The sun of Christmas poured golden blessings on Happy Valley first;
it leaped ten miles of intervening hills and shot winged shafts of
yellow light into the mouth of Pigeon; it darted awakening arrows
into the coves and hollows on the Head of Pigeon, between Brushy Ridge
and Pine Mountain; and one searching ray flashed through the open door
of the little log schoolhouse at the forks of Pigeon and played like
a smile over the waiting cedar that stood within--alone.
Down at the mines below, the young doctor had not waited the coming
of that sun. He had sprung from his bed at dawn, had built his own
fire, dressed hurriedly, and gone hurriedly on his rounds, leaving
a pill here, a powder there, and a word of good cheer everywhere.
That was his Christmas tree, the cedar in the little schoolhouse--his
and Hers. The Marquise of Queensberry, he called her--and she was
coming up from the Gap that day to dress that tree and spread the
joy of Christmas among mountain folks, to whom the joy of Christmas
was quite unknown.
An hour later the passing mail-carrier, from over Black Mountain,
stopped with switch uplifted at his office-door.
"Them fellers over the Ridge air comin' over to shoot up yo'
Christmas tree," he drawled.
The switch fell and he was gone. The young doctor dropped by his
fire--stunned; for just that thing had happened ten years before
to the only Christmas tree that had ever been heard of in those
immediate hills, except his own. Out of that very schoolhouse some
vandals from over Pine Mountain had driven the Pigeon Creek people
after a short fight, and while the surprised men, frightened women
and children, and the terrified teacher scurried to safety behind
rocks and trees had shot the tree to pieces. That was ten years
before, but even now, though there were some old men and a few old
women who knew the Bible from end to end, many grown people and most
of the children had never heard of the Book, or of Christ, or knew
that there was a day known as Christmas Day. That such things were
so had hurt the doctor to the heart, and that was why, as Christmas
drew near, he had gone through the out-of-the-way hollows at the Head
of Pigeon and got the names and ages of all the mountain children; why
now, long after that silly quarrel with the marquise, he had humbled his
pride and written her please to come and help him; why she had left the
Christmas of Happy Valley in St. Hilda's hands and was coming; and why
now the cedar-tree stood in the little log schoolhouse at the forks of
Pigeon. Moreover, there was yet enmity between the mountaineers of Pigeon
and the mountaineers over Pine Mountain, who were jealous and scornful
of any signs of the foreign influence but recently come into the hills.
The meeting-house, courthouse, and the schoolhouse were yet favorite
places for fights among the mountaineers. There was yet no reverence
at all for Christmas, and the same vandals might yet regard a Christmas
tree as an imported frivolity to be sternly rebuked. The news was not
only not incredible, it probably was true; and with this conclusion some
very unpleasant lines came into the young doctor's kindly face, and he
sprang for his horse.
Two hours later he had a burly mountaineer with a Winchester posted on the
road leading over Pine Mountain, another on the mountainside overlooking
the little valley, several more similarly armed below, while he and two
friends, with revolvers buckled on, waited for the marquise, with their
horses hitched in front of his office-door. This Christmas tree was to be.
Meanwhile his mind was busy with memories of the previous summer. Once
again he was bounding across a brook in a little ravine in Happy Valley
to see two young mountaineers in a fierce fight--with his sweetheart and
a one-legged man named Pleasant Trouble as referees, and once again that
distracted sweetheart was rushing for refuge to his arms. She had got the
two youths to fight with fists instead of pistols and according to such
rules of the ring as she could remember, and that was why thereafter he
had called her the marquise. Then had come that silly quarrel and, instead
of to the altar, she had gone back to Happy Valley to teach again. Now
he would see her once more and his hopes were high. Outside he heard the
creaking of wheels. A big spring wagon loaded with Christmas things drew
up in front of his door and amidst them sat the superintendent's daughter
and two girl friends, who shouted cheery greetings to him. He raised his
eyes and high above saw the muffled figure of the marquise coming through
the snowy bushes down the trail. Behind her rode a man with a crutch
across his saddle-bows--Pleasant Trouble, self-made bodyguard to the
little teacher: nowhere could she go without him at her heels. Pleasant
grinned, and the faces of the lovers, suddenly suffused, made their story
quite plain. The doctor lifted her from her horse and helped her into the
wagon, to meet three pairs of mischievous eyes, so that quite gruffly for
him, he said:
"On your way now--and hustle!"
A black-snake whip cracked and up Pigeon the wagon bumped with
the doctor, his two friends, and Pleasant Trouble on horseback
alongside; past the long batteries of coke-ovens with grinning
darkies, coke-pullers, and loaders idling about them; up the
rough road through lanes of snow-covered rhododendrons winding
among tall oaks, chestnuts, and hemlocks; through circles and
arrows of gold with which the sun splashed the white earth--every
cabin that they passed tenantless, for the inmates had gone ahead
long ago--and on to the little schoolhouse that sat on a tiny
plateau in a small clearing, with snow-tufted bushes of laurel
on every side and snowy mountains rising on either hand.
The door was wide open and smoke was curling from the chimney. A few
horses and mules were hitched to the bushes near by. Men, boys, and
dogs were gathered around a big fire in front of the building; and in
a minute women, children, and more dogs poured out of the schoolhouse
to watch the coming cavalcade. Since sunrise the motley group had been
waiting there, and the tender heart of the little marquise began to
ache: the women thinly clad in dresses of worsted or dark calico, and
a shawl or short jacket or man's coat, with a sunbonnet or "fascinator"
on their heads, and men's shoes on their feet--the older ones stooped
and thin, the younger ones carrying babies, and all with weather-beaten
faces and bared hands; the men and boys without overcoats, their coarse
shirts unbuttoned, their necks and upper chests bared to the biting cold,
their hands thrust in their pockets as they stood about the fire, and
below their short coat-sleeves their wrists showing chapped and red;
while to the little boys and girls had fallen only such odds and ends
of clothing as the older ones could spare. Quickly the doctor got his
party indoors and to work on the Christmas tree. Not one did he tell of
the impending danger, and the Colt's .45 bulging under this man's shoulder
or on that man's hip, and the Winchester in the hollow of an arm here
and there were sights too common in those hills to arouse suspicion in
anybody's mind. The cedar-tree, shorn of its branches at the base and
banked with mosses, towered to the angle of the roof. There were no
desks in the room except the one table once used by the teacher. Long,
crude wooden benches with low backs faced the tree, with an aisle leading
from the door between them. Lap-robes were hung over the windows, and soon
a gorgeous figure of Santa Claus was smiling down from the very tiptop
of the tree. With her flushed face, eager eyes, and golden hair the busy
marquise looked like its patron saint. Ropes of gold and silver tinsel
were swiftly draped around and up and down; enmeshed in these were little
red Santas, gayly colored paper horns filled with candy, colored balls,
white and yellow birds, little colored candles with holders to match, and
other glittering things; while over the whole tree a glistening powder
was sprinkled like a mist of shining snow. Many presents were tied to
the tree, and under it were the rest of the labelled ones in a big pile.
In a semicircle about the base sat the dolls in pink, yellow, and blue,
and looking down the aisle to the door. Packages of candy in colored
Japanese napkins and tied with a narrow red ribbon were in another pile,
with a pyramid of oranges at its foot. And yet there was still another
pile for unexpected children, that the heart of none should be sore. Then
the candles were lighted and the door flung open to the eager waiting
crowd outside. In a moment every seat was silently filled by the women
and children, and the men, stolid but expectant, lined the wall. The like
of that tree no soul of them had ever seen before. Only a few of the older
ones had ever seen a Christmas tree of any kind, and they but one; and
they had lost that in a free-for-all fight. And yet only the eyes of them
showed surprise or pleasure. There was no word--no smile, only unwavering
eyes mesmerically fixed on that wonderful tree.
The young doctor rose, and only the marquise saw and wondered that he was
nervous, restless and pale. As best he could he told them what Christmas
was and what it meant to the world; and he had scarcely finished when
a hand beckoned to him from the door. Leaving one of his friends to
distribute the presents, he went outside to discover that one vandal
had come on ahead, drunk and boisterous. Promptly the doctor tied him
to a tree and, leaving Pleasant Trouble to guard him, shouldered a
Winchester and himself took up a lonely vigil on the mountainside.
Within, Christmas went on. When a name was called a child came forward
silently, usually shoved to the front by some relative, took what was
handed to it, and, dumb with delight, but too shy even to murmur a word
of thanks, silently returned to its seat with the presents hugged to
its breast--presents that were simple, but not to those mountain mites:
colored pictures and illustrated books they were, red plush albums,
simple games, fascinators, and mittens for the girls; pocket-knives,
balls, firecrackers, horns, mittens, caps, and mufflers for the boys;
a doll dressed in everything a doll should wear for each little girl,
no one of whom had ever seen a doll before, except what was home-made
from an old dress or apron tied in several knots to make the head and
body. Twice only was the silence broken. One boy quite forgot himself
when given a pocket-knife. He looked at it suspiciously and incredulously,
turned it over in his hand, opened it and felt the edge of the blade, and,
panting with excitement, cried:
"Hit's a shore 'nough knife!"
And again when, to make sure that nobody had been left out, though all the
presents were gone, the master of ceremonies asked if there was any other
little boy or girl who had received nothing, there arose a bent, toothless
old woman in a calico dress and baggy black coat, her gray hair straggling
from under her black sunbonnet and her hands gnarled and knotted from work
and rheumatism. Simply as a child she spoke:
"I ain't got nothin'."
Gravely the giver of the gifts asked her to come forward, and while,
nonplussed, he searched the tree for the most glittering thing he could
find, a tiny gold safety-pin was thrust into his hand, the whiter hollow
of the marquise's white throat became visible, and that old woman was made
till death the proudest in the hills. Then all the women pressed forward
and then the men, until all the ornaments were gone, even the half-burned
candles with their colored holders, which the men took eagerly and fastened
in their coats, clasping the holders to their lapels or fastening the bent
wire in their buttonholes, and pieces of tinsel rope, which they threw over
their shoulders--so that the tree stood at last just as it was when brought
from the wild woods outside.
Straightway then the young doctor hurried the departure of the merrymakers.
Already the horses stood hitched, and, while the lap-robes were being
carried out, a mountaineer who had brought along a sack of apples lined
up the men and boys, and at a given word started running down the road,
pouring out the apples as he ran while the men and boys scrambled for them,
rolling and tussling in the snow.
Just then a fusillade of shots rang from the top of the mountain, but
nobody paid any heed. As the party moved away, the mountaineers waved
their hands and shouted good-by to the doctor, too shy still to pay much
heed to the other "furriners" in the wagon. The doctor looked back once
with a grateful sigh of relief, but no one in the wagon knew that there
had been any danger that day. How great the danger had been not even the
doctor knew till Pleasant Trouble galloped up and whispered behind his
hand: the coming vandals had got as far as the top of the dividing ridge,
had there quarrelled and fought among themselves, so that, as the party
drove away, one invader was at the minute cursing his captors, who were
setting him free, and high upon the ridge another lay dead in the snow.
That night the doctor and the marquise, well muffled against the cold,
sat on the porch of the superintendent's bungalow while the daughter sat
discreetly inside. The flame-light of the ovens licked the snowy ravine
above and below; it was their first chance for a talk, and they had it
out to the happy end.
"You see," said the doctor, "there is even more to do over here than in
Happy Valley."
"There is much to do everywhere in these hills," said the marquise.
"And _I_ need you--oh, how I do need you!" Most untimely, the daughter
appeared at the door.
"Then you shall have me," whispered the marquise.
"Bedtime!" called the girl, and only with his eyes--just then--could the
doctor kiss the little marquise. But the next morning, when he went with
her as far as the top of the mountain and Pleasant Trouble rode whistling
ahead, he had better luck.
"When?" he asked.
"Not till June," she said firmly. And again he asked:
"When?"
"Oh, about two o'clock," smiled the marquise.
"The first two o'clock?"
"Too early!"
"The second," he said decidedly. For answer the marquise leaned from
her saddle toward him and he kissed her again.
Later, by just five months and one week, the doctor mounted his horse
for Happy Valley. He had to go up Pigeon, and riding by the little
schoolhouse, he stopped at the door and from his horse pushed it open.
The Christmas tree stood just as he had left it on Christmas Day, only,
like the evergreens on the wall and over the windows, it too was brown,
withered, and dry. Gently he closed the door and rode on. And on the
clock-stroke of two in Happy Valley there was a wedding that blessed
first June afternoon.