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