at the crab-apple tree. She was vaguely fearful lest this sadness which
its sudden beauty had made her feel would stay with her and lend an
aching loveliness to other long-accustomed, perfectly familiar things.
The years from thirteen on seemed all at once dim, perilous ways to
her. If one were made to feel pain and sadness by things which had
hitherto given only joy, how could one walk safely through the weeks
and months to come?
Feeling a sudden longing for the security of the Wescott kitchen and
the very tangible occupation of setting the table, she climbed down
the boulder and ran all the way home. She did not say anything to her
mother about the crab-apple tree; she was beginning, curiously enough,
to understand that there are Things that people do not tell, even to
mothers. Mrs. Wescott, however, was a wise woman. Although she brought
up her children before temperaments were discovered or Child Guidance
Clinics and project methods were invented, she knew perfectly well that
Mary’s age was an Age of Discovery; and when she saw Mary’s eyes she
gave her an extra dose of sulphur and molasses, and suggested that they
spend the afternoon making candy for the church sale.
But when two weeks later the drifting petals and the well-dried roads
brought Mary Christmas once more over the hill, and they all ran to
meet her with glad shouts, Mary Wescott looked at her with different
eyes. For she saw in Mary Christmas what she never could have seen
if the crab-apple tree had not finished what the traces of tears had
begun.
V
THE GARDEN OF EDEN
That second visit of Mary Christmas always stood out in the Wescott
mind as being particularly satisfying. In the first place, there
were no formalities of introduction or of early acquaintance to be
undergone. In other words, they could get right down to the business
at hand, which was, as everyone must know, the asking of questions
concerning that ancient and distant land the charm of which Mary
Christmas had upon her first visit only suggested. Moreover, a year
had wrought much improvement in Mary Christmas’ speech. Now there was
little necessity to strain one’s ears for familiar words; in fact,
there were few words that were unfamiliar. Only the curious rhythm in
her voice had not changed, or the deep, rich tones that rose and fell
with her changes of mood, or the lingering softness which she gave to
especially loved words.
Nor was she averse to talking. After dinner, while their father
interviewed a client in the library and their mother did some leftover
household tasks, the children gathered around her in the warm sunlight
of the orchard, white and fragrant with its falling blossoms, and asked
the questions they had vainly asked one another all winter long.
“Is it really the oldest country in all the world, Mary
Christmas--older than the Garden of Eden?”
Mary Christmas looked at them all as though she were trying to bridge
the gulf between them and her, between their land and her own. There
were time and agony in her eyes. Mary Wescott saw them there, though
she did not know their names--wise, brooding, long-suffering things
that were more ancient even than Mary Christmas’ land.
“Is it really the oldest country in all the world, Mary
Christmas--older than the Garden of Eden?”
“It _is_ the Garden of Eden,” said Mary Christmas, smiling at the
slow surprise that crept over their faces. “God made it the first of
any land after He had parted the waters. He was tired of looking at
just water, and so He made land. That was my land, where Erzerum is
now--the Garden of Eden.”
“Where Adam and Eve lived, Mary Christmas? And all the trees in the
world?”
“Yes,” said Mary Christmas. “Trees white like these by the rivers, and
blossoms blowing through the air when the spring comes after the long
winter.”
“And the Tree of Life, Mary Christmas? Is that in Erzerum, even now?”
“Yes,” said Mary Christmas. But her eyes grew dark when she told them
that, and she would not describe the Tree of Life.
They were all quiet then for a few moments. The idea of anyone’s having
lived in the Garden of Eden was quite too staggering. John particularly
could not get things straight in his mind. Was Mary Christmas so old
that, like the Garden of Eden, she was ageless? She who had seen the
Tree of Life, was it not likely that she, too, had walked in the cool
of the day with God and Adam and Eve?
“What’s the next oldest thing in your land, Mary Christmas?” It was
Roger who asked this question. The Garden of Eden with Mary Christmas
in it was too much for him. Like John, he could not get it clear, and
he was hoping now for something less overwhelming.
“The next oldest thing?” repeated Mary Christmas, as though all time
were passing in slow review before her. “A great mountain is the next
oldest thing, the highest mountain in the world, almost, with snow on
it all the year. It rises from the plain--so.” With her quick, brown
fingers she gathered handfuls of the fallen petals and piled them on a
flat, bare place near the tree trunk. The children helped her silently
by scooping up more petals from among the grass and giving them to her.
“So--it goes up from the plain into Heaven, white with snow. It is a
holy mountain. It is where Noah landed with the ark, after the rain
fell forty days and forty nights.”
“I know,” said Roger. “Mount Ararat. It’s in the Bible.”
“It’s in the geography, too,” said Cynthia.
“Ararat,” repeated Mary Christmas slowly. “Masis, my people call it.
Well, Noah landed there after all the rain had fallen. One morning the
ark stopped and shook them all. And there they were! The water began
to go down--quickly--and there was my land--the oldest land in all the
world!”
Again John was puzzled. Mary Christmas and her land were so inseparable
that it almost seemed as though she must have been there to show its
high pastures and clear waters to Shem, Ham, and Japheth, while Noah’s
wife tidied up the ark before leaving it, and Noah anxiously loosed the
beasts, clean and unclean alike, determined that this time there should
be no hitch in the starting of a new world.
“What became of the ark?” asked Roger. He had a detail-loving mind.
“The Bible doesn’t say.”
Mary Christmas looked at them all without replying. Perhaps she
hesitated to supplement the Bible; perhaps she was preparing them for
the effect of her answer.
“The ark is still there on the top of the mountain.” She spoke slowly
and solemnly. “God keeps it there to make the people good. No one can
see it, but it is there. When the moon shines on the mountain or the
sun on certain days, there is its great shadow.”
“Oh, but, Mary Christmas! Still there, after all those thousands of
years?”
“I tell you the truth,” said Mary Christmas. There was finality in her
tone. “There is its shadow on the mountain-side.”
“Have you seen its shadow, Mary Christmas--you--yourself?”
“Yes,” said Mary Christmas. And then she did a strange thing. Raising
her right hand to her head, she touched her forehead lightly with her
fingers, then her breast, and then her shoulders from left to right,
closing her eyes as she did so. Her still face awed the children. They
had never seen that sign before.
“But what if anyone should climb the mountain to its very top?” they
persisted, breaking the silence once she had opened her eyes. “Couldn’t
they see it if it is there?”
“No,” said Mary Christmas. “Only someone holy could see it--someone
very, very good. The Virgin Mary--or, perhaps, your father.”
Years afterward they were to laugh at the remembrance of Mary
Christmas’ words and at the picture of Father Wescott toiling up Ararat
with all the zeal which he had ever shown on the eve of a Republican
victory. But now they were impressed only by the reverence in her
voice. Good and wise as they had always known their father to be, they
had never thought him fit for such celestial company.
“Once a saint, a holy man, tried to climb the mountain to see the ark,”
continued Mary Christmas. “That was hundreds of years ago. His name was
Saint Jacob. For three days he went up and up through the snow and ice.
But each morning, when he woke from sleep, he found himself back at
the same place where he had started the day before. Then an angel came
to him with a great plank of wood. The angel told Saint Jacob that God
would let no one walk on the top of the mountain, for it was sacred;
but that He had sent the saint a piece of the ark as a reward for his
patience. And now that wood is in the great church at Etchmiadzin.”
“Say it again, Mary Christmas,” they begged, forgetting Saint Jacob and
the ark in this unfamiliar, ringing word. “Say it again--_please_!”
She repeated it, and they said it after her, against those days when
they should retell her stories to one another and to all their friends.
“Have you seen the wood yourself, Mary Christmas, in the great church?”
“I have touched it with my hand,” said Mary Christmas, again pausing
a moment to make that mysterious sign on forehead and breast. “Once,
when I was a little girl like Mary and Cynthia, I was ill. I could not
walk or play. My father took me to Etchmiadzin--a long journey in a
donkey-cart. I remember how tired I got and how my bones ached. When we
came to Etchmiadzin, we went straight to the great church inside the
high walls. It was dark, with lights only at the great altar, and sweet
smells everywhere. The priest there told me to place my hand on the
wood. Then he made a prayer, and I was well again. On the way back home
I sprang from the cart and ran ahead of the donkey. My father--he cried
for joy!”
Mary and Cynthia looked at Mary Christmas’ hand, which lay in her
lap, motionless for a moment, as she noted the effect of her story
upon them. That long-fingered hand which was strained and knotted and
bruised from the weight of her great bundle, which had yearned to hold
an avenging weapon and to shed blood, which had woven birds and stars,
tired sheep and climbing roses into their mother’s shawl--that hand
had, years ago, touched a piece of the ark of Noah, and had felt within
itself the quickening sense of returning health. The thought was too
immense and far-reaching for them. They needed weeks and months to be
able to comprehend it.
“In the church at Etchmiadzin there are other holy, sacred things,”
continued Mary Christmas, her voice lingering over her words. “There is
the head of the spear which the soldiers put into the side of our Lord.
Then in a great silver box there is the hand of holy Saint Gregory. He
was the saint who lived down a well for thirteen years.”
“For thirteen years!” cried Roger, disbelief punctuating his words. “In
a well! Oh, Mary Christmas!”
“He did,” said Mary Christmas. “I tell you the truth just as they told
it to me when I was a little girl. A wicked king cast him into the well
because he would not give up his faith. And there he stayed, holding
tight to the rocks so that he might not slip into the black, terrible
water. There were serpents in that water. They reached their heads
toward him! But when he made the sign of the cross they slipped back
again. It was the same with all the other creeping things. They fled
before that holy sign!”
“What did he eat all those years, Mary Christmas?”
“A widow woman who lived near the well lowered food to him in a basket
every night at midnight. One night the king’s soldiers caught her. They
would have put her to death if holy Gregory had not heard her cries and
called from his well. They heard him call and mocked him. Then God
sent an angel from Heaven who changed them all, and the king too, into
wild boars, and threw a veil over the woman so that they could not find
her.
“Then, when God knew that Gregory was good and patient enough to be a
saint, He sent another angel to the wicked king’s sister, and commanded
her to bring Gregory up out of the well. And when they lowered cords
and drew the saint up, he was black like a man from Africa! The first
thing he did was to put his hands on the horns of the boar who had been
the king. The horns faded away, and the king came back. And Gregory
said, ‘I am building a church for God in Etchmiadzin. Will you give
gold and jewels?’ And the king said, ‘Yes.’”
“And the great silver box, Mary Christmas? What about that?”
Then Mary Christmas told them that when Saint Gregory died they cut
off his right hand, which had wrought such wonders, and placed it in
a silver box in the great church. The hand still wrought wonders, for
when sick and suffering people and those who were troubled with care
and sin came to Etchmiadzin and knelt and touched the box, they were
healed. Then, she said, there was a certain good bishop who was much
worried in his mind over an old sin in his boyhood--a sin which most
persons would have forgotten. But he could not forget it. All his life
he had wanted to atone for it in some more satisfactory way than just
by holy living. When he saw the miracles wrought by the hand of the
saint, he thought of the most satisfactory way in all the world.
One night, when all was still within the high walls of the cathedral
square in Etchmiadzin, he laid aside his bishop’s robes and put on the
gray gown and hood of a pilgrim. He went to the dark church with its
dim altar lights, and took the silver box, which he wrapped in purple
velvet and bound with cords of gold. Kneeling by the altar in the
stillness, he consecrated himself to purity of thought and act and,
with the aid of holy Saint Gregory, to the service of God among those
who most needed Him.
He did not know just where he was going, Mary Christmas told them;
but once he was outside the wall, some Power led him where It would.
It took him far beyond cities and towns to high, wind-swept plains,
where rough men wandered with their flocks and herds, and to secluded
mountain villages whose people knew nothing of Etchmiadzin and its
great church, and had never heard of the good saint. Among these people
and in these villages the pilgrim lingered, and wherever he saw sorrow
or sickness, he would take the silver box with its rich covering of
purple and gold from beneath his shabby cloak and show it to those
who needed help. Here the power of the saint was greater even than at
Etchmiadzin, for those in suffering or anxiety needed but to look upon
the box, and they were straightway healed.
Most wonderful of all, the saint gave his miraculous help not only to
people but to animals and flowers. For once when the tired pilgrim
rested on the top of a high, silent hill and sang a psalm to God, he
chanced to see a lamb that had fallen and was caught between two rocks.
Carefully placing the silver box on the hillside, he hurried to help
the poor creature. But as he drew near, he saw to his amazement the
rocks that held the lamb separate, and the animal spring to its feet
and frisk away.
“And an old man told me once,” concluded Mary Christmas, looking at
the rapt faces of the children, “what _he_ heard about the hand
of holy Saint Gregory. He said that flowers and trees which wanted
water in the hot summer would spring up afresh when the silver box was
brought among them. So that wherever the pilgrim went, the valleys and
hills blossomed and there was peace everywhere--just as on Ascension
eve.”
“What’s Ascension eve, Mary Christmas?”
Mary Christmas looked at them in perplexed surprise, and then at the
church spire, just visible through the blossoming trees. Evidently she
was doubtful as to the sufficiency of New England Congregationalism in
the nineties.
“It is the eve of the day when our Lord ascended into Heaven,” she
said slowly. “On that night, in my country, at one moment which no one
knows, all the water everywhere is still. Rivers and streams do not
move. In that moment stones and flowers and stars and all creatures
speak to one another. If you should hide in a cave in the mountain and
hear them, you would never feel sadness any more.”
The tense softness of her voice as she said those last words mingled
with the hum of bees in the quiet orchard. The children were silent
as they looked at her, even the boys vaguely conscious that this was
no time to speak. She leaned back against the gray trunk of the apple
tree, her body relaxed, her quick hands listless in her lap, her mouth
still and thoughtful. Only her eyes under their dark brows were not
still. They were as though haunted by living flames that soared upward
from the fire in her heart. Mary Wescott saw them burning there, and
understood all at once that Beauty had kindled them--the irresistible,
torturing loveliness that lies in ancient, lip-worn tales, consecrated
forever by their own mystic grace and by the simple faith of a people’s
childhood.
In mid-afternoon, when their mother called Mary Christmas to a lunch
of sandwiches and milk before she should again take to the road with
her great pack, the children followed her to the house, fairly dazed
by all the unfamiliar things which they had heard. When she had gone,
they would sort out all these bewildering events and persons and places
and put them in orderly, well-kept mental niches, to be taken out and
reviewed one at a time: the Garden of Eden with its Tree of Life; the
ark and its one transcendent plank; Saints Jacob and Gregory; the
penitent pilgrim with his silver box; Armenian hills and valleys in
the single magic moment of Ascension eve. But now, overpowered by the
wealth to which they had become the heirs, they could only stand and
watch her as she ate her lunch and talked with their father and mother
about the roads she would travel during the next few days and her
prospects for the summer.
When, intent upon reaching a near-by town before the late June twilight
should fade, she had gone upon her way in the lengthening afternoon
shadows, and the children retold her stories to their father and
mother, Mary Wescott, impelled by the desire to be alone, left them on
the porch and hurried through the pasture to the boulder. Once she
had climbed to the top and looked again at the crab-apple tree, now
white with drifting bloom, the lump in her throat got the better of her
and her eyes filled with tears. But no one can be quite sure that the
crab-apple tree was the cause. It might have been the sad, haunting
beauty of certain words of Mary Christmas, or the thought of one star
calling to another across a wide Eastern sky.
* * * * *
The next day it rained. An east wind swept the last petals from the
orchard trees, and drove them through the misty air into the drenching
grass. Cynthia, returning in the rain from an errand for her mother,
brought in one which clung close to her wet, pink cheek. Watching the
storm from the library windows, they talked of Mary Christmas. What was
she thinking of as she followed the coast road beneath the lowering
rain-filled clouds? Was it of Saint Gregory, or the great, dim church
where she had been healed, or of Raphael and little Mary in Erzerum?
There was one place which they knew where the highroad ran just
above the ocean, where on clear days one could see the Mount Desert
hills lying like a sleeping giant against the blue horizon. Here, on
days like this, the surf, driven by the wind, pounded at the foot of
fog-wrapped cliffs; here, they felt sure, she would wish for Ascension
eve when for one moment the waters are still.
VI
A GOOD SAINT AND A SILVER BOX
In late September, when a blue haze veiled the hills beyond the
harbor and so lay over the upland farms that one who did not know
might easily think the land was kind, when woodbine flamed upon the
stone walls and the still air sang with a hidden insect-chorus, Mary
Christmas surprised and delighted them all by coming again. Her visit
this time was brief,--she was on the trail of a rumor that some
late summer-sojourners wanted laces,--but she stayed long enough to
strengthen their faith in the stories of the miraculous relics at
Etchmiadzin, and to convince them anew that she had become, in truth,
the most wonderful person in all their world. Nor were they obliged
to content themselves during that winter merely with conjectures as
to what she was doing and with the tracings of her spring journeyings
upon the map. Their father, returning from Augusta during the
legislative season for a week-end at home, told them of meeting her
one day on the city street, and of his embarrassment when, in the face
of all the passers-by, she threw herself at his feet in the newly
fallen snow quite as she had done on the library floor. She had, he
said,--the country roads being impassable,--begun to ply a winter
trade in handmade and imported articles among the larger towns along
the railroad, and was already becoming, so his city friends told him,
a familiar figure. Once again he saw her, this time in a coach of the
train from Portland to Boston, whence he was traveling, much to the
satisfaction of his family, to deliver a speech on Republican integrity
before the McKinley Club of that city. Here again, prostrating herself
as completely as the train aisle would permit, she hailed him as her
savior, much to the amazement of the pop-corn boy, the conductor, and
all the tired, self-centred persons who usually travel on trains.
The tidings bridged the long succession of cold and snow-blocked
weeks which had kept her from them the year before, and brought her
nearer. Moreover, in the games and plays which they had formed from her
stories, her presence among them became almost tangible. Every child
in the village knew those stories, which the Wescotts had retold with
such generosity of detail and with no slight degree of superiority;
and there was not one who would willingly refuse his services when a
well was to be dug for Saint Gregory in the deepest snowdrift, or when
a suitable plank must be procured for presentation to Saint Jacob, who
patiently slumbered at the foot of some improvised Ararat.
Here were pastimes of which they never tired, pageants which the State
of Maine in the late nineteenth or in any other century could not
afford them. Here, as they ransacked their various attics for costumes,
trained the dogs of the neighborhood to take the part of wild boars,
instructed Saint Gregory in the art of crossing himself, and converted
the Wescott stable into the Etchmiadzin church, they felt the lure of
“stronds afar remote,” recognized, even if vaguely, the charm that
forever lies in unfamiliar, echoing names of distant places, and dimly
perceived a spiritual magic and romance that transcended religion as
they knew it, as sunlight transforms a dull and barren room.
There was, it must be admitted, not a little honest doubt on the part
of parents, both as to the advisability of these plays and games and as
to the character and influence of this stranger within their gates who
had inspired them. Were stories that dealt with saints and relics and
a church with an altar suitable to the needs of a strictly Protestant
community? Was there not sacrilege, or worse still, mockery, in this
sign of the cross which every child who had at any time played the part
of Saint Gregory could make with avidity? Was it not possible that
such practices, even in play, might tend to entice children from that
straight, narrow, and rather unembellished way which their fathers had
so steadfastly and unquestioningly trod?
These queries, however, if not answered satisfactorily, were at least
stilled by a kind of mutual confidence and dependence common to New
England village life in the nineties--a dependence which afforded
inestimable advantages both to the individual and to society. Pleading
children of this period most commonly received from their parents one
of the following replies:--
“If the Wescott children do, you may.”
“If Mrs. Howe lets Lucy and William, I’ll let you.”
“Wait and see if the Parker children go.”
That the stories and games told and inspired by Mary Christmas were
not considered harmful by the Wescott parents was sufficient reason
for their toleration, if not for their sanction, by other heads of
families. As for Mary Christmas herself, the initial suspicion which
her sudden and outlandish appearance had bred among them had died an
early death. The reception and confidence accorded her by the Wescotts,
her tragic story, which appealed especially to those fired by foreign
missionary zeal, and above all the good reports of her conduct on the
road, of her honesty, industry, and kindness to children, which were
circulated freely by those having relatives in the more open country,
all bore witness to her worthiness as an occasional companion.