They returned to the threshold, and as they were bending over to grip

the dead man the same sound filled the air, but this time louder,

more intense, a cry of great agony. The sweat dripped from McCurdie’s

forehead. They lifted the dead man and brought him into the room, and

after laying him on a dirty strip of carpet they did their best to

straighten the stiff limbs. Biggleswade put on the table a bundle

which he had picked up outside. It contained some poor provisions—a

loaf, a piece of fat bacon, and a paper of tea. As far as they could

guess (and as they learned later they guessed rightly) the man was the

master of the house, who, coming home blind drunk from some distant

inn, had fallen at his own threshold and got frozen to death. As they

could not unclasp his fingers from the broken bottle neck they had to

let him clutch it as a dead warrior clutches the hilt of his broken

sword.

Then suddenly the whole place was rent with another and yet another

long, soul-piercing moan of anguish.

“There’s a second room,” said Boyne, pointing to a door. “The sound

comes from there.”

He opened the door, peeped in, and then, returning for the lamp,

disappeared, leaving McCurdie and Biggleswade in the pitch darkness,

with the dead man on the floor.

“For heaven’s sake, give me a drop of whisky,” said the Professor, “or

I shall faint.”

Presently the door opened and Lord Boyne appeared in the shaft of

light. He beckoned to his companions.

“It is a woman in childbirth,” he said in his even, tired voice. “We

must aid her. She appears unconscious. Does either of you know anything

about such things?”

They shook their heads, and the three looked at each other in dismay.

Masters of knowledge that had won them world-wide fame and honor, they

stood helpless, abashed before this, the commonest phenomenon of

nature.

“My wife had no child,” said McCurdie.

“I’ve avoided women all my life,” said Biggleswade.

“And I’ve been too busy to think of them. God forgive me,” said Boyne.

The history of the next two hours was one that none of the three men

ever cared to touch upon. They did things blindly, instinctively,

as men do when they come face to face with the elemental. A fire

was made, they knew not how, water drawn they knew not whence, and

a kettle boiled. Boyne, accustomed to command, directed. The others

obeyed. At his suggestion they hastened to the wreck of the car and

came staggering back beneath rugs and traveling bags which could supply

clean linen and needful things, for amid the poverty of the house they

could find nothing fit for human touch or use. Early they saw that the

woman’s strength was failing, and that she could not live. And there,

in that nameless hovel, with death on the pitiful bed, the three great

men went through the pain and the horror and squalor of birth, and they

knew that they had never yet stood before so great a mystery.

With the first wail of the newly born infant a last convulsive shudder

passed through the frame of the unconscious mother. Then three or four

short gasps for breath, and the spirit passed away. She was dead.

Professor Biggleswade threw a corner of the sheet over her face, for he

could not bear to see it.

They washed and dried the child as any crone of a midwife would have

done, and dipped a small sponge which had always remained unused in a

cut-glass bottle in Boyne’s dressing-bag in the hot milk and water of

Biggleswade’s thermos bottle, and put it to his lips; and then they

wrapped him up warm in some of their own woolen undergarments, and took

him into the kitchen and placed him on a bed made of their fur coats in

front of the fire. As the last piece of fuel was exhausted they took

one of the wooden chairs and broke it up and cast it into the blaze.

And then they raised the dead man from the strip of carpet and carried

him into the bedroom and laid him reverently by the side of his dead

wife, after which they left the dead in darkness and returned to the

living. And the three grave men stood over the wisp of flesh that had

been born a male into the world. Then, their task being accomplished,

reaction came, and even Boyne, who had seen death in many lands, turned

faint. But the others, losing control of their nerves, shook like men

stricken with palsy.

Suddenly McCurdie cried in a high pitched voice, “My God! Don’t you

feel it?” and clutched Boyne by the arm. An expression of terror came

on his iron features. “There! It’s here with us.”

Little Professor Biggleswade sat on a corner of the table and wiped his

forehead.

“I heard it. I feel it. It was like the beating of wings.”

“It’s the fourth time,” said McCurdie. “The first time was just before

I accepted the Deverills’ invitation. The second in the railway

carriage this afternoon. The third on the way here. This is the fourth.”

Biggleswade plucked nervously at the fringe of whisker under his jaws

and said faintly, “It’s the fourth time up to now. I thought it was

fancy.”

“I have felt it, too,” said Boyne. “It is the Angel of Death.” And he

pointed to the room where the dead man and woman lay.

“For God’s sake let us get away from this,” cried Biggleswade.

“And leave the child to die, like the others?” said Boyne.

“We must see it through,” said McCurdie.

A silence fell upon them as they sat round by the blaze with the

new-born babe wrapped in its odd swaddling clothes asleep on the pile

of fur coats, and it lasted until Sir Angus McCurdie looked at his

watch.

“Good Lord,” said he, “it’s twelve o’clock.”

“Christmas morning,” said Biggleswade.

“A strange Christmas,” mused Boyne.

McCurdie put up his hand. “There it is again! The beating of wings.”

And they listened like men spellbound. McCurdie kept his hand uplifted,

and gazed over their heads at the wall, and his gaze was that of a man

in a trance, and he spoke:

“Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given——”

Boyne sprang from his chair, which fell behind him with a crash.

“Man—what the devil are you saying?”

Then McCurdie rose and met Biggleswade’s eyes staring at him through

the great round spectacles, and met the eyes of Boyne. A pulsation like

the beating of wings stirred the air.

The three wise men shivered with a queer exaltation. Something strange,

mystical, dynamic had happened. It was as if scales had fallen from

their eyes and they saw with a new vision. They stood together humbly,

divested of all their greatness, touching one another like children,

as if seeking mutual protection, and they looked, with one accord,

irresistibly compelled, at the child.

At last McCurdie unbent his black brows and said hoarsely:

“It was not the Angel of Death, Boyne, but another Messenger that drew

us here.”

The tiredness seemed to pass away from the great administrator’s face,

and he nodded his head with the calm of a man who has come to the quiet

heart of a perplexing mystery.

“It’s true,” he murmured. “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is

given. Unto the three of us.”

Biggleswade took off his great round spectacles and wiped them.

“Gaspar, Melchior, Balthazar. But where are the gold, frankincense and

myrrh?”

“In our hearts, man,” said McCurdie.

The babe cried and stretched its tiny limbs.

Instinctively they all knelt down together to discover if possible and

administer ignorantly to its wants. The scene had the appearance of an

adoration.

Then these three wise, lonely, childless men who, in furtherance of

their own greatness, had cut themselves adrift from the sweet and

simple things of life and from the kindly ways of their brethren,

and had grown old in unhappy and profitless wisdom, knew that an

inscrutable Providence had led them as it had led three Wise Men of

old, on a Christmas morning long ago, to a nativity which should give

them a new wisdom, a new link with humanity, a new spiritual outlook, a

new hope.

And when their watch was ended they wrapped up the babe with precious

care, and carried him with them, an inalienable joy and possession,

into the great world.

[13] Reprinted by permission of W. J. Locke.

A CHRISTMAS CONFESSION[14]

_Agnes McClelland Daulton_

Philamaclique lay wrapped softly in snow. The trees arching the wide

streets swayed in the stinging winter wind and silently dropped their

white plumes upon the head of the occasional pedestrian. Over the old

town peace brooded. The snow deadened the passing footstep; the runners

of the rude sleds, the hoofs of the farm horses, made no sound; sleepy

quiet prevailed but for the rare jingle of sleigh-bells or the gay

calling of children’s voices.

The rollicking morning sun, having set the town a-glitter without

adding a hint of warmth, smiled broadly as he peeped into the

snowy-curtained window of a little red brick house on the north

side of High Street. Here in the quaint, low sitting-room he found

good cheer a-plenty. The red geraniums on the window-sill, the

worn but comfortable furniture, the crackling wood fire upon the

hearth, the dozing cat upon the hearth-rug, even the creaking of the

rocking-chairs, whispered of warmth and rest and homeliness.

“So I just run over to tell you, seein’ the snow was too deep for you

to get out to prayer-meetin’,” wheezed Mrs. Keel, blinking at the sun

and creaking heavily back and forth in the old rush-bottomed rocker.

“Says I to Joel at breakfast, ‘Granny Simmers will be pleased as Punch,

for she always did love a frolic, so I’ll just run over and tell her

while Mellie is washin’ the dishes and I’m waitin’ for the bread to

raise’.”

“It was real kind of you, Sister Keel, with your asthmy an’ rheumatiz,”

quavered Granny, folding her checked breakfast shawl more closely about

her slender shoulders, as she sat excitedly poised like a little gray

bird on the edge of her chair. “Jest to think of us Methodists havin’

a Christmas-tree after all these years. My! how I wish it had come in

John’s time! I remember once, when we was livin’ out on the farm, says

he to me, ‘Polly, if the preacher says we’ll have a tree this year, you

and me’ll hitch up Dolly an’ go to town an’ buy a gif’ fer every man,

woman, an’ child.’ Dolly was our bay buggy-beast, an’ the best mare in

the neighborhood, so John was as choice of her as he was of me ’most,

an’ that was a deal for him to offer.”

“Law, Granny, how well I remember him and you ridin’ so happy in that

little green wicker sleigh!” exclaimed Mrs. Keel, as she ponderously

drew herself from the deeps of her chair. “I must be goin’ now. It was

awful nice of Brother Sutton to decide for the Christmas tree when he

found the infant class was achin’ for it. His face was beamin’ last

night like a seryphim. The children are about wild; Emmie says she

wants a pony; guess we’d have some trouble hangin’ that on the tree!

Mart wants a gold watch and chain, and Billy says marbles and a gun is

good enough for him; but I reckon they’ll all take what they can get.

Joel said this mornin’ he’s afraid there’ll be lots of achin’ hearts.

There is them little Cotties—who’s a-goin’ to give to them, and the

Jacksons, and old Miss Nellie, and Widow Theat. I don’t see how the

Millers can do much for Tessie; and poor old Sister Biddle, says she to

me last night as we was comin’ out, says she, ‘It’ll be awful sweet to

hear Brother Knisley readin’ out, Mis’ Sallie Biddle; seems ’most as if

I couldn’t stand it, it’ll be so sweet. I ain’t had a Christmas gif’

since Biddle was courtin’ me sixty years ago.’ The poor old body was

just chucklin’ over it; but who’s goin’ to give her anything, I’d like

to know?”

“Oh, my me!” sighed Granny, clasping her little wrinkled hands

wistfully as she stood at the open door. “I ain’t thought of the gif’s.

It was the lights, and the candles a-twinklin’, an’ the music, an’

the children most bustin’ with gladness and wishes. Land! when I was

a little girl, how I used to wish we was Moravians; they was always

havin’ trees, or candle feasts, or children’s feasts, or Easterin’s,

an’ us Methodists didn’t have no excitement ’cept revivals. Law me,

what am I sayin’!” she broke off with a chuckle. “As if I didn’t thank

the Lord every night for makin’ me a Methodist bred, a Methodist born,

a Methodist till I die. It’s the children I’m thinkin’ about.”

Mrs. Keel laughed and held up a fat reproving finger as she called from

the gate:

“I guess you ain’t growed up yourself, Granny, for all your eighty

years. I’ve said to Joel often, says I, ‘There ain’t a child in this

town that is younger at heart than Granny Simmers,’ and says he, ‘Ner a

child that’s sweeter ner prettier!’”

“My me!” whispered Granny as she closed the door, her soft wrinkled

cheeks delicately flushed at the unexpected compliment. “John said I’d

never git over bein’ a girl, an’ here I be blushin’ like a fool ’cause

old Joel Keel says I ain’t bad-lookin’.”

There was much bustling going on in the trim little “brick” that

morning. Martha Morris, Granny’s “help,” had never known her mistress

to be so concerned about the crispness of the pepper-cakes, the

spiciness of the pig and horse ginger cookies, the brownness of the

twisted doughnuts, or the flakiness of the mince pies that were resting

by noon in savory richness on the pantry shelf. Then, when dinner was

over and the dishes washed, Granny demanded that she herself be taken

in hand.

“Law, Granny, you ain’t goin’ up town in such a snow as this!”

protested Martha, as she lovingly tucked the thin white hair under the

velvet cap and folded the kerchief about her neck.

“Indeed I am, Marthy,” replied Granny with prompt decision. “The sun is

shinin’ grand, an’ Billy Sharp went along with the snow shovel while

you was washin’ the dishes. Just wrap me up warm an’ I’ll get along

first rate.”

“Better let me go, too,” argued Martha, as she pinned Granny’s “Bay

State” firmly under her chin with the big glass brooch with its

precious lock of gray hair safely inclosed, and tied her nubia over her

cap. “You might slip and fall. I won’t feel safe one minute till you

are back home.”

“Land, Marthy! every born soul knows me. Ain’t I Granny to the hull

town, for all I ain’t got a chick ner a child? My me! it’s sixty years

since John an’ me laid ’Rastus away; fifty since little Mary, her

father’s darlin’, slipped off to heaven. Seems like my old heart goes

out in love to everybody ’count of them three, John and my two babies,

waitin’ for me in one of the Father’s mansions. Hope there’s a chimbly

corner—John always loved it so on a winter’s night; an’ I hope there’s

roses growin’ by the doorstep, so it will seem like home to ’em all;

an’, Marthy, if I fall there ain’t a soul but would be ready to pick me

up, an’ a smile for me, bless ’em! I jest wonder sometimes how it comes

everybody is so kind an’ good. It’s a lovely world, that’s what it is.”

“Now,” said Granny to herself, as she teetered along on the icy walk

toward the busy stores, “John said a gif’ for every man, woman, an’

child. Guess I can remember the hull lot, as there’s only six men an’

I’ve got the women writ down; an’ for the children, well, I’ll buy till

my money gives out, an’ I reckon I’ll get enough. Kind of pitiful about

Sister Biddle. My! what a dashin’, lovely girl she was when I first see

her at the Beals’ apple-parin’! She was Sallie Neely then, pretty as a

picture, hair and eyes like jet, an’ cheeks pink as roses, an’ so tall

an’ slender. I recollect how she picked me up an’ whirled me round;

she was as light as a feather on her feet, an’ said, ‘Polly Whitehead,

was there ever such a morsel of a girl as you are? If I was a man, I’d

marry you ’fore night.’ An’ John said he said to himself she’d have had

a hard time of it, for he made up his mind then an’ there to have me

himself. Yes, I’ll get Sallie Neely a red plush album an’ put John’s

picture in it; she’d admire to get that!”

Granny hesitated.

“Well, did you ever!” she gasped. “I ain’t never thought of it before;

who’ll give anything to me, Polly Simmers? John would, dear John, but

he’s gone, an’ I ain’t got a blood akin in the town, an’ they’ve all

got such a lot to give to. Mebby I wouldn’t mind much, but it—would—be

kind of mortifyin’ to be the only one forgot, for I’m bound they

sha’n’t be another soul left out. I wonder if I dare!”

* * * * *

Long shafts of light from the bare, uncurtained windows of the old

church lay across the snow, as the cracked bell jangled through the

crisp air its Christmas greeting. The jingle of sleigh-bells, the

creaking of the runners, merry voices, bits of song, gay laughter,

united in a Christmas carol redolent with Christmas spirit—Peace on

earth, good will to men.

Granny, leaning on Martha’s strong arm, fairly shivered with excitement

and delight. She knew that not a soul called by the clamor of that bell

had been forgotten. There had been no need of stinting, for Granny’s

acres were broad and fruitful and her wants few. Gift after gift had

her withered hands tied into pretty parcels. The pen had creaked and

sputtered across the paper as she marked them, for she had refused all

help from curious but loving Martha, only asking that there be a good

fire made in the air-tight stove in the spare chamber. There she worked

alone, but happy, Martha well knew, as she stood with her ear pressed

to the crack of the door, having found the keyhole stopped with cotton.

“While shepherds watched their flocks by night,

All seated on the ground,

The angels of the Lord came down,

And glory shone around,”

quavered the old voice. And Martha never knew it was not Granny Simmers

who sang so joyfully within, but pretty Polly Whitehead in the choir

of the old meeting-house, looking on the same hymn-book with handsome

young John Simmers, the catch of the valley.

“Just fairly takes my breath away,” wheezed Mrs. Keel, meeting Granny

at the door of the church. “Don’t seem like the same place. Now ain’t

it pretty?”

Granny caught her breath.

Could this be the little church she knew so well? Before that altar,

she, a bride, had stood with John; there they had carried Baby Rastus

and Mary for baptism; there the casket had rested that awful day when

she had found herself alone.

A crude little sanctuary, always bare and cheerless to the

beauty-loving eye, yet rich with tenderest memories to Granny;

to-night, ablaze with lights, roped with greenery, gay with flags,

joyful with the hum of merry voices, it seemed some new and unexplored

fairyland. And there upon the rostrum in all its glory, tall, straight,

and beautiful, twinkling with candles, festooned with strings of

popcorn and cranberries, glittering with tinsel stars and silver

crowns, adorned with bobinet stockings cubby and knubby with candy and

nuts, hung with packages big and little, stood the tree, the tree!

“Let me set down till I get my breath, Marthy,” cackled Granny,

excitedly. “Jest get my specks out of my pocket, will you, child? My,

my! if only John an’ ’Rastus an’ little Mary was here now!”

Sitting straight in the corner of her pew, her spectacles on the

extreme end of her nose, her bonnet tipped rakishly to one side in her

joy, her black-woolen-mittened hands crossed demurely in her lap, she,

the happiest child of them all, listened to the exercise. Carolers and

speech-makers found naught but sympathy in her sweet face.

When the last speaker had tiptoed to his seat and the infant class was

growing unruly in the amen corner—the sight of the bobinet stockings

and mysterious packages being too much for the patience of their

baby souls—Brother Knisley carefully mounted the step-ladder and the

distribution of the gifts began.

“Billy Keel, Tessie Miller—Dora Jackson, Mrs. Sallie Biddle,” haltingly

read the Brother. The sight of Sallie’s wild delight over the red

plush album almost moved Granny to tears. “Mrs. Polly Simmers, Martha

Morris—Mrs. Polly Simmers, Mrs. Joel Keel—Mrs. Polly Simmers,” then

again and again until the pew in which Granny sat was filled and

overflowed into her lap. Wide-eyed, at first happy, then more and more

distressed grew the small face under its rakish bonnet.

“Mrs. Polly Simmers, Miss Nelly Sanford—Mrs. Polly Simmers—” Oh, would

they never cease? Martha, chuckling with joy, gathered them in one by

one.

“There, Granny, guess it ain’t hard to see who is the favorite in this

town,” she whispered vehemently. “Law’s sakes, if here ain’t another;

that makes twenty-one! Wonder what it is? It feels for all the world

like a milk-strainer, but I never heard of such a thing hung on a tree.”

Granny’s face flushed, puckered, and flamed into crimson.

“Don’t talk so loud, Marthy. Ain’t you got no manners! Oh, whatever,

ever shall I do?”

“Do?” wheezed Mrs. Keel, leaning over the back of her pew. “Do? Why,

take every one of ’em and enjoy ’em. Ain’t one but what’s filled with

love, even if it is a milk-strainer, though I can’t see why anybody

come to think of that.”

“Goodness knows, we needed it bad enough,” returned Martha, shrilly,

over Mrs. Keel’s shoulder. “I’ve been jaw-smithin’ about it fer the

last month, but she wus always forgittin’ it.”

“Looks to me as if that was a coal-hod,” remarked Billy Keel, prodding

a bulky bundle on Granny’s lap with a fat forefinger.

“You hush up, Billy Keel,” exclaimed Granny, resentfully. “I ain’t

makin’ any remark about your gif’s, be I?”

Billy, as much astonished as if one of his pet doves had pecked him,

hung his head in shame.

“Mrs. Polly Simmers,” announced the Brother, pompously, as he slowly

clambered to the floor; “that is the last gif’.”

“Ahem!” began Brother Sutton, his mild old eyes beaming with joy as he

looked over his congregation. He drew his tall length to its uttermost,

set the tips of his fingers together, and teetered slowly back and

forth from toe to heel. “Ahem! It has been gratifying indeed to see

so much generosity. But most of all it has pleased us to see that the

receiver of the lion’s share has been our aged sister, Mrs. Polly

Simmers. It is delightful that her unselfish life, her high sense of

honor, her sweet sympathy, has been appreciated.”

Granny, her face deathly pale, every hint of the Christmas joy of

the early evening gone from her eyes, now dulled with agony, arose

trembling in her pew.

But Brother Sutton’s eyes brightened as he saw her.

“Our aged sister wishes to speak to us, I see,” he said, kindly, “and I

know all the little folks will be very quiet.”

“I jest want to say,” gasped Granny, clutching nervously at the pew in

front of her, “I jest want to say that I’m a wicked old sinner, that

I’m a liar and a cheat and a disgrace to my church.”

The audience, as if electrified, turned toward her in amazement; even

the children dropped their gifts to stare at Granny, as she stood pale,

wild-eyed, and self-accusing.

“My heart’s ’most bustin’ with your goodness,” went on the quavering

old voice, “and I’ve got to tell or I’ll die ’fore mornin’, an’ I

can’t go to John an’ ’Rastus an’ little Mary with a lie on my soul,

even if the good Lord would forgive me for their sakes an’ let me in.

That day I set out to buy a gif’ fer every man, woman, an’ child in

the church the devil kept tellin’ me they wouldn’t be nothin’ fer old

Granny Simmers, an’ the more I thought the more I got a hankerin’ to

hear my name read with the rest; an’ the bad man he said to me, says

he, ‘Granny Simmers, why don’t you buy some things for yourself an’

put them on the tree; nobody’d be the wiser. Needn’t buy anything

extravagant,’ says he, ‘jest plain needcessities that Marthy’s been

urgin’. Since you are buyin’ for everybody in the church, there’s no

harm—John said every man, woman, an’ child.’

“I didn’t have an idee that anybody would think of old me, so I says

to the bad man at last, says I, ‘Jest a few things, devil, jest a

few—a milk-strainer that Marthy has been jawin’ about, a coal-hod, a

tack-hammer, an’ a new calico I had been needin’ for some time; then I

got a couple of new pie tins an’ a soapstone ’cause Marthy cracked the

old one. An’ I never once thought of it bein’ a sin, an’ I tied ’em

up with ribbons an’ tissue-paper, an’ sung as I did it—I was just as

happy as a child. But when I saw how you’d all remembered me, an’ heard

Brother Knisley readin’ gif’ after gif’, an’ I seed how I’d doubted

your friendship an’ knowed you never dreamed I was actin’ a lie, I just

felt so pusly mean I couldn’t stand that you should believe all them

gif’s come from love. I guess I ain’t fit for anything but churchin’.”

Shaking with sobs, the little woman dropped back in her seat to be

received into Martha’s loving arms.

“Brother Sutton”—it was Mrs. Keel’s asthmatic wheeze that broke the

silence—“Brother Sutton, I’ve got a few words to say, and as I look

about at the streamin’ eyes of this congregation I know you’ll all

agree with me. If there is a dear saint on earth, who has stood by us

in our sorrows an’ our joys, who’s hovered over our death-beds and

welcomed our babies, it’s Granny Simmers. If there’s a soul of honor,

a childlike conscience, and one of the Lord’s own, it is this blessed

little woman. I don’t know how the rest of you feel, but my heart’s

’most broke for the poor little soul. Ain’t no more sin in her gentle

little heart than there is in a baby’s.”

“Amen!” came from every side.

But Brother Sutton, his face beaming with tenderness, had come swiftly

down the aisle and was bending over Granny.

“Sister,” he said, taking her little wrinkled hands in his, “believe

me, God forgave you this before you asked it; and as for us, look about

you, and what do you see in the faces of your friends? Come one and all

and give her your tenderest greetings.”

Kneeling by the bed that night in her little white gown and cap, as she

pressed her face in the pillow where John’s head had rested for so many

years, Granny poured out a humble and a contrite heart. “An’, Lord,”

she added, “please tell John an’ the children that I give every one of

them things to Mis’ Cottie, an’ I’m startin’ out again with falterin’

steps toward the heavenly home.”

[14] By permission of the author and the “Outlook.”

THE DAY OF DAYS[15]

_Elsie Singmaster_

Upon three hundred and sixty-five days in the year Miss Mary Britton

gave; upon one day Miss Mary received. That day was the day before

Christmas.

Miss Mary did not receive, however, from the same persons to whom she

gave. Miss Mary gave to all the village, a lift here in sickness, a

little present of money there in case of need. To Sally Young went a

new bonnet, to old Carrie Burrage a warm shawl, to the preacher and his

large family unnumbered articles. Miss Mary took old Carrie Burrage,

tiresome, ungrateful, self-centered, into her house for a month; she

took the Arundel baby for three.

None of these persons remembered Miss Mary at Christmas. The village

was poor; it considered Miss Mary rich; it expected her to be generous.

Miss Mary’s present came from far away New York; it was the most

treasured gift received in the state of Ohio. Years ago, when the

Britton fortune was large, when kinsfolk were numerous, when the broad

doors of this Britton house stood open to relatives removed to the

fourth degree, a young cousin had spent a happy summer under its roof.

He had been ill; here, in the country, ministered to with unfailing

kindness, he had fully recovered.

Since then, he had never failed to remember his hosts at Christmas

time. He had never come again; he grew to be a famous man with whom it

was an honor to be connected, but he was never too busy to remember

the tastes of his cousins. Miss Mary’s father had had his magazine,

her mother a bit of lace, Miss Mary’s brother a riding whip, Miss

Mary herself a book. After the father died, two gifts came to Miss

Mary’s mother; when all had gone but the lonely daughter, her gift

was quadrupled. Of late years, the gift had increased—instead of four

books, Miss Mary received twenty.

“You have now more time for reading,” wrote the cousin. “If my taste in

books does not please you, you must tell me. It will be just as easy to

send you what you like as what I like.”

Miss Mary had no quarrel with her cousin’s taste. If he had sent her

a Greek dictionary, she would have treasured it. But he sent her the

books she loved, novels, essays, poetry. With them came always a letter

with reminders of that happy summer, and expressions of affection.

The box came usually on the last train on Christmas Eve. It was

sometimes earlier, but it had never yet been late. Miss Mary always

opened the box herself, with many failures of hammer and screwdriver

to do proper execution, with excited examination of bindings, to see

that no harm had come to them on their long journey, with pauses and

exclamations while titles and frontispieces were examined. Miss Mary

had this year a new bookcase for which she had been a long time saving

the extra pennies that remained after baker’s and butcher’s bills were

paid and the repairs made on the homestead and the outfit for the

Arundel baby purchased. The bookcase was already half filled with the

overflow from Miss Mary’s other bookcases.

Miss Mary woke on the morning of the day before Christmas with flushed

cheeks and an accelerated pulse. This condition was no warning of

approaching illness, it indicated only Miss Mary’s usual condition of

excitement on this day. For three months past, the Arundel baby in the

next room had wakened her drowsy hostess at the crack of dawn, but

this morning Miss Mary was dressed before the Arundel baby had opened

her brown eyes. Miss Mary’s excitement, however, was not entirely that

of joyful anticipation; it was partly alarm. Each year, she prepared

herself for disappointment, for the coming of the evening train without

any precious freight for her. The cousin was old, ten years older than

Miss Mary; he could not live to send her gifts on every Christmas, and

when he died, when his box failed to come, she would be alone in the

world, without kin, without interests beyond the sleepy village, with

nothing to look forward to all her life long.

“I must be prepared for it,” Miss Mary often said to herself.

But she never succeeded in preparing herself. When she woke, she sprang

from bed as she used to spring in her childhood.

“I am like the children who call out ‘Christmas gift’ and pound at the

door,” said Miss Mary, amused at herself.

It was about nine o’clock when the Arundel baby’s aunt came for her.

She was to have come at eight; she was, indeed, to have come yesterday

and last week, and, indeed, last month. But the Arundel baby belonged

to a weak and shiftless family.

She was much inconvenienced by the delay of the baby’s aunt. To the

day before Christmas Miss Mary postponed various duties, her intention

being to keep the hours as full as possible so that the time might not

drag until the evening train.

The house was yet to be put in order, the wreaths must be hung in the

windows, sundry baskets must be packed for distribution in the morning

and sundry presents be wrapped for the butcher’s boy and the baker’s

man and for James Vanderslice, the expressman. To the baker’s man Miss

Mary gave a tie, to the butcher’s boy a pair of suspenders, alternating

the gifts with the years, but to James Vanderslice, eagerly watched for

at twilight, she gave both, and a little present of money besides.

The Arundel baby’s aunt not only came an hour late, but she stayed for

an hour talking about nothing.

The aunt began presently to gossip, and Miss Mary moved uneasily in her

chair. She did not like gossip or persons who repeated it. Fortunately,

the baker’s horn interrupted with its loud demand, and Miss Mary asked

to be excused. When she returned, she brought with her the baby’s hat

and coat. Miss Mary was able to dismiss unpleasant persons without

their being aware of it. She wrapped the baby up herself and tucked her

into the carriage she had bought and kissed her good-by.

“She has been a good girl,” she said. “You must bring her to see me

every week. When she is a little older, I will begin to teach her to

read and afterwards to sew patchwork. That is the way I was brought up.”

Miss Mary remained standing, and the baby’s aunt had perforce to remain

standing too.

“A child is a great care,” said she, as she raised the corner of her

apron to her pale eyes.

“Not if she’s managed with system,” answered Miss Mary in her curt way.

“This baby’s been very little care to me; she need be very little to

you if you’re systematic.”

“I’m sure I’ll try,” said the baby’s aunt, as she wiped away more tears.

Then the baby carriage was trundled down the street. Miss Mary suffered

a slight pang as she saw how cheerfully the baby went, how willing she

was to associate with unattractive incompetence, and a sharper pang as

she beheld the bump with which the coach took the first crossing; then

she went indoors. This was her day, the happiest day of all the year;

she could think no more of the Arundel baby.

Miss Mary went first of all to put the baby’s room in order. She took

down the white crib and carried the pieces, one by one, into the attic.

Except the bed, nothing belonging to the baby remained, since all had

been sent earlier in the day to the house of the aunt. Then, with

capable strokes of her strong arms, she swept the room. She had not

been brought up to work of this kind, but when change of fortune made

it necessary she was quick to teach herself. This morning the swift

moving back and forth of the broom gave her pleasure.

When the baby’s room was finished, Miss Mary went to look at the clock.

She was surprised to see that it was only half past ten. She was

conscious of a jumping feeling in her heart, and she looked out the

window as if to ease it. She saw nothing but the familiar houses with

their familiar dooryards. It was Miss Mary’s custom to look often out

the window on the day before Christmas.

Now, sternly, as usual she began to prepare herself for disappointment.

“Nothing is more probable than that it will not come,” said Miss Mary.

At eleven o’clock, having wrapped her packages and packed her baskets,

she looked at the clock again, expecting the hand to stand at twelve.

Thereupon she determined that she would look no more. Her simple lunch

was usually eaten at one; she decided to have it earlier, in order to

have a long afternoon for what she wished to do. In her heart of hearts

she knew that the chief of her occupations would be waiting.

Miss Mary washed her dishes slowly, then she brushed up the kitchen,

which needed no brushing. She wished now that she was only beginning

her lunch instead of finishing it.

Again Miss Mary went to the window and looked out. The street was still

empty, and at sight of it Miss Mary shivered.

“I must not expect anything,” she said sternly.

By half past one she had tied up those of her Christmas packages which

remained and had hung the holly wreaths in the front windows. Then she

cried out “O dear!” and went to the door. She had not been mistaken:

drops of water were falling, the sky was thickly overclouded, the wind

was east. Already it sighed mournfully round the corner of the house.

“A rainy Christmas Eve!” cried Miss Mary tragically. “A rainy Christmas

Day!”

At two o’clock, she began to give her sitting-room an unnecessary

dusting; at half past, she sat down at the window with some sewing; at

three, she went to the door again, as if pulled by a rope. When she saw

the expressman coming down the street, she clutched the side of the

door. But the expressman stopped at the corner house and then turned

the head of his old white horse back toward the station.

At half past three, Miss Mary took up some crocheting. The Arundel baby

would need new petticoats in the spring, and Miss Mary realized that

new petticoats, and the lace for them, if any were had, would have to

come from her. But the thread clung to her fingers, the needle slipped

from her hand.

“It’s the rheumatism,” she said to herself, grimly. “Old age is here.”

At four o’clock Miss Mary took a book, and in three minutes laid it

down. It was one of Cousin John’s books.

“I am a goose,” she announced aloud to her quiet house. “I could

even buy a few books for myself and make shift to subscribe to a few

magazines if the box does not come. But,”—here Miss Mary covered her

face with her hands—“it will mean that I am alone in the world!”

At half past four Miss Mary began to prepare supper, though she usually

ate at six. She no longer made excuses to herself; she did not pretend

that she was having supper early so as to make the evening long; she

sought only to fill the next minute and the next; she was reckless

about the later hours.

The evening train came in at six. It was only a country way train with

a short run, and it was on time, even on Christmas Eve. With a great

jump of her heart, Miss Mary heard its familiar whistle. Allowing for

all James Vanderslice’s slowness, he should reach her house in fifteen

minutes. It was probable that hers would be the only package he would

have to deliver.

Moving with a slow step, she descended to the cellar and put coal on

the furnace fire. Temptingly, mockingly, the hammer and screwdriver

seemed to thrust themselves to the top of the tool box on the table

which she had to pass. Miss Mary did not touch them. She played the

part of expecting nothing.

When Miss Mary came up from the cellar, the hands of the clock pointed

to twenty minutes after six. She grew red, then pale. Then she opened

the door and stood with the rain beating against her. The street was

dark and quiet.

“He _must_ come,” whispered Miss Mary.

But the expressman did not come. When Miss Mary went indoors, it was

half past six. Until seven she walked up and down her sitting-room.

Then her lips tightened.

“I am going to bed,” she said aloud.

Miss Mary fixed her fires for the night; she set out the milk pail on

the shelf on the back porch; she wound the clock and took her lamp

and climbed the stairway and undressed and lay down in her bed. Then,

metaphorically and actually, she turned her face to the wall.

But at eight o’clock she was still awake. At half past eight she sprang

from bed, thinking she heard a rap at the door; at nine she lighted her

lamp and looked at the clock. All within and without the house was as

silent as midnight. Then poor Miss Mary yielded herself to despair.

“I do not know what is the matter with me. This had to happen sometime!

But I am utterly desolate and forlorn. Christmas is a dreadful time

when you grow old. But I have been trying to prepare myself for years!

I do not know what is the matter with me.”

The ticking of the clock seemed to fill the quiet house. Miss Mary grew

more and more nervous. Again she sprang from bed.

“If I have some exercise, perhaps I shall sleep!”

But exercise did not bring sleep. Miss Mary went into her father’s room

and her brother’s room, and into her mother’s room, which had lately

been the Arundel baby’s, and tears ran down her cheeks. It was not a

journey from which she need have expected much repose of spirit.

“If they could only come back!” she cried. “If things could only be as

they used to be on Christmas! If I were only not alone in the world!”

Then Miss Mary did an extraordinary thing. She was standing in her

mother’s room, where the Arundel baby’s bed had stood. In this room her

childish difficulties had been adjusted, her childish troubles soothed.

She lifted her head as if she heard a voice speaking to her, and then

she laughed almost hysterically.

“I _will_ have a merry Christmas,” she cried suddenly.

At once, hurrying back to her bedroom, she began to dress feverishly,

hastily, with fingers that trembled over hooks and buttons. Still she

talked to herself. She seemed to be saying over and over that she

would get herself a Christmas gift. When she was dressed, she hurried

down the steps at perilous speed and went into the cellar and put the

draught on the furnace. Apparently grief had crazed her.

Still Miss Mary’s strange course was not at an end. She put on her

shawl and bonnet and opened the door and went out, forgetting to turn

the key, and hurried down the street in the rain without an umbrella.

Following straight the course that the Arundel baby’s aunt had taken,

she knocked at a mean little door. Within was a light and the sound of

voices. In answer to a loud “Come in!” Miss Mary opened the door and

entered.

The Arundel baby’s aunt, however lugubrious and tearful she might

be in the presence of Miss Mary, had other moments when she allowed

herself to be merry and comfortable. She was now surrounded

by her friends,—Miss Mary recognized each one of the doubtful

guests,—refreshments were being passed, hilarity was at its height. The

Arundel baby—Miss Mary saw her at the same instant that she beheld the

hands of the clock pointing to midnight—lay asleep in her carriage in

the corner. She had not been undressed; her cheeks were flushed as if a

slight fever might have added a stain of red to cheeks already red from

crying.

Miss Mary said not a word in reproof; she lifted the baby from the

carriage and took her under her shawl and bade the baby’s aunt come

to see her on the morrow and stalked out. Neither the baby’s aunt nor

her guests made reply. They all had been at some time Miss Mary’s

pensioners; it was more than probable that they would need her help

again.

Miss Mary walked with rapid steps back to her house. The clouds had

parted, the dashes of rain were fitful, the wind had veered to the

north; but she was not aware of the change. In the dark corner of her

porch stood a wooden box, and pinned to it was a scrap of paper on

which James Vanderslice explained that he would tell her tomorrow why

he had been so late in delivering her parcel. Miss Mary saw neither box

nor paper; she would not see them until morning.

In the kitchen the fire was glowing, and Miss Mary sat down before

it, bonneted and shawled, with the Arundel baby in her arms. She was

trembling, her breath came in gasps. Presently she opened the shawl and

looked down. The Arundel baby was still sleeping, with her mouth pursed

up in her funny fashion, and her damp hair curled tightly over her

head. Miss Mary regarded her solemnly, even with awe, as if she beheld

some unaccountable object. Then she heaved a long and happy sigh, and

her tears began to fall. She remembered that Christmas Day had come;

she thought with tender heart of that other Baby, whom she had for a

little while forgotten; she prayed that He would help her make the

Arundel baby a good girl.

“I shall have something to think of! I shall have some one that is

mine! This,” said good Miss Mary with trembling lips, “this was what

was the matter with me!”

[15] By permission of the author and the “Youth’s Companion.” This story

was printed in the “Youth’s Companion,” December 23, 1926.

HOLLY AT THE DOOR[16]

_Agnes Sligh Turnbull_

On the outside—that is, in the smart little suburban town of

Branchbrook—Christmas week had begun most auspiciously. A light fall of

snow made the whole place look like an old-fashioned holiday greeting

card; the neat English stuccos and Colonial clapboards set back in wide

lawns, seemed to gather their flocks of clipped little pine and spruce

shrubbery closer to them and suggest through their fresh curtained

windows the thought of bright wood fires and mistletoe and shining

Christmas cheer soon to come.

In the parish room of St. Andrew’s small gray stone church the children

were practicing carols while pigeons cooed on the roof. And down in the

village center great boxes of holly wreaths stood in the street before

all the grocery store windows, and bevies of slender little virgin pine

trees, ready and waiting for the great moment to which they had been

born, leaned against all the shop door-ways.

The postman smiled beneath his staggering load, thinking of later

benefactions; and the windows of Beverly’s Fine Food Stuffs, the town’s

most exclusive market, were caparisoned with every delicacy which even

a Christmas epicure might desire.

Strangers spoke to each other, children laughed gleefully, shop men

made jokes with their customers, everybody was busy, friendly, somehow

relaxed from the ordinary conventional aloofness, because Christmas

was only five days away. Everything was just as it should be, on the

outside.

But on the inside—that is to say, in the big Colonial home of the

Bartons which had been built just long enough before prices went up to

make it seem now more of an abode of wealth than it really was—here the

week had begun in the worst way possible. Monday morning had started

with a quarrel.

Alice Barton had not rested well the night before. She had fully

planned to spend all Sunday afternoon and evening addressing Christmas

cards. That would have seen them all safely in the postman’s hands this

morning.

But the plan had been frustrated by the Levitts’ dropping in for a

call, staying to tea and spending the evening. And it had been Tom’s

fault entirely. He was the one that simply kept them. Of course she had

to be decently polite. They sat listening to the radio until eleven.

After that she had been too tired to start the cards. And here they

were all to do now, this morning, more than a hundred of them, on top

of all the regular day’s work and the committee meeting at eleven. And

she must get a few more hours shopping in! That would be hectic now but

there was no help for it. And all her packages were yet to be tied up,

and Mrs. Dunlop’s bridge-luncheon on Wednesday and Catherine’s friend

coming Thursday! She _must_ not forget about the guest room curtains!

Why had she let Catherine have any one come at Christmas time!

The dull headache she had when she rose became a splitting pain. She

scarcely spoke to Tom as she dressed except for one brief and fitting

retort to his: “Now don’t spend all day in the bath room. I have to

shave!”

She went down stairs, mechanically checking off the things she must

tell Delia, the maid.

Tom was down before the children. He opened the front door for the

newspaper which Delia always forgot to bring in and came toward the

table with his brows drawn. It was not a propitious moment, but the

thing had to be done.

“Tom.”

“Darned if they haven’t given that murderer another reprieve! How do

they ever expect to have....”

“Listen, Tom! There’s something I want to ask you.”

“A pretty kind of justice! Wrap all the little murderers up in pink

wool blankets for fear they get cold in the neck, and forget the poor

cuss that’s been killed! You know, Alice, what ought to be done is

this....”

“Yes, but Tom, listen. I’ll simply have to have a little more money.”

(It was dreadful to have to ask him now when he was all stirred up over

this thing in the paper!) “I’ll just have to do some more shopping,

just a few little things I forgot, and I’d rather be free to go about

instead of sticking to the charge accounts. If you could give me....”

Tom was suddenly all attention. His dark eyes were looking at her

keenly. He broke in.

“Why I gave you an extra twenty-five last Friday.”

“I know, Tom, but it took every cent of it for the cards. And even then

I had to spend most of the day trying to find respectable ones within

my price.” Tom’s face looked thunderous.

“Do you mean to tell me that it takes _twenty-five dollars_ now to send

out Christmas cards? _Twenty-five dollars!_ Why, Good Heavens, that

would buy two tons of coal. That’s the sheerest piece of criminal waste

I ever heard of!”

Alice’s face darkened too. “Well, what are you going to do about it?

You know the kind everybody sends us. We can’t look like pikers. It

would have cost fifty dollars to get the engraved kind I wanted. I

won’t send out cheap stereotyped ones, so all that’s left for me is to

try to pick out something artistic and individual, at least for the

people we care most about. It’s no easy job, and this is the thanks I

get!”

“You bet you’ll get none from me. Do you know how I feel? I hate

Christmas! Nothing but money, money beforehand, and nothing but bills,

bills, bills afterward. It’s enough to drive a man crazy. And what’s

the sense of it? You send a lot of cards to people that barely look at

’em and throw ’em in the fire! You women exchange a bunch of junk that

you never use. And as a family, we spend money like drunken sailors on

a lot of extravagant things we’ve no business having. And old Dad, poor

boob, gets a good dinner out of it and then he pays and pays and pays

for the next six months! That’s the way I’ve got it doped out!”

Alice’s face was frozen in sharp lines. “If that’s the way you feel

about it I suppose I needn’t hope for my coat.”

“Coat! What coat?”

“Tom, as if you didn’t know perfectly well what I wanted this year more

than anything. The short fur coat! Why I’ve talked about it all fall. I

think every woman in town has one but me. I can’t wear my big seal one

shopping and marketing! And my cloth one is simply gone! Why, I thought

all the time you knew, and that you’d surely....” There were almost

tears in her voice.

“So it’s come to that, has it! A woman has to have a special kind of

fur coat to do her marketing in! Too bad! Well, I’m sorry to disappoint

you but you can’t bank on one this year—unless you’d like to mortgage

the house!”

He got up abruptly from the table. Young Tom and Catherine had just

come into the dining room in time for the last speech. They looked at

their parents with cool, amused eyes. It was not the first quarrel they

had witnessed in the last years since they had left childhood behind.

Catherine, a day pupil at Miss Bossart’s finishing school, and young

Tom, a Senior in High School, were startlingly mature. They were

calmer, more cynical, more unemotional than their parents. They touched

life with knowing fingers that never trembled. Alice marveled at them.

She rose now too and followed Tom into the library. He sat down a

moment at the desk and then flicked her a slip of paper.

“There’s fifty. And that’s all, remember, until next month’s allowance!”

Alice’s voice was like cold steel. “Thanks. I’m sure I’ll enjoy

spending it since it’s so very generously given.”

Tom did not answer. He got into his overcoat, called a general good-by

and left the house.

Alice came back to the children. Young Tom looked up quizzically.

“Well, Mums, that ought to hold him for a while, eh, what?” he remarked

as he helped himself hugely to the omelette.

Catherine’s brows were slightly puckered. “Say, Mother, am I going to

get my watch? Dad was in such a vile humor, I’m scared. Really I’ll

feel like a pauper down there at Miss Bossart’s unless I get something

a little bit flossy. And this old watch, I’ve had since I was twelve.

There isn’t another round gold one in school. Everything’s platinum

now! Heavens, it’s not much to ask for compared to what most of the

girls are getting. Jean and Hilda know they’re getting cars of their

own! And flocks of them are getting marvelous fur coats.”

“Well, you have your new coat,” Alice reminded her.

“Oh, yes,” Catherine agreed with a faint, deprecating sigh, “such as it

is.”

Alice opened her lips for a quick remonstrance and closed them again.

Oh, what was the use! The children were always ungrateful. They had no

real appreciation these days of what their parents gave them. With them

it was take, take, take, and never a thought of value received.

Young Tom looked up from his toast and marmalade with his most winning

smile.

“Say, Mums, can you let me have a fiver out of your new pile? I’m in

the very dickens of a hole.”

Alice fastened quick eyes upon him. “Where has your allowance gone?”

she asked sharply.

“Well, gee, it’s so small to begin with I can hardly see it and then

just now round Christmas time there’s always such a darned lot of

extras!”

Catherine cut in sweetly: “Such as bouquets of orchids for Miss Doris

Kane!”

“Orchids!” Alice almost screamed the word. “Tom, you don’t mean for

a minute to tell me you’re sending orchids to a girl! High School

children sending orchids! I never in my life heard of anything so

wickedly absurd!”

“Well, gosh, Mums, what are you going to do? That’s what all the girls

want now for the dances, and a fellow can’t look like a piker! I’ve

got to order some for to-night. Lend me five, won’t you, just to run

me over? What we ought to have is a charge account at the florist’s.

That’s what all the other fellows’ folks have.”

“No doubt,” Alice said sarcastically. “It’s barely possible that some

of your friends’ fathers may have more money to pay their bills than

your father has. But I suppose you never thought of that! Well, I’ll

give you five this time, but I don’t want you ever to ask me again for

such a purpose.”

“And now if he’s through,” Catherine broke in, “what about me? Is there

any reason why I should be broke while my handsome young brother sends

orchids to Doris Kane? You should see what the girls are giving each

other for Christmas. It makes me sick to hand out the things I have.

They look like a rummage sale compared with the rest! I did want one

decent thing for Jean, but I’m terribly short.”

She looked at her mother challengingly.

Alice made a desperate gesture with her hands. “All right,” she said,

“you can have it. Of course it doesn’t matter whether I’m short or not!

I’m at the place where I don’t care much what happens!”

Her head throbbed miserably as she borrowed the two five-dollar bills

from her housekeeping purse and gave them to the children. She had a

vivid perception that each thought they should have been tens. Their

thanks were scant and careless. They had only received their just due,

and scarcely that!

Alice felt sick as she climbed the stairs to the den where she kept her

desk. Now for the cards. Christmas was a hard, trying time. She would

be glad when it was over.

She began in frantic haste, selecting, addressing, searching her note

book and the telephone directory for streets and numbers. Five, ten,

fifteen finished, stamped, ready.

Suddenly she picked up an alien from the carefully chosen mass that

lay about her, a cheap little card that she knew she had never bought.

Either she or the sales girl must have caught it up by mistake with

some of the others. It was a commonplace little card of the folder

variety that carries a sentimental verse inside. Alice opened it

mechanically before tossing it into the waste basket. And there beneath

her eyes were these words:

Oh what, my dear, of Christmas cheer could any one wish more,

Than candle-light and you within, and holly at the door!

She stared at the words unbelievingly. Not for thirty years had she

thought of that old song. And now suddenly she heard it in her father’s

voice, just as he used to sing it Christmas after Christmas as he went

through the house with his hammer in one hand and a dangling bough of

green in the other.

And holly at the door, and holly at the door!

With candle-light and you within, and holly at the door!

She hummed the old melody under her breath, and then she found herself

bending over the desk, face in hands, weeping, while over her swept

great waves of homesickness, poignant pangs of yearning for a place and

a time that had drifted out of her consciousness.

At last she raised her head and leaned it against the high back of

the chair. It seemed almost as though invisible fingers had pressed

it there, had closed her eyes, had made the pen drop from her passive

hand. All at once she was back in the little town of her childhood

where she had not been, and where not even her mind had traveled

vividly, these long years.

Christmas time in Martinsville! Christmas in the small frame house that

had been home. Mother singing blithely as she stuffed the turkey in

the kitchen. Father standing proudly by, watching her every movement.

For the turkey was an event. One turkey a year, to be ordered after

due consideration from one of the farmers near town, to be received

with a small flurry of excitement when it arrived and to be picked and

prepared for the oven by Mother’s own skilful fingers.

“I suppose we should ask Miss Amanda for dinner to-morrow. The Smiths

usually have her but they’re away this year,” Mother was saying.

Father agreed. “Maybe we’d better. It’s not nice to think of anybody

sitting down all by themselves to a cold bite on Christmas!”

“When we have so much,” Mother went on. “You’d better stop and ask her

when you go for the mail to-night.”

Footsteps on the porch. Father and Mother break into smiles. “There’s

Alice,” they exclaim in unison.

Quick stamping of snow on the scraper, quick opening of the door, a

quick rush of cold wind and a quick, joyous child’s voice.

“Mother, the holly’s come; Father, look at this! Isn’t it lovely? Mr.

Harris just got in now with the wagon from Wanesburg. And he brought

a big box of it. He has wreaths, too, but they’re a quarter apiece.

I think the bunch is prettier and it was only a dime. Look at the

berries!”

The child’s cheeks are as scarlet as her red toboggan and sweater, that

Mother herself had knitted. Her blue eyes are shining and eager, her

light hair tossed by the wind.

“Put it up quick, Father, and I’ll get the red ribbon for it.” She

flies up stairs, stumbling in her haste.

Suddenly, laughter below, expostulation, hurrying feet in the front

hall. “Alice, Alice, don’t open the under drawer of my bureau! You

_didn’t_, did you? Mercy, we had such a scare! The ribbon’s in the top

drawer, left hand side. Now mind, no looking any where else!”

“And holly at the door....”

Father’s big voice booming out happily.

Alice skips down the stairs. “I never peeped! Honestly. But what can it

be you have for me? It’s something to wear! Oh, I can’t wait.”

“And holly at the door....”

Father’s hammer tapping smartly, then the gay swinging green branch

with its brave little bow of red. They all have to go out to admire it.

“And, Father, you should see the church! It’s wonderful this year.

George Davis and Mr. Parmley climbed up on two ladders and tied the

greens to the big cross rafter and fastened a silver star right at the

top. It’s never been so pretty. And the tree! Mother, it reaches the

ceiling! And Mrs. Davis was putting little white lambs under it and

shepherds. We saw it when we were there practicing for to-night. Oh, I

_hope_ I don’t forget my speech.”

Immediately, concentrated, proud interest. Father and Mother sit down

to listen once again. Alice stands in front of the table, her hands

primly by her sides, her face upraised in gentle seriousness.

“The milk-white sheep looked up one night,

And there stood an angel all in white,

And though he spoke no words to them,

He was there on the hills of Bethlehem,

That very first Christmas morning!

“The lowing cattle meekly stood

Near to a manger rough and rude....”

On and on goes the sweet childish voice to the end.

“And the time will come, so the wise men say,

When the wolf and the lamb together shall play,

And a little child shall lead the way,

The child of that first Christmas morning.”

“Pshaw!” says Father, poking the fire to hide the tender mist in his

eyes. “You couldn’t forget that if you tried!”

“Of course you couldn’t,” Mother reassures. “Only remember to speak

loud enough that they can hear you in the back of the church.”

“And all the girls have new dresses,” Alice exclaims, coming excitedly

down to earth again. “And I said I had one too. That wasn’t a fib, was

it, Mother? It really is new, for me, even if it is Aunt Jennie’s old

one dyed.”

“Of course,” Mother stoutly agrees. “And all the trimmings are new.

That light cashmere certainly took the dye well.”

“I don’t see how you got it such a beautiful shade of red. It’s just

like the holly!”

“You must remember, my dear,” Father puts in with loving pride, “that

your mother is a very wonderful person.”

The soft early dusk of Christmas Eve falls upon Martinsville. Father

starts down to the post-office for the mail. Mother prepares a light

supper to be eaten in the kitchen because of the general haste. For the

big Sunday School entertainment and “treat” is at seven-thirty. Alice

sets out with her small pail to go to a neighbor’s for the daily supply

of milk.

It is so still in the village street. All white and hushed. Just a

little stirring like wings in the church yard pines. The child stops,

breathless, clasping her hands to her breast, the small pail dangling

unheeded, her whole tender young soul caught up suddenly in a white

mystery. Christmas Eve! The baby in the manger. The gold stars looking

down just as they were to-night, and the angels sweeping through the

sky on soft shining wings, singing _singing_.

It seemed almost as though they would appear any moment there where

the stars were brightest, right back of the church steeple.

Why, it was real. It was true! Christmas Eve was happening again,

within her, down deep, deep in her heart somewhere, as she stood there

all quiet and alone in the snow. The wonderful aching beauty of it!

It was as though she and the big wide star-swept night had a secret

together. Or perhaps it was she _and God_.

Down the street comes a quick, clear jingle-jangle-jingle. A sleigh has

just turned the corner. Alice starts and runs the rest of the way to

the neighbors!

“And two quarts, please, Mother says, if you can spare it, because

to-morrow’s Christmas!”

She is dressed for the entertainment in the new dyed dress, her long

curls showing golden above its rich red. Father and Mother suddenly

begin to consult together in low voices in the kitchen. They come out

at last impressively.

“Would she rather have one of her presents, not the big one but the

other one, now, so she could wear it to-night? Would she?”

Alice stands considering delightedly, blue eyes like stars, “The big

present would still be left for to-morrow?” she queries eagerly.

“You bet!” Father assures her.

“Then—I—believe—I’ll—take the other—_now_!”

Mother brings it out. A hair ribbon! Just the color of the dress.

Bigger and broader than any she has ever had. It is finally perched

like a scarlet tanager above the golden curls!

There is the sound of talking, laughing voices passing outside.

Scrunch, scrunch, scrunch, of many feet in the snow. People going to

the entertainment. The little church up the street is all alight. It is

time to go! They start out in the fresh, frosty air. Father follows her

and Mother along the narrow snowy path, humming the Holly Song softly

to himself.

All at once there was a shrill persistent ringing. It was not of a

church bell or passing sleighs. It kept on ringing. The woman in the

chair before the desk littered with Christmas cards came slowly back

to her surroundings. She grasped the telephone dazedly. “This is Mrs.

Barton. What meeting?... Oh, yes.... No, I can’t come.... I’m—I’m not

well.”

She hung up the receiver abruptly. The Committee meeting at eleven!

It seemed suddenly far away. Her one longing was to get back again to

the past where she had just now been living; to those fresh, sweet

realities of long ago. She closed her eyes, terrified lest the illusion

was lost completely. But slowly, softly, surely, the little snowy

village of Martinsville closed in again around her. She was once more

the child, Alice.

She was falling asleep on Christmas Eve. The entertainment had been

wonderful. She hadn’t forgotten her speech, not a word, and the girls

all thought her dress was lovely and her hair ribbon had felt so big

and pretty and floppy on her head, and the Ladies Quartette had sung

“O Holy Night” for a surprise. Nobody knew they had been practicing,

and it was so beautiful it had hurt her inside. And the treat candy

had ever so many more chocolates in it than last year, and it was

snowing again and she could hear the faint jingle-jangle-jingle of the

sleighs still going up and down Main Street, and she was so happy! And

to-morrow would really be Christmas.

Then all at once it was morning. Father and Mother were talking in low,

happy voices in their room. She could hear Father creaking softly down

the back stairs to start the fire before she got awake. The stockings

would be all filled. Goodness, it was hard to wait.

Then at last a great noise in the front hall. Father shouting “Merry

Christmas! My Christmas gift! Merry Christmas up there!”

It is time now. She flings her chill little body into her red wrapper

and slippers and scurries down the stairs. A big fire in the grate!

The three big bulging stockings! Father and Mother stand by until she

empties hers first. She feels it with delicious caution. Oranges,

apples and nuts in the toe. A funny little bumpy thing above. That

would be one of Father’s jokes. But at the top a mysterious soft,

squashy package! She withdraws it slowly. She opens one tiny corner,

gasps, opens a little more. Then gives a shrill cry. “_Mother!_ It

_couldn’t_ be a—a _muff_!”

She pulls it out, amazed ecstasy on her face. “It _is_ a muff! Oh,

Father, to think of your getting me a muff.” She clasps the small scrap

of cheap fur to her breast. “Oh, Mother, I never was so happy.”

A subdued sound drew louder, became a sharp rap at the door.

Martinsville receded. The woman in the chair opened her eyes with a

dull realization of the present. Delia stood in the door-way, black and

ominous. “What about them bed-room curtains?” she demanded.

Alice Barton rose slowly. With a great effort she brought her mind

back to the problems of the day. She led the way to the guest room

with Delia after her, grumbling inaudibly. Perhaps her eyes were still

misted over with sweet memories, for somehow the curtains did not look

so bad. “We’ll let them go as they are, Delia. You have enough extras

to do.”

Delia departed in pleased surprise, and Alice sat down in the quiet

room before a mirror, and peered into it. Almost she expected to see

the child she had once been, the tender, smiling young mouth, the soft,

eager eyes, the tumbled curls.

Instead she saw a middle aged face with all the spontaneous light gone

out of it. There were hard lines in it which no amount of expensive

“facials” had been able to smooth away. There was a bitter, unlovely

droop to the lips.

Alice regarded herself steadily. Where along the way had she lost the

spirit of that child who had this day come back to her?

The outward changes of her life passed in review. It was soon after

that last happy Christmas in Martinsville that the little town had

been swept by disease. The old village doctor had neither knowledge

nor equipment to restrain it. When it was over, many homes had been

desolated, and Alice, a bewildered little orphan, had gone to Aunt

Jennie’s in the city.

The changed way of living had been at first startling and then

strangely commonplace. She had been fluidly adaptable. She had gone to

a fashionable finishing school, had made a smart début, had met Tom,

fallen deeply in love and then married him with all the circumstance

Aunt Jennie had ordained.

Then had come life in Branchbrook and the beginning for herself of the

curious nameless game Aunt Jennie had taught her, of belonging, of

keeping up with most; of being ahead of many. A game with no noticeable

beginning and no possible end. And of course one had to keep on

playing it, for if one stopped it meant being dropped. Life would be

insupportable after that.

And yet, would it? The game wasn’t making any of them happy as it was.

Back of her own restless home she saw again Father and Mother and the

little girl named Alice. They had all been so joyously content with

each other, had found life with its few small pleasures so wholesome

and sweet to the taste.

The woman rose trembling to her feet. Suppose she stopped playing the

game! Suppose she didn’t care whether she belonged or not. What if she

tried walking in the simple ways of her mother?

She stood there thinking in new terms, startled out of all her old

standards, crying out to the past to guide her. And then suddenly she

raised her arms above her head in a gesture of emancipation.

She examined her extra shopping list for which she had asked the money

that morning. All the items were expensive courtesies that need not be

rendered if considered apart from the game. She crossed them out one by

one.

All that day as she went about her duties, she was conscious of an

invisible companion: a child with eager, happy eyes walked beside

her, watched her as she helped Delia with the big fruit cake, as she

fastened a bough of holly to the door with her own hands.

The child was still close to her in the shadows when she lighted the

tall candelabra at dusk and drew the tea-table to the fireside. Just

the fire-light and candle shine to greet Tom when he came. She sat

very still on the big divan, waiting. Would he feel the new quiet that

possessed her? Would he forgive her for having made all the other

Christmases times of confusion and worry? She wondered.

The children were not home yet when Tom came. He hung his coat in the

hall closet and entered the living room heavily. He looked tired. His

glance swept over the tall lighted candles, and the shining tea table.

“What’s coming off here? A tea-fight?” he said.

Alice stretched her hands toward him.

“You are the only guest, Tom. You and the children.”

The man came nearer in surprise, caught her hands, peered into her

face. Then his own softened. “What is it?” he asked.

They sank down together on the divan, hands still clasped tightly,

something old and yet new, flooding back and forth between them.

“What is it?” Tom asked again. “There is something ... tell me.”

And then suddenly the woman knew that into her own hard faded eyes

there had come again the gladness of youth.

“I had a visit to-day,” she said slowly, “from a little girl of thirty

years ago. A little girl I had forgotten. She brought me something

precious.”

Tom looked at her wonderingly. “Will she come _again_? _Often?_” he

begged.

Alice shook her head and smiled. “There is no need,” she answered

softly. “For she and her gift have come _to stay_!”

[16] By permission of the author and “McCall’s Magazine.” Copyright 1926

by “McCall’s Magazine.”

TEACHER JENSEN[17]

_Karin Michaelis_

If the school-children had cared to look about them while they were

playing hide-and-seek during recess, they would have seen the sharp

tower of a mighty building piercing the air beyond a distant clump

of trees. Unless you knew better, you would have believed that it

was a castle where knights and beautiful ladies ate game off golden

plates and on Sundays regaled themselves with macaroons. But the

school-children did know better. They knew, forgot, and remembered

again, that it was a prison standing near them, where prisoners lived,

each in his own cell, never seeing each other except at church, where

black masks disguised their faces. They knew and forgot and remembered

again.

Lauritz Thomsen belonged there. Not that he had done anything to be

ashamed of—God forbid! But his father was the cook for the prison, and

Lauritz knew what the prisoners got to eat—and what they did not get.

He lived, so to speak, in prison, but apart from these men with the

black masks. He was so accustomed to taking the short cut across the

fields to the high red wall and walking through the entrance portal,

which was immediately closed and bolted after him, that it all seemed

like nothing extraordinary. He could see it in no other light. But if

his schoolmates began to ask him questions he would hold his peace and

blush to the roots of his hair.

His mother worried and grieved about the prison, and sought as best she

could to forget what was going on. Filling her windows with flowers,

she tried to silence her unpleasant thoughts about the poor creatures

breathing the deathly cellar air behind those iron bars. She laid by

penny upon penny in the hope of saving enough to buy a little country

inn, or any kind of establishment far away from the Living Cemetery, as

the prison was called. During her dreams she cried aloud, waking her

children, for she always saw people with black masks on their faces

swarming behind walls and windows and threatening to kill her. Evil

dreams arise from evil thoughts, it is said, but Frau Thomsen could

have no evil thoughts. She had only once in her life gone through the

prison. It still froze her with terror to think of it, and she could

not understand how her husband could sing and enjoy himself at the end

of his day’s work. Nor could she comprehend how he could speak of the

prisoners as if they were friends or comrades. When he began to carry

on in this way she would leave the room and not come back until he had

promised to talk about something else.

Children are children. They can accustom themselves to wading in a

river where crocodiles sleep, or to playing in a jungle where snakes

hang from the trees. Children become accustomed to living near a

prison just as they get used to a father who drinks or a mother who

scolds. They think of it, forget it, and remember it again. Thoughts

glide across their minds like shadows; for a moment everything seems

dark, and suddenly the sun shines once more.

Whenever a prisoner escaped, the school-children were thrown into a

great commotion. They followed the pursuit from afar, listening to the

shots, the alarm signals, the whistles. They leaned out of windows

and saw the prison wardens rushing in all directions, on foot, and

on horseback. Nothing was so exciting as a man hunt, either over

winter snow or over green summer fields. When the fugitive was taken,

peace descended upon all their souls. Now the only question was what

punishment would be meted out to the victim, and all eyes were turned

toward Lauritz. But Lauritz said nothing. He was ashamed without quite

knowing why.

Prison and the prisoners would be forgotten save when a boy or girl at

play would suddenly gape at the high towers to the east, jutting up

there above the forest.

The children had a new teacher. He was called Teacher Jensen—nothing

more. If he had a Christian name, he was never called by it. Just

Teacher Jensen. And Teacher Jensen was little and frail, and Teacher

Jensen’s voice was as little and frail as he. But there was a wonderful

quality in his voice, like a violin that makes a much louder noise

than anyone would believe possible. The children did not sleep in his

classes. They were not even drowsy. In his classes they forgot to

write notes to each other or secretly to eat bread and butter behind

their desks. They only listened and asked questions. Teacher Jensen had

an answer for everything. They could ask Teacher Jensen all kinds of

questions. But sometimes he would shake his head and say: “I seem to

have forgotten it. Let me think a minute.” Or worse yet: “I don’t know.

I never knew it. But I will look it up. It is to be found in some book,

or a friend will tell me the answer.” The children found that there was

something splendid about having a teacher of whom you could ask all

kinds of questions and who sometimes did not know the answer offhand.

Teacher Jensen talked about new things and old, and his speech was not

like pepper shaken from a pepper pot. Even while the children were

playing in the fields, they would remember what he had said. Yes, it

remained fast in their minds.

One day Teacher Jensen said that murder was by no means the worst thing

a man could do, and that it was much worse to think or say or do evil

to another human being, or to make a defenseless animal suffer. And the

children were full of wonder. It seemed that a new door had been opened

to them, and each passed through it, one after another. Yes, it was

true, what he said. They understood his meaning clearly, but they cast

their eyes down, for all of them knew they had often done what was much

worse than murder. Perhaps they would do it again, but not willingly,

never willingly. Yet there was another thing worse than murder, and

that was to act without using your will.

One day Teacher Jensen brought with him a sick, whining little cat

which he had found on his way to school. He had put it under his cloak

to keep it warm, and he stroked its back and its sharp little head. It

was an ugly, gray, dirty cat. Teacher Jensen did not tell the children

what he was going to do with it, but simply sat with the cat in his lap

and rubbed his cheek against its head. To the children this poor little

sick gray cat was the whole world. They took a silent vow that they

would cure it. Through Teacher Jensen’s little gray cat they had peered

deep into the soul of an animal, and what they saw was more beautiful

and more pure than a human soul.

Teacher Jensen often went on Sunday excursions with the children.

Whoever wanted to could come, and all of them wanted to. It so happened

that one Sunday morning in the autumn they were walking among falling

leaves, and the earth clung to their shoes in little lumps. It had

been raining, and was likely to rain again. Traversing a bit of open

country, they soon entered the big forest in the distance. Ahead of

them was the “castle” that was a prison. Lauritz ran in to get a

scarf. Teacher Jensen saw him and drew his hand over his eyes, and as

he cast down his eyes it was clear that he had been crying; but no

one asked anything, no one spoke. They arrived at a vast grove of fir

trees standing in long rows, with their evergreen branches above and

their yellow trunks below. Teacher Jensen explained that such a forest

could grow from a mere handful of tiny grains. The children knew this

perfectly well; yet it sounded quite new. They suddenly understood

that trees lived, breathed, and thought, that they strove for the light

as poor people strive for bread.

“Now let’s begin the game,” said Teacher Jensen. “Let’s imagine that

this forest of fir trees is a prison, and that we are all prisoners,

each in his own cell. Let us do this for one hour. I am holding a watch

in my hand. During that hour let no one speak, for we are prisoners,

and speech is forbidden.”

This was a new game, a peculiar game. The rain had stopped some time

ago, but drops were still falling from the high trees. The children

stood, each under his own tree, and felt the water dripping and

dripping on cheeks and hands. The children stood with the water

dripping off them, laughing and shouting to each other side by side

cell by cell. Slowly the laughter died and their faces became serious.

All eyes were directed toward Teacher Jensen, who stood with the watch

in his hand. He seemed to see nobody, and did not announce when the

hour should begin.

The children felt as if they ought to hold their breath, for surely

something important and serious was afoot. It was not like the times

when they had gone out with other teachers, when hatred and pride

cropped up as soon as the school door was closed. This was serious,

and each breath was like a bucketful of water from a deep, deep well.

Was time standing still? Had not many hours already passed? Were they

really prisoners after all? They did not crawl away, though there was

nothing to stop them. Teacher Jensen did not look around him at all,

yet as soon as any of the children thought of creeping away they could

not help remembering what happened when a prisoner escaped and they

heard the shots ring out, the alarm bells clang, the whistles blow,

and saw the wardens riding off in all directions hunting the fugitive.

Their feet would not obey them—they were bound fast by Teacher Jensen’s

word; the outstretched hand with the watch held them in their places.

Yes, they were prisoners, each in his own cell, and darkness settled

and a gentle mist descended, veil upon veil.

Was this what it was like being a prisoner?

The hour was up.

Every one sighed with relief, yet they all stood quiet for a moment,

as if they could not really believe that they had regained their

freedom. Then they sprang up and clustered around Teacher Jensen,

asking him questions. It was growing dark, and he put his watch in his

pocket, saying: “It is just as hard to be a prison watchman as to be a

prisoner.”

The children had never thought of this before, and after a long pause

Teacher Jensen added: “The lot of the prison warden is the hardest of

all, for he can do nothing for the prisoners; and in his heart he wants

to help them all he can, yet they are not able to read his thoughts.”

And after another pause he said: “I knew a man who spent seventeen

years in prison and then died there.”

When Lauritz reached home his mother was sitting at the piano playing

and singing. The smell of freshly baked cake filled the room. On the

table stood a glass bowl of apples. Lauritz’s father sat on a chair

smoking his pipe. Without knowing just what he said or why he said it,

Lauritz went up to the piano and whispered in his mother’s ear: “When I

am a big man I shall be a prison warden.”

“What did you say?” she cried. “A prison warden, Lauritz? In there with

those people? Never!”

Lauritz repeated: “When I am a big man I shall be a prison warden.”

* * * * *

And then something happened that was never explained. Who had the idea

first no one knew. Perhaps it entered all those little heads at the

same time, in that hour when they were standing, each a prisoner under

his own tree, each in his own cell—just in a single hour.

When Teacher Jensen was told about the plan, he only nodded as if he

had known about it long ago. But when they begged him to talk to the

prison inspector, since their scheme was contrary to all regulations,

he shook his head, saying: “It is your idea. You must carry it out.

It is up to you, if you believe in yourselves, to stand fast by your

beliefs.”

That was two months before Christmas, and all the school-children, big

and little, boys and girls, were there. Money was the first necessity,

and it had to be collected in modest amounts and earned in an honorable

way. Teacher Jensen said that if the gift was not honest no good came

of it. The children all saved the money that they would ordinarily have

spent on sweets and on stamps for their albums. They went on little

errands, chopped wood, carried water, and scrubbed milk cans, wooden

buckets, and copper tubs. The money was put into a big earthenware pig

that Teacher Jensen had put in the wardrobe at school. No one knew who

gave the most or who gave the least.

Lauritz announced that, including the seventeen sick people, there were

three hundred and ten prisoners in the jail.

In the middle of December the pig was broken and the money was counted

over and over, but it did not amount to much. Then a little fellow came

with his little private savings bank, and a girl with a little earthen

receptacle in which she kept her spare pennies. That started them off.

Many little hoardings destined for Christmas presents were emptied into

the great common fund at school. See how it grew! Shiny paper was now

brought, and flags and walnuts. Every day the whole school stayed until

supper time cutting out and pasting. The little girls made white and

red roses. They wove baskets, gilded walnuts, pasted flags on little

sticks, and cut out cardboard stars, painting them gold and silver.

The little ones made, out of clay, birds’ nests with eggs in them,

and little horses and cows that they covered with bright colors so

they looked like real live animals. The boys cut out photographs and

made little boxes. With jig saws they fashioned napkin rings and paper

weights.

Christmas trees were bought—three hundred and ten real fir trees, for

which the gardener charged only twenty-five pfennigs apiece.

Teacher Jensen emptied his purse on the desk. It had once been black,

but it had long since turned brown, and was full of cracks. “That

belonged to the man who spent seventeen years in prison,” he announced.

“He had it there with him. He kept it there for seventeen long years.”

No one asked who the man was, but the money had to be counted over many

times, for the children’s eyes were moist and they had to keep wiping

the tears away.

On the Sunday before Christmas the children went with Teacher Jensen to

the local store and bought a lot of tobacco and chocolate, almonds and

raisins, playing cards and brightly colored handkerchiefs, and writing

paper. And they got a lot of old Christmas books too, which were given

to them free because they were at the bottom of the pile and were out

of date.

The parents of the children had to contribute whether they wanted to or

not, and bags full of cookies and nuts, playing cards and books, came

out of each house.

Lauritz’s father had spoken in all secrecy to the prison chaplain, who

went as a representative to the inspector. But the inspector hemmed and

hawed saying: “That goes against all regulations. It’s impossible. It

can’t be allowed on any ground whatever.” The chaplain was to have told

this to Lauritz’s father, and Lauritz was to have brought the news to

the children that the plan had to be abandoned. But the chaplain said

nothing to Lauritz’s father, and the children did not know that it was

impossible and could never be allowed.

All the parents, no matter how much they had to do, made a point of

going into the schoolhouse the day before Christmas and seeing the

three hundred little sparkling Christmas trees, each laden with joy,

each with its star on the top, each with its white and red roses,

white and red flags, and white and red candles, each decorated with

tinsel and hung with gifts. To every tree a little letter was fastened,

written by a boy or a girl. What was in this letter only the writer and

perhaps Teacher Jensen knew—for Teacher Jensen had to help the little

ones who only knew how to print numbers and capital letters.

The church bells rang over the town and called the faithful to God’s

worship. The prison bells rang out over the prison and called the

prisoners to the prison church. Before the school was drawn up a row

of wagons which had been laden with the little Christmas trees. Each

child then took his tree under his arm and set out, following the

wagons, singing as he went. It was a Christmas party without snow, but

a Christmas party just the same.

Stopping before the prison, they rang the bell, and asked to speak to

the inspector. He came out, and the moment he appeared Teacher Jensen

and all the children began to sing: “_O du fröhliche, o, du selige,

gnaden-bringende Weihnachtszeit...._”

The inspector shook his head sadly and raised his hands in the air. It

was impossible, absolutely impossible—he had said so. But the children

kept right on singing, and seemed not to hear him. As the inspector

afterward said, when the director of all the prisons in that district

demanded an explanation: “A man is only human, and had you been in my

place, Mr. Director, you would have done as I did, even if it had cost

you your position.”

Thus it came to pass that this one time Christmas was celebrated in

each cell of the big prison—a good, happy, cheerful Christmas. When

the prisoners came back from the worship of God with their black masks

on their faces they found a Christmas tree in every cell, and the cell

doors stood open until the candles had burned out, and the prisoners

received permission to go freely from cell to cell all through the

corridor to look at each other’s Christmas trees and gifts—to look at

them and to compare them. But each prisoner thought that his little

tree and his present were the most beautiful and the best of all.

When the last light had burned out, the doors were closed, and far into

the night the prisoners sang the Christmas carols of their childhood,

free from distress, grief, and all spitefulness.

And as the last light flickered out behind the high walls the thin

figure of a man with his coat collar up over his ears and his hat

pulled over his face crept along the prison wall. Through the night air

he heard the voices singing, “_Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht._”

Clasping his hands tightly together and raising them aloft into the

darkness, he cried: “I thank thee, father. Thy guilt has been atoned

for ten times over.”

[17] Reprinted from the “Living Age” by permission.

HONORABLE TOMMY[18]

_Mary E. Wilkins Freeman_

It was the day before Christmas, long ago, when Christmas was seldom

observed in New England. There were two houses in the village separated

by a wide yard in which the grass, of a dirty dun color, lay like a

frost-woven mat underfoot, crunching when the children sped over it.

It was difficult to understand what the boy and girl found amusing in

that dismal wintry yard, flanked on one side by the Dunbar farmhouse,

with its enormous barns and outbuildings, on the other by the more

modern house where the Roseberrys lived. There was probably nothing

except the indomitable spirit of youth. The boy, Tommy Dunbar, and

the girl, Cora Roseberry, raced back and forth between the leafless,

creaking old cherry trees. They made leaps over a ledge of rock. The

girl gave little squeals of merriment from time to time. The boy,

although radiant, was silent. They were pretty children, but the

fashions of their day detracted from their beauty.

The girl, charmingly graceful, pink and white, with long blond curls,

wore a hoop skirt and a frock of royal Stuart plaid. She wore white

stockings and ugly half-low shoes, a red knitted hood, and a shawl over

her mother’s sontag. As she ran, the fringed corners of the blue and

green plaid shawl flew out.

“You will catch cold,” said the boy thoughtfully. “Stop, Cora; you must

let me tie the ends of your shawl.”

“It is cold,” agreed the girl: “but I have on Mother’s sontag under

the shawl.” She glanced down admiringly and guiltily at the brilliant

circle of her royal Stuart skirt. “Mother didn’t know I was going to

wear this dress,” said she.

“What made you?” asked the boy soberly. He was smaller than the girl,

although of the same age. He was also paler. His attire was as absurd:

trousers which seemed a queer evolution from skirts, an uncouth jacket,

and wool cap and muffler. His features were good, but their expression

of extreme seriousness baffled. His blue eyes under a high forehead

were almost aggressively thoughtful for a mere child.

“Will your mother scold you?”

“My mother scold me!” The girl burst into a roulade of laughter.

“Mother never scolds me, neither does Father. Everybody loves me, you

know,” she said prettily.

Tommy Dunbar gazed reflectively at Cora. He was considering what

would have happened to him had he clad himself, without permission

from his aunts Nancy and Sarah and his Uncle Reuben, in the bright

blue broadcloth suit with a white frill round the neck which he wore

Sundays.

Cora looked at him curiously. “Do your folks treat you bad if you do

things you want to?” she inquired. Tommy was silent.

“Why don’t you answer?”

“My folks do the way they think is right, I guess,” said Tommy, with a

stolid air.

Cora gave her long curls a toss. She dismissed the subject.

“You can’t catch me, running around every one of the cherry trees three

times,” declared she, and was off.

Cora ran round the trees, with Tommy following at a fixed distance,

according to his code of honor, then stopped, squealing with glee.

“Couldn’t! Told you so,” said she. Cora was charming. She conquered her

ugly clothes. In a way, Tommy Dunbar conquered his. There was a very

noble, manly expression on his young face above the uncouth jacket and

muffler.

Cora sniffed. “What are they cooking over at your folks’?” said she.

“They’re doing pig work,” replied Tommy. “That’s lard trying out you

smell.”

“Seems to me funny work to be doing the day before Christmas,” said

Cora.

Tommy stared.

Cora stared back. “You look as if you’d never heard of Christmas,” said

she. “Are you going to have a tree, or hang up your stocking?”

Tommy hesitated; then he said feebly: “I guess I’ll hang up my

stocking.”

“That’s what I’m going to do this Christmas.” Cora lowered her voice.

“That’s really what Mother went to Boston for,” she whispered. “You

see, I know perfectly well that Father and Mother and Aunt Emmy and

Grandpa and Cousin Ellen give the things that go in my stocking. But I

like to make believe it’s Santa Claus, and it pleases the others, so I

do.”

To Tommy the remark was enigmatical, but he made no comment.

“I shall hang my stocking by the fireplace in the sitting-room,” said

Cora. “Where will you hang yours?”

“Guess I’ll hang mine by the fireplace in the sitting-room, too,”

muttered Tommy; but he had an anxious, bewildered expression.

It did not dawn upon Cora that Tommy Dunbar had never in his life hung

up his stocking, but so it was.

Cora saw her mother getting out of the stage-coach, and summarily ran

home. Tommy also went home, sniffing the smell of lard and roast meat.

He enjoyed his supper of crisp roast spare-ribs, turnips, baked

potatoes and pumpkin pie. At the table were his Uncle Reuben and his

aunts Sarah and Nancy. His grandmother was confined to her room with a

cold, otherwise things would have been different. Tommy’s grandmother

could not have connived in the after-happenings of that day. Before

going up-stairs to bed Tommy stopped to say good night to her. She sat

propped up in her great bed, with a white shawl over her shoulders,

and she was knitting. She smiled serenely at Tommy.

If anything, serenity was a fault in Grandmother Dunbar. No minor

trials of life disturbed her, and she often assumed erroneously that

they did not disturb other people. However, she was the mother of

children, and when a child was in question the surface of her sweet

calm could be ruffled. If only she had known—but she did not know. She

smiled at Tommy, and her large pink-and-white face, framed in white

ruffles, represented to the child personified love. His mother had died

when he was a baby, his father two years ago, and Tommy had speeded to

this grandmotherly shelter.

Tommy kissed her good night with effusion. It was a pity that he did

not confide in her; but he was very shy and shamed before the unwonted

idea in his mind. His grandmother gave him a peppermint, and told him

not to forget his prayers, and he climbed up-stairs to his own bedroom.

It was an icy room, and almost reproachfully neat.

Tommy said his prayers, and went to bed, but not to sleep. His room was

over the sitting-room. He could hear the hum of conversation below.

He knew each voice, although he could not distinguish one word. Aunt

Nancy’s was very shrill, punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter.

Aunt Sarah’s was of lower pitch. Uncle Reuben had a deep bass growl.

Tommy listened. Presently they would all go out in the back kitchen to

grind sausage meat.

Soon silence settled down upon the floor below. They were all out

in the back kitchen. Tommy crept very softly out of bed. He took one

of his knitted blue yarn stockings, and he went down-stairs, padding

on his bare feet. Tommy wore a red flannel nightgown. When he opened

the sitting-room door and the fire-light on the hearth illumined him,

he looked like a little Fra Angelico angel. His fair hair, crested

smoothly over his forehead, caught the light. His pale cheeks were rosy

with reflection.

He tiptoed across the floor and hung the blue yarn stocking in the

fire-place. Then he beat a retreat; but he had been discovered. His

aunt Nancy, whose hearing was almost preternatural, had heard the

stairs creak under his little feet and had pulled the others along

with her. They were all peeking around the kitchen door. However, they

were out of range of the fireplace. They only saw Tommy approach, then

steal away in that flickering red light. Reuben held them back until

the sitting-room door was closed, and the pit-pat of Tommy’s bare feet

had ceased upon the stairs. Then the three hearty, healthy, kindly, but

obtuse, young people entered the sitting-room.

“He certainly was fussing about something in the fireplace,” said

Nancy. Suddenly she made a pounce. She pointed. She shook and bent

with stifled laughter. The others looked. They saw poor Tommy’s blue

stocking, symbolic of childish faith, hanging in the fireplace. Nancy

laughed, and Sarah laughed, but cautiously. Reuben stared.

“What’s the stockin’ doin’ there?” he inquired, with no lowering of his

deep voice.

Tommy up-stairs heard him, and trembled. Then he heard no more, for

his aunts hushed his uncle peremptorily. They pulled him out into the

kitchen.

“What in creation—?” began Reuben.

“Reuben, do hush up. He’ll hear you,” gasped Nancy. “It’s—it’s——”

“It’s what? What did he come down like that for, and hang his stockin’

there? Is he crazy?”

“It’s Christmas to-morrow,” replied Nancy, choking with laughter.

“And he was out in the yard with Cora this afternoon, and she must have

told him she was going to hang her stocking, and put him up to it,”

said Sarah between giggles.

“Grace went to Boston this morning,” said Nancy. “I know she went to

buy presents for Cora. They’re just spoiling that child.”

Reuben scowled. “If,” said he, “Grace wants to fill her child’s head

with such nonsense, I do wish she would tell her not to talk to Tommy.

Hangin’ his stockin’ in the chimney!”

However, Reuben, who was not an ill-natured man, grinned as he spoke.

Into his small brown eyes leapt a spark of malicious mischief.

“I’ll fix up his stockin’; I vum I will,” declared Reuben. He began to

laugh. They all laughed.

“What are you going to do, Reuben?” inquired Nancy.

Reuben whispered. The heads of the three conspirators were close

together. When Reuben finished, they all laughed until the tears ran

down their cheeks. Reuben’s plan seemed to them such a joke.

The three, stifling their laughter, filled the blue yarn stocking. When

it hung bulging, they fairly clung together and reeled, they were so

overcome by the fun of the thing.

“He will come down by dawn to find it,” giggled Nancy. She and Sarah

slept on the ground floor, Reuben above.

“I will sleep with one ear open,” said he. “I shall hear him come

downstairs.”

“Mind you don’t let him hear you,” cautioned Sarah. “Nancy and I will

be on the lookout.”

Soon the house was still. The street was still, hushed by an evening of

fast-falling snow. Everybody slept except Tommy. He lay awake in a sort

of ecstasy. He did not know what he expected. Afterward he was never

able to define the nature of his joyful expectancy, but he lay awake in

one of the transports of awaited happiness which do not come often in

a lifetime. All the beautiful symbolism of Christmas was astir in him,

like a strain of wonderful music. Little New England boy, who had never

known a Yuletide, it may be that ancestral memory had been awakened in

him, that the joy of his ancestors over the merry holy time of the year

thrilled him.

The storm clouds had passed. He could see a great star from his window.

He gazed at it so steadily that its rays became multiplied. Finally

the star, to his concentrated vision, seemed surrounded by a halo of

rainbows. He lay there waiting for the dawn, in such bliss as he might

never again in his whole life attain, since that bliss was to be dashed

back into the very face of his soul with a shock as of spiritual ice.

That Christmas morning the dawn was beautiful, and Tommy’s window faced

the east. He saw first a pallor of light along the horizon; then beams

of cowslip-gold, rose and violet shot upward like an aurora. Tommy

crept out of bed. He padded down-stairs. The cold was bitter, but he

did not feel it. The poor little man in his red flannel nightgown

entered the sitting-room. There was a faint glow on the hearth. He

stole near. Yes, his stocking was full, bulging with unknown treasures.

He did not hear his uncle Reuben coming down-stairs behind him, then

hiding observant in a dark corner of the front entry. He did not see

his aunts’ faces peering around a crack of their bedroom door. He

clutched the stocking. He was trembling with delight. He had intended

to run up-stairs and discover his wealth in his own room, but he could

not wait. He sat down on the hearth and began to explore.

When it was over, just one little sharp sound broke the silence.

Nancy said afterward it sounded as if some boy had stepped on a very

little dog and killed him. After that, silence came again. Somehow the

watchers did not feel like laughing. Tommy stood up. The dawn light

fell full upon his white, stern little face. He crammed the miserable

travesties of Christmas treasures back into the stocking. He went

straight to the outer door. He shot the bolt. He went out.

“Mercy on us!” gasped Nancy.

“He will catch his death of cold going out in his night-gown,” said

Sarah. She was very pale.

Reuben came into the room. He looked frightened. “Where has he gone?”

he demanded.

Sarah and Nancy hushed him and drew him into their own room. They

peered out, and saw the boy, with the stern white face of a man,

march in. He held his blue yarn stocking dangling limply. He went

up-stairs. They heard his door close. The three went together into the

sitting-room. Nancy was almost weeping, Reuben scowled, Sarah’s pale

face wore a puzzled expression.

“I did not think he would take it like that,” half sobbed Nancy. Sarah

looked accusingly at her brother.

“I don’t see why you did it,” she said.

“You thought it was as good a joke as I did,” retorted Reuben. He shook

himself, took his cap from a peg, and went out.

Nancy and Sarah, left alone, stood and stared at each other in dismay.

They did not give speech to it, but at that moment both realized that

childhood was a land left far behind them. Nancy’s lover had died two

years before. Queerly enough, she thought of him now. Sometime he had

been a little boy like poor Tommy.

“I s’pose we ought to have known better,” Sarah thought. All she said

was, “I guess Grace Roseberry will think we’re heathen.”

“Perhaps he—won’t—tell,” said Nancy hesitatingly.

“Children always tell,” returned Sarah. “Let him tell. It is all

Grace’s fault, spoiling Cora and having her put such ideas into Tommy’s

head. Come, it’s time to get breakfast. You go in and see how Mother

is; if she had a good night.”

“Mother wouldn’t like it,” murmured Nancy.

“She’ll give him some pep’mints and coddle him up when he tells her,”

said Sarah.

“Perhaps he won’t tell,” returned Nancy.

“Of course he’ll tell; children always tell. Let him. I’ve done nothing

that I’m ashamed of. It was only a joke. It will cure him of being so

silly, too. I’ll start the breakfast while you look after Mother.”

Then Tommy was heard on the stairs. He entered the room, clad in his

uncouth suit, and went soberly through on his way to the wood-shed. It

was his morning task to chop up the kindling wood. Tommy’s face was

still white and unchildlike, and the sisters regarded each other with

something like fear when he had disappeared.

“All I’ve got to say is, a child as silly as that ought to be taught

sense, and I guess it’s just as well it happened,” said Sarah.

“He’s had time enough to tell Mother; but I don’t believe he has.”

“Well, if he has told, Mother has coddled him; but he looked just the

same.”

“Maybe we are making too much fuss over nothing,” said Nancy. Sarah

went into the kitchen, stepping heavily and quickly, and Nancy entered

her mother’s room. The old woman was awake, and she smiled serenely at

her daughter.

“He hasn’t told,” thought Nancy with relief. When she joined her sister

in the kitchen she said, “Sarah, he hasn’t told Mother. He’s a good

boy.”

“He will tell,” returned Sarah grimly, “and he can, for all me.”

But Tommy did not tell, although as time went on he was subjected to

a severe ordeal. It began that very morning out in the yard under

the cherry trees. The light fall of snow was not enough to admit of

sleighing, but enough to make as good an excuse for using a Christmas

sled as a child could wish. Out there, on the thin glistening rime of

snow was Cora Roseberry, dragging a superfine sled, gaudily painted

and named “Snow Bird.” Cora wore a set of furs, although the muff was

dreadfully in her way. It was a Christmas present. She also wore a

bright red cloak lined with plaid, another Christmas present, and on

one hand a kid glove. The other hand was bare, because it was decorated

with a gold ring with a garnet stone.

When she saw Tommy she hailed him. “Come here, quick, quick!” she

called in her thin sweet voice.

“Oh, Tommy Dunbar, you are _so_ slow!” she cried as he came up. “I want

you to just look at my Christmas presents! See my sled, see my furs,

see my red cape, see my kid gloves, real kid, the first I’ve had. And

oh, Tommy, see my ring! See how it shines!”

Tommy nodded soberly. He was not jealous, but he could not bring

himself to show hilarity after his own experience.

“And these ain’t near all,” boasted Cora. “I’ve got two books, a red

one and a blue one, with pictures, and a photograph album, and oranges,

and candy, and a game, and lots of other things. Say, can’t you come in

our house and see them?”

“I guess I can’t just now,” replied Tommy gravely.

“I’ve got a new doll with real hair and a pink spangled dress, and a

stereoscope with lots of pictures. Say, Tommy, don’t you want to look

at the pictures through my stereoscope?”