CHRISTMASTIDE.
"Through suffering and through sorrow thou hast past,
To show us what a woman true may be;
They have not taken sympathy from thee,
Nor made thee any other than thou wast;
· · · · ·
"Nor hath thy knowledge of adversity
Robbed thee of any faith in happiness,
But rather cleared thine inner eye to see
How many simple ways there are to bless."
LOWELL.
"And if any painter drew her,
He would paint her unaware,
With a halo round the hair."
MRS. BROWNING.
There were dark portents abroad. Rumors, and threats, and
prognostications of fear and strife teemed in the columns of each day's
sheet of news, and pulsed wildly along the electric nerves of the land;
and men looked out, as into a coming tempest, that blackened all the
southerly sky with wrath; and only that the horror was too great to be
believed in, they could not have eaten and drunken, and bought and sold,
and planted and builded, as they did, after the age-old manner of man,
in these days before the flood that was to come.
Civil war, like a vulture of hell, was swooping down from the foul
fastness of iniquity that had hatched her in its high places, and that
reared itself, audaciously, in the very face of Heaven.
And a voice, as of a mighty angel, sounded "Woe! woe! woe! to the
inhabiters of earth!"
And still men but half heard and comprehended; and still they slept and
rose, and wrought on, each in his own work, and planned for the morrow,
and for the days that were to be.
And in the midst of all, came the blessed Christmastide! Yes! even into
this world that has rolled its seething burden of sin and pain and shame
and conflict along the listening depths through waiting cycles of God's
eternity, was Christ once born!
And little children, of whom is the kingdom, in their simple faith and
holy unconsciousness, were looking for the Christmas good, and wondering
only what the coming joy should be.
The shops and streets of Mishaumok were filled with busy throngs. People
forgot, for a day, the fissure that had just opened, away there in the
far Southland, and the fierce flames that shot up, threatening, from the
abyss. What mattered the mass meetings, and the shouts, and the guns,
along those shores of the Mexican Gulf? To-night would be Christmas Eve;
and there were thousands of little stockings waiting to be hung by happy
firesides, and they must all be filled for the morrow.
So the shops and streets were crowded, and people with arms full of
holiday parcels jostled each other at every corner.
There are odd encounters in this world tumble that we live in. In the
early afternoon, at one of the bright show cases, filled within and
heaped without with toys, two women met--as strangers are always
meeting, with involuntary touch and glance--borne together in a
crowd--atoms impinging for an instant, never to approach again, perhaps,
in all the coming combinations of time.
These two women, though, had met before.
One, sharp, eager--with a stylish-shabby air of dress about her, and the
look of pretense that shopmen know, as she handled and asked prices,
where she had no actual thought of buying--holding by the hand a child
of six, who dragged and teased, and got an occasional word that crushed
him into momentary silence, but who, tired with the sights and the
Christmas shopping, had nothing for it but to begin to drag and tease
again; another, with bright, happy, earnest eyes and flushing cheeks,
and hair rolled back in a golden wealth beneath her plain straw bonnet;
bonnet, and dress, and all, of simple black; these two came face to
face.
The shabby woman with a sharp look recognized nothing. Glory McWhirk
knew Mrs. Grubbling, and the child of six that had been the Grubbling
baby.
All at once, she had him in her arms; and as if not a moment had gone by
since she held him so in the little, dark, upper entry in Budd Street,
where he had toddled to her in his nightgown, for her grieved farewell,
was hugging and kissing him, with the old, forgetting and forgiving
love.
Mrs. Grubbling looked on in petrified amaze. Glory had transferred a
fragrant white paper parcel from her pocket to the child's hands, and
had thrust upon that a gay tin horse from the counter, before it
occurred to her that the mother might, possibly, neither remember nor
approve.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am, for the liberty; and it's very likely you
don't know me. I'm Glory McWhirk, that used to live with you, and mind
the baby."
"I'm sure I'm glad to see you, Glory," said Mrs. Grubbling
patronizingly; "and I hope you've been doing well since you went away
from me." As if she had been doing so especially well before, that there
might easily be a doubt as to whether going farther had not been faring
worse. I have no question that Mrs. Grubbling fancied, at the moment,
that the foundation of all the simple content and quiet prosperity that
evidenced themselves at present in the person of her former handmaid,
had been laid in Budd Street.
"And where are you living now?" proceeded she, as Glory resigned the boy
to his mint stick, and was saying good-by.
"Out in Kinnicutt, ma'am; at Miss Henderson's, where I have been ever
since."
She never thought of triumphing. She never dreamed of what it would be
to electrify her former mistress with the announcement that she whom she
had since served had died, and left her, Glory McWhirk, the life use of
more than half her estate. That she dwelt now, as proprietress, where
she had been a servant. Her humbleness and her faithfulness were so
entire that she never thought of herself as occupying, in the eyes of
others, such position. She was Miss Henderson's handmaiden, still; doing
her behest, simply, as if she had but left her there in keeping, while
she went a journey.
So she bade good-by, and courtesied to Mrs. Grubbling and gathered up
her little parcels, and went out. Fortunately, Mrs. Grubbling was half
stunned, as it was. It is impossible to tell what might have resulted,
had she then and there been made cognizant of more. Not to the shorn
lamb, alone, always, are sharp winds beneficently tempered. There is a
mercy, also, to the miserable wolf.
Glory had one trouble, to-day, that hindered her pure, free and utter
enjoyment of what she had to do.
All day she had seen, here and there along the street, little forlorn
and ragged ones, straying about aimlessly, as if by any chance, a scrap
of Christmas cheer might even fall to them, if only they kept out in the
midst of it. There was a distant wonder in their faces, as they met the
buyers among the shops, and glanced at the fair, fresh burdens they
carried; and around the confectioners' windows they would cluster,
sometimes, two or three together, and _look_; as if one sense could take
in what was denied so to another. She knew so well what the feeling of
it was! To see the good times going on, and not be in 'em! She longed so
to gather them all to herself, and take them home, and make a Christmas
for them!
She could only drop the pennies that came to her in change loose into
her pocket, and give them, one by one, along the wayside. And she more
than once offered a bright quarter (it was in the days when quarters yet
were, reader!), when she might have counted out the sum in lesser bits,
that so the pocket should be kept supplied the longer.
* * * * *
Down by the ---- Railway Station, the streets were dim, and dirty, and
cheerless. Inside, the passengers gathered about the stove, where the
red coals gleamed cheerful in the already gathering dusk of the winter
afternoon. A New York train was going out; and all sorts of people--from
the well-to-do, portly gentleman of business, with his good coat
buttoned comfortably to his chin, his tickets bought, his wallet lined
with bank notes for his journey, and secretly stowed beyond the reach
(if there be such a thing) of pickpockets, and the _Mishaumok Journal_,
Evening Edition, damp from the press, unfolded in his fingers, to the
care-for-naught, dare-devil little newsboy who had sold it to him, and
who now saunters off, varying his monotonous cry with:
"_Jour-nal_, gentlemen! Eve-nin' 'dition! Georgy out!"
("What's that?" exclaims an inconsiderate.)
"Georgy out! (Little brother o' mine. Seen him anywhere?) Eve-nin'
'dition! _Jour-nal_, gentleman!" and the shivering little candy girl,
threading her way with a silent imploringness among the throng--were
bustling up and down, in waiting rooms, and on the platforms, till one
would think, assuredly, that the center of all the world's activity, at
this moment, lay here; and that everybody _not_ going in this particular
express train to New York, must be utterly devoid of any aim or object
in life, whatever.
So we do, always, carry our center about with us. A little while ago all
the world was buying dolls and tin horses. Horizons shift and ring
themselves about us, and we, ourselves, stand always in the middle.
By and by, however, the last call was heard.
"Passengers for New York! Train ready! All aboard!"
And with the ringing of the bell, and the mighty gasping of the
impatient engine, and a scuffle and scurry of a minute, in which
carpetbags and babies were gathered up and shouldered indiscriminately,
the rooms and the platforms were suddenly cleared of all but a few
stragglers, and half a dozen women with Christmas bundles, who sat
waiting for trains to way stations.
Two little pinched faces, purple with the bitter cold, looked in at the
door.
"It's good and warm in there. Less' go!"
And the older drew the younger into the room, toward the glowing stove.
They looked as if they had been wandering about in the dreary streets
till the chill had touched their very bones. The larger of the two, a
boy--torn hopelessly as to his trousers, dilapidated to the last degree
as to his fragment of a hat--knees and elbows making their way out into
the world with the faintest shadow of opposition--had, perhaps from
this, a certain look of pushing knowingness that set itself, by the
obscure and inevitable law of compensation, over against the gigantic
antagonism of things he found himself born into; and you knew, as you
looked at him, that he would, somehow, sooner or later, make his small
dint against the great dead wall of society that loomed itself in his
way; whether society or he should get the worst of it, might happen as
it would.
The younger was a little girl. A flower thrown down in the dirt. A jewel
encrusted with mean earth. Little feet in enormous coarse shoes, cracked
and trodden down; bare arms trying to hide themselves under a bit of old
woolen shawl; hair tangled beneath a squalid hood; out from amidst all,
a face of beauty that peeped, like an unconscious draft of God's own
signing, upon humanity. Was there none to acknowledge it?
An official came through the waiting room.
The boy showed a slink in his eyes, like one used to shoving and rebuff,
and to getting off, round corners. The girl stood, innocent and
unheeding.
"There! out with you! No vagrums here!"
Of course, they couldn't have all Queer Street in their waiting rooms,
these railway people; and the man's words were rougher than his voice.
But these were two children, who wanted cherishing!
The slink in the boy's eye worked down, and became a sneak and a
shuffle, toward the door. The girl was following.
"Stop!" called a woman's voice, sharp and authoritative. "Don't you stir
a single step, either of you, till you get warm! If there isn't any
other way to fix it, I'll buy you both a ticket somewhere and then
you'll be passengers."
It was a tall, thin, hoopless woman, with a carpetbag, a plaid shawl,
and an umbrella; and a bonnet that, since other bonnets had begun to
poke, looked like a chaise top flattened back at the first spring. In a
word, Mehitable Sampson.
Something twitched at the corners of the man's mouth as he glanced round
at this sudden and singular champion. Something may have twitched under
his comfortable waistcoat, also. At any rate, he passed on; and the
children--the brief battledore over in which they had been the
shuttlecocks--crept back, compliant with the second order, much amazed,
toward the stove.
Miss Sampson began to interrogate.
"Why don't you take your little sister home?"
"This one ain't my sister." Children always set people right before they
answer queries.
"Well--whoever she is, then. Why don't you both go home?"
"'Cause it's cold there, too. And we was sent to find sticks."
"If she isn't your sister, who does she belong to?"
"She don't belong to nobody. She lived upstairs, and her mother died,
and she came down to us. But she's goin' to be took away. Mother's got
five of us, now. She's goin' to the poorhouse. She's a regular little
brick, though; ain't yer, Jo?"
The pretty, childish lips that had begun to grow red and lifelike again,
parted, and showed little rows of milk teeth, like white shells. The
blue eyes and the baby smile went up, confidingly, to the young
ragamuffin's face. There had been kindness here. The boy had taken to
Jo, it seemed; and was benevolently evincing it, in the best way he
could, by teaching her good-natured slang.
"Yes; I'm a little brick," she lisped.
Miss Sampson's keen eyes went from one to the other, resting last and
long on Jo.
"I shouldn't wonder," she said, deliberately, "if you was Number Four!"
"Whereabouts do you live?" suddenly, to the boy.
"Three doors round the corner. 'Tain't number four, though. It's
ninety-three."
"What's your name?"
"Tim Rafferty."
"Tim Rafferty! Did anybody ever trust you with a carpetbag?"
"I've carried 'em up. But then they mostly goes along, and looks sharp."
"Well, now I'm going to leave you here, with this one. If anybody speaks
to you, say you was left in charge. Don't stir till I come back.
And--look here! if you see a young woman come in, with bright, wavy
hair, and a black gown and bonnet, and if she comes and speaks to you,
as most likely she will, tell her I said I shouldn't wonder if this was
Number Four!"
And Nurse Sampson went out into the street.
When she came back, the children sat there, still; and Glory McWhirk was
with them.
"I don't know as I'd any business to meddle; and I haven't made any
promises; but I've found out that you can do as you choose about it, and
welcome. And I couldn't help thinking you might like to have this one
for Number Four."
Glory had already nestled the poor, tattered child close to her, and
given her a cake to eat from the refreshment counter.
Tim Rafferty delivered up the carpetbag, in proud integrity. To be sure,
there were half a dozen people in the room who had witnessed its
intrustment to his hands; but I think he would have waited there, all
the same, had the coast been clear.
Miss Sampson gave him ten cents, and recounted to Glory what she had
learned at number ninety-three.
"She's a strange child, left on their hands; and they're as poor as
death. They were going to give her in charge to the authorities. The
woman said she couldn't feed her another day. That's about the whole of
it. If Tim don't bring her back, they'll know where she is, and be
thankful."
"Do you want to go home with me, and hang up your stocking, and have a
Christmas?"
"My golly!" ejaculated Tim, staring.
The little one smiled shyly, and was mute. She didn't know what
Christmas was. She had been cold, and she was warm, and her mouth and
hands were filled with sweet cake. And there were pleasant words in her
ears. That was all she knew. As much as we shall comprehend at first,
perhaps, when the angels take us up out of the earth cold, and give us
the first morsel of heavenly good to stay our cravings.
This was how it ended. Tim had a paper bag of apples and cakes, with
some sugar pigs and pussy cats put in at the top, and a pair of warm
stockings out of Glory's bag, to carry home, for himself; and he was to
say that the lady who came to see his mother had taken Jo away into the
country. To Miss Henderson's, at Kinnicutt. Glory wrote these names upon
a paper. Tim was to be a good boy, and some day they would come and see
him again.
Then Nurse Sampson's plaid shawl was wrapped about little Jo, and pinned
close over her rags to keep out the cold of Christmas Eve; and the bell
rang presently; and she was taken out into the bright, warm car, and
tucked up in a corner, where she slept all the hour that they were
steaming over the road.
And so these three went out to Kinnicutt to keep Christmas at the Old
House.
So Glory carried home the Christ gift that had come to her.
Tim went back, alone, to number ninety-three. He had his bag of good
things, and his warm stockings, and his wonderful story to tell. And
there was more supper and breakfast for five than there would have been
for six. Nevertheless, somehow, he missed the "little brick."
Out at Cross Corners, Miss Henderson's Home was all aglow. The long
kitchen, which, by the outgrowth of the house for generations, had come
to be a central room, was flooded with the clear blaze of a great pine
knot, that crackled in the chimney; and open doors showed neat adjoining
rooms, in and out which the gleams and shadows played, making a
suggestive pantomime of hide and seek. It was a grand old place for
Christmas games! And three little bright-faced girls sat round the knee
of a tidy, cheery old woman, who told them, in a quaint Irish brogue,
the story of the "little rid hin," that was caught by the fox, and got
away, again, safe, to her own little house in the woods, where she
"lived happy iver afther, an' got a fine little brood of chickens to
live wid her; an' pit 'em all intill warrum stockings and shoes, an'
round-o-caliker gowns."
And they carped at no discrepancies or improbabilities; but seized all
eagerly, and fused it in their quick imaginations to one beautiful
meaning; which, whether it were of chicken comfort, overbrooded with
warm love, or of a clothed, contented childhood, in safe shelter,
mattered not a bit.
Into this warm, blithe scene came Glory, just as the fable was ended for
the fourth time, bringing the last little chick, flushed and rosy from a
bath; born into beauty, like Venus from the sea; her fair hair, combed
and glossy, hanging about her neck in curls; and wrapped, not in a
"round-o-caliker," but in a scarlet-flannel nightgown, comfortable and
gay. Then they had bowls of bread and milk, and gingerbread, and ate
their suppers by the fire. And then Glory told them the old story of
Santa Claus; and how, if they hung their stockings by the chimney, there
was no knowing what they mightn't find in them to-morrow.
"Only," she said, "whatever it is, and whoever He sends it by, it all
comes from the good Lord, first of all."
And then, the two white beds in the two bedrooms close by held four
little happy bodies, whose souls were given into God's keeping till his
Christmas dawn should come, in the old, holy rhyme, said after Glory.
By and by, Faith and Mr. Armstrong and Miss Sampson came over from the
Corner House, with parcels from. Kriss Kringle.
And now there was a gladsome time for all; but chiefly, for Glory.
What unpacking and refolding in separate papers! Every sugar pig, and
dog, and pussy cat must be in a distinct wrapping, that so the children
might be a long time finding out all that Santa Claus had brought them.
What stuffing, and tying, and pinning, inside, and outside, and over the
little red woolen legs that hung, expectant, above the big, open
chimney! How Glory laughed, and sorted, and tied and made errands for
string and pins, and seized the opportunity for brushing away great
tears of love, and joy, and thankfulness, that would keep coming into
her eyes! And then, when all was done, and she and Faith came back from
a little flitting into the bedrooms, and a hovering look over the wee,
peaceful, sleeping faces there, and they all stood, for a minute,
surveying the goodly fullness of small delights stored up and waiting
for the morrow--how she turned suddenly, and stretched her hands out
toward the kind friends who had helped and sympathized in all, and said,
with a quick overflow of feeling, that could find only the old words
wherein to utter herself:
"Such a time as this! Such a beautiful time! And to think that I should
be in it!"
Miss Henderson's will was fulfilled.
A happy, young life had gathered again about the ancient hearthstone
that had seen two hundred years of human change.
The Old House, wherefrom the last of a long line had passed on into the
Everlasting Mansions, had become God's heritage.
Nurse Sampson spent her Christmas with the Gartneys.
They must have her again, they told her, at parting, for the wedding;
which would be in May.
"I may be a thousand miles off, by that time. But I shall think of you,
all the same, wherever I am. My work is coming. I feel it. There's a
smell of blood and death in the air; and all the strong hearts and
hands'll be wanted. You'll see it."
And with that, she was gone.