Great was the excitement in the houses of King as Christmas drew nigh.
The air was simply charged with secrets. Everybody was very penurious
for weeks beforehand and hoards were counted scrutinizingly every day.
Mysterious pieces of handiwork were smuggled in and out of sight, and
whispered consultations were held, about which nobody thought of being
jealous, as might have happened at any other time. Felicity was in her
element, for she and her mother were deep in preparations for the
day. Cecily and the Story Girl were excluded from these doings
with indifference on Aunt Janet’s part and what seemed ostentatious
complacency on Felicity’s. Cecily took this to heart and complained to
me about it.
“I’m one of this family just as much as Felicity is,” she said, with as
much indignation as Cecily could feel, “and I don’t think she need
shut me out of everything. When I wanted to stone the raisins for the
mince-meat she said, no, she would do it herself, because Christmas
mince-meat was very particular--as if I couldn’t stone raisins right!
The airs Felicity puts on about her cooking just make me sick,”
concluded Cecily wrathfully.
“It’s a pity she doesn’t make a mistake in cooking once in a while
herself,” I said. “Then maybe she wouldn’t think she knew so much more
than other people.”
All parcels that came in the mail from distant friends were taken charge
of by Aunts Janet and Olivia, not to be opened until the great day of
the feast itself. How slowly the last week passed! But even watched pots
will boil in the fulness of time, and finally Christmas day came, gray
and dour and frost-bitten without, but full of revelry and rose-red
mirth within. Uncle Roger and Aunt Olivia and the Story Girl came over
early for the day; and Peter came too, with his shining, morning face,
to be hailed with joy, for we had been afraid that Peter would not be
able to spend Christmas with us. His mother had wanted him home with
her.
“Of course I ought to go,” Peter had told me mournfully, “but we won’t
have turkey for dinner, because ma can’t afford it. And ma always cries
on holidays because she says they make her think of father. Of course
she can’t help it, but it ain’t cheerful. Aunt Jane wouldn’t have cried.
Aunt Jane used to say she never saw the man who was worth spoiling her
eyes for. But I guess I’ll have to spend Christmas at home.”
At the last moment, however, a cousin of Mrs. Craig’s in Charlottetown
invited her for Christmas, and Peter, being given his choice of going or
staying, joyfully elected to stay. So we were all together, except Sara
Ray, who had been invited but whose mother wouldn’t let her come.
“Sara Ray’s mother is a nuisance,” snapped the Story Girl. “She just
lives to make that poor child miserable, and she won’t let her go to the
party tonight, either.”
“It is just breaking Sara’s heart that she can’t,” said Cecily
compassionately. “I’m almost afraid I won’t enjoy myself for thinking of
her, home there alone, most likely reading the Bible, while we’re at the
party.”
“She might be worse occupied than reading the Bible,” said Felicity
rebukingly.
“But Mrs. Ray makes her read it as a punishment,” protested Cecily.
“Whenever Sara cries to go anywhere--and of course she’ll cry
tonight--Mrs. Ray makes her read seven chapters in the Bible. I wouldn’t
think that would make her very fond of it. And I’ll not be able to talk
the party over with Sara afterwards--and that’s half the fun gone.”
“You can tell her all about it,” comforted Felix.
“Telling isn’t a bit like talking it over,” retorted Cecily. “It’s too
one-sided.”
We had an exciting time opening our presents. Some of us had more than
others, but we all received enough to make us feel comfortably that we
were not unduly neglected in the matter. The contents of the box which
the Story Girl’s father had sent her from Paris made our eyes stick out.
It was full of beautiful things, among them another red silk dress--not
the bright, flame-hued tint of her old one, but a rich, dark crimson,
with the most distracting flounces and bows and ruffles; and with it
were little red satin slippers with gold buckles, and heels that made
Aunt Janet hold up her hands in horror. Felicity remarked scornfully
that she would have thought the Story Girl would get tired wearing red
so much, and even Cecily commented apart to me that she thought when
you got so many things all at once you didn’t appreciate them as much as
when you only got a few.
“I’d never get tired of red,” said the Story Girl. “I just love it--it’s
so rich and glowing. When I’m dressed in red I always feel ever so much
cleverer than in any other colour. Thoughts just crowd into my brain
one after the other. Oh, you darling dress--you dear, sheeny, red-rosy,
glistening, silky thing!”
She flung it over her shoulder and danced around the kitchen.
“Don’t be silly, Sara,” said Aunt Janet, a little stiffly. She was a
good soul, that Aunt Janet, and had a kind, loving heart in her ample
bosom. But I fancy there were times when she thought it rather hard
that the daughter of a roving adventurer--as she considered him--like
Blair Stanley should disport herself in silk dresses, while her own
daughters must go clad in gingham and muslin--for those were the days
when a feminine creature got one silk dress in her lifetime, and seldom
more than one.
The Story Girl also got a present from the Awkward Man--a little,
shabby, worn volume with a great many marks on the leaves.
“Why, it isn’t new--it’s an old book!” exclaimed Felicity. “I didn’t
think the Awkward Man was mean, whatever else he was.”
“Oh, you don’t understand, Felicity,” said the Story Girl patiently.
“And I don’t suppose I can make you understand. But I’ll try. I’d ten
times rather have this than a new book. It’s one of his own, don’t you
see--one that he has read a hundred times and loved and made a friend
of. A new book, just out of a shop, wouldn’t be the same thing at all.
It wouldn’t MEAN anything. I consider it a great compliment that he has
given me this book. I’m prouder of it than of anything else I’ve got.”
“Well, you’re welcome to it,” said Felicity. “I don’t understand and I
don’t want to. I wouldn’t give anybody a Christmas present that wasn’t
new, and I wouldn’t thank anybody who gave me one.”
Peter was in the seventh heaven because Felicity had given him a
present--and, moreover, one that she had made herself. It was a bookmark
of perforated cardboard, with a gorgeous red and yellow worsted goblet
worked on it, and below, in green letters, the solemn warning, “Touch
Not The Cup.” As Peter was not addicted to habits of intemperance, not
even to looking on dandelion wine when it was pale yellow, we did not
exactly see why Felicity should have selected such a device. But Peter
was perfectly satisfied, so nobody cast any blight on his happiness by
carping criticism. Later on Felicity told me she had worked the bookmark
for him because his father used to drink before he ran away.
“I thought Peter ought to be warned in time,” she said.
Even Pat had a ribbon of blue, which he clawed off and lost half an hour
after it was tied on him. Pat did not care for vain adornments of the
body.
We had a glorious Christmas dinner, fit for the halls of Lucullus, and
ate far more than was good for us, none daring to make us afraid on that
one day of the year. And in the evening--oh, rapture and delight!--we
went to Kitty Marr’s party.
It was a fine December evening; the sharp air of morning had mellowed
until it was as mild as autumn. There had been no snow, and the long
fields, sloping down from the homestead, were brown and mellow. A weird,
dreamy stillness had fallen on the purple earth, the dark fir woods, the
valley rims, the sere meadows. Nature seemed to have folded satisfied
hands to rest, knowing that her long wintry slumber was coming upon her.
At first, when the invitations to the party had come, Aunt Janet had
said we could not go; but Uncle Alec interceded in our favour, perhaps
influenced thereto by Cecily’s wistful eyes. If Uncle Alec had a
favourite among his children it was Cecily, and he had grown even more
indulgent towards her of late. Now and then I saw him looking at her
intently, and, following his eyes and thought, I had, somehow, seen that
Cecily was paler and thinner than she had been in the summer, and that
her soft eyes seemed larger, and that over her little face in moments of
repose there was a certain languor and weariness that made it very sweet
and pathetic. And I heard him tell Aunt Janet that he did not like to
see the child getting so much the look of her Aunt Felicity.
“Cecily is perfectly well,” said Aunt Janet sharply. “She’s only growing
very fast. Don’t be foolish, Alec.”
But after that Cecily had cups of cream where the rest of us got only
milk; and Aunt Janet was very particular to see that she had her rubbers
on whenever she went out.
On this merry Christmas evening, however, no fears or dim foreshadowings
of any coming event clouded our hearts or faces. Cecily looked brighter
and prettier than I had ever seen her, with her softly shining eyes and
the nut brown gloss of her hair. Felicity was too beautiful for words;
and even the Story Girl, between excitement and the crimson silk array,
blossomed out with a charm and allurement more potent than any regular
loveliness--and this in spite of the fact that Aunt Olivia had tabooed
the red satin slippers and mercilessly decreed that stout shoes should
be worn.
“I know just how you feel about it, you daughter of Eve,” she said, with
gay sympathy, “but December roads are damp, and if you are going to
walk to Marrs’ you are not going to do it in those frivolous Parisian
concoctions, even with overboots on; so be brave, dear heart, and show
that you have a soul above little red satin shoes.”
“Anyhow,” said Uncle Roger, “that red silk dress will break the hearts
of all the feminine small fry at the party. You’d break their spirits,
too, if you wore the slippers. Don’t do it, Sara. Leave them one wee
loophole of enjoyment.”
“What does Uncle Roger mean?” whispered Felicity.
“He means you girls are all dying of jealousy because of the Story
Girl’s dress,” said Dan.
“I am not of a jealous disposition,” said Felicity loftily, “and she’s
entirely welcome to the dress--with a complexion like that.”
But we enjoyed that party hugely, every one of us. And we enjoyed the
walk home afterwards, through dim, enshadowed fields where silvery
star-beams lay, while Orion trod his stately march above us, and a red
moon climbed up the black horizon’s rim. A brook went with us part of
the way, singing to us through the dark--a gay, irresponsible vagabond
of valley and wilderness.
Felicity and Peter walked not with us. Peter’s cup must surely have
brimmed over that Christmas night. When we left the Marr house, he had
boldly said to Felicity, “May I see you home?” And Felicity, much to our
amazement, had taken his arm and marched off with him. The primness
of her was indescribable, and was not at all ruffled by Dan’s hoot of
derision. As for me, I was consumed by a secret and burning desire to
ask the Story Girl if I might see HER home; but I could not screw my
courage to the sticking point. How I envied Peter his easy, insouciant
manner! I could not emulate him, so Dan and Felix and Cecily and the
Story Girl and I all walked hand in hand, huddling a little closer
together as we went through James Frewen’s woods--for there are strange
harps in a fir grove, and who shall say what fingers sweep them? Mighty
and sonorous was the music above our heads as the winds of the night
stirred the great boughs tossing athwart the starlit sky. Perhaps it was
that aeolian harmony which recalled to the Story Girl a legend of elder
days.
“I read such a pretty story in one of Aunt Olivia’s books last night,”
she said. “It was called ‘The Christmas Harp.’ Would you like to hear
it? It seems to me it would just suit this part of the road.”
“There isn’t anything about--about ghosts in it, is there?” said Cecily
timidly.
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t tell a ghost story here for anything. I’d frighten
myself too much. This story is about one of the shepherds who saw the
angels on the first Christmas night. He was just a youth, and he loved
music with all his heart, and he longed to be able to express the melody
that was in his soul. But he could not; he had a harp and he often tried
to play on it; but his clumsy fingers only made such discord that
his companions laughed at him and mocked him, and called him a madman
because he would not give it up, but would rather sit apart by himself,
with his arms about his harp, looking up into the sky, while they
gathered around their fire and told tales to wile away their long night
vigils as they watched their sheep on the hills. But to him the thoughts
that came out of the great silence were far sweeter than their mirth;
and he never gave up the hope, which sometimes left his lips as a
prayer, that some day he might be able to express those thoughts in
music to the tired, weary, forgetful world. On the first Christmas night
he was out with his fellow shepherds on the hills. It was chill and
dark, and all, except him, were glad to gather around the fire. He sat,
as usual, by himself, with his harp on his knee and a great longing in
his heart. And there came a marvellous light in the sky and over the
hills, as if the darkness of the night had suddenly blossomed into a
wonderful meadow of flowery flame; and all the shepherds saw the angels
and heard them sing. And as they sang, the harp that the young shepherd
held began to play softly by itself, and as he listened to it he
realized that it was playing the same music that the angels sang
and that all his secret longings and aspirations and strivings were
expressed in it. From that night, whenever he took the harp in his
hands, it played the same music; and he wandered all over the world
carrying it; wherever the sound of its music was heard hate and discord
fled away and peace and good-will reigned. No one who heard it could
think an evil thought; no one could feel hopeless or despairing or
bitter or angry. When a man had once heard that music it entered into
his soul and heart and life and became a part of him for ever. Years
went by; the shepherd grew old and bent and feeble; but still he
roamed over land and sea, that his harp might carry the message of the
Christmas night and the angel song to all mankind. At last his strength
failed him and he fell by the wayside in the darkness; but his harp
played as his spirit passed; and it seemed to him that a Shining One
stood by him, with wonderful starry eyes, and said to him, ‘Lo, the
music thy harp has played for so many years has been but the echo of the
love and sympathy and purity and beauty in thine own soul; and if at any
time in the wanderings thou hadst opened the door of that soul to evil
or envy or selfishness thy harp would have ceased to play. Now thy life
is ended; but what thou hast given to mankind has no end; and as long as
the world lasts, so long will the heavenly music of the Christmas harp
ring in the ears of men.’ When the sun rose the old shepherd lay dead by
the roadside, with a smile on his face; and in his hands was a harp with
all its strings broken.”
We left the fir woods as the tale was ended, and on the opposite hill
was home. A dim light in the kitchen window betokened that Aunt Janet
had no idea of going to bed until all her young fry were safely housed
for the night.
“Ma’s waiting up for us,” said Dan. “I’d laugh if she happened to go to
the door just as Felicity and Peter were strutting up. I guess she’ll be
cross. It’s nearly twelve.”
“Christmas will soon be over,” said Cecily, with a sigh. “Hasn’t it
been a nice one? It’s the first we’ve all spent together. Do you suppose
we’ll ever spend another together?”
“Lots of ‘em,” said Dan cheerily. “Why not?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” answered Cecily, her footsteps lagging somewhat.
“Only things seem just a little too pleasant to last.”
“If Willy Fraser had had as much spunk as Peter, Miss Cecily King
mightn’t be so low spirited,” quoth Dan, significantly.
Cecily tossed her head and disdained reply. There are really some
remarks a self-respecting young lady must ignore.