Chapter IX: Part III (5)

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.