The neighborhood, the township, and the world had been snowed in. Snow
drifted the road in hills and hollows, and hung in little eddying
wreaths, where the wind took it, on the pasture slopes. It made solid
banks in the dooryards, and buried the stone walls out of sight. The
lacework of its fantasy became daintily apparent in the conceits with
which it broidered over all the common objects familiar in homely
lives. The pump, in yards where that had supplanted the old-fashioned
curb, wore a heavy mob-cap. The vane on the barn was delicately sifted
over, and the top of every picket in the high front-yard fence had a
fluffy peak. But it was chiefly in the woods that the rapture and
flavor of the time ran riot in making beauty. There every fir branch
swayed under a tuft of white, and the brown refuse of the year was all
hidden away.
That morning, no one in Tiverton Hollow had gone out of the house, save
to shovel paths, and do the necessary chores. The road lay untouched
until ten o'clock, when a selectman gave notice that it was an occasion
for "breakin' out," by starting with his team, and gathering oxen by
the way until a conquering procession ground through the drifts, the
men shoveling at intervals where the snow lay deepest, the oxen walking
swayingly, head to the earth, and the faint wreath of their breath
ascending and cooling on the air. It was "high times" in Tiverton
Hollow when a road needed opening; some idea of the old primitive way
of battling with the untouched forces of nature roused the people to an
exhilaration dashed by no uncertainty of victory.
By afternoon, the excitement had quieted. The men had come in, reddened
by cold, and eaten their noon dinner in high spirits, retailing to the
less fortunate women-folk the stories swapped on the march. Then, as
one man, they succumbed to the drowsiness induced by a morning of wind
in the face, and sat by the stove under some pretense of reading the
county paper, but really to nod and doze, waking only to put another
stick of wood on the fire. So passed all the day before Christmas, and
in the evening the shining lamps were lighted (each with a strip of red
flannel in the oil, to give color), and the neighborhood rested in the
tranquil certainty that something had really come to pass, and that
their communication with the world was reëstablished.
Susan Peavey sat by the fire, knitting on a red mitten, and the young
schoolmaster presided over the other hearth corner, reading very hard,
at intervals, and again sinking into a drowsy study of the flames.
There was an impression abroad in Tiverton that the schoolmaster was
going to be somebody, some time. He wrote for the papers. He was always
receiving through the mail envelopes marked "author's proofs," which,
the postmistress said, indicated that he was an author, whatever proofs
might be. She had an idea they might have something to do with
photographs; perhaps his picture was going into a book. It was very
well understood that teaching school at the Hollow, at seven dollars a
week, was an interlude in the life of one who would some day write a
spelling-book, or exercise senatorial rights at Washington. He was a
long-legged, pleasant looking youth, with a pale cheek, dark eyes, and
thick black hair, one lock of which, hanging low over his forehead, he
twisted while he read. He kept glancing up at Miss Susan and smiling at
her, whenever he could look away from his book and the fire, and she
smiled back. At last, after many such wordless messages, he spoke.
"What lots of red mittens you do knit! Do you send them all away to
that society?"
Miss Susan's needles clicked.
"Every one," said she.
She was a tall, large woman, well-knit, with no superfluous flesh. Her
head was finely set, and she carried it with a simple unconsciousness
better than dignity. Everybody in Tiverton thought it had been a great
cross to Susan Peavey to be so overgrown. They conceded that it was a
mystery she had not turned out "gormin'." But that was because Susan
had left her vanity behind with early youth, in the days when, all legs
and arms, she had given up the idea of beauty. Her face was
strong-featured, overspread by a healthy color, and her eyes looked
frankly out, as if assured of finding a very pleasant world. The sick
always delighted in Susan's nearness; her magnificent health and
presence were like a supporting tide, and she seemed to carry outdoor
air in her very garments. The schoolmaster still watched her. She
rested and fascinated him at once by her strength and homely charm.
"I shall call you the Orphans' Friend," said he.
She laid down her work.
"Don't you say one word," she answered, with an air of abject
confession. "It don't interest me a mite! I give because it's my
bounden duty, but I'll be whipped if I want to knit warm mittens all my
life, an' fill poor barrels. Sometimes I wisht I could git a chance to
provide folks with what they don't need ruther'n what they do."
"I don't see what you mean," said the schoolmaster. "Tell me."
Miss Susan was looking at the hearth. A warmer flush than that of
firelight alone lay on her cheek. She bent forward and threw on a pine
knot. It blazed richly. Then she drew the cricket more securely under
her feet, and settled herself to gossip.
"Anybody'd think I'd most talked myself out sence you come here to
board," said she, "but you're the beatemest for tolin' anybody on. I
never knew I had so much to say. But there! I guess we all have, if
there's anybody 't wants to listen. I never've said this to a livin'
soul, an' I guess it's sort o' heathenish to think, but I'm tired to
death o' fightin' ag'inst poverty, poverty! I s'pose it's there, fast
enough, though we're all so well on 't we don't realize it; an' I'm
goin' to do my part, an' be glad to, while I'm above ground. But I
guess heaven'll be a spot where we don't give folks what they need, but
what they don't."
"There is something in your Bible," began the schoolmaster
hesitatingly, "about a box of precious ointment." He always said "your
Bible," as if church members held a proprietary right.
"That's it!" replied Miss Susan, brightening. "That's what I al'ays
thought. Spill it all out, I say, an' make the world smell as sweet as
honey. My! but I do have great projicks settin' here by the fire alone!
Great projicks!"
"Tell me some!
"Well, I dunno's I can, all of a piece, so to speak; but when it gits
along towards eight o'clock, an' the room's all simmerin', an' the moon
lays out on the snow, it does seem as if we made a pretty poor spec'
out o' life. We don't seem to have no color in it. Why, don't you
remember 'Solomon in all his glory'? I guess 't wouldn't ha' been put
in jest that way if there wa'n't somethin' in it. I s'pose he had
crowns an' rings an' purple velvet coats an' brocade satin weskits, an'
all manner o' things. Sometimes seems as I could see him walkin'
straight in through that door there." She was running a knitting needle
back and forth through her ball of yarn as she spoke, without noticing
that some one had been stamping the snow from his feet on the doorstone
outside. The door, after making some bluster of refusal, was pushed
open, and on the heels of her speech a man walked in.
"My land!" cried Miss Susan, aghast. Then she and the schoolmaster, by
one accord, began to laugh.
But the man did not look at them until he had scrupulously wiped his
feet on the husk mat, and stamped them anew. Then he turned down the
legs of his trousers, and carefully examined the lank green carpet-bag
he had been carrying.
"I guess I trailed it through some o' the drifts," he remarked. "The
road's pretty narrer, this season o' the year."
"You give us a real start," said Susan. "We thought be sure 'twas
Solomon, an' mebbe the Queen o' Sheba follerin' arter. Why, Solon
Slade, you ain't walked way over to Tiverton Street!"
"Yes, I have," asserted Solon. He was a slender, sad-colored man,
possibly of her own age, and he spoke in a very soft voice. He was
Susan's widowed brother-in-law, and the neighbors said he was clever,
but hadn't no more spunk 'n a wet rag.
Susan had risen and laid down her knitting. She approached the table
and rested one hand on it, a hawk-like brightness in her eyes.
"What you got in that bag?" asked she.
Solon was enjoying his certainty that he held the key to the situation.
"I got a mite o' cheese," he answered, approaching the fire and
spreading his hands to the blaze.
"You got anything else? Now, Solon, don't you keep me here on
tenter-hooks! You got a letter?"
"Well," said Solon, "I thought I might as well look into the
post-office an' see."
"You thought so! You went a-purpose! An' you walked because you al'ays
was half shackled about takin' horses out in bad goin'. You hand me
over that letter!"
Solon approached the table, a furtive twinkle in his blue eyes. He
lifted the bag and opened it slowly. First, he took out a wedge-shaped
package.
"That's the cheese," said he. "Herb."
"My land!" ejaculated Miss Susan, while the schoolmaster looked on and
smiled. "You better ha' come to me for cheese. I've got a plenty, tansy
an' sage, an' you know it. I see it! There! you gi' me holt on 't!" It
was a fugitive white gleam in the bottom of the bag; she pounced upon
it and brought up a letter. Midway in the act of tearing it open, she
paused and looked at Solon with droll entreaty. "It's your letter, by
rights!" she added tentatively.
"Law!" said he, "I dunno who it's directed to, but I guess it's as much
your'n as anybody's."
Miss Susan spread open the sheets with an air of breathless delight.
She bent nearer the lamp. "'Dear father and auntie,'" she began.
"There!" remarked Solon, in quiet satisfaction, still warming his hands
at the blaze. "There! you see _'tis_ to both."
"My! how she does run the words together! Here!" Miss Susan passed it
to the schoolmaster. "You read it. It's from Jenny. You know she's away
to school, an' we didn't think best for her to come home Christmas. I
knew she'd write for Christmas. Solon, I told you so!"
The schoolmaster took the letter, and read it aloud. It was a simple
little message, full of contentment and love and a girl's new delight
in life. When he had finished, the two older people busied themselves a
moment without speaking, Solon in picking up a chip from the hearth,
and Susan in mechanically smoothing the mammoth roses on the side of
the carpetbag.
"Well, I 'most wish we'd had her come home," said he at last, clearing
his throat.
"No, you don't either," answered Miss Susan promptly. "Not with this
snow, an' comin' out of a house where it's het up, into cold beds an'
all. Now I'm goin' to git you a mite o' pie an' some hot tea."
She set forth a prodigal supper on a leaf of the table, and Solon
silently worked his will upon it, the schoolmaster eating a bit for
company. Then Solon took his way home to the house across the yard, and
she watched at the window till she saw the light blaze up through his
panes. That accomplished, she turned back with a long breath and began
clearing up.
"I'm worried to death to have him over there all by himself," said she.
"S'pose he should be sick in the night!"
"You'd got over," answered the schoolmaster easily.
"Well, s'pose he couldn't git me no word?"
"Oh, you'd know it! You 're that sort."
Miss Susan laughed softly, and so seemed to put away her recurrent
anxiety. She came back to her knitting.
"How long has his wife been dead?" asked the schoolmaster.
"Two year. He an' Jenny got along real well together, but sence
September, when she went away, I guess he's found it pretty dull
pickin'. I do all I can, but land! 't ain't like havin' a woman in the
house from sunrise to set."
"There's nothing like that," agreed the wise young schoolmaster. "Now
let's play some more. Let's plan what we'd like to do to-morrow for all
the folks we know, and let's not give them a thing they need, but just
the ones they'd like."
Miss Susan put down her knitting again. She never could talk to the
schoolmaster and keep at work. It made her dreamy, exactly as it did to
sit in the hot summer sunshine, with the droning of bees in the air.
"Well," said she, "there's old Ann Wheeler that lives over on the
turnpike. She don't want for nothin', but she keeps her things packed
away up garret, an' lives like a pig."
"'Sold her bed and lay in the straw.'"
"That's it, on'y she won't sell nuthin'. I'd give her a house all
winders, so 't she couldn't help lookin' out, an' velvet carpets 't
she'd got to walk on."
"Well, there's Cap'n Ben. The boys say he's out of his head a good deal
now; he fancies himself at sea and in foreign countries."
"Yes, so they say. Well, I'd let him set down a spell in Solomon's
temple an' look round him. My sake! do you remember about the temple?
Why, the nails was all gold. Don't you wish we'd lived in them times?
Jest think about the wood they had--cedars o' Lebanon an' fir-trees.
You know how he set folks to workin' in the mountains. I've al'ays
thought I'd like to ben up on them mountains an' heard the axes ringin'
an' listened to the talk. An' then there was pomegranates an' cherubim,
an' as for silver an' gold, they were as common as dirt. When I was a
little girl, I learnt them chapters, an' sometimes now, when I'm
settin' by the fire, I say over that verse about the 'man of Tyre,
skillful to work in gold, and in silver, in brass, in iron, in stone,
and in timber, in purple, in blue, and in fine linen, and in crimson.'
My! ain't it rich?"
She drew a long breath of surfeited enjoyment. The schoolmaster's eyes
burned under his heavy brows.
"Then things smelt so good in them days," continued Miss Susan. "They
had myrrh an' frankincense, an' I dunno what all. I never make my
mincemeat 'thout snuffin' at the spice-box to freshen up my mind. No
matter where I start, some way or another I al'ays git back to Solomon.
Well, if Cap'n Ben wants to see foreign countries, I guess he'd be
glad to set a spell in the temple. Le's have on another stick--that big
one thereby you. My! it's the night afore Christmas, ain't it? Seems if
I couldn't git a big enough blaze. Pile it on. I guess I'd as soon set
the chimbly afire as not!"
There was something overflowing and heady in her enjoyment. It
exhilarated the schoolmaster, and he lavished stick after stick on the
ravening flames. The maple hardened into coals brighter than its own
panoply of autumn; the delicate bark of the birch flared up and
perished.
"Miss Susan," said he, "don't you want to see all the people in the
world?"
"Oh, I dunno! I'd full as lieves set here an' think about 'em. I can
fix 'em up full as well in my mind, an' perhaps they suit me better 'n
if I could see 'em. Sometimes I set 'em walkin' through this kitchen,
kings an' queens an' all. My! how they do shine, all over precious
stones. I never see a di'mond, but I guess I know pretty well how't
would look."
"Suppose we could give a Christmas dinner,--what should we have?"
"We'd have oxen roasted whole, an' honey--an'--but that's as fur as I
can git."
The schoolmaster had a treasury of which she had never learned, and he
said musically:--
... "'a heap
Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd;
With jellies soother than the creamy curd,
And lucid syrops, tinct with cinnamon;
Manna and dates, in argosy transferr'd
From Fez; and spicéd dainties, every one,
From silken Samarcand to cedar'd Lebanon.'"
"Yes, that has a real nice sound. It ain't like the Bible, but it's
nice."
They sat and dreamed and the fire flared up into living arabesques and
burnt blue in corners. A stick parted and fell into ash, and Miss Susan
came awake. She had the air of rousing herself with vigor.
"There!" said she, "sometimes I think it's most sinful to make believe,
it's so hard to wake yourself up. Arter all this, I dunno but when
Solon comes for the pigs' kittle to-morrer, I shall ketch myself
sayin', 'Here's the frankincense!'"
They laughed together, and the schoolmaster rose to light his lamp. He
paused on his way to the stairs, and came back to set it down again.
"There are lots of people we haven't provided for," he said. "We
haven't even thought what we'd give Jenny."
"I guess Jenny's got her heart's desire." Miss Susan nodded sagely.
"I've sent her a box, with a fruit-cake an' pickles and cheese. She's
all fixed out."
The schoolmaster hesitated, and turned the lamp-wick up and down. Then
he spoke, somewhat timidly, "What should you like to give her father?"
Miss Susan's face clouded with that dreamy look which sometimes settled
upon her eyes like haze.
"Well," said she, "I guess whatever I should give him'd only make him
laugh."
"Flowers--and velvet--and honey--and myrrh?"
"Yes," answered Miss Susan with gravity. "Perhaps it's jest as well
some things ain't to be had at the shops."
The schoolmaster took up his lamp again and walked to the door.
"We never can tell," he said. "It may be people want things awfully
without knowing it. And suppose they do laugh! They'd better laugh than
cry. _I_ should give all I could. Good-night."
Miss Susan banked up the fire and set her rising of dough on the
hearth, after a discriminating peep to see whether it was getting on
too fast. After that, she covered her plants by the window and blew out
the light, so that the moon should have its way. She lingered for a
moment, looking out into a glittering world. Not a breath stirred. The
visible universe lay asleep, and only beauty waked. She was aching with
a tumultuous emotion--the sense that life might be very fair and
shining, if we only dared to shape it as it seems to us in dreams. The
loveliness and repose of the earth appealed to her like a challenge;
they alone made it seem possible for her also to dare.
Next morning, she rose earlier than usual, while the schoolmaster was
still fast bound in sleep. She stayed only to start her kitchen fire,
and then stood motionless a moment for a last decision. The great white
day was beginning outside with slow, unconscious royalty. The pale
winter dawn yielded to a flush of rose; nothing in the aspect of the
heavens contradicted the promise of the night before. It seemed to her
a wonderful day, dramatic, visible in peace, because, on that morning,
all the world was thinking of the world and not of individual desires.
She went to the bureau drawer in the sitting-room and looked, a little
scornfully, at two packages hidden there. Handkerchiefs for the
schoolmaster, stockings and gloves for Solon! Shutting the drawer, she
hurried out into the kitchen, snatching her scissors from the
work-basket by the way. She gave herself no time to think, but went up
to her flower-stand and began to cut the geranium blossoms and the
rose. The fuchsias hung in flaunting grace. They were dearer to her
than all. She snipped them recklessly, and because the bunch seemed
meagre still, broke the top from her sweet-scented geranium and
disposed the flowers hastily in the midst. Her posy was sweet-smelling
and good; it spoke to the heart. Putting a shawl over her head, she
rolled the flowers in her apron from the frost, and stepped out into
the brilliant day. The little cross-track between her house and the
other was snowed up; but she took the road and, hurrying between banks
of carven whiteness, went up Solon's path to the side door. She walked
in upon him where he was standing over the kitchen stove, warming his
hands at the first blaze. Susan's cheeks were red with the challenge of
the stinging air, but she had the look of one who, living by a larger
law, has banished the foolishness of fear. She walked straight up to
him and proffered him her flowers.
"Here, Solon," she said, "it's Christmas. I brought you these."
Solon looked at her and at them, in slow surprise. He put out both
hands and took them awkwardly.
"Well!" he said, "Well!"
Susan was smiling at him. It seemed to her at that moment that the
world was a very rich place, because you may take all you want and give
all you choose, while nobody is the wiser.
"Well," remarked Solon again, "I guess I'll put 'em into water." He
laid them down on a chair. "Susan, do you remember that time I walked
over to Pine Hill to pick you some mayflowers, when you was gittin'
over the lung fever?"
She nodded.
"Susan," said he desperately, "what if I should ask you to forgit old
scores an' begin all over?"
"I ain't laid up anything," answered Susan, looking him full in the
face with her brilliant smile.
"There's suthin' I've wanted to tell ye, this two year. I never s'posed
you knew, but that night I kissed your sister in the entry an' asked
her, I thought 't was you."
"Yes, I knew that well enough I was in the buttery and heard it all.
There, le's not talk about it."
Solon came a step nearer.
"But will you, Susan?" he persisted. "Will you? I know Jenny'd like
it."
"I guess she would, too," said Susan. "There! we don't need to talk no
further! You come over to breakfast, won't you? I'm goin' to fry
chicken. It's Christmas mornin'." She nodded at him and went out,
walking perhaps more proudly than usual down the shining path. Solon,
regardless of his cooling kitchen, stood at the door and watched her.
Solon never said very much, but he felt as if life were beginning all
over again, just as he had wished to make it at the very start. He
forgot his gray hair and furrowed face, just as he forgot the cold and
snow. It was the spring of the year.
When Miss Susan entered her kitchen, the schoolmaster had come down and
was putting a stick of wood into the stove.
"Merry Christmas!" he called, "and here's something for you."
A long white package lay on the table at the end where her plate was
always set. She opened it with delicate touches, it seemed so precious.
"My sake!" said she. "It's a fan!" She lifted it out, and the fragrance
of an Eastern wood filled all the room. She swept open the feathers.
They were white and wonderful.
"It was never used except by one very beautiful woman," said the
schoolmaster, without looking at her. "She was a good deal older than
I; but somehow she seemed to belong to me. She died, and I thought I
should like to have you keep this."
Susan was waving it back and forth before her face, stirring the air to
fragrance. Her eyes were full of dreams. "My! ain't it rich!" she
murmured. "The Queen o' Sheba never had no better. An' Solon's comin'
over to breakfast."