Chapter VI: Part III (2)

And then little John Rumsey gasped, for his Aunty Anne was lifting her face even as baby sister might, to a tall and strange man to be kissed.

Gifts had been given and the evening was almost over. Anne Rumsey’s sister-in-law was speaking, under cover of voices and merriment and confusion, to Anne’s sister:

“It saves Anne trouble, of course, but to put one’s self outside it all, and give nothing at Christmas, I don’t see how Anne can.”

[6] By permission of the author and “McClure’s Magazine.”

TO SPRINGVALE FOR CHRISTMAS[7]

Her children arise up and call her blessed.

_Zona Gale_

When President Arthur Tilton of Briarcliff College, who usually used a two-cent stamp, said “Get me Chicago, please,” his secretary was impressed, looked for vast educational problems to be in the making, and heard instead:

“Ed? Well, Ed, you and Rick and Grace and I are going out to Springvale for Christmas.... Yes, well, I’ve got a family too, you recall. But mother was seventy last Fall and—Do you realize that it’s eleven years since we’ve all spent Christmas with her? Grace has been every year. She’s going this year. And so are we! And take her the best Christmas she ever had, too. Ed, mother was _seventy_ last Fall——”

At dinner, he asked his wife what would be a suitable gift, a very special gift, for a woman of seventy. And she said: “Oh, your mother. Well, dear, I should think the material for a good wool dress would be right. I’ll select it for you, if you like—” He said that he would see, and he did not reopen the subject.

In town on December twenty-fourth he timed his arrival to allow him an hour in a shop. There he bought a silver-gray silk of a fineness and a lightness which pleased him and at a price which made him comfortably guilty. And at the shop, Ed, who was Edward McKillop Tilton, head of a law firm, picked him up.

“Where’s your present?” Arthur demanded.

Edward drew a case from his pocket and showed him a tiny gold wrist-watch of decent manufacture and explained: “I expect you’ll think I’m a fool, but you know that mother has told time for fifty years by the kitchen clock, or else the shield of the black-marble parlor angel who never goes—you get the idea?—and so I bought her this.”

At the station was Grace, and the boy who bore her bag bore also a parcel of great dimensions.

“Mother already has a feather bed,” Arthur reminded her.

“They won’t let you take an automobile into the coach,” Edward warned her.

“It’s a rug for the parlor,” Grace told them. “You know it _is_ a parlor—one of the few left in the Mississippi valley. And mother has had that ingrain down since before we left home——”

Grace’s eyes were misted. Why would women always do that? This was no occasion for sentiment. This was a merry Christmas.

“Very nice. And Ricky’d better look sharp,” said Edward dryly.

Ricky never did look sharp. About trains he was conspicuously ignorant. He had no occupation. Some said that he “wrote,” but no one had ever seen anything that he had written. He lived in town—no one knew how—never accepted a cent from his brothers and was beloved of every one, most of all of his mother.

“Ricky won’t bring anything, of course,” they said.

But when the train had pulled out without him, observably, a porter came staggering through the cars carrying two great suitcases and following a perturbed man of forty-something who said, “Oh, here you are!” as if it were they who were missing, and squeezed himself and his suitcases among brothers and sister and rug. “I had only a minute to spare,” he said regretfully. “If I’d had two, I could have snatched some flowers. I flung ’em my card and told ’em to send ’em.”

“Why are you taking so many lugs?” they wanted to know.

Ricky focused on the suitcases. “Just necessities,” he said. “Just the presents. I didn’t have room to get in anything else.”

“Presents! What?”

“Well,” said Ricky, “I’m taking books. I know mother doesn’t care much for books, but the bookstore’s the only place I can get trusted.”

They turned over his books: Fiction, travel, biography, a new illustrated edition of the Bible—they were willing to admire his selection. And Grace said confusedly but appreciatively: “You know, the parlor bookcase has never had a thing in it excepting a green curtain _over_ it!”

And they were all borne forward, well pleased.

Springvale has eight hundred inhabitants. As they drove through the principal street at six o’clock on that evening of December twenty-fourth, all that they expected to see abroad was the pop-corn wagon and a cat or two. Instead they counted seven automobiles and estimated thirty souls, and no one paid the slightest attention to them as strangers. Springvale was becoming metropolitan. There was a new church on one corner and a store-building bore the sign “Public Library.” Even the little hotel had a rubber-plant in the window and a strip of cretonne overhead.

The three men believed themselves to be a surprise. But, mindful of the panic to be occasioned by four appetites precipitated into a Springvale ménage, Grace had told. Therefore the parlor was lighted and heated, there was in the air of the passage an odor of brown gravy which, no butler’s pantry ever having inhibited, seemed a permanent savory. By the happiest chance, Mrs. Tilton had not heard their arrival nor—the parlor angel being in her customary eclipse and the kitchen grandfather’s clock wrong—had she begun to look for them. They slipped in, they followed Grace down the hall, they entered upon her in her gray gingham apron worn over her best blue serge, and they saw her first in profile, frosting a lemon pie. With some assistance from her, they all took her in their arms at once.

“Aren’t you surprised?” cried Edward in amazement.

“I haven’t got over being surprised,” she said placidly, “since I first heard you were coming!”

She gazed at them tenderly, with flour on her chin, and then she said: “There’s something you won’t like. We’re going to have the Christmas dinner to-night.”

Their clamor that they would entirely like that did not change her look.

“Our church couldn’t pay the minister this Winter,” she said, “on account of the new church-building. So the minister and his wife are boarding around with the congregation. To-morrow’s their day to come here for a week. It’s a hard life and I didn’t have the heart to change ’em.”

Her family covered their regret as best they could and entered upon her little feast. At the head of her table, with her four “children” about her, and father’s armchair left vacant, they perceived that she was not quite the figure they had been thinking her. In this interval they had grown to think of her as a pathetic figure. Not because their father had died, not because she insisted on Springvale as a residence, not because of her eyes. Just pathetic. Mothers of grown children, they might have given themselves the suggestion, were always pathetic. But here was mother, a definite person with poise and with ideas, who might be proud of her offspring, but who, in her heart, never forgot that they _were_ her offspring and that she was the parent stock.

“I wouldn’t eat two pieces of that pie,” she said to President Tilton; “it’s pretty rich.” And he answered humbly: “Very well, mother.” And she took with composure Ricky’s light chant:

“Now, you must remember, wherever you are,
That you are the jam, but your mother’s the jar.”

“Certainly, my children,” she said. “And I’m about to tell you when you may have your Christmas presents. Not to-night. Christmas eve is no proper time for presents. It’s stealing a day outright. And you miss the fun of looking forward all night long. The only proper time for the presents is after breakfast on Christmas morning, _after_ the dishes are washed. The minister and his wife may get here any time from nine on. That means we’ve got to get to bed early!”

President Arthur Tilton lay in his bed looking at the muslin curtain on which the street-lamp threw the shadow of a bare elm which he remembered. He thought:

“She’s a pioneer spirit. She’s the kind who used to go ahead any way, even if they had missed the emigrant party, and who used to cross the plains alone. She’s the backbone of the world. I wish I could megaphone that to the students at Briarcliff who think their mothers ‘try to boss’ them!”

“Don’t leave your windows open too far,” he heard from the hall. “The wind’s changed.”

In the light of a snowy morning the home parlor showed the cluttered commonplace of a room whose furniture and ornaments were not believed to be beautiful and most of them known not to be useful. Yet when—after the dishes were washed—these five came to the leather chair which bore the gifts, the moment was intensely satisfactory. This in spite of the sense of haste with which the parcels were attacked—lest the minister and his wife arrive in their midst.

“That’s one reason,” Mrs. Tilton said, “why I want to leave part of my Christmas for you until I take you to the train to-night. Do you care?”

“I’ll leave a present I know about until then too,” said Ricky. “May I?”

“Come on now, though,” said President Arthur Tilton. “I want to see mother get her dolls.”

It was well that they were not of an age to look for exclamations of delight from mother. To every gift her reaction was one of startled rebuke.

“Grace! How could you? All that money! Oh, it’s beautiful! But the old one would have done me all my life.... Why, Edward! You extravagant boy! I never had a watch in my life. You ought not to have gone to all that expense. Arthur Tilton! A silk dress! What a firm piece of goods! I don’t know what to say to you—you’re all too good to me!”

At Ricky’s books she stared and said: “My dear boy, you’ve been very reckless. Here are more books than I can ever read—now. Why, that’s almost more than they’ve got to start the new library with. And you spent all that money on me!”

It dampened their complacence, but they understood her concealed delight and they forgave her an honest regret at their modest prodigality. For, when they opened her gifts for them, they felt the same reluctance to take the hours and hours of patient knitting for which these stood.

“Hush, and hurry,” was her comment, “or the minister’ll get us!”

The minister and his wife, however, were late. The second side of the turkey was ready and the mince pie hot when, toward noon, they came to the door—a faint little woman and a thin man with beautiful, exhausted eyes. They were both in some light glow of excitement and disregarded Mrs. Tilton’s efforts to take their coats.

“No,” said the minister’s wife. “No. We do beg your pardon. But we find we have to go into the country this morning.”

“It is absolutely necessary to us that we go into the country,” said the minister earnestly. “This morning,” he added impressively.

“Into the country! You’re going to be here for dinner.”

They were firm. They had to go into the country. They shook hands almost tenderly with these four guests. “We just heard about you in the post-office,” they said. “Merry Christmas—oh, Merry Christmas! We’ll be back about dark.”

They left their two shabby suitcases on the hall floor and went away.

“All the clothes they’ve got between them would hardly fill these up,” said Mrs. Tilton mournfully. “Why on earth do you suppose they’d turn their back on a dinner that smells so good and go off into the country at noon on Christmas Day? They wouldn’t do that for another invitation. Likely somebody’s sick,” she ended, her puzzled look denying her tone of finality.

“Well, thank the Lord for the call to the country,” said Ricky shamelessly. “It saved our day.”

They had their Christmas dinner, they had their afternoon—safe and happy and uninterrupted. Five commonplace-looking folk in a commonplace-looking house, but the eye of love knew that this was not all. In the wide sea of their routine they had found and taken for their own this island day, unforgettable.

“I thought it was going to be a gay day,” said Ricky at its close, “but it hasn’t. It’s been heavenly! Mother, shall we give them the rest of their presents now, you and I?”

“Not yet,” she told them. “Ricky, I want to whisper to you.”

She looked so guilty that they all laughed at her. Ricky was laughing when he came back from that brief privacy. He was still laughing mysteriously when his mother turned from a telephone call.

“What do you think!” she cried. “That was the woman that brought me my turkey. She knew the minister and his wife were to be with me to-day. She wants to know why they’ve been eating a lunch in a cutter out that way. Do you suppose——”

They all looked at one another doubtfully, then in abrupt conviction. “They went because they wanted us to have the day to ourselves!”

“Arthur,” said Mrs. Tilton with immense determination, “let me whisper to you, too.” And from that moment’s privacy he also returned smiling, but a bit ruefully.

“Mother ought to be the president of a university,” he said.

“Mother ought to be the head of a law firm,” said Edward.

“Mother ought to write a book about herself,” said Ricky.

“Mother’s mother,” said Grace, “and that’s enough. But you’re all so mysterious, except me.”

“Grace,” said Mrs. Tilton, “you remind me that I want to whisper to you.”

Their train left in the late afternoon. Through the white streets they walked to the station, the somber little woman, the buoyant, capable daughter, the three big sons. She drew them to seclusion down by the baggage-room and gave them four envelopes.

“Here’s the rest of my Christmas for you,” she said. “I’d rather you’d open it on the train. Now, Ricky, what’s yours?”

She was firm to their protests. The train was whistling when Ricky owned up that the rest of his Christmas present for mother was a brand-new daughter, to be acquired as soon as his new book was off the press. “We’re going to marry on the advance royalty,” he said importantly, “and live on—” The rest was lost in the roar of the express.

“Edward!” shouted Mrs. Tilton. “Come here. I want to whisper——”

She was obliged to shout it, whatever it was. But Edward heard, and nodded, and kissed her. There was time for her to slip something in Ricky’s pocket and for the other good-bys, and then the train drew out. From the platform they saw her brave, calm face against the background of the little town. A mother of “grown children” pathetic? She seemed to them at that moment the one supremely triumphant figure in life.

They opened their envelopes soberly and sat soberly over the contents. The note, scribbled to Grace, explained: Mother wanted to divide up now what she had had for them in her will. She would keep one house and live on the rent from the other one, and “here’s all the rest.” They laughed at her postscript:

“Don’t argue. I ought to give the most—I’m the mother.”

“And look at her,” said Edward solemnly. “As soon as she heard about Ricky, there at the station, she whispered to me that she wanted to send Ricky’s sweetheart the watch I’d just given her. Took it off her wrist then and there.”

“That must be what she slipped in my pocket,” said Ricky.

It was.

“She asked me,” he said, “if I minded if she gave those books to the new Springvale public library.”

“She asked me,” said Grace, “if I cared if she gave the new rug to the new church that can’t pay its minister.”

President Arthur Tilton shouted with laughter.

“When we heard where the minister and his wife ate their Christmas dinner,” he said, “she whispered to ask me whether she might give the silk dress to her when they get back to-night.”

All this they knew by the time the train reached the crossing where they could look back on Springvale. On the slope of the hill lay the little cemetery, and Ricky said:

“And she told me that if my flowers got there before dark, she’d take them up to the cemetery for Christmas for father. By night she won’t have even a flower left to tell her we’ve been there.”

“Not even the second side of the turkey,” said Grace, “and yet I think——”

“So do I,” her brothers said.

[7] By permission of the author and the “Delineator.”

EMMY JANE’S CHRISTMAS[8]

_Julia B. Tenney_

Mawnin’, Miss Johnson. Is yer out doin’ yer Chris’mas shoppin’? You sure is de forehandestest pusson I eber did see. Here ’tis five whole days ’fore Chris’mas, an’ you ’most frough gettin’ ready.

What ’s we goin’ ter do? Why, jes as usu’l, an’ dat ’s good ’nough fer we. You see, we spends Chris’mas day sorter foragin’ roun’ ’mongst de white folks, an’ c’llectin’ things tergether, an’ ketchin’ ’em Chris’mas gif’; den de nex’ day we all has _our_ Chris’mas.

What? We ain’t got it on de right date? What’s dat got to do wid de ’joyment ob it, I’d like to know? An’, anyhow, no one doan’ know fer sure what is de right date nohow, ’ca’se dere ain’t no one erlivin’ now what was erlive when Chris’mas started in on us, an’ if dere was, I wouldn’ b’lieve him nohow, ’ca’se he’d be too ole ter trus’ his mem’ry. So one day’s as good as anudder, an’ maybe better. Dis here way suits _me_, an’ it saves er lot ob trouble an’ hard wuk, not ter speak ob de money.

Dis is de way we wuks it, an’ ’scusin’ de walkin’ roun’ an’ totin’ de load home, it ain’t no trouble ’t all.

We ’vides de city up into pahts. I teks de av’nues, ’Lindy teks de lengthways streets, li’le Polly Ann an’ John Andrew de cross streets, an’ Jeemes William—my ole man—de gen’lemen’s clubs. We all has our own way ob doin’ it, but we all gits de things.

Jeemes William he jes’ stan’s near de do’ ob de club-houses wid his hat in his han’, an’ as de gen’men goes in, he says ter all ob de sassy-lookin’ ones, “Chris’mas gif’, Gen’al,” an’ p’ints ter de army-button what he foun’ in de White Lot, an’ what he puts in his buttonhole on dese ’casions. Den as de South’rn gen’men goes in, he hol’s dat li’le ’Federate flag ober de button an’ says, “Chris’mas gif’, Massa.” An’ I’ve knowed him ter come home wid as much as twelve dollars in his pocket jes f’om his good manners; dey is so skase nowerdays, wid all dis passle ob young niggers growin’ up roun’ here, dat de white folks is willin’ ter pay high fer ’em when dey do come ’cross ’em.

’Lindy she puts on dat black alpacky frock of hern an’ er white collar an’ a starched white ap’on, an’ she takes de rich-lookin’ houses an’ rings de bells an’ asks kin she hope out wid de extra wuk jes fur er tas’e ob de Chris’mas-time, an’ dat fetches some one ’fore she’s made more ’n five or six tries, an’ den she jes lays herse’f out ter please de white folks, an’ ebery endurin’ one ob dem gibs her sumpen ’nudder what they doan’ want an’ what somebody else done gib _dem_, an’ as ’Lindy mos’ in gen’al picks out de big famblies, dere ain’t no mean showin’ f’om her.

Polly Ann an’ John Andrew dey sings “I ’s er-rovin’ li’le darky all de way f’om Alabam’” an’ some yudder sech chunes un’er de winders, an’ folks t’rows dem pennies an’ nickels, an’ lots ob ’em gibs ’em cakes an’ or’nges an’ candy an’ de like er dat.

Me? How do I git my share? Now yer ’ll laugh! Jeemes William say’, “No one would n’t thunk er sech er thing ’cep’in’ you, Emmy Jane,” but I ain’t nuss nine li’le white chillun, ’sides thirteen ob my own piccaninnies, countin’ de halves an’ de dade ones, an’ not learn nothin’ ter hope me ’long in dis world.

I jes puts on er clean purple caliker frock an’ er stiff white ap’on wid er white handkuchief roun’ my neck, an’ I ties er colored handkuchief ober my h’ad ter make our kind er white folks ’member de days when we all uster be jes like one family, an’ laugh an’ cry togeder, an’ dat ’s how come it dat I done foun’ out so many ob de quality.

What I do ’sides dress up like ole times? Well, all de endurin’ year I saves up all de putty fedders f’om de tu’keys an’ chickens an’ geese an’ sech, an’ I gets me er ball ob red cord fer five cents, an’ I ties de fedders up in li’le bunches an’ puts ’em in er basket.

Chris’mas I teks dat basket on my arm, an’ I s’lec’s de houses where dey is babies, an’ dere is plenty ob ’em on de av’nues, too, ’spite ob Mr. Roosterfelt er-sayin’ rich chillun is fallin’ off in comin’ ter our big cities. He oughter hab my job one year an’ see fer hisse’f.

Well, I rings de bell an’ asks kin I gib de baby er Chris’mas gif’, an’ ’most ebery fambly say “Yes,” an’ brings de baby out, an’ acts pleased-like. Den I hol’s out my arms to de li’le chile an’ says, “Come ter Mammy, Honey!” an’ most in gen’al dey jumps right to me, an’ dat settles de mas an’ pas.

Den I s’lec’s er bunch ob fedders an’ gibs dem to de baby. All chillun, white or black, loves to play wid fedders. Reckon it’s ’ca’se dey ain’t so long lef’ dem off in de wing-country what dey come f’om, an’ I tell you dat basket is er heap sight heavier on de home trip dan on de goin’ out.

Next day we all brings out our pickin’s an’ we builds er fire in de bes’ room, an’ _den’s_ our Chris’mas.

Doan’ we _give_ no presen’s? Co’s we does. We s’lec’s all de things what we doan’ want, same as de white folks does, an’ we makes er pile ob ’em, den we makes a lis’ ob de names ob de people what we wants ter gib to,—’Lindy she does dat paht, ’ca’se she’s had schoolin’ an’ kin write grand,—den we blin’fol’s li’le John Andrew, an’ ’Lindy she calls out er name, an’ John Andrew grabs er gif’. Dat ’s how come you ter git er pair of gallusses, an’ Daddy Bundy er long gingham ap’on las’ year.

I hopes de givin’ dis year will turn ter tu’key an’ cranberry, jes fer de sake ob ole times down home. I sure does get lonesome fer de ole place roun’ ’bout Chris’mas.

[8] By permission of The Century Co.

DAVID’S STAR OF BETHLEHEM[9]

_Christine Whiting Parmenter_

Scott Carson reached home in a bad humor. Nancy, slipping a telltale bit of red ribbon into her workbasket, realized this as soon as he came in.

It was the twenty-first of December, and a white Christmas was promised. Snow had been falling for hours, and in most of the houses wreaths were already in the windows. It was what one calls “a Christmasy-feeling day,” yet, save for that red ribbon in Nancy’s basket, there was no sign in the Carson home of the approaching festival.

Scott said, kissing her absent-mindedly and slumping into a big chair, “This snow is the very limit. If the wind starts blowing there’ll be a fierce time with the traffic. My train was twenty minutes late as it is, and—There’s the bell. Who can it be at this hour? I want my dinner.”

“I’ll go to the door,” said Nancy hurriedly, as he started up. “Selma’s putting dinner on the table now.”

Relaxing into his chair Scott heard her open the front door, say something about the storm and, after a moment, wish someone a Merry Christmas.

A Merry Christmas! He wondered that she could say it so calmly. Three years ago on Christmas morning, they had lost their boy—swiftly—terribly—without warning. Meningitis, the doctor said. Only a few hours before the child had seemed a healthy, happy youngster, helping them trim the tree; hoping, with a twinkle in the brown eyes so like his mother’s, that Santa Claus would remember the fact that he wanted skis! He had gone happily to bed after Nancy had read them “The Night Before Christmas,” a custom of early childhood’s days that the eleven-year-old lad still clung to. Later his mother remembered, with a pang, that when she kissed him good night he had said his head felt kind of funny. But she had left him light-heartedly enough and gone down to help Scott fill the stockings. Santa had not forgotten the skis; but Jimmy never saw them.

Three years—and the memory still hurt so much that the very thought of Christmas was agony to Scott Carson. Jimmy had slipped away just as the carolers stopped innocently beneath his window, their voices rising clear and penetrating on the dawn-sweet air:

“Silent night—holy night....”

Scott arose suddenly. He _must_ not live over that time again. “Who was it?” he asked gruffly as Nancy joined him, and understanding the gruffness she answered tactfully, “Only the expressman.”

“What’d he bring?”

“Just a—a package.”

“One naturally supposes that,” replied her husband, with a touch of sarcasm. Then, suspicion gripping him, he burst out, “Look here! If you’ve been getting a Christmas gift for me, I—I won’t have it. I told you I wanted to forget Christmas. I——”

“I know, dear,” she broke in hastily. “The package was only from Aunt Mary.”

“Didn’t you tell her we weren’t keeping Christmas?” he demanded irritably.

“Yes, Scott; but—but you know Aunt Mary! Come now, dinner’s on and I think it’s a good one. You’ll feel better after you eat.”

But Scott found it unaccountably hard to eat; and later, when Nancy was reading aloud in an effort to soothe him, he could not follow. She had chosen something humorous and diverting; but in the midst of a paragraph he spoke, and she knew that he had not been listening.

“Nancy,” he said, “is there any place—any place on God’s earth where we can get away from Christmas?”

She looked up, answering with sweet gentleness, “It would be a hard place to find, Scott.”

He faced her suddenly: “I feel as if I couldn’t stand it—the trees—the carols—the merrymaking, you know. Oh, if I could only sleep this week away! But ... I’ve been thinking.... Would—would you consider for one moment going up to camp with me for a day or two? I’d gone alone, but——”

“Alone!” she echoed. “Up there in the wilderness at Christmas time? Do you think I’d let you?”

“But it would be hard for you, dear, cold and uncomfortable. I’m a brute to ask it, and yet——”

Nancy was thinking rapidly. They could not escape Christmas, of course. No change of locality could make them forget the anniversary of the day that Jimmy went away. But she was worried about Scott, and the change of scene might help him over the difficult hours ahead. The camp, situated on the mountain a mile from any neighbors, would at least be isolated. There was plenty of bedding, and a big fireplace. It was worth trying.

She said, cheerfully, “I’ll go with you, dear. Perhaps the change will make things easier for both of us.”

This was Tuesday, and on Thursday afternoon they stepped off the north-bound train and stood on the platform watching it vanish into the mountains. The day was crisp and cold. “Two above,” the station master told them as they went into the box of a station and moved instinctively toward the red-hot “air-tight” which gave forth grateful warmth.

“I sent a telegram yesterday to Clem Hawkins, over on the mountain road,” said Scott. “I know you don’t deliver a message so far off; but I took a chance. Do you know if he got it?”

“Yep. Clem don’t have a ’phone, but the boy come down for some groceries and I sent it up. If I was you, though, I’d stay to the Central House. Seems as if it would be more cheerful—Christmas time.”

“I guess we’ll be comfortable enough if Hawkins airs out, and lights a fire,” replied Scott, his face hardening at this innocent mention of the holiday. “Is there anyone around here who’ll take us up? I’ll pay well for it, of course.”

“Iry Morse’ll go; but you’ll have to walk from Hawkinses. The road ain’t dug out beyond.... There’s Iry now. You wait, an’ I’ll holler to him. Hey, Iry!” he called, going to the door, “Will you carry these folks up to Hawkinses? They’ll pay for it.”

“Iry,” a ruddy-faced young farmer, obligingly appeared, his gray work horse hitched to a one-seated sleigh of ancient and uncomfortable design.

“Have to sit three on a seat,” he explained cheerfully; “but we’ll be all the warmer for it. Tuck the buffalo robe ’round the lady’s feet, mister, and you and me’ll use the horse blanket. Want to stop to the store for provisions?”

“Yes, I brought some canned stuff, but we’ll need other things,” said Nancy. “I’ve made a list.”

“Well, you got good courage,” grinned the station master. “I hope you don’t get froze to death up in the woods. Merry Christmas to yer, anyhow!”

“The same to you!” responded Nancy, smiling; and noted with a stab of pain that her husband’s sensitive lips were trembling.

Under Ira’s cheerful conversation, however, Scott relaxed. They talked of crops, the neighbors, and local politics—safe subjects all; but as they passed the district school, where a half-dozen sleighs or flivvers were parked, the man explained: “Folks decoratin’ the school for the doin’s to-morrow afternoon. Christmas tree for the kids, and pieces spoke, and singin’. We got a real live school-ma’am this year, believe _me_!”

They had reached the road that wound up the mountain toward the Hawkins farm, and as they plodded on, a sudden wind arose that cut their faces. Snow creaked under the runners, and as the sun sank behind the mountain Nancy shivered, not so much with cold as with a sense of loneliness and isolation. It was Scott’s voice that roused her:

“Should we have brought snowshoes? I didn’t realize that we couldn’t be carried all the way.”

“Guess you’ll get there all right,” said Ira. “Snow’s packed hard as a drum-head, and it ain’t likely to thaw yet a while. Here you are,” as he drew up before the weatherbeaten, unpainted farm house. “You better step inside a minute and warm up.”

A shrewish-looking woman was already at the door, opening it but a crack, in order to keep out fresh air and cold.

“I think,” said Nancy, with a glance at the deepening shadows, “that we’d better keep right on. I wonder if there’s anybody here who’d help carry our bags and provisions.”

“There ain’t,” answered the woman, stepping outside and pulling a faded gray sweater around her shoulders. “Clem’s gone to East Conroy with the eggs, and Dave’s up to the camp keepin’ yer fire goin’. You can take the sled and carry yer stuff on that. There ’tis, by the gate. Dave’ll bring it back when he comes. An’ tell him to hurry. Like as not, Clem won’t get back in time fer milkin’.”

“I thought Dave was goin’ to help Teacher decorate the school this afternoon,” ventured Ira. He was unloading their things as he spoke and roping them to the sled.

“So’d he,” responded the woman; “but there wa’n’t no one else to light that fire, was they? Guess it won’t hurt him none to work for his livin’ like other folks. That new school-ma’am, she thinks o’ nothin’ but——”

“Oh, look here!” said the young man, straightening up, a belligerent light in his blue eyes, “it’s Christmas! Can Dave go back with me if I stop and milk for him? They’ll be workin’ all evenin’—lots o’ fun for a kid like him, and——”

“No, he can’t!” snapped the woman. “His head’s enough turned now with speakin’ pieces and singin’ silly songs. You better be gettin’ on, folks. I can’t stand here talkin’ till mornin’.”

She slammed the door, while Ira glared after her retreating figure, kicked the gate post to relieve his feelings, and then grinned sheepishly.

“Some grouch! Why, she didn’t even ask you in to get warm! Well, I wouldn’t loiter if I was you. And send that kid right back, or he’ll get worse’n a tongue-lashin’. Well, good-by to you, folks. Hope you have a Merry Christmas.”

The tramp up the mountain passed almost entirely in silence, for it took their united energy to drag the sled up that steep grade against the wind. Scott drew a breath of relief when they beheld the camp, a spiral of smoke rising from its big stone chimney like a welcome promise of warmth.

“Looks grand, doesn’t it? But it’ll be dark before that boy gets home. I wonder how old——”

They stopped simultaneously as a clear, sweet voice sounded from within the cabin:

“Silent night ... holy night....”

“My God!”

Scott’s face went suddenly dead white. He threw out a hand as if to brush something away, but Nancy caught it in hers pulling it close against her wildly beating heart.

“All is calm ... all is bright.”

The childish treble came weirdly from within, while Nancy cried, “Scott—dearest, don’t let go! It’s only the little boy singing the carols he’s learned in school. Don’t you see? Come! Pull yourself together. We must go in.”

Even as she spoke the door swung open, and through blurred vision they beheld the figure of a boy standing on the threshold. He was a slim little boy with an old, oddly wistful face, and big brown eyes under a thatch of yellow hair.

“You the city folks that was comin’ up? Here, I’ll help carry in yer things.”

Before either could protest he was down on his knees in the snow, untying Ira’s knots with skillful fingers. He would have lifted the heavy suit case himself, had not Scott, jerked back to the present by the boy’s action, interfered.

“I’ll carry that in.” His voice sounded queer and shaky. “You take the basket. We’re late, I’m afraid. You’d better hurry home before it gets too dark. Your mother said——”

“I don’t mind the dark,” said the boy quietly, as they went within. “I’ll coast most o’ the way down, anyhow. Guess you heard me singin’ when you come along.” He smiled, a shy, embarrassed smile as he explained: “It was a good chance to practice the Christmas carols. They won’t let me, ’round home. We’re goin’ to have a show at the school to-morrow. I’m one o’ the three kings—you know—‘We three kings of Orient are.’ I sing the first verse all by myself,” he added with childish pride.

There followed a moment’s silence. Nancy was fighting a desire to put her arms about the slim boyish figure, while Scott had turned away, unbuckling the straps of his suit case with fumbling hands. Then Nancy said, “I’m afraid we’ve kept you from helping at the school this afternoon. I’m so sorry.”

The boy drew a resigned breath that struck her as strangely unchildlike.

“You needn’t to mind, ma’am. Maybe they wouldn’t have let me go anyway; and I’ve got to-morrow to think about. I—I been reading one o’ your books. I like to read.”

“What book was it? Would you like to take it home with you for a—” She glanced at Scott, still on his knees by the suit case, and finished hurriedly—“a Christmas gift?”

“Gee! Wouldn’t I!” His wistful eyes brightened, then clouded. “Is there a place maybe where I could hide it ’round here? They don’t like me to read much to home. They” (a hard look crept into his young eyes), “they burned up the book Teacher gave me a while back. It was ‘David Copperfield,’ and I hadn’t got it finished.”

There came a crash as Scott, rising suddenly, upset a chair. The child jumped, and then laughed at himself for being startled.

“Look here, sonny,” said Scott huskily, “you must be getting home. Can you bring us some milk to-morrow? I’ll find a place to hide your book and tell you about it then. Haven’t you got a warmer coat than this?”

He lifted a shabby jacket from the settle and held it out while the boy slipped into it.

“Thanks, mister,” he said. “It’s hard gettin’ it on because it’s tore inside. They’s only one button,” he added, as Scott groped for them. “She don’t get much time to sew ’em on. I’ll bring up the milk to-morrow mornin’. I got to hurry now or I’ll get fits! Thanks for the book, ma’am. I’d like it better’n anything. Good night.”

Standing at the window Nancy watched him start out in the fast descending dusk. It hurt her to think of that lonely walk; but she thrust the thought aside and turned to Scott, who had lighted a fire on the hearth and seemed absorbed in the dancing flames.

“That’s good!” she said cheerfully. “I’ll get things started for supper, and then make the bed. I’m weary enough to turn in early. You might bring me the canned stuff in your suit case, Scott. A hot soup ought to taste good to-night.”

She took an apron from her bag and moved toward the tiny kitchen. Dave evidently knew how to build a fire. The stove lids were almost red, and the kettle was singing. Nancy went about her preparations deftly, tired though she was from the unaccustomed tramp, while Scott opened a can of soup, toasted some bread, and carried their meal on a tray to the settles before the hearthfire. It was all very cozy and “Christmasy,” thought Nancy, with the wind blustering outside and the flames leaping up the chimney. But she was strangely quiet. The thought of that lonely little figure trudging off in the gray dusk persisted, despite her efforts to forget. It was Scott who spoke, saying out of a silence, “I wonder how old he is.”

“The—the little boy?”

He nodded, and she answered gently, “He seemed no older than—I mean, he seemed very young to be milking cows and doing chores.”

Again Scott nodded, and a moment passed before he said, “The work wouldn’t hurt him though, if he were strong enough; but—did you notice, Nancy, he didn’t look half fed? He is an intelligent little chap, though, and his voice—Good lord!” he broke off suddenly, “how can a shrew like that bring such a child into the world? To burn his book! Nancy, I can’t understand how things are ordered. Here’s that poor boy struggling for development in an unhappy atmosphere—and our Jimmy, who had love, and understanding, and—Tell me, why is it?”

She stretched out a tender hand; but the question remained unanswered, and the meal was finished in silence.

Dave did not come with the milk next morning. They waited till nearly noon, and then tramped off in the snow-clad, pine-scented woods. It was a glorious day, with diamonds sparkling on every fir tree, and they came back refreshed, and ravenous for their delayed meal. Scott wiped the dishes, whistling as he worked. It struck his wife that he hadn’t whistled like that for months. Later, the last kitchen rites accomplished, she went to the window, where he stood gazing down the trail.

“He won’t come now, Scott.”

“The kid? It’s not three yet, Nancy.”

“But the party begins at four. I suppose everyone for miles around will be there. I wish—” She was about to add that she wished they could have gone too, but something in Scott’s face stopped the words. She said instead, “Do you think we’d better go for the milk ourselves?”

“What’s the use? They’ll all be at the shindig, even that sour-faced woman, I suppose. But somehow—I feel worried about the boy. If he isn’t here bright and early in the morning I’ll go down and see what’s happened. Looks as if it were clouding up again, doesn’t it? Perhaps we’ll get snowed in!”

Big, lazy-looking snowflakes were already beginning to drift down. Scott piled more wood on the fire, and stretched out on the settle for a nap. But Nancy was restless. She found herself standing repeatedly at the window looking at the snow. She was there when at last Scott stirred and wakened. He sat up blinking, and asked, noting the twilight, “How long have I been asleep?”

Nancy laughed, relieved to hear his voice after the long stillness.

“It’s after five.”

“Good thunder!” He arose, putting an arm across her shoulders. “Poor girl! I haven’t been much company on this trip! But I didn’t sleep well last night, couldn’t get that boy out of my mind. Why, look!” Scott was staring out of the window into the growing dusk. “Here he is now! I thought you said——”

He was already at the door, flinging it wide in welcome as he went out to lift the box of milk jars from the sled. It seemed to Nancy, as the child stepped inside, that he looked subtly different—discouraged, she would have said of an older person; and when he raised his eyes she saw the unmistakable signs of recent tears.

“Oh, David!” she exclaimed, “why aren’t you at the party?”

“I didn’t go.”

The boy seemed curiously to have withdrawn into himself. His answer was like a gentle “none of your business”; but Nancy was not without a knowledge of boy nature. She thought, “He’s hurt—dreadfully. He’s afraid to talk for fear he’ll cry; but he’ll feel better to get it off his mind.” She said, drawing him toward the cheerful hearthfire, “But why not, Dave?”

He swallowed, pulling himself together with an heroic effort.

“I had ter milk. The folks have gone to Conroy to Gramma Hawkins’s! I _like_ Gramma Hawkins. She told ’em to be sure an’ bring me; but there wasn’t no one else ter milk, so ... so....”

It was Scott who came to the rescue as David’s voice failed suddenly.

“Are you telling us that your people have gone away, for _Christmas_, leaving you home alone?”

The boy nodded, winking back tears as he managed a pathetic smile.

“Oh, I wouldn’t ha’ minded so much if—if it hadn’t been for the doin’s at the school. Miss Mary was countin’ on me ter sing, and speak a piece. I don’t know who they could ha’ got to be that wise man.” His face hardened in a way not good to see in a little boy, and he burst out angrily, “Oh, I’d have gone—after they got off! _Darn ’em!_ But they hung ’round till almost four, and—and when I went for my good suit they—they’d _hid_ it—or carried it away!... And there was a Christmas tree....”

His voice faltered again, while Nancy found herself speechless before what she recognized as a devastating disappointment. She glanced at Scott, and was frightened at the consuming anger in his face; but he came forward calmly, laying a steady hand on the boy’s shoulder. He said, and, knowing what the words cost him, Nancy’s heart went out to her husband in adoring gratitude, “Buck up, old scout! We’ll have a Christmas tree! And we’ll have a party too, you and Mother and I—darned if we don’t! You can speak your piece and sing your carols for us. And Mother will read us ‘The’”—for an appreciable moment Scott’s voice faltered, but he went on gamely—“‘The Night Before Christmas.’ Did you ever hear it? And I know some stunts that’ll make your eyes shine. We’ll have our party to-morrow, Christmas Day, sonny; but now” (he was stooping for his overshoes as he spoke), “now we’ll go after that tree before it gets too dark! Come on, Mother. We want you, too!”

Mother! Scott hadn’t called her that since Jimmy left them! Through tear-blinded eyes Nancy groped for her coat in the diminutive closet. Darkness was coming swiftly as they went into the snowy forest, but they found their tree, and stopped to cut fragrant green branches for decoration. Not till the tree stood proudly in its corner did they remember the lack of tinsel trimmings; but Scott brushed this aside as a mere nothing.

“We’ve got pop corn, and nothing’s prettier. Give us a bit of supper, Nancy, and then I’m going to the village.”

“The village! At this hour?”

“You take my sled, mister,” cried David, and they saw that his eyes were happy once more, and childlike. “You can coast ’most all the way, like lightning! I’ll pop the corn. I’d love to! Gee! it’s lucky I milked before I come away!”

The hours that followed passed like magic to Nancy Carson. Veritable wonders were wrought in that small cabin; and oh, it was good to be planning and playing again with a little boy! Not till the child, who had been up since dawn, had dropped asleep on the settle from sheer weariness, did she add the finishing touches to the scene.

“It’s like a picture of Christmas,” she murmured happily. “The tree, so green and slender with its snowy trimmings—the cone-laden pine at the windows—the bulging stocking at the fireplace, and—and the sleeping boy. I wonder——”

She turned, startled by a step on the creaking snow outside, but it was Scott, of course. He came in quietly, not laden with bundles as she expected, but empty-handed. There was, she thought, a strange excitement in his manner as he glanced ’round the fire-lit room, his eyes resting for a moment on David’s peaceful face. Then he saw the well-filled stocking at the mantel, and his eyes came back unswervingly to hers.

“Nancy! Is—is it——?”

She drew nearer, and put her arms about him.

“Yes, dear, it’s—Jimmy’s—just as we filled it on Christmas Eve three years ago. You see, I couldn’t quite bear to leave it behind us when we came away, lying there in his drawer so lonely—at Christmas time. Tell me you don’t mind, Scott—won’t you? We have our memories, but David—he has so little. That dreadful mother, and——”

Scott cleared his throat; swallowed, and said gently, “He has, I think the loveliest mother in the world!”

“What do you mean?”

He drew her down onto the settle that faced the sleeping boy, and answered, “Listen, Nancy. I went to the school-house. I thought perhaps they’d give me something to trim the tree. The party was over, but the teacher was there with Ira Morse, clearing things away. I told them about David—why he hadn’t shown up; and asked some questions. Nancy—what do you think? That Hawkins woman isn’t the child’s mother! I _knew_ it!

“Nobody around here ever saw her. She died when David was a baby, and his father, half crazed, the natives thought, with grief, brought the child here, and lived like a hermit on the mountain. He died when Dave was about six, and as no one claimed the youngster, and there was no orphan asylum within miles, he was sent to the poor farm, and stayed there until last year, when Clem Hawkins wanted a boy to help do chores, and Dave was the cheapest thing in sight. Guess you wonder where I’ve been all this time? Well, I’ve been interviewing the overseer of the poor—destroying red tape by the yard—resorting to bribery and corruption! But—Hello, old man, did I wake you up?”

David, roused suddenly, rubbed his eyes. Then, spying the stocking, he wakened thoroughly, and asked, “Say! Is—is it Christmas?”

Scott laughed, and glanced at his watch.

“It will be, in twelve minutes. Come here, sonny.”

He drew the boy onto his knee, and went on quietly: “The stores were closed, David, when I reached the village. I couldn’t buy you a Christmas gift, you see. But I thought if we gave you a _real mother_, and—and a father——”

“Oh, Scott!”

It was a cry of rapture from Nancy. She had, of course, suspected the ending to his story, but not until that moment had she let herself really believe it. Then, seeing the child’s bewilderment, she explained, “He means, dear, that you’re our boy now—for always.”

David looked up, his brown eyes big with wonder.

“And I needn’t go back to Hawkins’s? Not _ever_?”

“Not ever,” Scott promised, while his throat tightened at the relief in the boy’s voice.

“And I’ll have folks, same as the other kids?”

“You’ve guessed right.” The new father spoke lightly in an effort to conceal his feeling. “That is, if you think we’ll do!” he added, smiling.

“Oh, you’ll——”

Suddenly inarticulate, David turned, throwing his thin arms around Scott’s neck in a strangling, boylike hug. Then, a bit ashamed because such things were new to him, he slipped away, standing with his back to them at the window, trying, they saw with understanding hearts, to visualize this unbelievable thing that had come, a miracle, into his starved life. When after a silence they joined him, the candle on the table flared up for a protesting moment, and then went out. Only starlight and firelight lit the cabin now; and Nancy, peering into the night, said gently, “How beautifully it has cleared! I think I never saw the stars so bright.”

“Christmas stars,” Scott reminded her and, knowing the memory that brought the roughness to his voice, she caught and clasped his hand.

It was David who spoke next. He was leaning close to the window, his elbows resting on the sill, his face cupped in his two hands. He seemed to have forgotten them as he said dreamily, “It’s Christmas.... Silent night ... holy night ... like the song. I wonder—” He looked up trustfully into the faces above him—“I wonder if—if maybe one of them stars isn’t the Star of Bethlehem!”

[9] Reprinted from the “American Magazine” by permission of the author.

A GOD IN ISRAEL[10]

_Norman Duncan_

James Falcontent, of Groot & McCarthy, was in the most singular fashion to be imagined struck with ominous amazement. And big James Falcontent had got well past the years of simplicity; he was not easily startled. The Fifth Avenue bus had stopped; Falcontent had glanced up from his musing—a purely commercial calculation, being nothing more romantic than some trick of the trade having to do with the sale of boots and shoes. But what Falcontent had then observed—he was gently yawning at the time—nevertheless astounded him beyond recent experience. Moreover, it led him eventually to far-away places and engrossed him in preposterous emotions. Here, indeed, was the first flutter of the wings of Fate. No; it was not a woman. A splendid, high-stepping, modish creature, of impeccable propriety, of gracious, aristocratic demeanor, might mildly have interested James Falcontent in passing. But since the last departure of Matilda—well, since the death of Falcontent’s wife, Falcontent had persuaded himself that women were not at all pertinent to his life in the world. No; it was not a woman. Nothing of the sort! A church had dumfounded Falcontent.

Nobody was going in or out; the bronze doors were closed and doubtless locked fast against untimely intrusion.

“Shut down for the week, by George!” Falcontent commented, in astonishment.

It was a gigantic building occupying a great block of what Falcontent called in his business lingo high-class real estate. And it was truly a magnificent edifice. It occurred all at once to Falcontent that a plant of this spaciousness and exquisite exterior, running full time, as it were, only on Sundays, with occasional week-day operations, situated in a neighborhood in which real-estate values were of such an appalling character that few men could look upon them and live thereafter without horrified envy, must have an enormous patronage to support it. That is to say, a good many people of consequence must still be going to church. And it astonished Falcontent to the very deeps of his knowledge of the world to confront this visible evidence of what he had for a good many years conceived to have become an old-fashioned and generally abandoned habit of piety. Moreover, Falcontent could recall other churches. There were hundreds of them. There were thousands. Good Lord, there must be millions—the country over! And most of them, Falcontent was shocked to remember, were of an extravagant magnitude and elegance, each according to its community.

What the deuce did people still go to church for, anyhow? Nobody that Falcontent was intimate with ever went to church. But there must still be something in it!