Chapter V: Part III (1)

When old man Trimble stood before the fireplace at midnight that night, stuffing little parcels into the deep, borrowed stocking, he chuckled noiselessly, and glanced with affection towards the corner of the room where his young wife lay sleeping. He was a fat old man, and as he stood with shaking sides in his loose, home-made pajamas, he would have done credit to a more conscious impersonation of old Santa himself.

His task finally done, he glanced down at a tall bundle that stood on the floor almost immediately in front of him, moved back with his hands resting on his hips, and thoughtfully surveyed it.

“Well, ef anybody had ’a’ told it on me I never would ’a’ believed it,” he said, under his breath. “The idee o’ me, Ephe Trimble, settin’ up sech a thing ez that in his house—at my time o’ life.” Then glancing towards the sleeper, he added, with a chuckle, “an’ ef they’d ’a’ prophesied it I wouldn’t ’a’ believed sech ez _thet_, neither—at my time o’ life—bless her little curly head.”

He sat down on the floor beside the bundle, clipped the twine, and cautiously pushed back the wrappings. Then, rising, he carefully set each piece of the water-set up above the stocking on the mantel. He did not stop to examine it. He was anxious to get it in place without noise.

It made a fine show, even in the dim, unsteady light of a single taper that burned in its tumbler of oil close beside the bed. Indeed, when it arose in all its splendor, he was very much impressed.

“A thing like that ought to have a chandelier to set it off right,” he thought—“yas, and she’ll have one, too—she’ll have anything she wants—thet I can give her.”

Sleep came slowly to the old man that night, and even long after his eyes were closed, the silver things seemed arrayed in line upon his mental retina. And when, after a long while, he fell into a troubled slumber, it was only to dream. And in his dream old Judge Robinson’s mother-in-law seemed to come and stand before him—black dress, side curls, and all—and when he looked at her for the first time in his life unabashed—she began to bow, over and over again, and to say with each salutation, “Be seated”—“be seated”—“be seated,” getting farther and farther away with each bow until she was a mere speck in the distance—and then the speck became a spot of white, and he saw that the old lady had taken on a spout and a handle, and that she was only an ice-pitcher, tilting, and tilting, and tilting,—while from the yellow spout came a fine metallic voice saying, “Be seated”—“be seated”—again and again. Then there would be a change. Two ladies would appear approaching each other and retreating—turning into two ice-pitchers, tilting to each other, then passing from tilting pitchers to bowing ladies, until sometimes there seemed almost to be a pitcher and a lady in view at the same time. When he began to look for them both at once the dream became tantalizing. Twin ladies and twin pitchers—but never quite clearly a lady and a pitcher. Even while the vision tormented him it held him fast—perhaps because he was tired, having lost his first hours of sleep.

He was still sleeping soundly, spite of the dissolving views of the novel panorama, when above the two voices that kept inviting him to “be seated,” there arose, in muffled tones at first, and then with distressing distinctness, a sound of sobbing. It made the old man turn on his pillow even while he slept, for it was the voice of a woman, and he was tender of heart. It seemed in the dream and yet not of it—this awful, suppressed sobbing that disturbed his slumber, but was not quite strong enough to break it. But presently, instead of the muffled sob, there came a cumulative outburst, like that of a too hard-pressed turkey-gobbler forced to the wall. He thought it was the old black gobbler at first, and he even said, “Shoo,” as he sprang from his bed. But a repetition of the sound sent him bounding through the open door into the dining-room, dazed and trembling.

Seated beside the dining-table there, with her head buried in her arms, sat his little wife. Before her, ranged in line upon the table, stood the silver water-set—her present to him. He was beside her in a moment—leaning over her, his arms about her shoulders.

“Why, honey,” he exclaimed, “what on earth——”

At this she only cried the louder. There was no further need for restraint. The old man scratched his head. He was very much distressed.

“Why, honey,” he repeated, “tell its old man all about it. Didn’t it like the purty pitcher thet its old husband bought for it? Was it too big—or too little—or too heavy for it to tote all the way out here from that high mantel? Why didn’t it wake up its lazy ol’ man and make him pack it out here for it?”

It was no use. She was crying louder than ever. He did not know what to do. He began to be cold and he saw that she was shivering. There was no fire in the dining-room. He must do something. “Tell its old man what it would ’a’ ruther had,” he whispered in her ear, “jest tell him, ef it don’t like its pitcher——”

At this she made several efforts to speak, her voice breaking in real turkey-gobbler sobs each time, but finally she managed to wail:

“It ain’t m-m-m-mi-i-i-ne!”

“Not yours! Why, honey. What can she mean? Did it think I bought it for anybody else? Ain’t yours! Well, I like that. Lemme fetch that lamp over here till you read the writin’ on the side of it, an’ I’ll show you whose it is.” He brought the lamp.

“Read that, now. Why, honey! Wh-wh-wh-what in thunder an’ lightnin’! They’ve done gone an’ reversed it. The fool’s put my name first—‘Ephraim N. Trimble. From—his——’

“Why Jerusalem jinger!

“No wonder she thought I was a low-down dog—to buy sech a thing an’ mark it in my own name—no wonder—here on Christmus, too. The idee o’ Rowton not seein’ to it thet it was done right——”

By this time the little woman had somewhat recovered herself. Still, she stammered fearfully.

“R-r-r-owton ain’t never s-s-s-saw that pitcher. It come from L-l-l-awson’s, d-d-down at Washin’ton, an’ I b-brought it for y-y-y-you!”

“Why, honey-darlin’—” A sudden light came into the old man’s eyes. He seized the lamp and hurried to the door of the bed-chamber, and looked in. This was enough. Perhaps it was mean—but he could not help it—he set the lamp down on the table, dropped into a chair, and fairly howled with laughter.

“No wonder I dremp’ ol’ Mis’ Meredy was twins!” he screamed. “Why, h-h-honey,” he was nearly splitting his old sides—“why, honey, I ain’t seen a thing but these two swingin’ pitchers all night. They’ve been dancin’ before me—them an’ what seemed like a pair o’ ol’ Mis’ Meredys, an’ between ’em all I ain’t slep’ a wink.”

“N-n-either have I. An’ I dremp’ about ol’ Mis’ M-m-m-eredy, too. I dremp’ she had come to live with us—an’ thet y-y-you an’ me had moved into the back o’ the house. That’s why I got up. I couldn’t sleep easy, an’ I thought I might ez well git up an’ see wh-wh-what you’d brought me. But I didn’t no mor’n glance at it. But you can’t say you didn’t sleep, for you was a-s-s-snorin’ when I come out here——”

“An’ so was you, honey, when I ’ranged them things on the mantel. Lemme go an’ git the other set an’ compare ’em. That one I picked out is mighty purty.”

“I’ll tell you befo’ you fetch ’em thet they’re exactly alike”—she began to cry again—“even to the p-p-polar bear. I saw that at a glance, an’ it makes it s-s-so much more ridic’——”

“Hush, honey. I’m reely ashamed of you—I reely am. Seems to me ef they’re jest alike so much the better. What’s the matter with havin’ a pair of ’em? We might use one for butter-milk.”

“Th-that would be perfectly ridiculous. A polar bear’d look like a fool on a buttermilk pitcher. N-n-no, the place for pitchers like them is in halls, on tables, where anybody comin’ in can see ’em, an’ stop an’ git a drink. They couldn’t be nothin’ tackier’n pourin’ buttermilk out of a’ ice-pitcher.”

“Of co’se, if you say so, we won’t—I jest thought maybe—or, I tell you what we might do. I could easy take out a panel o’ banisters out of the side po’ch, an’ put in a pair o’ stair-steps, so ez to make a sort o’ side entrance to the house, an’ we could set one of ’em in _it_. It would make the pitcher come a little high, of co’se, but it would set off that side o’ the house lovely, an’ ef you say so——

“Lemme go git ’em all out here together.”

As he trudged in presently loaded up with the duplicate set he said, “I wonder ef you know what time it is, wife?”

She glanced over her shoulder at the clock on the wall.

“Don’t look at that. It’s six o’clock last night by that. I forgot to wind her up. No, it’s half-past three o’clock—that’s all it is.” By this time he had placed his water-set beside hers upon the table. “Why, honey,” he exclaimed, “where on earth? I don’t see a sign of a’ inscription on this—an’ what is this paper in the spout? Here, you read it, wife, I ain’t got my specs.”

“Too busy to mark to-day—send back after Christmas—sorry.

“ROWTON.”

“Why, it—an’ here’s another paper. What can this be, I wonder?”

“To my darling wife, from her affectionate husband.”

The little wife colored as she read it.

“Oh, that ain’t nothin’ but the motter he was to print on it. But ain’t it lucky thet he didn’t do it? I’ll change it—that’s what I’ll do—for anything you say. There, now. Don’t that fix it?”

She was very still for a moment—very thoughtful. “An’ affectionate is a mighty expensive word, too,” she said, slowly, glancing over the intended inscription, in her husband’s handwriting. “Yes. Your pitcher don’t stand for a thing but generosity—an’ mine don’t mean a thing but selfishness. Yes, take it back, cert’nly, that is ef you’ll get me anything I want for it. Will you?”

“Shore. They’s a cow-topped butter-dish an’ no end o’ purty little things out there you might like. An’ ef it’s goin’ back, it better be a-goin’. I can ride out to town an’ back befo’ breakfast. Come, kiss me, wife.”

She threw both arms around her old husband’s neck, and kissed him on one cheek and then on the other. Then she kissed his lips. And then, as she went for pen and paper, she said: “Hurry, now, an’ hitch up, an’ I’ll be writin’ down what I want in exchange—an’ you can put it in yo’ pocket.”

In a surprisingly short time the old man was on his way—a heaped basket beside him, a tiny bit of writing in his pocket. When he had turned into the road he drew rein for a moment, lit a match, and this is what he read:

My dear Husband,—I want one silver-mounted brier-wood pipe and a
smoking set—a nice lava one—and I want a set of them fine overhauls
like them that Mis Pope give Mr. Pope that time I said she was too
extravagant, and if they’s any money left over I want some nice
tobacco, the best. I want all the price of the ice-set took up even
to them affectionate words they never put on.

Your affectionate and loving wife,

KITTY.

When Ephraim put the little note back in his pocket, he took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes.

Her good neighbors and friends, even as far as Simpkinsville and Washington, had their little jokes over Mis’ Trimble’s giving her splendor-despising husband a swinging ice-pitcher, but they never knew of the two early trips of the twin pitcher, nor of the midnight comedy in the Trimble home.

But the old man often recalls it, and as he sits in his front hall smoking his silver-mounted pipe, and shaking its ashes into the lava bowl that stands beside the ice-pitcher at his elbow, he sometimes chuckles to himself.

Noticing his shaking shoulders as he sat thus one day his wife turned from the window, where she stood watering her geraniums, and said:

“What on earth are you a-laughin’ at, honey?” (She often calls him “honey” now.)

“How did you know I was a-laughin’?” He looked over his shoulder at her as he spoke.

“Why, I seen yo’ shoulders a-shakin’—that’s how.” And then she added, with a laugh, “An’ now I see yo’ reflection in the side o’ the ice-pitcher, with a zig-zag grin on you a mile long—yo’ smile just happened to strike a iceberg.”

He chuckled again.

“Is that so? Well, the truth is, I’m just sort o’ tickled over things in general, an’ I’m a-settin’ here gigglin’, jest from pure contentment.”

[4] From “Moriah’s Mourning” by Ruth McEnery Stuart. By permission of Harper & Brothers.

THE GIFT OF THE MANGER[5]

_Edith Barnard Delano_

Christine’s frail body bent slightly forward to meet the force of the gale. She kept her face lowered, shielded by her muff; yet now and again she raised it for an instant to glance upward at Norwood, with a bright flash of the eyes and a gleam of teeth. Invariably he met the look and warmed to it as to a flame, smiled back, or shook his head. To speak in the face of such a gale was all but impossible, yet once or twice she bent close enough to call in her sweet, high tones, “I love it! I adore it!”

It was at such times that he shook his head. He was keen enough for adventure, good sport enough to meet it halfway, to make the utmost of it when it came; but this—the snow, the early fall of night, the upward climb over roads tantalizingly but half remembered—this was more than he had counted upon, and, truly, more than he wanted. He was beginning to wonder whether, even for Christine’s sake, the journey were a wise one.

They had planned, weeks earlier, to take the noon train as far as River Junction, where his father, with the pair of sturdy grays, was to meet them for the eight-mile drive to the old home farm over the hills. But young doctors cannot always keep their best-laid plans, and Christine had waited in vain at the station while Norwood officiated at an entrance into the world and an exit therefrom—the individuals most concerned in both instances taking their own time. Christine, waiting beside the suit-cases, boxes, and parcels, whose number and variety of shapes unmistakably proclaimed Christmas gifts, had watched the express pull out of the station. Then, with a dull pounding at her temples and a barely controlled choking in her throat, she had gathered up the Christmas impedimenta and gone home. Norwood found her there an hour later, still dressed as for the journey, and sobbing wildly in a heap at the foot of the bed—his Christine, to whose courage during the past ten months his very soul had done homage many a time.

“I cannot bear it! I cannot bear it!” she had sobbed out at last, when the tenderness of his arms had begun to soothe her outburst of grief. “To be with your father and mother, to make Christmas for the poor old darlings, to work and keep busy all day—that was bad enough; but I could have done that——”

“I know, dear, I know,” he said, holding her firmly, his professional sense alive to every pulse in the racked body.

“But to stay here, where Teddy was last year—I cannot, I cannot!”

“Christine!” he besought her.

“Oh, Ned, I have seen him watch me tie up every parcel—I have heard him on the stairs—I have caught myself wondering which toys he would wish for this Christmas—and he isn’t here! I cannot bear it! I cannot stay here without him! I want my boy, my little boy—my baby! It is Christmas eve—and I want my boy!”

And this was his Christine who, during the ten months since the child had died, had faced the world and her husband with her head held high, with a smile on her lips and courage in the clasp of her hand! Not once before to-day had he heard her cry out in grief or rebellion—his Christine!

“Then we will not stay here,” he said. “We will go to the farm whether we have missed the train or not! We will go to the end of the world, or beyond it, if that will help!”

“Ned! What do you mean?” she cried, drawing back from his clasp to look up into his face.

“It is only a matter of sixty miles or so, and it isn’t yet two o’clock; we can make it with the big car!”

She sprang to her feet with a choking laugh, her hands on her throat, her eyes shining like stars of hope.

“Hurry!” she cried; and in scarcely half an hour they were on their way, the multitude of the Christmas bundles tumbled, helter-skelter, into the tonneau, she fur-clad and glowing beside him.

The big “sixty” stood up to its task, and the first part of the journey was as nothing. It had been one of those winters when autumn prolongs itself into December, when people begin to talk of a green Christmas, and the youngsters feel almost hopeless about sleds and skates; but to-day, Christmas eve, the children’s hopes had revived; a sudden drop in temperature, a leaden sky, an unwonted briskness among the sparrows—it might not be a green Christmas, after all.

That was one of the little things that Christine talked about along the way; and when the first few flakes of snow came wavering down she held out her muff, as if trying to catch them all, and laughed.

“Oh, see, Ned! We’ll snowball each other to-morrow!”

But he had replied, “Let’s hope that we shall have to postpone the snow-balling until we get to the farm, anyway. By Jove! I had forgotten how steep these roads were!”

“Don’t you remember them?” she asked. “Have you forgotten your way?”

He got the teasing note in her tone. “That’s all right,” he said, “but it has been many years since I came this way; and roadsides have a way of changing, even in Vermont; and with this storm coming along worse every minute, I am not anxious to negotiate them by dark.”

“’Fraid cat,” she laughed, and then cried: “Oh, see! The snow is coming! It’s coming, coming, coming!”

It had come, indeed, on the wings of a quick, wild gust; its particles cut like bits of ice, and presently flew in swirling eddies beside the car and in front of it, and, for all their speed, built itself into little drifts wherever a curve or crevice or corner made a possible lodging-place. It pierced their barrier of windshield and curtains, and heaped itself on their fur wrappings, until swept away again by a new fierce breath of the storm. Then it was that Christine’s cheeks flamed, but she bent forward to meet the force of the wind, and now and again turned to call up to Norwood that she loved it.

Night fell almost with the swiftness of a stage curtain, blotting out the distant hills, the pastures, the fields, and scattered houses; blotting out at last even the roadsides, its blackness emphasized by the ever-swirling, steadily descending snow. Once or twice Norwood stopped the car and got out to reconnoiter. Christine felt his uneasiness by means of that sixth sense of wifehood; yet all the while, by another of wifehood’s endowments, she rested secure, serene in the feeling that all was well and must continue well with her man at the wheel; while side by side with his own feeling of uneasiness, Norwood was proud of his wife’s courageous serenity, unaware in his masculine simplicity that her courage had its fount of being in himself.

Nobly the big car responded to their demand upon it, yet they had gone not more than a few miles beyond the last recognized sign-post when it began to show symptoms of reluctance, of distress. Norwood muttered under his breath, and once more Christine turned a laughing face toward him.

“It’s a real adventure,” she cried. “I do believe you are lost!”

Norwood’s answering laugh held no merriment. “You are not so bad at guessing,” he remarked, dryly. “Suppose you try to guess the way!”

Her keen eyes were peering forward through the veil of snow. “Here we come! I think I see a house ahead of us,” she said. “We can ask our way of the people who live there.”

“They won’t know,” said Norwood, with a man’s pessimism. “Probably foreigners. Half the old places around here are bought up by people who can’t speak English and don’t know anything when they can.”

“Oh, you just don’t want to ask questions,” said Christine. “Men always hate to! I never can see why!”

The day had held many things for him; now his nerves were beginning to jump. “All right, we’ll ask,” he said, shortly.

The car, in its inanimate way, seemed glad enough to stop. “I will run in and ask,” said Christine, and Norwood was already busy over some of the mysterious attentions men love to bestow upon their engines.

“All right,” he said, without raising his head.

But in a moment she was back. “It isn’t a house, Ned! It’s only a barn!”

Still bent over his engine, he replied: “House probably across the road. They often fix them that way up here.”

But in another moment or two she was calling to him, above the voice of the gale: “Ned! Ned! There has been a fire! It must have been quite lately, for the snow melts as it falls on the place where the house was! How horrible to think of those poor people, burned out just before Christmas.”

At that he stood up. “Burned out, is it? They may be camping in the barn. We’ll see if we can’t rout them out.”

He went back a step or two and reached over to his horn, sending forth one honking, raucous blast after another. “That ought to fetch them,” he said.

There was, indeed, an answering sound from the barn—trampling of hoofs, the suffering call of an unmilked cow. Christine went toward the denser blackness, which was the door.

“Hoo—hoo!” she cried. “Is any one here?”

She held a little pocket flash-light in her hand, and threw its light here and there through the interior darkness. Norwood, still busy with his engine, was not aware when she went within; he was busy with mind and fingers. But all at once he sprang into a fuller activity—the activity of the man who hears the one cry that would recall him from another world; his wife had called to him, had cried aloud a wordless message which held wonder and fear, bewilderment, and—a note of joy?

He ran around the car into the open doorway of the barn. The air of the vast space within was redolent with the scent of stored hay, the warm, sweet breath of beasts, the ghost of past summers, the promised satisfaction of many a meal-time. He could hear the movement of the animals in the stalls; the roof of the barn arched far above in cavelike darkness; in a quick flash of memory there came to him the story of another cave where patient beasts were stabled; and this was Christmas eve....

Far back in the gloom there shone a tiny light. He was curiously breathless. “Christine!” he called, a quick, foolish fear clutching at his heart, “Christine!”

She answered with another wordless call that was partly an exclamation of wonder, partly a crooning. Blundering forward, he could see the dim outline of a form—Christine’s form—kneeling in the dimness that was sparsely lighted by the pocket-light which she had dropped on the floor beside her. It was scarcely more than the space of a breath before he was at her side, yet in that space there had arisen another cry—a cry which he, the doctor, had also heard many times before. He felt as though he were living in a dream—but a dream as old as time.

“Ned, it’s a baby! Look! Here, alone, in the manger!”

It was, truly, a manger beside which she knelt; and she held gathered closely in her arms a child which was now crying lustily. Norwood spoke, she answered, and together they bent over the little form. It had been warmly wrapped in an old quilt; it was dressed in a queer little dress of brilliant pink, with strange, dark woolen underthings the like of which Christine had never seen before. Its cradle had been warm and safe, for all the gale without, and it had slept there peacefully in the manger until the honking horn and this strange woman had brought it back to a world of very cruel hunger.

Norwood laughed aloud as its little waving, seeking fists closed on one of his fingers. “Good healthy youngster,” he said; “three or four months old, I should say.” Then he added, “Hey, old man, where are your folks?”

At that Christine held the baby more closely to her breast. “Oh, I suppose it does belong to some one,” she said. “But, oh, Ned, I found it! Here in the manger—like the Christ-child! It seemed to me that I found something I had lost, something of my own!”

Norwood felt the danger of this sort of talk, as he mentally termed it, and hastened to interrupt. “Sure you found it!” he said. “That’s just what the baby is trying to tell you, among other things. He cries as if he were starved. Can’t you keep him quiet? Lord! how he yells!”

But Christine had sprung to her feet with the baby still held closely to her in all its strange wrappings. She was staring into the blackness of the barn. There must have been a new sound, for Norwood also turned quickly.

“Who’s there?” he called. He had taken Christine’s light from the floor and now flashed it toward the sound.

“All a-right! I mak-a de light,” a voice called; and with the careless noisiness of one who feels himself at home, the new-comer stumbled toward a shelf near the door and presently succeeded in lighting a dingy lantern. It revealed him to be, as Norwood had foreseen, a person distinctly un-American; and as they drew nearer his features disclosed themselves, though undoubtedly old, as of that finished adherence to type which is the result, perhaps, of the many-centuries-old Latin ideal of human perfection—the type as distinct and clear-cut as a Neapolitan cameo.

“Well,” said Norwood, jocularly, “quite a fire here, I see!”

The Italian raised shoulders and palms in that gesture of his race, alike disclaiming all responsibility and at the same time imploring the blessings of a benign Providence. “Oh, de fire, de fire! He burn all up; he burn up everyt’ing!”

By gesture and broken words he made the story plain. “Dis-a morn’ Maria send-a me to River—you know, River. I tak-a de horse; I go. I come back. I see-a de smoke, de smoke away up. I whip-a de horse. I come! _Dio mio!_ De smoke! He flame up, up. I whip-a de horse. I come to de hill. I see Maria run out of de house wit’ de babee in her arm. She tak-a de babee to de barn and she run-a back. She run-a back to Stefano. Stefano he in bed. He in bed one mont’, two mont’, t’ree mont’—no can move. I whip-a de horse some more. I jump down. I t’ink I go too for Stefano. _Ma! Dio mio!_” Again the gesture imploring Heaven. “De house, de floor, he go, he come down. Maria, Stefano, all—all come down, all go! _Dio!_”

He had made it graphic enough. They could see the quick tragedy of it, the wild rush of the mother taking her baby to its cradled safety in the manger, her dash back to the bedridden husband, the flames, the quickly charred timbers of the old house, the crashing fall....

Christine could feel the blood rush back to her heart; her forehead, her lips, were as cold as if an icy hand had been laid upon them; she trembled, and strained the baby to herself as if it could still the sympathetic pain at her heart. Norwood, seeing her distress, moved closer, drew her into the curve of his arm; her head bent to his shoulder, and he could feel her silently crying. Before the revelation of the pitiful tragedy they were momentarily speechless; then Norwood began to question the man.

“But the neighbors? Why did no one come to help?”

The sidewise bend of his head, the opening fingers of his gesture, spoke as plainly as the Italian’s words. “No neighbor! Far away over de mount’. No can-a see! Far away!”

“He means that the nearest neighbors were too far off to see the fire,” Norwood explained. “It’s likely enough, in these hills!” Again he asked: “But the barn? Why didn’t the barn burn, too?”

“No burn-a de barn; de wind dat-a way—” He made an expressive gesture. “De wind-a blow! De barn no burn.”

“That’s plain enough,” said Norwood. “Well, I am mighty sorry for you, my friend. What can we do to help you? What are you going to do with the baby?”

The old man seemed to become aware for the first time of the child in Christine’s arms. “Where you fin’-a heem?” he asked.

“My wife found him, back there in the manger where the poor mother laid him for safety, I suppose. What are you going to do with him?”

“Me not-a do! He not-a my babee!”

“Good Lord, man! He is some relation to you, isn’t he? Your grandchild, perhaps?”

“_Ma!_ No-o! Maria, Stefano, come from Ascoli! Me”—tapping his breast in a magnificent gesture—“Me _Siciliano_!”

Christine looked up and gave a little eager cry. “You are not related? He isn’t your baby, then, and you don’t want him?”

“Wait, dear! Make sure, first, before you set your hopes too high.” Norwood understood what was passing in her mind, and he added to the old man: “You are not related? What are you doing here, then?”

Again the typical shrug. “Stefano no can work; he much-a seeck! Me come along. Maria, Stefano, dey tell-a me, ‘You stay mak-a de mon. Stefano get-a well, you can-a go!’ So me stay, two week, t’ree week, maybe!”

Norwood thought quickly in silence for a moment; then he asked the man, “Do you know where Squire Norwood lives?”

The man nodded vigorously: “Big-a house, white house; over dere—two, t’ree mile.”

“Can you show us the way?”

“_Si!_”

“Then come on! We will give you a lift and a place to sleep in.”

He led his wife and the child, now sleeping, as many centuries before another had led a woman and a sleeping babe; the beauty and wonder and mystery of it was not changed, not lessened because he led them through the snow on a modern dispeller of distance, instead of through burning wastes on a patient beast. She had taken the child from a manger on this Christmas eve; and it seemed a very gift of God.

The distance to Squire Norwood’s house was only a matter of a few miles; yet it must have been an hour later when the two old people stood framed in the lamp-lighted door, hurriedly opened in response to the call of the motor’s horn.

“What’s this? what’s this?” his father’s hearty voice called out. “Thought ye were coming by train, and mother just broke down and cried when I come back without ye.”

Bareheaded, the snow no whiter than his hair, he stepped out toward the dark, big shape of the car, which loomed enormous through the falling snow; then he turned to stare after the shape which moved so swiftly past him and up to the shelter of the old wife’s arms. Doubtless there were hurried words, questions, answers; but the fact of the mere existence of the baby seemed to be enough for the two women—one so lately new to grief, the other so nearly beyond it for all time. They stopped, then passed within; the lighted doorway was empty.

“I swan! Where’d ye get that baby?” the old man asked of his son.

Norwood explained; his father was quick with self-reproach that such a tragedy had transpired so near, while he, the friendly “Squire” of the countryside, should have been all unaware of it.

“Summer-time I might have driven home that way; mother and me often stopped to see how Stefano was coming along. But winters we always use the state road. It’s longer, but better going. Sho! Mother will feel dreadful bad. She got to be real fond of Mareea, what with the baby coming, and after. Mareea used to tell as how they hadn’t any folks, poor young things!”

“Are you sure of that?” asked Norwood, sharply. “Could not Christine—could we have the baby?”

His father’s eyes held a sharp question, then became quickly misty. “I _am_ sure; but as selectman I can make it sure for ye beyond question.”

The men’s hands clasped; the squire coughed, and Norwood’s doctor-sense was aroused.

“Why, father, you are standing here without your hat! You go right in, and I’ll put the car in the barn. I guess we can give this man shelter over Christmas, can’t we?”

It was, perhaps, some three hours later, after his mother had worn out all her persuasion in trying to coax them to eat to four times their capacity; and after they had exhausted every detail of talk about the fire and the tragedy; and after they had disposed the beribboned parcels to be opened in the morning; and after Norwood had lifted his mother fairly off the floor in his good-night “bear hug”—it was after all of this that Norwood followed Christine up to the big south room, with its white-hung four-poster, and found her kneeling over the old mahogany cradle which had been his own. The old clock in the hall below struck twelve.

Christine arose, and laid her cheek against her husband’s arm. “It is Christmas,” she said; and the baby, sleeping, smiled.

[5] Reprinted from “Harper’s Magazine” by special permission of Edith Barnard Delano. All rights reserved by the author.

GOD REST YOU, MERRY CHRISTIANS[6]

_George Madden Martin_

It was the night before Christmas. Any Christian must have known it, apart from the calendar, by reason of a driving, haunting sense of things yet undone, and a goaded gathering together of exhausted faculties for a final sprint towards the accomplishing of all before the dawning of The Day.

Because we long have associated certain things with Christmas we have come to believe them integrant. The blended odor of orange peel, lighted tapers, and evergreens rushing upon us as the Church door opens means Christmas, even as much as the murmuring voices of the children within, each pew a variegated flower-bed of faces up-lifted to the light and tinsel of a giant tree.

Aromatic odors, other than frankincense and myrrh, mean Christmas, cedar, spices; and certain flavors, an almond kernel laid against a raisin and crushed between molars to the enravishment of the palate, seem to belong to Christmas; the translucent olive of preserved citron, exuding sugared richness, suggests Christmas, together with the crinkled layers of the myriad-seeded, luscious-hearted fig; blazing brandy means Christmas, and the velvet smoothness of egg, cream and Old Bourbon blended, seems part of Christmas too.

But because the average Christian is an unreasoning creature, and, like the ox, bending his neck to the yoke because the yoke offers, plods the way along unquestioning beneath it, the preceding mad rush means Christmas too, and the feverish dream wherein, for instance, the long strand of embroidery silk forever pulls through, unknotted. And it is expected that the bones should ache at Christmas, and the flesh cry out for weariness, and the brain be fagged to the excluding of more than a blurred impression of The Day when it is come.

In the Rumsey household the celebration of the festival began on Christmas Eve with a family gathering of children and grandchildren. There is a certain wild, last hour, preceding the moment of gracious and joyous bestowal, made up of frenzied haste and exhaustion. It was that hour now.

“Anne Rumsey calls it the tears and tissue-paper stage,” was told as evidence of Anne’s singular attitude towards the ways of the Christian world about her.

“And I am sure I don’t know what I’ve done to have any one as queer as Anne for my child,” Mrs. Rumsey, handsome, imposing, on her knees by the bed tying parcels, was saying to her married daughter, Florrie, come home with her babies for Christmas. “There’s no one prides themselves more on the conventional than I do, and I am sure you never did an unconventional thing in your life. But I suppose every family has to have its black sheep, not”—hastily at Florrie’s horrified disclaimer—“not that I mean that, of course—Florrie, how you take one up!—nor ugly duckling exactly, either, for Anne is the handsomest of you all—what did I tie in this package, do you know? I’m sure I don’t—but that a child of mine should thus deliberately each year stand apart, outside the Christmas spirit, while others—it almost looks as if I had not brought my children up with a proper regard for sacred things.”

Down-stairs, in the big, circular hallway, Anne Rumsey, outstretched in a long wicker chair, lay gazing into the fire. It was nice to lie there and watch the flames and listen to the crackle of the logs. Hickory logs seem to belong to Christmas. Anne’s grandfather, years ago, in the country, used to bring in hickory logs for Christmas. Anne had provided these for to-night herself. She had gone to a place in the country she knew of, and walked over to a farm and negotiated for them. She had waited a week for some member of her family to find time from shopping to make the jaunt with her, and then had gone alone. It was ideal December weather; the snow crunched under foot, the sky was brilliant, a top-knotted cardinal bird and a jay on a thorn-hedge against the blue looked at her as she passed along the road. It was good to be alive.

Her mother was testy that night at dinner. Her handsome face was flushed to floridness beneath her gray pompadour. “I’m sure I haven’t time to know whether the weather is perfect or not, if I half do my duty for my family at Christmas. For Heaven’s sake, Anne, don’t be so aggressively high-spirited; it gets on my nerves.”

And to-night, Christmas Eve, Anne lay looking into the fire. It was nice to know it was snowing outside those drawn curtains, it made one love their warmth and crimson more, and snow seems part of Christmas. That morning she had put holly about, idling over the pleasure of trying it here, there. Now she reveled in the color and cheer about her. She had dressed for the evening with a sort of childlike and smiling gaiety, slowly and pleasurably, because the dress seemed part of the season and the joy, and in the scarlet gown looked some dryad of the holly-tree herself, or some Elizabethan’s concept of the Twelfth Night spirit.

The outer door behind her opened to a latch-key and closed.

“Is that you, Daddy?” called Anne. “Come to the blaze and warm.”

“I can’t,” confessed the big-headed, square little man, struggling out of his overcoat; “I’m a disheveled wreck and I’ve got to dress for dinner, I suppose. What time do you look for ’em all around? God bless my soul, Anne, it’s good to see somebody composed and enjoying themselves. I’ve been looking for something for the grandchildren.”

“You said you were too busy, didn’t really have time——”

“Yes, yes, I did, I know I did, but——”

“—at the eleventh hour you rushed out; what did you buy, Daddy?”

“Just a trifle, a trifle around,” confessed John Rumsey hastily, moving towards the stairway; “just a trifle—been putting greenery around, Anne? It looks nice—but I’m worried by a sort of after-recollection. Didn’t I give Florrie’s boy a silver cup before, some time or other?”

Anne laughed; a teasing, yet a provoking laugh, too, it was. “Sort of mile-stones on the road to Dover, little John’s mugs will be, won’t they, father? This will make the——”

John Rumsey, with a plunge up the steps, sent back a sort of frenzied snort.

“Change your shoes,” called Anne after him; “it’s slushy down street, I know. I laid your clothes out; the buttons are in.”

“Thank the Lord!” John Rumsey’s voice came back. “I’ve been fighting my way through mobs, I’m exhausted.”

The dear, blessed, grizzle-headed little Daddy! It was he who, after the long pull, had made hickory fires and crimson hangings and silver mugs possible. The girl’s eyes softened to almost maternal tenderness. The dear, square-set, grizzled little Daddy!

Anne stretched her strong, young length in the chair and consciously luxuriated in the warmth, the richness, the beauty around her.

“It is like a hymn, the colors,” she was thinking.

Again a door opened, somewhere above this time, and protesting childish voices came down the stairway, the voices of sister Florrie’s babies come for Christmas. Anne’s eyes deepened as she listened, laughingly, yet broodingly.

It was sister Florrie answering:

“Now go on down to Norah, John Rumsey, and take your little sister. Go on! I’ll lose my mind if you say another word about Santy Claus; go on, I’ve got all that bed full of things to tie up yet——”

“But you said—” expostulated a small voice, the voice of little John Rumsey.

“I don’t care what I said—” a door closed violently.

A wail arose on the silence, the injured cry of Mary Wingate, the baby.

“Shut up, can’t you,” the fraternal tones of small John were heard requesting, “and come on.” Feet pattered along the hall as towards a rear stairway. “But she said afore we came to Grandpa’s, she did,” the voice of little John was reiterating as it grew fainter, “when she got time she’d tell me what Santy Claus looked like when she was little, afore his whiskers got white.”

Anne down-stairs laughed through merry yet fierce eyes. Babies belong to Christmas. Yet they could not come down here to her because of the decorations and the preparations which Florrie would not permit them to see beforehand.

Anne waxed hot in her soul, for babies belong to Christmas, or, rather, Christmas belongs to babies, and she loved babies. They are so honest, so unconquered, they look at the adult and its inconsistencies so uncompromisingly. So do boys, and she loved boys too. Babies and boys are the honestest things in life. Had Anne but known it, there was much of baby and of boy in her own nature; she attacked nobody’s convictions, only stood to her own. It gives one large liberty if one will be honest to self.

The footsteps of the babies, sent to some nether world, died away.

“Yet Christmas is meant for babies, or, rather, Christmas means A Baby.”

The girl rose. There were rooms opening around the hallway. It was at times such as this, with married sisters and brothers arriving with their families and laughter and jollity, that one loved it so, the space, and the beauty, and the means. At times such as Christmas one paused and thought about it all. The dear Daddy who had given it to them!

Anne crossed to one of the arched spaces and, pulling a curtain aside, went in. She left the hangings apart. The tree, glittering with scarlet and gold, and hung with delightful woolly lambs and Noah’s Arks and such like toys, would show joyously through the opening. And why not? Since it was her tree, for the tree had come to be her part and she had pottered around the whole happy, uninterrupted morning adorning it, since it was her tree it should stand unconcealed from first to last for its purpose—beauty, revel, festivity.

On salvers upon a table near the tree were bowls of glass and silver heaped with dates, figs, tamarinds, sweet pastes, nougats—luscious things that seemed to bring close, far-away Orient climes.

There seemed, too, in the colors and the appointments of the room, an Oriental sumptuousness pervading. Anne loved it, and laving in it, lent herself to it and stood with half-closed lids and parted lips, hands straight at sides, letting fancy be ravished, until she seemed to see——

Against an indigo sky wherein a star burned clear, three swift-footed, shadowy creatures swinging across sandy wastes, each uncouth back bearing in silhouette against the blue, a turbaned rider, eyes shielded by hand, gazing ahead——

Her eyes opened. It was lavish, the richness about her. There came a distaste. It was a simple and pastoral life those Orient Jewish people led. She had been there, she and Daddy, one delightful runaway journey together. Afterward her father had marked passages in a book and brought it to her, wherein it was put as neither he nor she could put it.

Now she walked to a bookcase, and taking out a slim volume, hunted passages, and finding them, read blissfully:

A total indifference to ... the vain appanage of the comfortable
which our drearier countries make necessary to us, was the
consequence of the sweet and simple life lived in Galilee.... The
countries which awaken few desires are the countries of idealism
and poesy. The accessories of life are there insignificant compared
with the pleasure of living.... The embellishment of the house is
superfluous, for it is frequented as little as possible.... This
contempt, when it is not caused by idleness, contributes greatly to
the elevation of the soul.

Anne, hunting passages, drew a long breath. She could love it too, the simple life of certain poverties.

We see the streets where Jesus played when a child in the stony
paths or little crossways which separate the dwellings. The house of
Joseph doubtless much resembled those poor shops lighted by the door,
serving at once for shop, kitchen, and bedroom, having for furniture
a mat, some cushions on the ground, one or two clay pots, and a
painted chest.

Where the little Jesus played! The eyes of Anne, lifting from the page, sought a niche where, in a golden frame, hung a picture, royal in indigo, purple and scarlet. It was a copy, but it was an honest one. The Baby’s head seemed verily to rest, to press, into the curve of Mary’s arm. The little head! And the brooding, jealous ecstasy in Mary’s face, and the little hand Mary was playfully uplifting! Was she dreaming great, beautiful dreams for the little son’s life to come? Does every woman dream mighty deeds for her man-child’s doing? And this Baby’s hand, uplifted there by Mary’s finger, the hand of the little Galilean peasant whose carpenter-father’s house boasted a few mats, one or two clay pots, and a painted chest: this little hand was to lift the human ideal out of materialism and set it above earthly things, and behold! nineteen hundred years are gone, and still that ideal shines high, clear, a star against the dome of Time, and wise men, following its leading, still are journeying, eyes shielded by hand, as they gaze ahead——

Mary’s little son, the peasant baby!

There was an opened piano in the room. Anne crossed to it. On her lips was a smile, an exultant, a jealous smile. She could feel the little head pressing into the curve of Mary’s arm.

Her fingers sought the keys. The notes were rich and deep and full; they filled the room and poured out into the hallway and rose——

Above stairs, from his own doorway, John Rumsey, struggling with the last details of a toilet, stood looking into his wife’s room. He was a big-headed, even a belligerent little man, but he stood as though hesitating once, twice, before speaking what was on his mind to say.

“Mary,” he had begun.

Mrs. Rumsey scarcely turned from the mêlée of jeweler’s boxes, ribbons, packages, surrounding her. “I can’t listen now; I’ve forgotten whom I could have meant this for——”

“But, Mary——”

“Heavens, John, don’t distract me; I have to dress yet——”

“Call Anne to help you.”

“Not at all,” with some asperity; “if Anne can so separate herself from the Christmas spirit as to abjure the preparing of any gifts herself, she’ll not be called on——”

“Mamma”—it was Florrie speaking from her room across the hall—“did you ever order the flowers for the dinner table?” appearing as she ended.

Mrs. Rumsey arose the picture of imposing and tragic despair. A small figure turned from between the curtains, where he was drawing figures on the moisture gathering on the pane. It was little John Rumsey.

“Aunt Anne went out and got them,” he said. “They are roses, they’re red.”

Now there were certain things destined to swell the portion of little John, as yet unwrapped.

“How did that child get in here?” demanded John’s grandmamma testily, even sharply; “now go on out. Didn’t your mother send you to Norah?”

“She put us out the kitchen, she’s helping ’em down there. She said we weren’t to see till everything was done.”

“Florrie,” besought Mrs. Rumsey, “please take him out. Gracious, child!” as the light fell upon the slender person of Florrie, “how ghastly tired you look! I told you that you were overdoing. There, there, don’t go to crying. Pour her some aromatic ammonia, Papa, it won’t hurt her; I’ve taken two doses myself since I got home. Sometimes I think it is a mistake to have them all here for Christmas Eve. Next year we’ll send the presents around and get the business over with and Christmas Day have them here in peace and quiet.”

“Mary,” the voice of Mr. Rumsey was insistent, “Donald Page is in town; got in this afternoon. I asked him to dinner to-night.”

There was silence. Some silences are ominous. Then from Florrie, looking from father to mother, timidly, perhaps, for Florrie loved peace:

“Does Anne know?”

“She wrote him. She brought her answer to me for sanction.”

“And you?” it was his wife asking.

“I sent it. She has waited a long time on you, Mary.”

Mrs. Rumsey had risen again, her lapful of ribbons and papers strewing the floor. “You sent it, and you asked him to dinner, Donald Page, absolutely come up out of the ranks——”

“I am out of the ranks,” said her husband.

“—and self-made, that is, if he ever is made at all.”

“I am self-made,” said John Rumsey.

Mary Rumsey, imposing in her maturity, handsome, surveyed him. She was a Wingate and they are an arrogant blood.

“I am self-made,” repeated John Rumsey, looking at her steadily.

“I have never forgotten it,” said Mary, his wife, her eyes measuring him.

The little boy at the window was gazing at these older people. His eyes were big.

“Oh,” Florrie was saying, “Mamma.”

They were looking at each other, the man and the woman, long married. Her eyes were hard, and his were sorrowful.

A few chords from the piano reached them. It was Anne; they knew her touch, and it was Anne’s voice now arising, sweet, strong, trembling with the passion of it.

For it was Christmas Eve. Else why this room strewn with holly and gifts and scarlet ribbons, else why this spiciness of cedar pervading the house, else why Anne’s noël arising?

The words came up to them, words that had belonged to Christmas at the small, old-fashioned church where the Rumseys once had been wont to go.

The little boy slipped out into the hall. They heard him pattering down to Anne.

Mary Rumsey, with a gesture of contrition like any girl’s, went to her husband, and the next moment was crying on the little man’s shoulder and his hand was patting her soothingly, gently.

For it was Christmas Eve, eve of the night when Christ was born, and Anne was singing of it:

“For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn,
Fall on your knees! O hear the angel voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born,
O night, O night divine!”

And down-stairs Anne, turning from the piano to the little nephew standing there, drew him to her with a kind of rapture, for children belong to Christmas, children and simple joys and memories and loves.

And then, a servant opening the door, Donald Page came in out of the night, big, steadfast-looking Donald, with something somewhere of the grimness of the fight in his eyes, and Anne went from the room out to the hall to meet him.

It was very big and simple, the gesture of her hands, as with one who gives all.