Chapter VIII: Part III (4)

“Oh, ma, are you sure you don’t care a bit?”

“Not a bit,” said Mrs. Mansfield, kissing her heartily. “I just thought he ought to be in the family. I’m glad it’s turned out this way. Now, you go to bed, an’ don’t forget to roll up your bangs.”

She went into her room and shut the door.

MRS. RISLEY’S CHRISTMAS DINNER

MRS. RISLEY’S CHRISTMAS DINNER

She was an old, old woman. She was crippled with rheumatism and bent with toil. Her hair was gray,—not that lovely white that softens and beautifies the face, but harsh, grizzled gray. Her shoulders were round, her chest was sunken, her face had many deep wrinkles. Her feet were large and knotty; her hands were large, too, with great hollows running down their backs. And how painfully the cords stood out in her old, withered neck!

For the twentieth time she limped to the window and flattened her face against the pane. It was Christmas day. A violet sky sparkled coldly over the frozen village. The ground was covered with snow; the roofs were white with it. The chimneys looked redder than usual as they emerged from its pure drifts and sent slender curls of electric-blue smoke into the air.

The wind was rising. Now and then it came sweeping down the hill, pushing a great sheet of snow, powdered like dust, before it. The window-sashes did not fit tightly, and some of it sifted into the room and climbed into little cones on the floor. Snow-birds drifted past, like soft, dark shadows; and high overhead wild geese went sculling through the yellow air, their mournful “hawnk-e-hawnk-hawnks” sinking downward like human cries.

As the old woman stood with her face against the window and her weak eyes strained down the street, a neighbor came to the door.

“Has your daughter an’ her fambly come yet, Mis’ Risley?” she asked, entering sociably.

“Not yet,” replied Mrs. Risley, with a good attempt at cheerfulness; but her knees suddenly began shaking, and she sat down.

“Why, she’d ought to ’a’ come on the last train, hadn’t she?”

“Oh, I do’ know. There’s a plenty o’ time. Dinner won’t be ready tell two past.”

“She ain’t b’en to see you fer five year, has she?” said the neighbor. “I reckon you’ll have a right scrumptious set-out fer ’em?”

“I will so,” said Mrs. Risley, ignoring the other question. “Her husband’s comin’.”

“I want to know! Why, he just thinks he’s some punkins, I hear.”

“Well, he’s rich enough to think hisself anything he wants to,” Mrs. Risley’s voice took on a tone of pride.

“I sh’u’d think you’d want to go an’ live with ’em. It’s offul hard fer you to live here all alone, with your rheumatiz.”

Mrs. Risley stooped to lay a stick of wood on the fire.

“I’ve worked nigh onto two weeks over this dinner,” she said, “a-seed’n’ raisins an’ cur’nts, an’ things. I’ve hed to skimp harrable, Mis’ Tomlinson, to get it; but it’s just—_perfec’_. Roast goose an’ cranberry sass, an’ cel’ry soup, an’ mince an’ punkin pie,—to say nothin’ o’ plum-puddin’! An’ cookies an’ cur’nt-jell tarts fer the children. I’ll hev to wear my old underclo’s all winter to pay fer ’t; but I don’t care.”

“I sh’u’d think your daughter’d keep you more comf’terble, seein’ her husband’s so rich.”

There was a silence. Mrs. Risley’s face grew stern. The gold-colored cat came and arched her back for a caress. “My bread riz beautiful,” Mrs. Risley said then. “I worried so over ’t. An’ my fruit-cake smells that good when I open the stun crock! I put a hull cup o’ brandy in it. Well, I guess you’ll hev to excuse me. I’ve got to set the table.”

When Mrs. Tomlinson was gone, the strained look came back to the old woman’s eyes. She went on setting the table, but at the sound of a wheel, or a step even, she began to tremble and put her hand behind her ear to listen.

“It’s funny they _didn’t_ come on that last train,” she said. “I w’u’dn’t tell her, though. But they’d ort to be here by this time.”

She opened the oven door. The hot, delicious odor of its precious contents gushed out. Did ever goose brown so perfectly before? And how large the liver was! It lay in the gravy in one corner of the big dripping-pan, just beginning to curl at the edges. She tested it carefully with a little three-tined iron fork.

The mince-pie was on the table, waiting to be warmed, and the pumpkin-pie was out on the back porch,—from which the cat had been excluded for the present. The cranberry sauce, the celery in its high, old-fashioned glass, the little bee-hive of hard sauce for the pudding and the thick cream for the coffee, bore the pumpkin-pie company. The currant jelly in the tarts glowed like great red rubies set in circles of old gold; the mashed potatoes were light and white as foam.

For one moment, as she stood there in the savory kitchen, she thought of the thin, worn flannels, and how much better her rheumatism would be with the warm ones which could have been bought with the money spent for this dinner. Then she flushed with self-shame.

“I must be gittin’ childish,” she exclaimed, indignantly; “to begredge a Chris’mas dinner to ’Lizy. ’S if I hedn’t put up with old underclo’s afore now! But I will say there ain’t many women o’ my age thet c’u’d git up a dinner like this ’n’,—rheumatiz an’ all.”

A long, shrill whistle announced the last train from the city. Mrs. Risley started and turned pale. A violent trembling seized her. She could scarcely get to the window, she stumbled so. On the way she stopped at the old walnut bureau to put a lace cap on her white hair and to look anxiously into the mirror.

“Five year!” she whispered. “It’s an offul spell to go without seein’ your only daughter! Everything’ll seem mighty poor an’ shabby to her, I reckon,—her old mother worst o’ all. I never sensed how I’d changed tell now. My! how no-account I’m a gittin’! I’m all of a trimble!”

Then she stumbled on to the window and pressed her cheek against the pane.

“They’d ort to be in sight now,” she said. But the minutes went by, and they did not come.

“Mebbe they’ve stopped to talk, meetin’ folks,” site said, again. “But they’d ort to be in sight now.” She trembled so she had to get a chair and sit down. But still she wrinkled her cheek upon the cold pane and strained her dim eyes down the street.

After a while a boy came whistling down from the corner. There was a letter in his hand. He stopped and rapped, and when she opened the door with a kind of frightened haste, he gave her the letter and went away, whistling again.

A letter! Why should a letter come? Her heart was beating in her throat now,—that poor old heart that had beaten under so many sorrows! She searched in a dazed way for her glasses. Then she fell helplessly into a chair and read it:

“DEAR MOTHER,—I am so sorry we cannot come, after all. We
just got word that Robert’s aunt has been expecting us all
the time, because we’ve spent every Christmas there. We feel
as if we _must_ go there, because she always goes to so much
trouble to get up a fine dinner; and we knew you wouldn’t do
that. Besides, she is so rich; and one has to think of one’s
children, you know. We’ll come, _sure_, next year. With a
merry, merry Christmas from all,

“ELIZA.”

It was hard work reading it, she had to spell out so many of the words. After she had finished, she sat for a long, long time motionless, looking at the letter. Finally the cat came and rubbed against her, “myowing” for her dinner. Then she saw that the fire had burned down to a gray, desolate ash.

She no longer trembled, although the room was cold. The wind was blowing steadily now. It was snowing, too. The bleak Christmas afternoon and the long Christmas night stretched before her. Her eyes rested upon the little fir-tree on a table in one corner, with its gilt balls and strings of popcorn and colored candles. She could not bear the sight of it. She got up stiffly.

“Well, kitten,” she said, trying to speak cheerfully, but with a pitiful break in her voice, “let’s go out an’ eat our Christmas dinner.”

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