MARY CHRISTMAS
[Illustration: BY HIS SIDE WALKED THE STRANGEST PERSON THE FOUR
WESCOTTS HAD EVER SEEN]
MARY CHRISTMAS
BY
MARY ELLEN CHASE
[Illustration]
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1936
_Copyright, 1926_,
BY MARY ELLEN CHASE.
_All rights reserved_
Published April, 1926
Reprinted September, 1926
Reprinted January, 1927
Reprinted August, 1936
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS PUBLICATIONS
ARE PUBLISHED BY
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
IN ASSOCIATION WITH
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
I CONCERNING A COLLAR AND TIE 3
II A BLUE GINGHAM AND AN ANCIENT LAND 19
III UNBURIED TREASURE 33
IV A WILD CRAB-APPLE TREE 44
V THE GARDEN OF EDEN 50
VI A GOOD SAINT AND A SILVER BOX 68
VII A PILLAR OF FIRE 80
VIII SHOWERS OF GOLD AND PEARLS 91
IX FOLKLORE AND POLITICS 103
X WAYSIDE SACRAMENTS 118
XI SHORT TWILIGHTS AND DRIFTING PETALS 126
XII MARY CHRISTMAS DAYS 138
MARY CHRISTMAS
_His candle shined upon my head, and ... by His light I
walked through darkness...._
_My root was spread out by the waters, and the dew lay all
night upon my branch._
THE BOOK OF JOB
I
CONCERNING A COLLAR AND TIE
Long years ago, in those speedless days of the late nineties when
children dropped homemade curtsies and said, “Yes, ma’am” and “No,
sir” quite as a matter of course, when they recited the sixty-three
books of the Bible, the kings of Israel, and the twelve disciples
according to St. Matthew without the least idea of achievement, when
baby specialists and motion pictures were almost unknown, and when
the efficacy of springtime asafœtida-bags and of sulphur and molasses
taken according to the magic rule of three was sponsored by the most
intelligent of parents--years ago, on a certain warm day very early in
the month of June, the four Wescott children, who were swinging on a
white gate beneath great elm trees, were startled by the most curious
and, for the duration of a long half-hour, quite inexplicable behavior
on the part of their father. At high noon, just as the church clock
was sending twelve mellow, wavering notes down through the sunlit air
to cling unseen to tree-tops or to hide in daisy fields--at high noon
he came up the street in full view of his neighbors, and halted with no
apparent embarrassment before his four awestruck children, _wearing
his collar and tie_!
* * * * *
Now, at the imminent risk of ruining the artistic value of this
story,--for we know only too well what it means to stop a truly
dramatic incident when it wants to go on,--we must, in all fairness
to the father of the four Wescotts, on the one hand, describe--since
we cannot explain--a certain distressingly peculiar habit of his, and
on the other, assure our readers that neither he nor his wife nor his
four children had ever because of it suffered the slightest lessening
of social standing in their community. For years, during the months
of May, June, July, August, and September, it had been Mr. Wescott’s
deplorable custom to traverse the distance between his law office over
the village grocery store and his home with his collar and tie in his
left hand. Otherwise his appearance was above reproach. His neat
gray suit was immaculately pressed and brushed, his neat straw hat
was placed at a most conservative angle, his neat black shoes shone
from his own early-morning labor, the gold-headed cane which he always
carried bespoke the gentleman that he was. But--_his collar and tie
hung from his left hand_.
No one felt entirely sure as to the date and origin of this custom.
Mrs. Wescott, who, it will be readily granted, should have known more
about those matters than anyone else, was not secure in her mind
concerning them. It is true that once, in the strictest confidence, she
disclosed to Mary, the eldest of the four Wescotts, her belief that the
habit had originated in those over-heated and perilous days when Father
Wescott had been doing his best to save the country in general and the
State of Maine in particular from the election of President Cleveland.
She furthermore advanced the opinion--which, as Mary grew older, she
was inclined to share--that the continuance of the habit should be
interpreted as silent proof that Mr. Wescott stood ready to defend
with all his might the Republican Party with its splendid principles
of “honest money and the chance to earn it.” These, however, logical
as they seemed, were only theories. Mr. Wescott himself afforded the
only source material, and that material was unfortunately impossible
of access, since the whole question with all its ramifications was one
which, Mrs. Wescott and her four children had tacitly agreed, was never
to be referred to whether in or out of the family circle.
It may easily be surmised that this habit of Mr. Wescott’s had been the
source of no little embarrassment to his wife and children, and their
splendid loyalty cannot, indeed, be too highly commended. Imagine, if
you will, any number of situations in which the recognition of such an
extraordinary practice might well have redounded to the discredit of
the family, and you will appreciate the truly fine material of which
these people were made. But as Mrs. Wescott said, again in confidence
to Mary and to Cynthia after she was ten, since they had endured the
visit of the Governor of Maine, they need have no fear as to anything
which the future might hold in store for them.
The gubernatorial guest dined with the Wescotts on an August noon when
Mary was eleven, just ten months, in fact, before the beginning of
the events which make up this story. He had communicated his nearness
to Mr. Wescott, who had hurried home at ten o’clock to warn his wife,
to change his clothes, and to decree blue serge for the children. As
Mrs. Wescott tied a new tie for him under a fresh collar, misgivings
would arise in spite of her, and more than once a warning trembled
on her lips. But she controlled herself, true even then to her sense
of loyalty, and reasonably secure in her faith that he could not, in
view of the distinction about to fall upon the family, so far forget
himself. Imagine, then, her distress when, an hour later, she saw her
husband conducting their distinguished guest up the street, his head
erect and crowned with the top hat which he had chosen for this unusual
occasion, his clean collar and new tie gently swinging from his left
hand! Imagine, too, the consternation of the children, who sat primly
on the front porch in Sunday serge, the girls in Mother Hubbards, the
boys as Lord Fauntleroyish as serge would admit, and rehearsed their
salutations. Can the mild remonstrance which sprang to Mrs. Wescott’s
lips as she stood in the doorway to receive her guest be wondered at?
“Father, how _could_ you!” she said in an undertone, after the
Governor had been duly presented. The accusing eyes of his four
children, who were engaged in making their curtsies and bows, added
poignancy to her thrust. His eyes followed their hostile glances, and
his cheeks colored. One could only believe that he, the author of their
disgrace, had been, up to this moment, entirely unconscious of the
incriminating articles in his hand.
It is extremely comforting, however, to be able to assure our readers
that no dire results followed this act, which we must believe to have
been quite unpremeditated on the part of Mr. Wescott. The Governor
having been shown upstairs by Mary Wescott to wash, he repaired hastily
to his own room, from whence he emerged almost simultaneously with
his honored guest, his appearance entirely conventional and his native
gallantry unimpaired. But although the dinner was a complete success
from every point of view, although upon his departure the Governor
assured his hostess in most lavish terms of his deep regard for her
husband, the ensuing legislative season was an anxious one for Mrs.
Wescott. Was it not possible, nay even probable, that habit might
assert itself even in the State capital? This fear so plucked at her
that she was tormented by frequent nightmares, in the worst of which
she saw her husband on a freezing winter day emerge from behind the
white marble pillars of the government building, descend the long
flight of steps, and walk through the city streets to his Augusta
hotel, his collar and tie in his hand. Her cries awoke Cynthia in the
next room, but to her startled questions her mother confessed only
vaguely to having seen in her sleep a most terrifying thing. Nor were
Cynthia’s far more insistent morning queries productive of anything
more definite.
Relief came in the shape of a legislator and friend from a neighboring
town, who, upon meeting Mrs. Wescott at a county convention of the
church, remarked in the course of conversation that she would never
know her husband in the ultra-dignified gentleman who lent tone to
the State Senate. Circumspect as were his words and uncompromising as
was his manner, Mrs. Wescott could only infer that he meant to allay
her fears, and the sense of freedom which she henceforth experienced,
in spite of her embarrassment at the time of the conversation, was
immeasurable.
Nor must we for a moment allow our readers to imagine that this habit,
which we have been at such pains to describe, had ever in the slightest
degree impaired the really enviable position which the Wescotts
maintained in the community. The energies of Mr. Wescott had been
dedicated, not merely to the affairs of his State and nation, but to
those of his native village as well. Her he had served, in the phrase
of the Scriptures, from his youth up. Fence-viewer and Pound-keeper at
twenty, he had passed successively through the lesser town offices
until now, on the fair side of forty, he was Moderator of the annual
Town Meeting, First Selectman, and, most honored of all positions,
Judge of the Municipal Court. Mrs. Wescott, in spite of the facts
that she had never played bridge in her life, that she belonged to no
Women’s Clubs and had never given an afternoon paper on “A Brief Survey
of English Literature,” and that woman suffrage, a measure at that time
in slight favor among some Western states, had received from her only a
kind of pitying amazement, was held in deepest respect by the village
at large and was, moreover, I dare say, a very happy woman--that is, as
women go. As for the four Wescott children, Mary, Cynthia, Roger, and
John, they were quite as promising as it is ever well or needful that
children should be.
And now to return to our exasperated story, which, for the last ten
minutes, has been fuming with impatience.
* * * * *
Years ago, on a certain warm day very early in the month of June, the
four Wescott children, who were swinging on a white gate beneath great
elm trees, were startled by the most curious and, for the duration of
a long half-hour, quite inexplicable behavior on the part of their
father. At high noon, just as the church clock was sending twelve
mellow, wavering notes down through the sunlit air to cling unseen
to tree-tops or to hide in daisy fields--at high noon he came up the
street in full view of all his neighbors, and halted with no apparent
embarrassment before his four awestruck children, _wearing his collar
and tie_!
They who had been too amazed to run to meet him in their usual fashion
silently opened the gate for him, all having dismounted and taken their
stand in twos on either side, Mary and Roger on the right, John and
Cynthia on the left. They could not be mistaken in their conviction
that something extraordinary had happened. Even John at five was so
sure that he asked not a question. He simply stared, round-eyed, at
his father’s neat throat. As for the others, they were conscious of a
suppressed excitement in their father’s manner, which, added to the
incriminating evidence of his unusual appearance, left not the shadow
of a doubt.
They continued to stare, now at him, now at one another, as he passed
through the gate without any suggestion that they follow him, and up
the driveway to the house. Whatever it was, he would tell their mother
first, and their part was to wait. This they did with their ears
strained for the slightest sound which might serve as a clue.
Their mother was bustling about in the kitchen, putting the finishing
touches to the dinner for which Mary and Cynthia had already set
the table. She was singing “Shall We Gather at the River,” but her
sweet, plaintive assurance that all the Wescotts would “gather with
the saints” was suddenly halted by the appearance of her husband in
the doorway. Listening outside, the children were quick to catch the
interruption. She was surprised, they knew, and they all felt for a
moment an unexpressed thrill of pride that they had first experienced
the sensation. Then--
“Why, Father!” they heard her say. Surely she also was not able to
believe her eyes!
A second or two of torturing silence, during which even breathing
was painful. Then the draft of the stove slammed shut,--to keep the
dinner from burning, they knew,--footsteps, and a streak of blue, their
mother’s gingham, through the windows of the dining-room, the closing
of a door. They knew what that meant. Their father had beckoned their
mother to the library, the seat of all family councils, punishments,
and Christmas secrets.
They might have talked then--perhaps it is singular that they did
not--but, since guesses seemed futile in the expectation of such a
stupendous happening as all things prophesied, they continued to stand
by the gate, staring alternately at one another and at the silent
windows of the library. It is altogether safe to predict, however, that
each of the four, from Mary to John, cast careful, inward glances over
the things each had been doing for the space of a week. There was none
of them who could not easily recall certain uncomfortable sessions
introduced in some such manner; and yet within the memory of none of
them had any misdemeanor, even of the most startling import, caused
such initial behavior from their father.
His sudden reappearance on the porch mercifully quieted certain
misgivings in the mind of Roger, who was beginning to realize that, if
he had counted ten, he should probably not have thrown the minister’s
son off the back fence into a burdock clump, and in the heart of
Cynthia, who had not felt right for a week because she had refused
to lend _Little Women_ to the Closson children, who, being the
offspring of a fisherman, smelt rather loathsomely of clams and fish.
He came down the driveway, walking rapidly, his collar and tie still in
their rightful places. As he passed the children by the white gate, he
paused for a moment.
“There’s company for dinner, children,” said he. “Please mind your
manners.”
They said, “Yes, sir” in a disappointed chorus. Although they had not
known exactly for what they were hoping, they all realized at once that
it was _not_ company for dinner. The announcement, in fact, was
like a dash of cold water. Roger made bold to question him.
“Is it the Governor again?” he asked.
“No,” answered his father. (Mary thought she detected here a slight
rise of color to his cheeks, a circumstance easily accounted for if our
readers will but recall that visit which brought such consternation in
the wake of its honor.) Then he passed quickly through the gate and
down the graveled sidewalk in the direction of his office.
The children looked at one another, all alike unwilling to recognize
that the very pleasurable suspense they had experienced must be
satisfied by a guest for dinner, probably by some neighboring lawyer,
who would talk about the tariff and keep them too long at the table.
But the older ones still clung hopefully to the strange air of mystery
about their father. That and the startling innovation in his appearance
could not, they told themselves, portend the usual dinner-guest.
“I suppose it will mean blue serge,” sighed Cynthia resignedly, “though
it’s much too hot.”
“I suppose it will,” said Mary.
“I can’t,” said Roger, all the time knowing that he could and would.
“There’s a baseball game at two--sharp.”
John said nothing, mostly because at five it takes all one’s time to
keep one’s mental balance in any such maelstrom of excitement as this.
Moreover, he knew he must do just as he was told.
“The Parker children all have new best dresses, made especially for
summer,” contributed Cynthia, “muslin with dots. That makes five apiece
for them.”
“It’s a silly extravagance,” said Mary. (The words and the opinion
belonged to her mother.) “Blue serge will do till Father gets the fall
election.”
But, to the surprise of all, the call to blue serge was not
forthcoming. They heard the draft of the stove opened, and smelt the
crisp, luscious odor of well-cooked meat and of freshly baked bread.
They heard their mother’s quick, sure steps going from kitchen to
dining-room and back again. Mary and Cynthia exchanged puzzled glances.
Neither could remember a time when they had not been called in to help
with the last things about the table.
“For, even if we’re not needed, what about the discipline?” thought
Mary.
The petals from the orchard trees beyond the driveway drifted through
the warm, bright air like great, lazy snowflakes. A pair of bluebirds
circled about in the white fragrance and in the drowsy murmur of bees.
And then Roger from the top of the gatepost gave a shout. He had seen
his father’s hat just topping the hill that led from the village.
“They’re coming--whoever it is!” he cried.
II
A BLUE GINGHAM AND AN ANCIENT LAND
They were coming! They topped the hill; they passed the academy
with its white columns and ancient date in gilded figures; they
passed the Blodgett house, within which Miss Sarah Blodgett peered
from the sidelights of the front entrance, mistrust and amazement
in her sharp face; they passed the church with its green shutters
and westward-pointing weathercock; they passed the crossroads where
Pleasant Street saunters across Maple; they entered upon that long
stretch of elm-shaded gravel walk, which, quite unimpaired by other
houses, leads to the Wescott gate. Still the four Wescotts by that gate
said not one word or made the slightest move toward going to meet their
father. Indeed, they were quite too busily engaged in trying to set
their mental houses to rights to do anything but stare. And stare they
did!
Their father was coming up the street, laden with a huge and shining
black bag or pack, which he carried most awkwardly by means of bands
across one shoulder. By his side walked the strangest person the four
Wescotts had ever seen. She was tall, and the queer folds of her black
dress gave place above the waist to a velvet bodice of the same color,
only laced with gold cord that tied at the throat. Her sleeves were
full and white, and their edges of lace fell almost over her dark,
long-fingered hands. They could see that her hair was as black and
shining as her bodice or as the covering of her great bundle, for the
handkerchief of red silk which had once covered it had fallen back
and lay on her shoulders. They saw, too, the gold coins, suspended in
tiny rings of gold, that hung from her ears, and the string of great
red stones around her neck. Then, as she came nearer and they stared
more breathlessly than ever, Roger at the coins, John at the necklace,
Cynthia and Mary at the gold-laced bodice and peculiar sleeves,
they saw that she had soft, dark eyes such as they had never seen
before--eyes which, they somehow all at once knew, had looked upon
things unfamiliar and far away.
At the gate their father recalled them to their senses.
“Children, this is our new friend, Mary Christmas,” he said, lifting
the latch, and allowing his guest to precede him into the driveway.
“Come and speak to her.”
They came forward then with the bows and curtsies which had been, as
far back as they could remember, the necessary accompaniment to the
reception of all visitors; but they were surprised almost to the point
of being startled when this dark stranger with the great eyes bent
suddenly and kissed the hands which they gave to her, at the same time
murmuring unfamiliar words.
It was just at the moment when Mary Christmas kissed the dimple between
the second and third finger of John’s square little hand that Mary
Wescott saw something which the others had quite overlooked. There were
traces of tears on the brown face of their guest--quite unmistakable,
tiny paths, which, dry as they now were, bore certain and tragic proof
in their downward course across her smooth cheeks. And as Mary Wescott
stared at those barely discernible lines, a singular thing happened to
her. She who had seen tears and the traces of them in plenty during
her twelve years began to feel suddenly as though she had never really
seen them before in all her life. Those dry, white stains on the face
of Mary Christmas were doing a strange thing to her, which she did not
understand or like at all. They were shutting out all the people about
her, her father, John, Roger, Cynthia, even Mary Christmas herself, the
sunlight, the drifting petals of apple blossoms, and in their places
were trying to show her Things which were not things at all. They were
making her dimly aware that the sorrows in the world, the pitiful
sufferings of the aged, the bewildering anguish of young people, the
broken hearts of little children, are all a part of a great mantle of
sorrow that encircles the whole wide earth in its dark, smothering
folds. She drew back frightened; but just at that moment her mother, in
blue gingham, appeared on the front steps.
Now that blue gingham was a wonder-working fabric. It chased away
the Things that Mary Wescott might have seen, and kept her a little
girl for a whole year longer. The suddenness of it there on the porch
brought back her father and the others, and, in spite of a peculiar
clutching at her throat and the entirely absurd idea that she had been
away somewhere, made her quite herself again. So when John, suddenly
freeing himself from Cynthia’s grasp, ran boldly after Mary Christmas
and his father and, to the astonishment of everyone, put his hand in
the dark one of the stranger to lead her to his mother, she could
follow with Roger and Cynthia, smiling at his unaccustomed friendliness
and sharing their eager excitement in each new happening of this most
extraordinary occasion.
That dinner and the afternoon hours that followed were memorable ones
in Wescott history. Mary Christmas sat at the table in the seat of
honor at their father’s right, those disturbing marks of tears quite
washed from her face, the red silk handkerchief tied neatly over her
dark hair. Appetites languished among the Wescott children; and for
once penalties were mercifully withheld from those who could eat no
potato. Four pairs of eyes traveled from headdress to gold lacings,
from brown cheeks, now flushed with color, to long brown fingers; four
pairs of ears strained to detect among the broken, rhythmic fragments
of her speech familiar everyday words that they could understand.
Mary Christmas talked not only with her lips. She talked with her
brows, her eyes, her hands, her whole body, in a mighty effort to
convey by means of harsh, newly found words the story of her life to
these, her new friends. Her country lay far across the ocean, across
warm inland seas and great sand-swept deserts. It was a high land of
tumbling, rockbound red hills and towering, snow-crowned mountains,
of broad valleys with streams, of wide, treeless pastures--the homes
of thousands of sheep. It was a land of bitter winters and dry, hot
summers, thick with dust, which the wind whirled in great storms from
the bordering deserts. Against the cold of those winters the people dug
their homes in the sloping hillsides, long narrow houses with space
for both men and animals, houses roofed with sods and partitioned with
stones; and these dwellings were proof also against the hot, parching
winds of summer. It was a land over which people had passed for
centuries, people of many races, one succeeding another in the march
of years, all journeying from the East to the West--hordes of people,
sweeping onward with the mercilessness of locusts or of the country’s
own burning wind. It was a land where in the spring snow-fed streams
glistened on the high mountain-sides and slipped crystal clear through
the valleys, with here and there the sound of tiny silver bells. Above
all, it was the oldest land in all the world--older than India, than
Egypt, than China with her walled towns, older than Jerusalem with
Solomon’s Temple, older than the white, ancient cities of Assyria and
Babylonia. Its red hills and snowy mountains and wide pastures and
clear rivers had been there when Methuselah rounded his nine-hundredth
year, and when Enoch took his solemn walk with God.
Mary Christmas loved this land. Even John understood that. When she
talked of its clear waters and of its wandering flocks of sheep, a
wistfulness haunted her voice like a melody; when she explained to the
puzzled children how great bands of people had again and again laid
it waste and desolate, numberless years before they were born, the
sadness of long centuries burdened her words; when she spoke of its
great age, her tones echoed like those of the organ at church, until
in one supreme outburst of reverence she rose from her chair, her face
uplifted, her arms spread wide after the manner of the ancient prophet
in benediction upon his people.
But even as she stood with outstretched arms and glowing face, a
change came over her features. The children saw it coming, and the
awe in which they had listened, wide-eyed, to her description of this
far-off, ancient land gave way to a kind of enchanting anticipation of
what might happen next. The sorrowful lines about her mouth hardened
until they became almost cruel; her long nose, with the bend in it so
peculiarly unlike any that they had seen, widened at the nostrils with
the great breaths which she was drawing; the sad yearning which had
softened her eyes faded as a candle burns itself out in a dark room,
and into the blackness of their depths there came an ominous red gleam.
She was no longer a poet, a patriot, or a prophet. She was one who
hates, bitterly, relentlessly.
Now her voice rose like the rising wind on the bare plains of her own
land.
“I live there. I play--like him--like her--like you all. I chase birds
and catch falling blossoms in my hair. Then I grow up. I go to a great
city--to Erzerum.” To the listening children this strange word boomed
like the sound of the town drum on Memorial Day. “I marry there--a good
man. We have two children--a girl, a boy. My husband, he buy silks,
laces, jewels, all beautiful from Persia, and sell them. We are happy.
Then a year ago--when the blossoms fall--like this--the Turks come.
They run through Erzerum--their horses run! They kill--they kill--they
_kill_!”
Her words ended in a high succession of convulsive liquid notes. Her
hands, which she had clasped above her head as her story mounted into
tragedy, twined and knotted themselves together. For a moment grief
dulled the ominous red gleam in her eyes, and the children saw with
consternation that they swam with tears. But the tears did not fall,
much to Mary Wescott’s relief. The hard lines came back around her
mouth. Again her nostrils quivered.
“They kill my husband. They want to kill me and my children--but my
husband--he hide us in a cave where he keep the silks and jewels.
They do not find us. If they find us--_I_ kill--one--two--three!
_I_ kill because they kill my husband!”
The fascinated children stared, half frightened, now at their guest who
dared to use a word so tremendous in its import, and who, moreover,
they felt sure, was entirely capable of its actual embodiment, now
at their parents, between whom they had caught in passing certain
questioning glances. Their father and mother, it must be admitted, were
experiencing not a few misgivings at this bloodthirsty turn in Mary
Christmas’ recital; for although they had not made a scientific study
of the child from the embryo to the beginning of adolescence, they
understood quite as clearly as modern parents that there are several
things of which children may just as well remain in ignorance.
It was John who came to the rescue with quite the most satisfactory
thing that ever happened. When the old clock on the mantel had ticked
away those few monstrous, weighty seconds during which the Wescott
children were about to embark their thoughts on perilous, uncharted
seas, during which Mr. Wescott fruitlessly searched for new topics of
conversation and Mrs. Wescott feared that her husband, for once in his
life, had made a mistake in judgment, during which Mary Christmas sat
with her hands knotted above her head and her revengeful words echoing
in the still room, John suddenly knew exactly what to do. Nor was this
strange if one stops to think about it. John was five years old--only a
few short years removed from those light-filled days when he had known
Everything. Perhaps some shadowy recollection of those days, some sense
of that which was then luminous and orderly, came stealing upon him
like the faint fragrance of violets in a fresh spring rain. Perhaps it
was the knowledge which he had then--which we all have, but so soon
forget--that made him suddenly understand the nothingness of hatred and
revenge.
But explanations at best are tiresome things. The important fact now
is, not how he knew what to do, but that he did it. He slipped from
his chair on the other side of his mother, crossed the room behind his
father, and walked straight into Mary Christmas’ lap with its ample
folds of black. He must have walked straight into her heart, too, and
driven out everything else but himself, for her arms came down and
went around him, and her sudden tears made ultramarine spots on his
blue gingham blouse. Then Mr. Wescott blew his nose mightily, and Mrs.
Wescott fussed with the tea things, and Mary and Cynthia alike felt
their throats grow big to bursting, and Roger shook a threatening fist
at the surprised head of the baseball captain which had appeared in the
window. And it all ended by Mary Christmas’ telling them of Raphael
and little Mary, aged respectively five and seven, who were staying
with their aunt in Erzerum until their mother could earn enough money
to bring them across the ocean to America.
“To Portland,” explained Father Wescott to the children. “That’s where
Mary Christmas lives now, when she’s not traveling about.”
The four Wescotts knew Portland. For years, in fact up to this very
minute, they had held it in highest esteem. It was the largest city
as well as one of the oldest in the State of Maine; it had been the
scene of a battle in the Revolutionary War; it was the birthplace of
their favorite poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. They had dreamed of
going with their father some day to see Portland--its fort, the gray
battleships in its wide harbor, the room in which Mr. Longfellow was
born. Now all at once it had become a charmless place. Its years were
but moments in the light of the centuries which had passed over the
land of Mary Christmas; its single combat meaningless and trifling
compared with the numberless battles which had succeeded one another
upon those hoary plains. Even its Mr. Longfellow, venerable, indeed
patriarchal as he looked in the school readers, was simply out of it
when lined up for inspection between Methuselah and Enoch! Portland,
heretofore a dream city, had, in view of this recent knowledge, become
as dull, stale, and familiar as their own village. The one lure that it
now possessed was the fact that Mary Christmas had chosen it as her new
home.
“And now,” said Mary Christmas, all dark things faded from her face,
“now I give gifts. Come!”
III
UNBURIED TREASURE
She rose from the table, still holding John by the hand, and led the
way into the library, on the floor of which lay the great black bundle,
like a mysterious treasure from a story-book of wonders. The excited
children stood at the four points of the compass while with their
father’s help she unbound the cords that held it in place. At last the
shining black cover opened, disclosing yet other bundles which in their
turn must be undone. The few slow seconds which the great clock in
the corner ticked away seemed like hours before these smaller bundles
disclosed their motley contents upon the library floor.
Here were household necessities of every sort from paring-knives,
metal dishcloths, and packages of tacks to needles, thimbles, and
spools of thread; articles of clothing--overalls, elastic suspenders,
underwear for children, hairpins, dozens of pairs of stockings,
collars of celluloid and linen, hair ribbons of entrancing colors,
shoe laces, safety pins and pins that were not safe, tape measures,
soap, scissors, tooth powder--all the hundred-and-one indispensable
things for which families in the outlying districts of New England in
those pre-Ford days of the nineties were often at a loss. Here were
toys,--rubber dolls, rattles, spinning tops, blocks, bouncing balls,
and jumping-ropes with shining, many-colored handles of wood,--toys
for the birthdays of some Maine farmer’s children whose father could
not get easily to town. And here, too, in a far recess of the smallest
inside bundle, just as in the last and most precious box of an Arabian
Night’s treasure chest, were certain intriguing parcels wrapped in
fantastic, figured papers of blue and green and gold--parcels that sent
out into the Wescott library, as on the wings of some invisible bird, a
rich, spicy fragrance that made one suddenly oblivious of the stockings
and the safety pins.
It was from these fascinating packages that Mary Christmas selected
her gifts--that is, for all but Roger, whose longing eyes had never
left a certain red-handled jumping-rope even when that strange, heavy
fragrance had floated through the room. To Mary Wescott she gave a
sewing-case in glossy black wood, inlaid with tiny flowers and birds
of mother-of-pearl in delightful confusion. A tiny golden key, which
held all the magic of golden keys everywhere, unlocked it with an
unmistakable click, and the lifted cover revealed compartments with all
manner of colored silks and threads, a pair of shining scissors, and
a silver thimble. There must have been magic, indeed, in that golden
key, as anyone would have suspected, for as Mary Wescott looked at the
inside and tried on the thimble, she wondered how darning her stockings
could ever have seemed a task.
For Cynthia there was the most entrancing napkin ring, of that
loveliest shade of blue which makes one think of far-away hills in a
September haze and of tall spikes of larkspur in the gathering dusk;
and it, too, bore flowers whose inlaid petals and tiny, sparkling
leaves formed a wreath around the ring. Could she ever again, she
wondered as she fingered it, think folding her napkin irksome or
needless?
When John’s turn came, Mary Christmas stood still for a moment and
looked at him, standing sturdily apart from the others in his blue
gingham suit, his chubby hands behind him, his wide, inquiring eyes
intent upon her face. Then she laughed, like the sound of the spring
streams in her own land, and drew out yet another package from the
farthest recess of all. Turning her back, she laughed again, softly,
as she undid the paper. Then, suddenly facing them, she took two quick
steps toward John, and placed over his curly head and around his soft
cheeks a silk cap made of the most bewildering colors in orderly rows
and topped by the most piquant of gold tassels. What wonder that
everyone applauded then, even to the baseball team that had been
surreptitiously watching proceedings for a full hour from various
stations about the porch and beneath the windows! For John in blue
gingham, his cheeks flushed to a bright pink, his brown eyes shining
with excitement and pleasure, some tendrils of golden hair escaping
from the silken band of his new cap, which might have graced the dark
head of some Eastern prince, was quite too rare a sight to be received
in silence!
Mrs. Wescott was so engrossed in her youngest child that she was quite
taken off her guard when her present came. She was trying to stifle
a wish, which seemed to her vain and extravagant, namely, that some
great painter might make a portrait of John in his new cap, when she
became suddenly aware of something enfolding her like a white, fragrant
mist. And there she was in Mary Christmas’ present, with her children
laughing at the surprise on her face and her husband standing in amazed
admiration beside her.
It was a shawl, but such a one as no Wescott had ever looked upon.
At first its lacy fretwork seemed indistinct and fantastic, like the
frost on a January windowpane. But as the children with careful fingers
lifted portions of it to look through its tiny squares and to marvel
at its fineness, they saw that pictures were woven within it--pictures
in delicate traceries of birds, butterflies, and flowers. Then Mary
Christmas swept it suddenly from their mother’s shoulders and held it
widespread against her black skirt; and lo! across the high centre
of it a flock of birds was winging its way as though across great
stretches of sky. In the lower centre swarms of butterflies danced and
hovered and poised among hundreds of flowers. But the corners, as Mary
Christmas showed them each in turn, were the most wonderful of all. In
the first, some tired sheep rested under a great tree; in the second,
the moon and stars looked down upon a silent hill; a child danced
in the third among falling flower-petals; in the last, a branching
rosebush clambered over a high wall and sent sprays of swaying blossoms
into some hidden garden. And as they looked at it and marveled, that
same richly laden fragrance stole from it like an invisible presence
and drifted away up the wide-mouthed fireplace, among the musty leaves
of their father’s old books, and through the open window into the June
sunlight.
“I made it,” said Mary Christmas, throwing it again over Mrs. Wescott’s
shoulders; “some in Erzerum, some in Portland last winter--I made it.
Now it is yours!”
“I can’t take it,” cried Mrs. Wescott, finding her voice with a great
effort. “It’s too lovely for me--and all that work, too! John, tell her
I can’t take it.”
But Mr. Wescott, astute in so many things, was really positively stupid
about that shawl. He just stood and stared at his wife quite as though
he had not seen her nearly every day for thirteen years, and made only
the feeblest of protests as a weak echo to her own. Mary Christmas paid
not the slightest heed to their remonstrances, except to shake her
hands in a peculiarly final gesture. She was wholly concerned now with
her gift for Mr. Wescott.
Now Father Wescott afforded a real problem. For him whom Mary Christmas
most delighted to honor, what gift among all the articles in her great
bundle was in the least suitable? She made a puzzled movement toward
the stockings and suspenders, but drew back dissatisfied. She fingered
cards of cuff buttons, combs in leather pockets, collars of all sorts,
only to drop them almost immediately. The fragrant, figured parcels
offered no solution. Obviously they contained nothing for a gentleman.
Then an idea came to Mary Christmas which made her halt in the
inspection of her wares and laugh in glad relief. She knew now the very
thing for Father Wescott, the thing that would suggest to him always
the depths of her gratitude. With another of her quick movements she
loosed the red necklace about her throat and threw it impulsively
over the head of Mr. Wescott. It lay across his white collar and on
the bosom of his white shirt, red as the geraniums in the porch tubs
outside or as great drops of blood. And as Mary Christmas saw the
stones pulsating there below Mr. Wescott’s surprised, embarrassed face,
she did a most peculiar thing. She threw herself face downward on the
library floor and kissed the self-polished toe of his shoe!
The four Wescotts were quite at a loss as to how to receive this last
event in such a long and overwhelming train. The laugh had died away on
Mary Christmas’ lips before she had thrown herself at their father’s
feet. Apparently, then, the situation was not to be considered
humorous. And yet the expression on their father’s face, to the older
ones at least, banished seriousness. He had been sufficiently ill at
ease when Mary Christmas had thrown the beads about his neck, but now
that she lay prostrate before him, the embarrassment on his face had
given place to a kind of empty foolishness which was irresistibly
funny. So, in spite of the warning glances of their mother, they
laughed--laughs which were echoed and re-echoed by the baseball team,
and in which Mary Christmas, raising herself from the floor, joined,
perhaps a little tolerantly.
Mr. Wescott then went to the stable, somewhat, it must be admitted,
after the manner of one escaping from a situation, to harness the
horses preparatory to carrying their guest and her great bundle a few
miles on their way; and in his absence, while Mary Christmas tied up
her wares in neat packages and placed them for wrapping in the black
oilcloth, Mrs. Wescott explained to the children the reason for this
singular expression of her gratitude.
Appearing suddenly that morning in the yard of a house on the outskirts
of the village, she had startled the inmates, who were quite unused to
peddlers of her description, into the fear that, with her dark face,
uncertain speech, strange gestures, and outlandish clothing, she must
mean evil--thievery, kidnapping, or worse. Suspicious and impulsive
by nature, they had not stayed to question her, but, hailing the town
sheriff who by ill luck was passing by, had demanded that she be taken
before the judge to answer for misdeeds contemplated if, fortunately,
not performed. Such had been the source of her anxious tears, the
traces of which had so nearly troubled Mary Wescott, and such the
occasion which had prompted Mr. Wescott, secure in her innocence, to
protect and befriend her.
They drove away a few minutes later, Mr. Wescott holding the reins and
Mary Christmas beside him, her great bundle securely tied to the back
of the carriage. The children waved them up the hill and out of sight,
repeating to themselves her farewell words:--
“Next year when the roads are dry and the petals fall--like this--I
come again. You wait--for me?”
That night every Wescott dreamed of Mary Christmas. Mr. Wescott
sat quite up in bed, declaiming indignantly his very words of that
morning to her stupid accusers, and aroused Mrs. Wescott, who for
what seemed hours had been enduring the hardships of a Monday in
an Armenian kitchen. Roger killed three monstrous Turks, alone and
single-handed, to avenge the death of Mary Christmas’ husband; while
John was a shepherd boy, tending his sheep in wide pastures and
wearing a many-colored cap, at which all of his silly sheep laughed
again and again. As for Mary and Cynthia, they spent the night in a
whirl of excitement in which Methuselah and Enoch strove to enlist
Mr. Longfellow’s assistance in a headlong rush against hordes of
barbarians. The State of Maine bard, however, obstinately declined to
be “up and doing”; indeed, he proved himself worse than useless in the
heat of the encounter, although he doubtless realized more fully than
ever before the earnestness and the reality of life!
IV
A WILD CRAB-APPLE TREE
That winter, which everyone called an “old-fashioned” one because the
harbor was frozen for miles toward the open sea and the snow blocked
the roads in great, curving drifts, they planned and replanned the
journey which Mary Christmas would make in the spring. Often in the
evening, when the supper dishes were washed and put away, when Mr.
Wescott was lost in the _Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan_ and the boys
were popping corn over the glowing embers in the deep fireplace, Mrs.
Wescott, Mary, and Cynthia would trace her way in the family atlas,
which had been purchased at some sacrifice because it featured the
State of Maine.
Leaving Portland, her great pack bulging with her wares, she would
doubtless take the road to Brunswick, the seat of Bowdoin College,
that venerable institution which had been the Alma Mater alike of
Mr. Longfellow and of Father Wescott. From thence she would follow
the coast, passing through Wiscasset, which held the oldest deed in
America in its courthouse, through the friendly towns of Newcastle
and Damariscotta, through Belfast and Searsport, once famous for
their sea captains and for their gracious, white-winged clippers.
The roads that she would travel would be like those they knew--roads
that climbed rocky, fir-clad hills and at their summits gave one
far-reaching stretches of sea with surf-swept islands and towering
white lighthouses; lonely by-roads that led to scraggly farms and
gray farmhouses, where lived people who fought a losing fight against
the barren land; elm-shaded village roads bordered by green-shuttered
houses and by white gates like their own. She would cross the wide
Penobscot where it narrowed enough to encourage a ferry, and, passing
through Bucksport with its gray fort and old graveyard, would come
by easy stages over dark, tumbling hills, on which great shadows
alternately marched and rested, to their own village.
“Only you can never be quite sure,” said Father Wescott, forsaking P.
H. Sheridan, “that she won’t come through Castine. With summer visitors
there, she ought to sell a lot of that hand-stuff.”
Then Mary Christmas’ route must be retraced just in case she did choose
Castine; and they continued to bend over the map until the sharp, warm
smell of burned pop-corn arrested their attention.
“Dear me, boys!” cried Mrs. Wescott. “Can’t you manage just one
popperful without so many old maids and burned ones?”
Mr. Wescott said nothing, but the face that he again raised from P.
H. Sheridan was mildly remonstrant. He was what people called in the
nineties “a great hand” for hot buttered pop-corn.
At half-past eight, filled with pop-corn and a drowsy content, they
went to bed to dream of Mary Christmas, while the bitterness of the
cold made a solitude of the village, and the lighted windows, one by
one, faded into the darkness without.
But just before the roads were really dry from the spring mud, before
the falling of the apple blossoms told them that they might begin
to watch with some certainty of fulfillment, something happened to
the eldest of the Wescotts. It was, in fact, the same curious Thing
to which she had been exposed on the day of Mary Christmas’ arrival,
but from which she had been saved by the fortunate intervention of
her mother’s blue gingham. This time, however, the attack came when
she was alone. She had gone into a near-by pasture to hunt for early
violets, and on the way home had climbed to the top of a great boulder,
from whence she could look far out over the fields and woods. It was a
favorite resting-place of hers, and until this particular day she had
experienced only pleasure and satisfaction in the exertion of the stiff
climb up the rock, in the sense of accomplishment when she had reached
the top, when she could rest her warm, tired body against the trunk of
a stunted pine and look out over the country. Through a vista in the
fir trees she could see a sloping hillside in the vivid green of early
spring, and on its summit a wild crab-apple tree, standing against the
bluest sky imaginable and flushed with the pink of opening petals.
Then it happened! The beauty of that wild crab-apple, in which for
years she had taken only pleasure, began to hurt her with a pain as
real and sharp as any other pain. Before this it had been just a lovely
thing to which their father had pointed with his cane, so that they
might not miss it as they walked on a Sunday afternoon. Now, in one
incomprehensible instant, it had become lovely unto tears!