With the comfortable heat of the fires, the kind offices of nearly all
the well-dressed people to the poorer ones--for they were not slow,
these kid-gloved Pullman passengers, to follow Miss Raymond’s
example--the day wore on quietly and not unpleasantly toward its
close. Then some one suddenly remembered that it was Christmas Eve.
“Dear me!” cried Miss Raymond, delightedly, reaching round the baby to
clap her hands; “let’s have a Christmas party!”
A few sighed and shook their heads, as they thought of their own home
firesides; one or two smiled indulgently on the small enthusiast;
several chimed in at once. Conductor and baggage-master were
consulted, and the spacious baggage-car “specially engaged for the
occasion,” the originator of the scheme triumphantly announced.
Preparations commenced without delay. All the young people put their
heads together in one corner, and many were the explosions of laughter
as the programme grew. Trunks were visited by their owners and small
articles abstracted therefrom to serve as gifts for the immigrants and
train-men, to whose particular entertainment the evening was by common
consent to be devoted.
Just as the lamps were lighted in the train, our hero, who had
disappeared early in the afternoon, returned dragging after him a
small, stunted pine tree, which seemed to have strayed away from its
native forests on purpose for the celebration. On being admitted to
the grand hall, Bob further added to the decorations a few strings of
a queer, mossy sort of evergreen. Hereupon a very young man with light
eyebrows, who had hitherto been inconspicuous, suddenly appeared from
the depths of a battered trunk, over the edge of which he had for some
time been bent like a siphon, and with a beaming face produced a box
of veritable, tiny wax candles! He was “on the road,” he explained,
for a large wholesale toy-shop, and these were samples. He guessed he
could make it all right with the firm.
Of course the affair was a great success. I have no space to tell of
the sheltered walk that Bob constructed of rugs, from car to car; of
the beautified interior of the old baggage-car, draped with shawls and
brightened with bits of ribbon; of the mute wonder of the poor
immigrants, a number of whom had just arrived from Germany, and could
not speak a word of English; of their unbounded delight when the
glistening tree was disclosed, and the cries of “_Weihnachtsbaum!
Weihnachtsbaum!_” from their rumpled children, whose faces waked into
a glow of blissful recollection at the sight. Ah! if you could have
seen the pretty gifts; the brave little pine (which all the managers
agreed couldn’t possibly have been used had it been an inch taller);
the improvised tableaux, wherein Bob successively personated an
organ-grinder, a pug dog, and Hamlet, amid thunders of applause from
the brakemen and engineers! Then the passengers sang a simple
Christmas carol, Miss Raymond leading with her pure soprano, and Bob
chiming in like the diapason of an organ.
Just as the last words died away a sudden hush came over the audience.
Could it be an illusion, or did they hear the muffled but sweet notes
of a church bell faintly sounding without? Tears came into the eyes of
some of the roughest of the immigrants as they listened, and thought
of a wee belfry somewhere in the Fatherland, where the Christmas bells
were calling to prayers that night. The sound of the bells ceased, and
the merriment went on, while the young man with eyebrows lighter than
ever, but with radiant face, let himself quietly into the car
unnoticed. It had been his own thought to creep out into the storm,
clear away the snow from the nearest locomotive bell, and ring it
while the gayety was at its height.
All this indeed there was, and more; but to Bob, the joy and sweetness
of the evening centered in one bright face. What mattered it if the
wind roared and moaned about the lonely, snow-drifted train, while he
could look into those brown eyes and listen to that voice for whose
every tone he was fast learning to watch? Truly, it was a wonderful
evening altogether.
Well, the blockade was raised, and the long railroad trip finished at
last. But two of its passengers, at least, have agreed to enter upon a
still longer journey.
She says it all began when he came staggering in with his armful of
wood and his blue mittens; and he? he doesn’t care at all when it
began. He only realizes the joy that has come to him, and believes
that after a certain day next May it will be Christmas for him all the
year round.