IV

‘Yes, I can see it,’ said the Reverend, ‘plainer than the sun in a midday

sky.’

With a taper at the end of a long cane, I had just ignited the last of

the candles, and the great Christmas-tree stood up before us, clad, from

its bole to its highest twig, in a shimmering garment of light. We two

were alone in the schoolroom, but beyond the closed door, we knew, was

Mr. Weaverly; and, beyond him again, a sea of expectant faces filling the

wide porch, and stretching out half across the street under the still,

frost-bound night. Every child that was not whispering excitedly to its

neighbour, was crooning to itself with irrepressible joy; and the sound

came to us through the solid timber like the sound of a bee-hive just

going to swarm.

‘Now open the door,’ said the Reverend, getting into his corner. ‘And if

you miss a single thing, I’ll haunt you when I am gone to the end of your

miserable life.’

I turned the key in the lock, and retreated hastily. The door flung

open. I saw the black form of Mr. Weaverly flicker aside, and expected

the whole room to be invaded in a minute by an avalanche of scrambling,

vociferating mites. But it did not happen so.

‘Not one has come in yet,’ said I, over the Reverend’s shoulder. ‘They

are just peering in at the door. I can see thirty faces, perhaps, with

thirty mouths, and twice as many eyes, opened wide; but never a smile

among the lot. How quiet they keep! But now trembling fingers are

coming round the doorposts, and a boot or two has got beyond the

threshold. The reluctant vanguard is being pressed forward by those

behind. They are creeping in now at last. The crowd has divided, and

they are edging up the room right and left, keeping their shoulders

against the walls. And all the time every wide-open eye remains fixed

upon the tree in awestruck delight. You hear that low whispering note?

They are beginning to find their voices again, and the girls are at last

venturing to let go one another’s hands. They are all in now, I think.

At least the room could hardly hold another—’

And just as a failing mill-dam begins to ooze, then to trickle and spurt,

and finally, in a moment gives way before the pressing tide, so the

silence now broke down under the flood of child voices. Shouts and

hurrahs, shrill peals of laughter, a hubbub of delighted commentary, made

the rafters vibrate above us, and the window-glass tremble in its

quarries. Before the din had so far moderated that I could get my tongue

to work again in the old vicar’s service, Weaverly and his satellites

were forging ahead with the first joyful business of the night.

It all comes back to me now—as I sit alone and late by my workroom

fire—clearer perhaps than when I was in the vortex of it all, with the

happy voices ringing about me, and the toy-drums and trumpets, the

mouth-organs and the whistle-pipes, each going to swell the already

deafening chorus the moment it was cut from the tree and put into some

eager, uplifted hand. I can see the great glittering pyramid of the tree

slowly giving up its treasures, until it bears nothing but the queen-doll

waving her star-tipped wand up among the flags and paper chains and holly

garlands of the ceiling. I see Weaverly, poised on the top of the

rickety ladder, gingerly dislodging her from her perch, while two

overdressed and over-perfumed ladies hold the ladder firm below, and gaze

up at him with fond and anxious eyes.

Now at last I see the Christmas-tree deserted, forgotten, while the

tables at the end of the room are unloading themselves of their cakes and

oranges and the score of other items appertaining to the feast. This is

a silent time, save for the exploding crackers and occasional shrieks of

fearsome delight; but it is over at last. The games begin, and with them

reawakens all the old turmoil in redoubled fury. Though each of us has

eaten more than is credible in any but a Downland-bred child, this in no

way impairs our agility. We hunt the slipper; we sing ourselves hoarse

with ‘Green Gravel’; we play ‘Blind Man’s Buff,’ and the Reverend, being

caught, is allowed to go through the part of Blind Man, at his own jovial

suggestion, without the handkerchief over his eyes.

And now two things come back to me more significant than all. But for

this busy quarter of an hour—when he is staggering to and fro, clutching

at pinafores and shock heads of hair—the Reverend has been rather a

silent and deliberate figure in the midst of all the madcap business,

more detached and quiet than I have known him at other Christmas gaieties

bygone. He has hovered about on the fringe of the merrymaking,

happy-faced as ever, yet with a certain slowness, a languor, that I have

never marked in him before. This is the one thing. The other is a

random glance I take over my shoulder at the Christmas-tree, when the fun

and frolic are at their highest. Pathetically forlorn and deserted it

looks, with bits of string clinging here and there to its drooping green

fronds, a single shining trinket hanging forgotten on one of its lower

branches, and half its glory already quenched. As I look at it, every

moment sees another candle gutter out and die. A few minutes more, I

think, and it will be nothing but a sombre and solemn fir-tree again,

ready to be carted down and set once more amidst the silent glooms of the

wood. Somehow, in spite of myself, the two things, the two thoughts,

blend themselves indivisibly together. I am glad now that, while through

the long evening I poured into the Reverend’s patient ear much idle

chatter and many feather-brained conceits, I said no word to him about

the dying Christmas-tree.

While I have been sitting here, turning over these thoughts, my own

candles have burned low: the wood-fire has sunk to a few waning embers:

it must be growing late, how late I do not guess until I turn to look at

the clock. Almost midnight! Another minute or two, and then—Christmas

morning! Perhaps, as the night is so clear and still, I shall be able to

hear the hour chime in far-off Stavisham. I go to the window, throw back

the casement against the rustling ivy, and look forth.

There is the glimmer of a lantern over by the Seven Sisters on the green,

and a sound of people talking quietly together. I think I can

distinguish George Artlett’s deep tones, and his brother Tom’s—the

Singing Plowman’s—higher, clearer speech, and an admonitory word or two

that might be Weaverly’s. The clock is striking now. Before its last

droning note dies on the frosty air, the darkness beneath me fills with a

living, joyous music:

‘Hark! the herald angels sing

Glory to the new-born King,

Peace on earth, and mercy mild,

God and sinners reconciled.

Joyful all ye nations, rise,

Join the triumph of the skies;

With the angelic host proclaim,

“Christ is born in Bethlehem.”

Hark! the herald angels sing

Glory to the new-born King!’

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at the Edinburgh University Press