ON CHRISTMAS EVE.
IT was Christmas eve, and nearing the time for Bethany to leave the
office. She stood, with her wraps on, by one of the windows, waiting for
Mr. Edmunds to come back. She had a message to deliver before she could
leave, and she expected him momentarily.
In the street below people were hurrying by with their arms full of
bundles. She was impatient to be gone, too. There were a great many
finishing touches for her to give the tall tree in the drawing-room at
home.
She had worked till the last moment at noon, and locked the door
regretfully on the gayly-decked room, with its mingled odors of pine
boughs and oranges, always so suggestive of Christmas festivities.
While she stood there, she heard steps in the hall.
"O, I thought you were Mr. Edmunds," she exclaimed, as David entered. It
was the first time he had been at the office that day. "I have a message
for him. Have you seen him anywhere?"
"No," answered David. "I have just come in from Hillhollow. Marta has
telegraphed that she is coming home on the night train, so I shall not
be able to accept Jack's invitation. She had not expected to come at all
during the holidays; but one of the teachers was called home, and she
could not resist the temptation to accompany her, although she can only
stay until the end of the week."
As Bethany expressed her regrets at Jack's disappointment, David picked
up a small package that lay on his desk.
"O, the expressman left that for you a little while ago," she said.
"Your Christmas is beginning early."
She turned again to the window, peering out through the dusk, while
David lighted the gas-jet over his desk, and proceeded to open the
package.
It occurred to her that here was a time, while all the world was turning
towards the Messiah on this anniversary eve of his coming, that she
might venture to speak of him. Before she could decide just how to
begin, David spoke to her:
"Do you care to look, Miss Hallam? I would like for you to see it."
He held a little silver case towards her, on which a handsome monogram
was heavily engraved.
As she touched the spring it flew open, showing an exquisitely painted
miniature on ivory.
She gave an involuntary cry of delight.
"What a beautiful girl," she exclaimed. "It is one of the loveliest
faces I ever saw." She scrutinized it carefully, studying it with an
artist's evident pleasure. Then she looked up with a smile.
"This must be the one Rabbi Barthold spoke to me about," she said. "He
said that she was rightly named Esther, for it means star, and her
great, dark eyes always made him think of starlight."
"How long ago since he told you that?" asked David in surprise.
"When we first began taking Hebrew lessons," she answered.
"And did he tell you we are bethrothed?"
"Yes."
David felt annoyed. He knew intuitively why his old friend had departed
so from his usual scrupulousness regarding a confidence. He had
intimated to David, when he had first met Miss Hallam, that she was an
unusually fascinating girl, and he feared that their growing friendship
might gradually lessen the young man's interest in Esther, whom he saw
only at long intervals, as she lived in a distant city.
"I had hoped to have the pleasure of telling you myself," said David.
"I have often wondered what she is like," answered Bethany, "and I am
glad to have this opportunity of offering my congratulations. I wish
that she lived here that I might make her acquaintance. I do not know
when I have seen a face that has captivated me so."
"Thank you," replied David, flushing with pleasure. A tender smile
lighted his eyes as he glanced at the miniature again before closing the
case. "She will come to Hillhollow in the spring," he added proudly.
They heard Mr. Edmunds's voice in the hall. Bethany held out her hand.
"I shall not see you again until next week, I suppose," she said, "so
let me wish you a very happy Christmas."
He kept her hand in his an instant as he repeated her greeting, then,
looking earnestly down into the upturned face, added gently in Hebrew,
the old benediction--"Peace be upon you."
It was quite dark when she stepped out into the streets. She thought of
David and Esther all the way home.
At first she thought of them with a tender smile curving her lips, as
she entered unselfishly into the happiness of the little romance she had
discovered.
Then she thought of them with tears in her eyes and a chill in her
heart, as some little waif might stand shivering on the outside of a
window, looking in on a happy scene, whose warmth and comfort he could
not share. The joy of her own betrothal, and the desolation that ended
it, surged back over her so overwhelmingly that she was in no mood for
merry-making when she reached home.
She longed to slip quietly away to her own room, and spend the evening
in the dark with her memories. She had to wait a moment on the
threshold before she could summon strength enough to go in cheerfully.
Mrs. Marion and Lois were in the dining-room helping the sisters
decorate the long table, where the children were to be served with
supper immediately on their arrival.
"Frank and Jack have gone out in a sleigh to gather them up," said Mrs.
Marion. "They'll soon be here, so you'll not have much time to dress."
"All right," responded Bethany, "I'll go in a minute. Mr. Herschel can't
come, so you may as well take off one plate."
"But George Cragmore can," said Miss Caroline, pausing on her way to the
kitchen. "I asked him this morning, and forgot to say anything about
it."
Then she trotted out for a cake-knife, blissfully unconscious of the
grimace Bethany made behind her back.
"O dear!" she exclaimed to Lois, "Miss Caroline means all right, but she
is a born matchmaker. She has taken a violent fancy to Mr. Cragmore, and
wants me to do the same. She thinks she is so very deep, and so very
wary in the way she lays her plans, that I'll never suspect; but the
dear old soul is as transparent as a window-pane. I can see every move
she makes."
"What about Mr. Cragmore?" asked Lois. "Is he conscious of her efforts
in his behalf?"
"O no. He thinks that she is a dear, motherly old lady, and is always
paying her some flattering attention. It is well worth his while, for
she makes him perfectly at home here, keeps his pockets full of goodies,
as if he were an overgrown boy (which he is in some respects), and
treats him with the consideration due a bishop. She is always going out
to Clarke Street to hear him preach, and quoting his sermons to him
afterwards. There he is now!" she exclaimed, as two short rings and one
long one were given the front door-bell.
"So he even has his especial signals," laughed Lois. "He must be on a
very familiar footing, indeed."
"He got into that habit when he first started to calling by to take me
up to the Hebrew class," she explained. "Miss Caroline encouraged him in
it."
Just then Miss Caroline came hurrying through the room to receive him.
"Bethany, dear," she said in an excited stage whisper, "you'd better run
up the back stairs. And do put on your best dress, and a rose in your
hair, just to please me. Now, won't you?"
Bethany and Lois looked at each other and laughed.
"I'd like to shock her by going in just as I am," said Bethany; "but as
it's Christmas-time I suppose I must be good and please everybody."
It was not long before a great stamping of many snowy little feet
announced the arrival of the Christmas guests.
They came into the house with such rosy, happy faces, that no one
thought of the patched clothes and ragged shoes.
"Dear hearts, I wish we could have a hundred instead of ten," sighed
Miss Harriet, as she helped seat them at the table. "They look as though
they never once had enough to eat in all their little lives."
"They shall have it now," declared Miss Caroline heartily, "if George
Cragmore doesn't keep them laughing so hard they can't eat. Just hear
the man!"
She had never seen him in such a gay humor, or heard him tell such
irresistibly funny stories as the ones he brought out for the
entertainment of these poor little guests, who had never known anything
but the depressing poverty of the most wretched homes.
Mr. Marion was the good St. Nicholas who had found them, and spirited
them away to this enchanted land; but Cragmore was the Aladdin who
rubbed his lamp until their eyes were dazzled by the wonderful scenes he
conjured up for them.
When the dinner was over, and everything had been taken off the table
but the flowers and candles and bonbon dishes, he lifted the smallest
child of all from her high chair, and took her on his knee.
With his arms around her, he began to tell the story of the first
Christmas. His voice was very deep and sweet, and he told it so well one
could almost see the dark, silent plains and the white sheep huddled
together, and the shepherds keeping watch by night.
One by one the children slipped down from their chairs, and crowded
closer around him.
He had never preached before to such a breathless audience, and he had
never put into his sermons such gentleness and pathos and power.
He was thinking of their poor, neglected lives, and how much they needed
the love of One who could sympathize to the utmost, because he was born
among the lowly, and "was despised and rejected of men." When he had
finished, the tears stood in his eyes with the intensity of his feeling,
and the children were very quiet.
The little girl on his lap drew a long breath. Then she smiled up in his
face, and, putting her arm around his neck, leaned her head against him.
There was a bugle-call from the library, and Jack led the children away
to listen to an orchestra composed of boys from the League, who had
volunteered their services for the occasion.
While they were playing some old carols, Miss Caroline called Mr.
Cragmore aside. "I've sent Bethany to light the candles on the tree in
the drawing-room," she said. "May be you can help her."
Lois heard the whisper, and his hearty response, "May the saints bless
you for that now!" She hurried into the hall to intercept Bethany.
"Ah ha, my lady," she said teasingly, "you needn't be putting everything
off onto poor Aunt Caroline. I've just now discovered that she is only
somebody's cat's-paw."
Bethany was irritated. She had been greatly touched by the winning
tenderness of Cragmore's manner with the children. If there had been no
memory of a past love in her life, she could have found in this man all
the qualities that would inspire the deepest affection; but with that
memory always present, she resented the slightest word that hinted of
his interest in her.
She made Lois go with her to light the tapers, and that mischief-loving
girl thoroughly enjoyed forestalling the little private interview Miss
Caroline had planned for her protege.
It was still early in the evening, while the children were romping
around the dismantled tree, that Cragmore announced his intention of
leaving.
"I promised to talk at a Hebrew mission to-night," he explained, in
answer to the remonstrances that greeted him on all sides.
"By the way," he exclaimed, "I intended to tell you about that, and I
must stay a moment longer to do it."
He hung his overcoat on the back of a tall chair, and folded his arms
across it.
"The other day I made the acquaintance of a Russian Jew, Sigmund
Ragolsky. He has a remarkable history. He married an English Jewess, was
a rabbi in Glasgow for a long time, and is now a Baptist preacher,
converted after a fourteen years' struggle against a growing belief in
the truth of Christianity. The story of his life sounds like a romance.
He was so strictly orthodox that he would not strike a match on the
Sabbath. He would have starved before he would have touched food that
had not been prepared according to ritual. He is here for the purpose of
establishing a Hebrew mission. You should see the people who come to
hear him. They are nearly all from that poor class in the tenement
district. One can hardly believe they belong to the same race with Rabbi
Barthold and his cultured friends. Ragolsky, though, is a scholar, and
I should like to hear the two men debate. He says the Reform Jews are no
Jews at all--that they are the hardest people in the world to convert,
because they look for no Messiah, accept only the Scripture that suits
them, and are so well satisfied with themselves that they feel no need
of any mediator between them and eternal holiness. They feel fully equal
to the task of making their own atonement. Rabbi Barthold says that the
orthodox are narrow fanatics, and that the majority of them live two
lives--one towards God, of slavish religious observances; the other
towards man, of sharp practices and double-dealing. I want you to hear
Ragolsky preach some night. I'll tell you his story some other time."
"Tell me this much now," said Bethany, as he picked up his overcoat
again; "did he have to give up his family as Mr. Lessing did?"
"No, indeed. Happily his wife and children were converted also. He had
two rich brothers-in-law in Cape Colony, Africa, who cut them off
without a shilling, but he is not grieving over that, I can assure you.
O, he is so full of his purpose, and is such a happy Christian! If we
were all as constantly about the Master's business as he is, the
millennium would soon be here."
Afterward, when the children had been taken home, and the feast and the
tree, and the people who gave them, were only blissful memories in their
happy little hearts, Bethany stood by the window in her room, holding
aside the curtain.
Everything outside was covered with snow. She was thinking of Ragolsky
and Lessing, and wondering which of the two fates would be David
Herschel's, if he should ever become a Christian.
Would Esther's love for her people be stronger than her love for him?
She knew how tenaciously the women of Israel cling to their faith, yet
she felt that it was no ordinary bond that held these two together.
Looking up beyond the starlighted heavens, Bethany whispered a very
heartfelt prayer for David and the beautiful, dark-eyed girl who was to
be his bride; and like an answering omen of good, over the white roofs
of the city came the joyful clangor of the Christmas chimes.