Christmas Week came.
Cities by thousands made preparation. Great shops took on vast cargoes
of silk and precious things and seemed ready to sail about, distributing
gifts to the town, and thought better of it, and let folk come in
numbers to them to pay toll for what they took. Banks opened their doors
and poured out, now a little trickling stream of pay envelopes, now a
torrent of green and gold. Flower stalls drew tribute from a million
pots of earth where miracles had been done. Pastry counters, those mock
commissariats, delicately masking as servants to necessity, made ready
their pretty pretences to nutrition. The woods came moving in--acres of
living green, taken in their sleep, their roots left faithful to a
tryst with the sap, their tops summoned to bear an hybrid fruitage. From
cathedrals rose the voices of children now singing little carols and
hymns in praise of the Christ-child, now speaking little verses in
praise of the saint, Nicholas, now clamouring for little new
possessions. And afar from the fields that lay empty about the clustered
roofs of towns came a chorus of voices of the live things, beast and
fowl, being offered up in the gorgeous pagan rites of the day.
Hither and yonder in every city the grown townsfolk ran. The most had
lists of names,--Grace, Margaret, Laura, Alice, Miriam, John, Philip,
Father, Mother,--beautiful names and of rich portent, so that,
remembering the time, one would have said that these were entered there
with some import of special comradeship, of being face to face, of
having realized in little what will some day be true in large. But on
looking closer, the lists were found to have quite other connotations:
as, Grace, bracelet; Margaret, spangled scarf; Laura, chafing-dish;
Philip, smoking set; Father (Memo: Ask mother what she thinks he'd
like). And every name, it seemed, stood for some bestowal of new
property, mostly of luxuries, and chiefly of luxuries of decoration. And
the minds of the buying adults were like lakes played upon by clouds and
storm birds and lightning, and, to be sure, many stars--but all in
unutterable confusion.
Also from the cargo-laden shops there came other voices in thousands,
but these were mostly answers. And when one, understanding Christmas,
listened to hear what part in it these behind the counter played, he
heard from them no voice of sharing in the theory of peace, or even of
truce, but instead:--
"Two a yard and double width. Jewelry is in the Annex. Did you want
three pairs of each? Veils and neckwear three aisles over. Leather,
glassware, baskets, ribbons, down the store beyond the notions. Toys and
dolls are in the basement--toys and dolls are in the basement. Jewelry
is in the Annex...."
So that a great part of the town seemed some strong chorus of invocation
to new possessions.
But there were other voices. Whole areas of every town lay, perforce,
within the days of Christmas Week--it must have been so, for there is
only one calendar to embrace humanity, as there is only one way of birth
and breath and death, one source of tears, one functioning for laughter.
But to these reaches of the town the calendar was like another thing,
for though it was upon them in name, its very presence was withdrawn. In
those ill-smelling stairways and lofts there was little to divulge the
imminence of anything other than themselves. And wherever some echo of
Christmas Week had crept, the wistfulness or the lust was for possession
also; but here one could understand its insistence. So here the voices
said only, "I wish--I wish," and "I choose this--and this," at windows;
or, "If I had back my nickel...." "Don't you go expecting nothink!" And
over these went the whirr of machinery, beat of treadles, throb of
engines, or the silence of forced idleness, or of the disease of
dereliction. It was a time of many pagan observances, as when some were
decked in precious stuffs and some were thrown to lions.
To all these in the towns Christmas Week came. And of them all not many
stood silent and looked Christmas Week in the face. Yet it is a human
experience that none is meant to die without sharing. For the season is
the symbol of what happens to folk if they claim it.
Christmas is the time of withdrawal of most material life. It is the
time when nature subtracts the externals, hides from man the phenomena
of even her evident processes. Left alone, his thought turns inward and
outward--which is to say, it lays hold upon the flowing force so
slightly externalized in himself. If he finds in his own being a
thousand obstructions, a thousand persons,--dogs, sorcerers,
whoremongers,--he will try to escape from them all, back to the
externals. But if he finds there a channel which the substance of being
is using, he will be no stranger, but a familiar, with himself. Only
when the channel has been long cleared, when there has left it all
consciousness of striving, of self in any form, only when he finds
himself empty, ready, immaculate, will he have the divine adventure. For
it is then that in him the spirit of God will have its birth, then that
he will first understand his own nature ... the nature of being.
Then the turn of the year comes in, the year begins to mount. Birth is
in it, growth is in it, Spring is in it. Sometime, away back in
beginnings, they knew this. They knew that the time of the Winter
solstice is in some strange fashion the high moment of the year, as the
beginning of new activity in nature and in the gods. They solemnized the
return of the fiery sun wheel; they traced in those solstice days the
operations on earth of Odin and Berchta. They knew in themselves a thing
they could not name. And when the supreme experience took place in
Christ, they made the one experience typify the other, and became
conscious of the divine nature of this nativity. So, by the illuminati,
the prophets, the adepts, the time that followed was yearly set
aside--forty days of dwelling within the temple of self, forty days of
reverence for being, of consciousness of new birth. Then the emergence,
then the apotheosis of expression typifying and typified by Spring--the
time when bursting, pressing life almost breaks bounds, when birth and
the impulse to birth are in every form of life, without and within.
These festivals are not arbitrary in date. They grow out of the
universal experience.
Is it not then cause for stupefaction that this time of "divine
bestowal" should have become so physical a thing? From the ancient
perception, to have slipped into a sense of annual social comradeship
and good will and peace was natural and fine--to live in the little what
will some day be true in the large. But from this to have plunged down
into a time of frantic physical bestowals, of "present trading," of
lists of Grace and Margaret and Philip, of teeming shops with hunting
and hunted creatures within, of sacrificial trees and beasts, of a
sovereign sense of good for me and mine and a shameless show of Lord
and Lady Bountiful ... how can that have come about, how can the great
festival have been so dishonoured?
Not all dishonoured, for within it is its own vitality which nothing can
dishonour. Through all the curious variations which it receives at our
hands, something shines and sings: self-giving, joy giving, a vast, dim
upflickering on humanity of what this thing really is that it seeks to
observe, this thing that grips men so that no matter what they are
about, they will drop it at the touch of the gong and turn to some
expression, however crooked and thwarted, of the real spirit of the
time. If in war, then bayonets are stacked and holly-wreathed, and
candles stuck on each point! If at sea, some sailor climbs out on the
bowsprit with a wreath of green. If on the western plains, a turkey
wishbone for target will make the sport, at fifty paces; if at home,
some great extravagance or some humble gift or some poignant wish will
point the day; if at church, then mass and carol; in certain hearts,
reverence,--everywhere the time takes hold of folk and receives whatever
of greatness or grotesqueness they choose to give it.... So, too, the
actual and vital experience which it brings to humanity is universal, is
offered with cosmic regularity, cannot be escaped. Through all the
tumult of the time, Christmas Week and the time that lies near to it is
always waiting to claim its own, to take to itself those who will not be
deceived, who see in the stupendous yearly pageant only the usual
spectacle of humanity trying to say divine things in terms of things
physical, because the time for the universal expression is not yet come.
When that time comes ... when the time of the worship of _things_ shall
be past; when the tribal sense of holiday shall have given place to the
family sense, and that family shall be mankind; when shall never be seen
the anomaly of celebrating in a glorification of little family
tables--whose crumbs fall to those without--the birth of him who
preached brotherhood; and the mockery of observing with wanton spending
the birth of him who had not where to lay his head; when the rudiments
of divine perception, of self-perception, of social perception, shall
have grown to their next estate; when the area of consciousness shall be
extended yet farther toward the outermost; when that new knowledge with
which the air is charged shall let man begin to know what he is ... when
that time comes, they will look back with utmost wonder at our uncouth
gropings to note and honour something whose import we so obscurely
discern; but perhaps, too, with wonder that so much of human love and
divining should shine for us through the mists we make.
X
Two days before Christmas Ellen Bourne went through the new-fallen snow
of their wood lot. Her feet left scuffled tracks clouded about by the
brushing of her gown's wet hem and by a dragging corner of shawl. She
came to a little evergreen tree, not four feet tall, with low-growing
boughs, and she stood looking at it until her husband, who was also
following the snow-filled path, overtook her.
"Matthew," she said then, "will you cut me that?"
Matthew Bourne stood with his ax on his shoulder and looked a question
in slow preparation to ask one.
[Illustration: "THE CHILDREN BEGAN TO SING 'GO BURY SAINT NICKLIS'"]
"I just want it," she said; "I've--took a notion."
He said that she had a good many notions, it seemed to him. But he cut
the little tree, with casual ease and no compunctions, and they dragged
it to their home, the soft branches patterning the snow and obscuring
their footprints.
"It's like real Christmas weather," Ellen said. "They can't stop that
coming, anyhow."
In the kitchen Ellen's father sat before the open oven door of the
cooking stove, letting the snow melt from his heavy boots.
"Hey," he said, "I was beginning to think you'd forgot about supper.
What was in the trap?"
At once Ellen began talking rapidly. "Oh," she said, "we'll have some
muffins to-night, father. The kind you like, with--"
"Well, what was in the trap?" the old man demanded peevishly. "Why
don't you answer back? What was, Mat?"
Matthew, drying his ax blade, looked at it with one eye closed.
"Rabbit," he said.
"Where is it?" her father demanded.
"It was a young one--not as big as your fist," Ellen said. "I let it out
before he got there. Where's mother?"
"Just because a thing's young, it ain't holy water," the old man
complained. "Last time it was a squirrel you let go because it was
young--it's like being spendthrift with manna...." he went on.
Ellen's mother appeared, gave over to Ellen the supper preparations,
contented herself with auxiliary offices of china and butter getting,
and talked the while, pleased that she had something to disclose.
"Ben Helders stopped in," she told. "He's going to the City to-morrow.
What do you s'pose after? A boy. He's going to take him to bring up and
work on the farm."
"Where's he going to get the boy?" Ellen asked.
Her mother did not know, but Mrs. Helders was going to have a new
diagonal and she wanted the number of Ellen's pattern. Ben would stop
for it that night.
Evenings their kitchen was a sitting room, and when the supper had been
cleared away and the red cotton spread covered the table, Ellen asked
her husband to bring in the little tree. She found a cracker box,
handily cut a hole with a cooking knife, and set up the little tree by
the kitchen window.
"What under the canopy--" said her mother, her voice cracking.
"Oh, something to do in the evening," Ellen answered. "Father's going to
pop me some corn to trim it with; aren't you, father? Mother, why don't
you get you a good big darning needle and string what he pops?"
"It'll make a lot of litter," said her mother, but she brought the
needle, for something to do.
"Hey, king and country," said her father; "I'd ought to have somebody
here to shell it for me."
"Who you trimming up a tree for?" her mother demanded; "I thought they
wasn't to be any in town this year."
"It ain't Christmas yet," Ellen said only. "I guess it won't do any hurt
two days before."
While the two worked, Ellen went to the cupboard drawer, and from behind
her pile of kitchen towels she drew out certain things: walnuts, wrapped
in shining yeast tinsel and dangling from red yarn; wishbones tied with
strips of bright cloth; a tiny box, made like a house, with rudely cut
doors and windows; eggshells penciled as faces; a handful of peanut
owls; a glass-stoppered bottle; a long necklace of buttonhole twist
spools. A certain blue paper soldier doll that she had made was
upstairs, but the other things she brought and fastened to the tree.
Her husband smoked and uneasily watched her. He saw somewhat within her
plan, but he was not at home there. "If the boy _had_ lived and _had_
been up-chamber asleep now," he thought once, "it'd be something like,
to go trimming up a tree. But _this_ way--"
"What you leaving the whole front of the tree bare for?" her mother
asked.
"The blue paper soldier goes there. I want it should see the blue paper
soldier first thing...." Ellen said, and stopped abruptly.
"You talk like you was trimming the tree for somebody," her mother
observed, aggrieved.
"Maybe something might look in the window--going by," Ellen said.
"Get in there! Get your heads in there, ye beggars!" said the old man to
the popcorn. "I'd ought to have somebody here to pick up them shooting
kernels," he complained.
In a little while, with flat-footed stamping, Ben Helders came in. When
he had the pattern number, by laborious copying against the wall under
the bracket lamp, Matthew said to him:--
"Going to get a boy to work out, are you?"
Helders laughed and shifted.
"He's going to work by and by," he said. "We allow to have him to
ourselves a spell first."
"Keep him around the house till Spring?"
"More," said Helders. "You see," he added, "it's like this with us ...
family all gone, all married, and got their own. We figured to get hold
of a little shaver and have some comfort with him before he goes to
work, for life."
"Adopt him?" said Matthew, curiously.
"That's pretty near it," Helders admitted. "We've got one spoke for at
the City Orphand Asylum."
Ellen Bourne turned. "How old?" she asked.
"Around five--six, we figure." Helders said it almost sheepishly.
Ellen stood facing the men, with the white festoons of popcorn in her
hands.
"Matthew," she said, "let him bring us one."
Matthew stared. "You mean bring us a boy?" he asked.
"I don't care which--girl or boy. Anything young," Ellen said.
"Good Lord, Ellen," Matthew said, with high eyebrows, "ain't you got
your hands full enough now?"
Ellen Bourne lifted her hands slightly and let them fall. "No," she
answered.
The older woman looked at her daughter, and now first she was
solicitous, as a mother.
"Ellen," she said, "you have, too, got your hands full. You're wore out
all the time."
"That's it," Ellen said, "and I'm not wore out with the things I want to
do."
"Hey, king and country!" the old man cried, upsetting the popper. "Don't
get a child around here underfoot. I'm too old. I deserve grown folks.
My head hurts me--"
"Matthew," said Ellen to her husband, "let Helders bring us one.
To-morrow--for Christmas, Mat!"
Matthew looked slowly from side to side. It seemed incredible that so
large a decision should lie with a man so ineffectual.
"'Seems like we'd ought to think about it a while first," he said
weakly.
"Think about it!" said Ellen. "When haven't I thought about it? When
have I thought about anything else but him we haven't got any more?"
"Ellen!" the mother mourned, "you don't know what you're taking on
yourself--"
"Hush, mother," Ellen said gently; "you don't know what it is. You had
me."
She faced Helders. "Will you bring two when you come back to-morrow
night?" she said; "and one of them for us?"
Helders looked sidewise at Matthew, who was fumbling at his pipe.
"Wouldn't you want to see it first, now?" Helders temporized. "And a
girl or a boy, now?"
"No--I wouldn't want to see it first--I couldn't bear to choose. One
healthy--from healthy parents--and either girl or boy," Ellen said, and
stopped. "The nicest tree thing I've made is for a boy," she owned.
"It's a paper soldier.... I made these things for fun," she added to
Helders.
For the first time Helders observed the tree. Then he looked in the
woman's face. "I'll fetch out a boy for you if you say so," he said.
"Then do," she bade.
When the four were alone again, Mat sat looking at the floor. "Every
headlong thing I've ever done I've gone headlong over," he said
gloomily.
Ellen took a coin from the clock shelf. "When Ben goes past to-morrow,"
she merely said, "you'll likely see him. Have him get some little
candles for the tree."
"My head hurts me," the old man gave out; "this ain't the place for a
great noisy boy."
Ellen put her hand on his shoulder almost maternally.
"See, dear," she said, "then you'd be grandfather."
"Hey?" he said; "not if it was adopted, I wouldn't."
"Why, of course. That would make it ours--and yours. See," she cried,
"you've been stringing popcorn for it already, and you didn't know!"
"Be grandfather, would I?" said the old man. "Would I? Hey, king and
country! Grandfather again."
Ellen was moving about the kitchen lightly, with that manner, which
eager interest brings, of leaving only half footprints.
"Come on, mother," she said, "we must get the popcorn strung for sure,
now!"
The mother looked up at the tree. "Seems as if," she said, wrinkling her
forehead, "I used to make pink tarleton stockings for your trees and
fill 'em with the corn. I donno but I've got a little piece of pink
tarleton somewheres in my bottom drawer...."
... Next night they had the bracket lamp and the lamp on the shelf and
the table hand lamp all burning. The little tree was gay with the white
corn and the coloured trifles. The kitchen seemed to be centering in the
tree, as if the room had been concerned long enough with the doings of
these grown folk and now were looking ahead to see who should come next.
It was the high moment of immemorial expectancy, when those who are
alive turn the head to see who shall come after.
"What you been making all day, daddy?" Ellen asked, tense at every sound
from without.
Her father, neat in his best clothes, blew away a last plume of shaved
wood and held out something.
"I just whittled out a kind of a clothespin man," he explained. "I made
one for you, once, and you liked it like everything. Mebbe a boy won't?"
he added doubtfully.
"Oh, but a boy will!" Ellen cried, and tied the doll above the blue
paper soldier.
"Hadn't they ought to be here pretty soon?" Matthew asked nervously.
"Where's mother?"
"She's watching from the front room window," Ellen answered.
Once more Helders came stamping on the kitchen porch, but this time
there was a patter of other steps, and Ellen caught open the door before
he summoned. Helders stepped into the room, and with him was a little
boy.
"This one?" Ellen asked, her eyes alive with her eagerness.
But Helders shook his head.
"Mis' Bourne," he said, "I'm real dead sorry. They wa'n't but the one.
Just the one we'd spoke for."
"_One!_" Ellen said; "you said Orphan Asylum."
"There's only the one," Helders repeated. "The others is little bits of
babies, or else spoke for like ours--long ago. It seems they do that
way. But I want you should do something: I want you and Matthew should
take this one. Mother and I--are older ... we ain't set store so much...."
Ellen shook her head, and made him know, with what words she could find,
that it could not be so. Then she knelt and touched at the coat of the
child, a small frightened thing, with cap too large for him and one
mitten lost. But he looked up brightly, and his eyes stayed on the
Christmas tree. Ellen said little things to him, and went to take down
for him some trifle from the tree.
"I'm just as much obliged," she said quietly to Helders. "I never
thought of there not being enough. We'll wait."
Helders was fumbling for something.
"Here's your candles, I thought you might want them for somethin' else,"
he said, and turned to Matthew: "And here's your quarter. I didn't get
the toy you mentioned. I thought you wouldn't want it, without the
little kid."
Matthew looked swiftly at Ellen. He had not told her that he had sent by
Helders for a toy. And at that Ellen crossed abruptly to her husband,
and she was standing there as they let Helders out, with the little boy.
Ellen's father pounded his knee.
"But how long'll we have to wait? How long'll we have to wait?" he
demanded shrilly. "King and country, why didn't somebody ask him that?"
Matthew tore open the door.
"Helders!" he shouted, "how long did they say we'd have to wait?"
"Mebbe only a week or two--mebbe longer," Helders' voice came out of the
dark. "They couldn't tell me."
Ellen's mother stood fastening up a fallen tinsel walnut.
"Let's us leave the tree right where it is," she said. "Even with it
here, we won't have enough Christmas to hurt anything."