked at her wonderingly. “Will she come _again_? _Often?_” he begged.

Alice shook her head and smiled. “There is no need,” she answered softly. “For she and her gift have come _to stay_!”

[16] By permission of the author and “McCall’s Magazine.” Copyright 1926 by “McCall’s Magazine.”

TEACHER JENSEN[17]

_Karin Michaelis_

If the school-children had cared to look about them while they were playing hide-and-seek during recess, they would have seen the sharp tower of a mighty building piercing the air beyond a distant clump of trees. Unless you knew better, you would have believed that it was a castle where knights and beautiful ladies ate game off golden plates and on Sundays regaled themselves with macaroons. But the school-children did know better. They knew, forgot, and remembered again, that it was a prison standing near them, where prisoners lived, each in his own cell, never seeing each other except at church, where black masks disguised their faces. They knew and forgot and remembered again.

Lauritz Thomsen belonged there. Not that he had done anything to be ashamed of—God forbid! But his father was the cook for the prison, and Lauritz knew what the prisoners got to eat—and what they did not get. He lived, so to speak, in prison, but apart from these men with the black masks. He was so accustomed to taking the short cut across the fields to the high red wall and walking through the entrance portal, which was immediately closed and bolted after him, that it all seemed like nothing extraordinary. He could see it in no other light. But if his schoolmates began to ask him questions he would hold his peace and blush to the roots of his hair.

His mother worried and grieved about the prison, and sought as best she could to forget what was going on. Filling her windows with flowers, she tried to silence her unpleasant thoughts about the poor creatures breathing the deathly cellar air behind those iron bars. She laid by penny upon penny in the hope of saving enough to buy a little country inn, or any kind of establishment far away from the Living Cemetery, as the prison was called. During her dreams she cried aloud, waking her children, for she always saw people with black masks on their faces swarming behind walls and windows and threatening to kill her. Evil dreams arise from evil thoughts, it is said, but Frau Thomsen could have no evil thoughts. She had only once in her life gone through the prison. It still froze her with terror to think of it, and she could not understand how her husband could sing and enjoy himself at the end of his day’s work. Nor could she comprehend how he could speak of the prisoners as if they were friends or comrades. When he began to carry on in this way she would leave the room and not come back until he had promised to talk about something else.

Children are children. They can accustom themselves to wading in a river where crocodiles sleep, or to playing in a jungle where snakes hang from the trees. Children become accustomed to living near a prison just as they get used to a father who drinks or a mother who scolds. They think of it, forget it, and remember it again. Thoughts glide across their minds like shadows; for a moment everything seems dark, and suddenly the sun shines once more.

Whenever a prisoner escaped, the school-children were thrown into a great commotion. They followed the pursuit from afar, listening to the shots, the alarm signals, the whistles. They leaned out of windows and saw the prison wardens rushing in all directions, on foot, and on horseback. Nothing was so exciting as a man hunt, either over winter snow or over green summer fields. When the fugitive was taken, peace descended upon all their souls. Now the only question was what punishment would be meted out to the victim, and all eyes were turned toward Lauritz. But Lauritz said nothing. He was ashamed without quite knowing why.

Prison and the prisoners would be forgotten save when a boy or girl at play would suddenly gape at the high towers to the east, jutting up there above the forest.

The children had a new teacher. He was called Teacher Jensen—nothing more. If he had a Christian name, he was never called by it. Just Teacher Jensen. And Teacher Jensen was little and frail, and Teacher Jensen’s voice was as little and frail as he. But there was a wonderful quality in his voice, like a violin that makes a much louder noise than anyone would believe possible. The children did not sleep in his classes. They were not even drowsy. In his classes they forgot to write notes to each other or secretly to eat bread and butter behind their desks. They only listened and asked questions. Teacher Jensen had an answer for everything. They could ask Teacher Jensen all kinds of questions. But sometimes he would shake his head and say: “I seem to have forgotten it. Let me think a minute.” Or worse yet: “I don’t know. I never knew it. But I will look it up. It is to be found in some book, or a friend will tell me the answer.” The children found that there was something splendid about having a teacher of whom you could ask all kinds of questions and who sometimes did not know the answer offhand.

Teacher Jensen talked about new things and old, and his speech was not like pepper shaken from a pepper pot. Even while the children were playing in the fields, they would remember what he had said. Yes, it remained fast in their minds.

One day Teacher Jensen said that murder was by no means the worst thing a man could do, and that it was much worse to think or say or do evil to another human being, or to make a defenseless animal suffer. And the children were full of wonder. It seemed that a new door had been opened to them, and each passed through it, one after another. Yes, it was true, what he said. They understood his meaning clearly, but they cast their eyes down, for all of them knew they had often done what was much worse than murder. Perhaps they would do it again, but not willingly, never willingly. Yet there was another thing worse than murder, and that was to act without using your will.

One day Teacher Jensen brought with him a sick, whining little cat which he had found on his way to school. He had put it under his cloak to keep it warm, and he stroked its back and its sharp little head. It was an ugly, gray, dirty cat. Teacher Jensen did not tell the children what he was going to do with it, but simply sat with the cat in his lap and rubbed his cheek against its head. To the children this poor little sick gray cat was the whole world. They took a silent vow that they would cure it. Through Teacher Jensen’s little gray cat they had peered deep into the soul of an animal, and what they saw was more beautiful and more pure than a human soul.

Teacher Jensen often went on Sunday excursions with the children. Whoever wanted to could come, and all of them wanted to. It so happened that one Sunday morning in the autumn they were walking among falling leaves, and the earth clung to their shoes in little lumps. It had been raining, and was likely to rain again. Traversing a bit of open country, they soon entered the big forest in the distance. Ahead of them was the “castle” that was a prison. Lauritz ran in to get a scarf. Teacher Jensen saw him and drew his hand over his eyes, and as he cast down his eyes it was clear that he had been crying; but no one asked anything, no one spoke. They arrived at a vast grove of fir trees standing in long rows, with their evergreen branches above and their yellow trunks below. Teacher Jensen explained that such a forest could grow from a mere handful of tiny grains. The children knew this perfectly well; yet it sounded quite new. They suddenly understood that trees lived, breathed, and thought, that they strove for the light as poor people strive for bread.

“Now let’s begin the game,” said Teacher Jensen. “Let’s imagine that this forest of fir trees is a prison, and that we are all prisoners, each in his own cell. Let us do this for one hour. I am holding a watch in my hand. During that hour let no one speak, for we are prisoners, and speech is forbidden.”

This was a new game, a peculiar game. The rain had stopped some time ago, but drops were still falling from the high trees. The children stood, each under his own tree, and felt the water dripping and dripping on cheeks and hands. The children stood with the water dripping off them, laughing and shouting to each other side by side cell by cell. Slowly the laughter died and their faces became serious. All eyes were directed toward Teacher Jensen, who stood with the watch in his hand. He seemed to see nobody, and did not announce when the hour should begin.

The children felt as if they ought to hold their breath, for surely something important and serious was afoot. It was not like the times when they had gone out with other teachers, when hatred and pride cropped up as soon as the school door was closed. This was serious, and each breath was like a bucketful of water from a deep, deep well. Was time standing still? Had not many hours already passed? Were they really prisoners after all? They did not crawl away, though there was nothing to stop them. Teacher Jensen did not look around him at all, yet as soon as any of the children thought of creeping away they could not help remembering what happened when a prisoner escaped and they heard the shots ring out, the alarm bells clang, the whistles blow, and saw the wardens riding off in all directions hunting the fugitive. Their feet would not obey them—they were bound fast by Teacher Jensen’s word; the outstretched hand with the watch held them in their places. Yes, they were prisoners, each in his own cell, and darkness settled and a gentle mist descended, veil upon veil.

Was this what it was like being a prisoner?

The hour was up.

Every one sighed with relief, yet they all stood quiet for a moment, as if they could not really believe that they had regained their freedom. Then they sprang up and clustered around Teacher Jensen, asking him questions. It was growing dark, and he put his watch in his pocket, saying: “It is just as hard to be a prison watchman as to be a prisoner.”

The children had never thought of this before, and after a long pause Teacher Jensen added: “The lot of the prison warden is the hardest of all, for he can do nothing for the prisoners; and in his heart he wants to help them all he can, yet they are not able to read his thoughts.”

And after another pause he said: “I knew a man who spent seventeen years in prison and then died there.”

When Lauritz reached home his mother was sitting at the piano playing and singing. The smell of freshly baked cake filled the room. On the table stood a glass bowl of apples. Lauritz’s father sat on a chair smoking his pipe. Without knowing just what he said or why he said it, Lauritz went up to the piano and whispered in his mother’s ear: “When I am a big man I shall be a prison warden.”

“What did you say?” she cried. “A prison warden, Lauritz? In there with those people? Never!”

Lauritz repeated: “When I am a big man I shall be a prison warden.”

* * * * *

And then something happened that was never explained. Who had the idea first no one knew. Perhaps it entered all those little heads at the same time, in that hour when they were standing, each a prisoner under his own tree, each in his own cell—just in a single hour.

When Teacher Jensen was told about the plan, he only nodded as if he had known about it long ago. But when they begged him to talk to the prison inspector, since their scheme was contrary to all regulations, he shook his head, saying: “It is your idea. You must carry it out. It is up to you, if you believe in yourselves, to stand fast by your beliefs.”

That was two months before Christmas, and all the school-children, big and little, boys and girls, were there. Money was the first necessity, and it had to be collected in modest amounts and earned in an honorable way. Teacher Jensen said that if the gift was not honest no good came of it. The children all saved the money that they would ordinarily have spent on sweets and on stamps for their albums. They went on little errands, chopped wood, carried water, and scrubbed milk cans, wooden buckets, and copper tubs. The money was put into a big earthenware pig that Teacher Jensen had put in the wardrobe at school. No one knew who gave the most or who gave the least.

Lauritz announced that, including the seventeen sick people, there were three hundred and ten prisoners in the jail.

In the middle of December the pig was broken and the money was counted over and over, but it did not amount to much. Then a little fellow came with his little private savings bank, and a girl with a little earthen receptacle in which she kept her spare pennies. That started them off. Many little hoardings destined for Christmas presents were emptied into the great common fund at school. See how it grew! Shiny paper was now brought, and flags and walnuts. Every day the whole school stayed until supper time cutting out and pasting. The little girls made white and red roses. They wove baskets, gilded walnuts, pasted flags on little sticks, and cut out cardboard stars, painting them gold and silver. The little ones made, out of clay, birds’ nests with eggs in them, and little horses and cows that they covered with bright colors so they looked like real live animals. The boys cut out photographs and made little boxes. With jig saws they fashioned napkin rings and paper weights.

Christmas trees were bought—three hundred and ten real fir trees, for which the gardener charged only twenty-five pfennigs apiece.

Teacher Jensen emptied his purse on the desk. It had once been black, but it had long since turned brown, and was full of cracks. “That belonged to the man who spent seventeen years in prison,” he announced. “He had it there with him. He kept it there for seventeen long years.”

No one asked who the man was, but the money had to be counted over many times, for the children’s eyes were moist and they had to keep wiping the tears away.

On the Sunday before Christmas the children went with Teacher Jensen to the local store and bought a lot of tobacco and chocolate, almonds and raisins, playing cards and brightly colored handkerchiefs, and writing paper. And they got a lot of old Christmas books too, which were given to them free because they were at the bottom of the pile and were out of date.

The parents of the children had to contribute whether they wanted to or not, and bags full of cookies and nuts, playing cards and books, came out of each house.

Lauritz’s father had spoken in all secrecy to the prison chaplain, who went as a representative to the inspector. But the inspector hemmed and hawed saying: “That goes against all regulations. It’s impossible. It can’t be allowed on any ground whatever.” The chaplain was to have told this to Lauritz’s father, and Lauritz was to have brought the news to the children that the plan had to be abandoned. But the chaplain said nothing to Lauritz’s father, and the children did not know that it was impossible and could never be allowed.

All the parents, no matter how much they had to do, made a point of going into the schoolhouse the day before Christmas and seeing the three hundred little sparkling Christmas trees, each laden with joy, each with its star on the top, each with its white and red roses, white and red flags, and white and red candles, each decorated with tinsel and hung with gifts. To every tree a little letter was fastened, written by a boy or a girl. What was in this letter only the writer and perhaps Teacher Jensen knew—for Teacher Jensen had to help the little ones who only knew how to print numbers and capital letters.

The church bells rang over the town and called the faithful to God’s worship. The prison bells rang out over the prison and called the prisoners to the prison church. Before the school was drawn up a row of wagons which had been laden with the little Christmas trees. Each child then took his tree under his arm and set out, following the wagons, singing as he went. It was a Christmas party without snow, but a Christmas party just the same.

Stopping before the prison, they rang the bell, and asked to speak to the inspector. He came out, and the moment he appeared Teacher Jensen and all the children began to sing: “_O du fröhliche, o, du selige, gnaden-bringende Weihnachtszeit...._”

The inspector shook his head sadly and raised his hands in the air. It was impossible, absolutely impossible—he had said so. But the children kept right on singing, and seemed not to hear him. As the inspector afterward said, when the director of all the prisons in that district demanded an explanation: “A man is only human, and had you been in my place, Mr. Director, you would have done as I did, even if it had cost you your position.”

Thus it came to pass that this one time Christmas was celebrated in each cell of the big prison—a good, happy, cheerful Christmas. When the prisoners came back from the worship of God with their black masks on their faces they found a Christmas tree in every cell, and the cell doors stood open until the candles had burned out, and the prisoners received permission to go freely from cell to cell all through the corridor to look at each other’s Christmas trees and gifts—to look at them and to compare them. But each prisoner thought that his little tree and his present were the most beautiful and the best of all.

When the last light had burned out, the doors were closed, and far into the night the prisoners sang the Christmas carols of their childhood, free from distress, grief, and all spitefulness.

And as the last light flickered out behind the high walls the thin figure of a man with his coat collar up over his ears and his hat pulled over his face crept along the prison wall. Through the night air he heard the voices singing, “_Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht._”

Clasping his hands tightly together and raising them aloft into the darkness, he cried: “I thank thee, father. Thy guilt has been atoned for ten times over.”

[17] Reprinted from the “Living Age” by permission.

HONORABLE TOMMY[18]

_Mary E. Wilkins Freeman_

It was the day before Christmas, long ago, when Christmas was seldom observed in New England. There were two houses in the village separated by a wide yard in which the grass, of a dirty dun color, lay like a frost-woven mat underfoot, crunching when the children sped over it.

It was difficult to understand what the boy and girl found amusing in that dismal wintry yard, flanked on one side by the Dunbar farmhouse, with its enormous barns and outbuildings, on the other by the more modern house where the Roseberrys lived. There was probably nothing except the indomitable spirit of youth. The boy, Tommy Dunbar, and the girl, Cora Roseberry, raced back and forth between the leafless, creaking old cherry trees. They made leaps over a ledge of rock. The girl gave little squeals of merriment from time to time. The boy, although radiant, was silent. They were pretty children, but the fashions of their day detracted from their beauty.

The girl, charmingly graceful, pink and white, with long blond curls, wore a hoop skirt and a frock of royal Stuart plaid. She wore white stockings and ugly half-low shoes, a red knitted hood, and a shawl over her mother’s sontag. As she ran, the fringed corners of the blue and green plaid shawl flew out.

“You will catch cold,” said the boy thoughtfully. “Stop, Cora; you must let me tie the ends of your shawl.”

“It is cold,” agreed the girl: “but I have on Mother’s sontag under the shawl.” She glanced down admiringly and guiltily at the brilliant circle of her royal Stuart skirt. “Mother didn’t know I was going to wear this dress,” said she.

“What made you?” asked the boy soberly. He was smaller than the girl, although of the same age. He was also paler. His attire was as absurd: trousers which seemed a queer evolution from skirts, an uncouth jacket, and wool cap and muffler. His features were good, but their expression of extreme seriousness baffled. His blue eyes under a high forehead were almost aggressively thoughtful for a mere child.

“Will your mother scold you?”

“My mother scold me!” The girl burst into a roulade of laughter. “Mother never scolds me, neither does Father. Everybody loves me, you know,” she said prettily.

Tommy Dunbar gazed reflectively at Cora. He was considering what would have happened to him had he clad himself, without permission from his aunts Nancy and Sarah and his Uncle Reuben, in the bright blue broadcloth suit with a white frill round the neck which he wore Sundays.

Cora looked at him curiously. “Do your folks treat you bad if you do things you want to?” she inquired. Tommy was silent.

“Why don’t you answer?”

“My folks do the way they think is right, I guess,” said Tommy, with a stolid air.

Cora gave her long curls a toss. She dismissed the subject.

“You can’t catch me, running around every one of the cherry trees three times,” declared she, and was off.

Cora ran round the trees, with Tommy following at a fixed distance, according to his code of honor, then stopped, squealing with glee. “Couldn’t! Told you so,” said she. Cora was charming. She conquered her ugly clothes. In a way, Tommy Dunbar conquered his. There was a very noble, manly expression on his young face above the uncouth jacket and muffler.

Cora sniffed. “What are they cooking over at your folks’?” said she.

“They’re doing pig work,” replied Tommy. “That’s lard trying out you smell.”

“Seems to me funny work to be doing the day before Christmas,” said Cora.

Tommy stared.

Cora stared back. “You look as if you’d never heard of Christmas,” said she. “Are you going to have a tree, or hang up your stocking?”

Tommy hesitated; then he said feebly: “I guess I’ll hang up my stocking.”

“That’s what I’m going to do this Christmas.” Cora lowered her voice. “That’s really what Mother went to Boston for,” she whispered. “You see, I know perfectly well that Father and Mother and Aunt Emmy and Grandpa and Cousin Ellen give the things that go in my stocking. But I like to make believe it’s Santa Claus, and it pleases the others, so I do.”

To Tommy the remark was enigmatical, but he made no comment.

“I shall hang my stocking by the fireplace in the sitting-room,” said Cora. “Where will you hang yours?”

“Guess I’ll hang mine by the fireplace in the sitting-room, too,” muttered Tommy; but he had an anxious, bewildered expression.

It did not dawn upon Cora that Tommy Dunbar had never in his life hung up his stocking, but so it was.

Cora saw her mother getting out of the stage-coach, and summarily ran home. Tommy also went home, sniffing the smell of lard and roast meat.

He enjoyed his supper of crisp roast spare-ribs, turnips, baked potatoes and pumpkin pie. At the table were his Uncle Reuben and his aunts Sarah and Nancy. His grandmother was confined to her room with a cold, otherwise things would have been different. Tommy’s grandmother could not have connived in the after-happenings of that day. Before going up-stairs to bed Tommy stopped to say good night to her. She sat propped up in her great bed, with a white shawl over her shoulders, and she was knitting. She smiled serenely at Tommy.

If anything, serenity was a fault in Grandmother Dunbar. No minor trials of life disturbed her, and she often assumed erroneously that they did not disturb other people. However, she was the mother of children, and when a child was in question the surface of her sweet calm could be ruffled. If only she had known—but she did not know. She smiled at Tommy, and her large pink-and-white face, framed in white ruffles, represented to the child personified love. His mother had died when he was a baby, his father two years ago, and Tommy had speeded to this grandmotherly shelter.

Tommy kissed her good night with effusion. It was a pity that he did not confide in her; but he was very shy and shamed before the unwonted idea in his mind. His grandmother gave him a peppermint, and told him not to forget his prayers, and he climbed up-stairs to his own bedroom. It was an icy room, and almost reproachfully neat.

Tommy said his prayers, and went to bed, but not to sleep. His room was over the sitting-room. He could hear the hum of conversation below. He knew each voice, although he could not distinguish one word. Aunt Nancy’s was very shrill, punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter. Aunt Sarah’s was of lower pitch. Uncle Reuben had a deep bass growl. Tommy listened. Presently they would all go out in the back kitchen to grind sausage meat.

Soon silence settled down upon the floor below. They were all out in the back kitchen. Tommy crept very softly out of bed. He took one of his knitted blue yarn stockings, and he went down-stairs, padding on his bare feet. Tommy wore a red flannel nightgown. When he opened the sitting-room door and the fire-light on the hearth illumined him, he looked like a little Fra Angelico angel. His fair hair, crested smoothly over his forehead, caught the light. His pale cheeks were rosy with reflection.

He tiptoed across the floor and hung the blue yarn stocking in the fire-place. Then he beat a retreat; but he had been discovered. His aunt Nancy, whose hearing was almost preternatural, had heard the stairs creak under his little feet and had pulled the others along with her. They were all peeking around the kitchen door. However, they were out of range of the fireplace. They only saw Tommy approach, then steal away in that flickering red light. Reuben held them back until the sitting-room door was closed, and the pit-pat of Tommy’s bare feet had ceased upon the stairs. Then the three hearty, healthy, kindly, but obtuse, young people entered the sitting-room.

“He certainly was fussing about something in the fireplace,” said Nancy. Suddenly she made a pounce. She pointed. She shook and bent with stifled laughter. The others looked. They saw poor Tommy’s blue stocking, symbolic of childish faith, hanging in the fireplace. Nancy laughed, and Sarah laughed, but cautiously. Reuben stared.

“What’s the stockin’ doin’ there?” he inquired, with no lowering of his deep voice.

Tommy up-stairs heard him, and trembled. Then he heard no more, for his aunts hushed his uncle peremptorily. They pulled him out into the kitchen.

“What in creation—?” began Reuben.

“Reuben, do hush up. He’ll hear you,” gasped Nancy. “It’s—it’s——”

“It’s what? What did he come down like that for, and hang his stockin’ there? Is he crazy?”

“It’s Christmas to-morrow,” replied Nancy, choking with laughter.

“And he was out in the yard with Cora this afternoon, and she must have told him she was going to hang her stocking, and put him up to it,” said Sarah between giggles.

“Grace went to Boston this morning,” said Nancy. “I know she went to buy presents for Cora. They’re just spoiling that child.”

Reuben scowled. “If,” said he, “Grace wants to fill her child’s head with such nonsense, I do wish she would tell her not to talk to Tommy. Hangin’ his stockin’ in the chimney!”

However, Reuben, who was not an ill-natured man, grinned as he spoke. Into his small brown eyes leapt a spark of malicious mischief.

“I’ll fix up his stockin’; I vum I will,” declared Reuben. He began to laugh. They all laughed.

“What are you going to do, Reuben?” inquired Nancy.

Reuben whispered. The heads of the three conspirators were close together. When Reuben finished, they all laughed until the tears ran down their cheeks. Reuben’s plan seemed to them such a joke.

The three, stifling their laughter, filled the blue yarn stocking. When it hung bulging, they fairly clung together and reeled, they were so overcome by the fun of the thing.

“He will come down by dawn to find it,” giggled Nancy. She and Sarah slept on the ground floor, Reuben above.

“I will sleep with one ear open,” said he. “I shall hear him come downstairs.”

“Mind you don’t let him hear you,” cautioned Sarah. “Nancy and I will be on the lookout.”

Soon the house was still. The street was still, hushed by an evening of fast-falling snow. Everybody slept except Tommy. He lay awake in a sort of ecstasy. He did not know what he expected. Afterward he was never able to define the nature of his joyful expectancy, but he lay awake in one of the transports of awaited happiness which do not come often in a lifetime. All the beautiful symbolism of Christmas was astir in him, like a strain of wonderful music. Little New England boy, who had never known a Yuletide, it may be that ancestral memory had been awakened in him, that the joy of his ancestors over the merry holy time of the year thrilled him.

The storm clouds had passed. He could see a great star from his window. He gazed at it so steadily that its rays became multiplied. Finally the star, to his concentrated vision, seemed surrounded by a halo of rainbows. He lay there waiting for the dawn, in such bliss as he might never again in his whole life attain, since that bliss was to be dashed back into the very face of his soul with a shock as of spiritual ice.

That Christmas morning the dawn was beautiful, and Tommy’s window faced the east. He saw first a pallor of light along the horizon; then beams of cowslip-gold, rose and violet shot upward like an aurora. Tommy crept out of bed. He padded down-stairs. The cold was bitter, but he did not feel it. The poor little man in his red flannel nightgown entered the sitting-room. There was a faint glow on the hearth. He stole near. Yes, his stocking was full, bulging with unknown treasures.

He did not hear his uncle Reuben coming down-stairs behind him, then hiding observant in a dark corner of the front entry. He did not see his aunts’ faces peering around a crack of their bedroom door. He clutched the stocking. He was trembling with delight. He had intended to run up-stairs and discover his wealth in his own room, but he could not wait. He sat down on the hearth and began to explore.

When it was over, just one little sharp sound broke the silence. Nancy said afterward it sounded as if some boy had stepped on a very little dog and killed him. After that, silence came again. Somehow the watchers did not feel like laughing. Tommy stood up. The dawn light fell full upon his white, stern little face. He crammed the miserable travesties of Christmas treasures back into the stocking. He went straight to the outer door. He shot the bolt. He went out.

“Mercy on us!” gasped Nancy.

“He will catch his death of cold going out in his night-gown,” said Sarah. She was very pale.