Chapter I: Part 1

MARY CHRISTMAS

MARY CHRISTMAS

BY
MARY ELLEN CHASE

BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1936

_Copyright, 1926_,
BY MARY ELLEN CHASE.

_All rights reserved_

Published April, 1926
Reprinted September, 1926
Reprinted January, 1927
Reprinted August, 1936

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS PUBLICATIONS
ARE PUBLISHED BY
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
IN ASSOCIATION WITH
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

I CONCERNING A COLLAR AND TIE 3

II A BLUE GINGHAM AND AN ANCIENT LAND 19

III UNBURIED TREASURE 33

IV A WILD CRAB-APPLE TREE 44

V THE GARDEN OF EDEN 50

VI A GOOD SAINT AND A SILVER BOX 68

VII A PILLAR OF FIRE 80

VIII SHOWERS OF GOLD AND PEARLS 91

IX FOLKLORE AND POLITICS 103

X WAYSIDE SACRAMENTS 118

XI SHORT TWILIGHTS AND DRIFTING PETALS 126

XII MARY CHRISTMAS DAYS 138

MARY CHRISTMAS

_His candle shined upon my head, and ... by His light I
walked through darkness...._

_My root was spread out by the waters, and the dew lay all
night upon my branch._

THE BOOK OF JOB

I

CONCERNING A COLLAR AND TIE

Long years ago, in those speedless days of the late nineties when children dropped homemade curtsies and said, “Yes, ma’am” and “No, sir” quite as a matter of course, when they recited the sixty-three books of the Bible, the kings of Israel, and the twelve disciples according to St. Matthew without the least idea of achievement, when baby specialists and motion pictures were almost unknown, and when the efficacy of springtime asafœtida-bags and of sulphur and molasses taken according to the magic rule of three was sponsored by the most intelligent of parents--years ago, on a certain warm day very early in the month of June, the four Wescott children, who were swinging on a white gate beneath great elm trees, were startled by the most curious and, for the duration of a long half-hour, quite inexplicable behavior on the part of their father. At high noon, just as the church clock was sending twelve mellow, wavering notes down through the sunlit air to cling unseen to tree-tops or to hide in daisy fields--at high noon he came up the street in full view of his neighbors, and halted with no apparent embarrassment before his four awestruck children, _wearing his collar and tie_!

* * * * *

Now, at the imminent risk of ruining the artistic value of this story,--for we know only too well what it means to stop a truly dramatic incident when it wants to go on,--we must, in all fairness to the father of the four Wescotts, on the one hand, describe--since we cannot explain--a certain distressingly peculiar habit of his, and on the other, assure our readers that neither he nor his wife nor his four children had ever because of it suffered the slightest lessening of social standing in their community. For years, during the months of May, June, July, August, and September, it had been Mr. Wescott’s deplorable custom to traverse the distance between his law office over the village grocery store and his home with his collar and tie in his left hand. Otherwise his appearance was above reproach. His neat gray suit was immaculately pressed and brushed, his neat straw hat was placed at a most conservative angle, his neat black shoes shone from his own early-morning labor, the gold-headed cane which he always carried bespoke the gentleman that he was. But--_his collar and tie hung from his left hand_.

No one felt entirely sure as to the date and origin of this custom. Mrs. Wescott, who, it will be readily granted, should have known more about those matters than anyone else, was not secure in her mind concerning them. It is true that once, in the strictest confidence, she disclosed to Mary, the eldest of the four Wescotts, her belief that the habit had originated in those over-heated and perilous days when Father Wescott had been doing his best to save the country in general and the State of Maine in particular from the election of President Cleveland. She furthermore advanced the opinion--which, as Mary grew older, she was inclined to share--that the continuance of the habit should be interpreted as silent proof that Mr. Wescott stood ready to defend with all his might the Republican Party with its splendid principles of “honest money and the chance to earn it.” These, however, logical as they seemed, were only theories. Mr. Wescott himself afforded the only source material, and that material was unfortunately impossible of access, since the whole question with all its ramifications was one which, Mrs. Wescott and her four children had tacitly agreed, was never to be referred to whether in or out of the family circle.

It may easily be surmised that this habit of Mr. Wescott’s had been the source of no little embarrassment to his wife and children, and their splendid loyalty cannot, indeed, be too highly commended. Imagine, if you will, any number of situations in which the recognition of such an extraordinary practice might well have redounded to the discredit of the family, and you will appreciate the truly fine material of which these people were made. But as Mrs. Wescott said, again in confidence to Mary and to Cynthia after she was ten, since they had endured the visit of the Governor of Maine, they need have no fear as to anything which the future might hold in store for them.

The gubernatorial guest dined with the Wescotts on an August noon when Mary was eleven, just ten months, in fact, before the beginning of the events which make up this story. He had communicated his nearness to Mr. Wescott, who had hurried home at ten o’clock to warn his wife, to change his clothes, and to decree blue serge for the children. As Mrs. Wescott tied a new tie for him under a fresh collar, misgivings would arise in spite of her, and more than once a warning trembled on her lips. But she controlled herself, true even then to her sense of loyalty, and reasonably secure in her faith that he could not, in view of the distinction about to fall upon the family, so far forget himself. Imagine, then, her distress when, an hour later, she saw her husband conducting their distinguished guest up the street, his head erect and crowned with the top hat which he had chosen for this unusual occasion, his clean collar and new tie gently swinging from his left hand! Imagine, too, the consternation of the children, who sat primly on the front porch in Sunday serge, the girls in Mother Hubbards, the boys as Lord Fauntleroyish as serge would admit, and rehearsed their salutations. Can the mild remonstrance which sprang to Mrs. Wescott’s lips as she stood in the doorway to receive her guest be wondered at?

“Father, how _could_ you!” she said in an undertone, after the Governor had been duly presented. The accusing eyes of his four children, who were engaged in making their curtsies and bows, added poignancy to her thrust. His eyes followed their hostile glances, and his cheeks colored. One could only believe that he, the author of their disgrace, had been, up to this moment, entirely unconscious of the incriminating articles in his hand.

It is extremely comforting, however, to be able to assure our readers that no dire results followed this act, which we must believe to have been quite unpremeditated on the part of Mr. Wescott. The Governor having been shown upstairs by Mary Wescott to wash, he repaired hastily to his own room, from whence he emerged almost simultaneously with his honored guest, his appearance entirely conventional and his native gallantry unimpaired. But although the dinner was a complete success from every point of view, although upon his departure the Governor assured his hostess in most lavish terms of his deep regard for her husband, the ensuing legislative season was an anxious one for Mrs. Wescott. Was it not possible, nay even probable, that habit might assert itself even in the State capital? This fear so plucked at her that she was tormented by frequent nightmares, in the worst of which she saw her husband on a freezing winter day emerge from behind the white marble pillars of the government building, descend the long flight of steps, and walk through the city streets to his Augusta hotel, his collar and tie in his hand. Her cries awoke Cynthia in the next room, but to her startled questions her mother confessed only vaguely to having seen in her sleep a most terrifying thing. Nor were Cynthia’s far more insistent morning queries productive of anything more definite.

Relief came in the shape of a legislator and friend from a neighboring town, who, upon meeting Mrs. Wescott at a county convention of the church, remarked in the course of conversation that she would never know her husband in the ultra-dignified gentleman who lent tone to the State Senate. Circumspect as were his words and uncompromising as was his manner, Mrs. Wescott could only infer that he meant to allay her fears, and the sense of freedom which she henceforth experienced, in spite of her embarrassment at the time of the conversation, was immeasurable.

Nor must we for a moment allow our readers to imagine that this habit, which we have been at such pains to describe, had ever in the slightest degree impaired the really enviable position which the Wescotts maintained in the community. The energies of Mr. Wescott had been dedicated, not merely to the affairs of his State and nation, but to those of his native village as well. Her he had served, in the phrase of the Scriptures, from his youth up. Fence-viewer and Pound-keeper at twenty, he had passed successively through the lesser town offices until now, on the fair side of forty, he was Moderator of the annual Town Meeting, First Selectman, and, most honored of all positions, Judge of the Municipal Court. Mrs. Wescott, in spite of the facts that she had never played bridge in her life, that she belonged to no Women’s Clubs and had never given an afternoon paper on “A Brief Survey of English Literature,” and that woman suffrage, a measure at that time in slight favor among some Western states, had received from her only a kind of pitying amazement, was held in deepest respect by the village at large and was, moreover, I dare say, a very happy woman--that is, as women go. As for the four Wescott children, Mary, Cynthia, Roger, and John, they were quite as promising as it is ever well or needful that children should be.

And now to return to our exasperated story, which, for the last ten minutes, has been fuming with impatience.

* * * * *

Years ago, on a certain warm day very early in the month of June, the four Wescott children, who were swinging on a white gate beneath great elm trees, were startled by the most curious and, for the duration of a long half-hour, quite inexplicable behavior on the part of their father. At high noon, just as the church clock was sending twelve mellow, wavering notes down through the sunlit air to cling unseen to tree-tops or to hide in daisy fields--at high noon he came up the street in full view of all his neighbors, and halted with no apparent embarrassment before his four awestruck children, _wearing his collar and tie_!

They who had been too amazed to run to meet him in their usual fashion silently opened the gate for him, all having dismounted and taken their stand in twos on either side, Mary and Roger on the right, John and Cynthia on the left. They could not be mistaken in their conviction that something extraordinary had happened. Even John at five was so sure that he asked not a question. He simply stared, round-eyed, at his father’s neat throat. As for the others, they were conscious of a suppressed excitement in their father’s manner, which, added to the incriminating evidence of his unusual appearance, left not the shadow of a doubt.

They continued to stare, now at him, now at one another, as he passed through the gate without any suggestion that they follow him, and up the driveway to the house. Whatever it was, he would tell their mother first, and their part was to wait. This they did with their ears strained for the slightest sound which might serve as a clue.

Their mother was bustling about in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches to the dinner for which Mary and Cynthia had already set the table. She was singing “Shall We Gather at the River,” but her sweet, plaintive assurance that all the Wescotts would “gather with the saints” was suddenly halted by the appearance of her husband in the doorway. Listening outside, the children were quick to catch the interruption. She was surprised, they knew, and they all felt for a moment an unexpressed thrill of pride that they had first experienced the sensation. Then--

“Why, Father!” they heard her say. Surely she also was not able to believe her eyes!

A second or two of torturing silence, during which even breathing was painful. Then the draft of the stove slammed shut,--to keep the dinner from burning, they knew,--footsteps, and a streak of blue, their mother’s gingham, through the windows of the dining-room, the closing of a door. They knew what that meant. Their father had beckoned their mother to the library, the seat of all family councils, punishments, and Christmas secrets.

They might have talked then--perhaps it is singular that they did not--but, since guesses seemed futile in the expectation of such a stupendous happening as all things prophesied, they continued to stand by the gate, staring alternately at one another and at the silent windows of the library. It is altogether safe to predict, however, that each of the four, from Mary to John, cast careful, inward glances over the things each had been doing for the space of a week. There was none of them who could not easily recall certain uncomfortable sessions introduced in some such manner; and yet within the memory of none of them had any misdemeanor, even of the most startling import, caused such initial behavior from their father.

His sudden reappearance on the porch mercifully quieted certain misgivings in the mind of Roger, who was beginning to realize that, if he had counted ten, he should probably not have thrown the minister’s son off the back fence into a burdock clump, and in the heart of Cynthia, who had not felt right for a week because she had refused to lend _Little Women_ to the Closson children, who, being the offspring of a fisherman, smelt rather loathsomely of clams and fish. He came down the driveway, walking rapidly, his collar and tie still in their rightful places. As he passed the children by the white gate, he paused for a moment.

“There’s company for dinner, children,” said he. “Please mind your manners.”

They said, “Yes, sir” in a disappointed chorus. Although they had not known exactly for what they were hoping, they all realized at once that it was _not_ company for dinner. The announcement, in fact, was like a dash of cold water. Roger made bold to question him.

“Is it the Governor again?” he asked.

“No,” answered his father. (Mary thought she detected here a slight rise of color to his cheeks, a circumstance easily accounted for if our readers will but recall that visit which brought such consternation in the wake of its honor.) Then he passed quickly through the gate and down the graveled sidewalk in the direction of his office.

The children looked at one another, all alike unwilling to recognize that the very pleasurable suspense they had experienced must be satisfied by a guest for dinner, probably by some neighboring lawyer, who would talk about the tariff and keep them too long at the table. But the older ones still clung hopefully to the strange air of mystery about their father. That and the startling innovation in his appearance could not, they told themselves, portend the usual dinner-guest.

“I suppose it will mean blue serge,” sighed Cynthia resignedly, “though it’s much too hot.”

“I suppose it will,” said Mary.

“I can’t,” said Roger, all the time knowing that he could and would. “There’s a baseball game at two--sharp.”

John said nothing, mostly because at five it takes all one’s time to keep one’s mental balance in any such maelstrom of excitement as this. Moreover, he knew he must do just as he was told.

“The Parker children all have new best dresses, made especially for summer,” contributed Cynthia, “muslin with dots. That makes five apiece for them.”

“It’s a silly extravagance,” said Mary. (The words and the opinion belonged to her mother.) “Blue serge will do till Father gets the fall election.”

But, to the surprise of all, the call to blue serge was not forthcoming. They heard the draft of the stove opened, and smelt the crisp, luscious odor of well-cooked meat and of freshly baked bread. They heard their mother’s quick, sure steps going from kitchen to dining-room and back again. Mary and Cynthia exchanged puzzled glances. Neither could remember a time when they had not been called in to help with the last things about the table.

“For, even if we’re not needed, what about the discipline?” thought Mary.

The petals from the orchard trees beyond the driveway drifted through the warm, bright air like great, lazy snowflakes. A pair of bluebirds circled about in the white fragrance and in the drowsy murmur of bees.

And then Roger from the top of the gatepost gave a shout. He had seen his father’s hat just topping the hill that led from the village.

“They’re coming--whoever it is!” he cried.

II

A BLUE GINGHAM AND AN ANCIENT LAND

They were coming! They topped the hill; they passed the academy with its white columns and ancient date in gilded figures; they passed the Blodgett house, within which Miss Sarah Blodgett peered from the sidelights of the front entrance, mistrust and amazement in her sharp face; they passed the church with its green shutters and westward-pointing weathercock; they passed the crossroads where Pleasant Street saunters across Maple; they entered upon that long stretch of elm-shaded gravel walk, which, quite unimpaired by other houses, leads to the Wescott gate. Still the four Wescotts by that gate said not one word or made the slightest move toward going to meet their father. Indeed, they were quite too busily engaged in trying to set their mental houses to rights to do anything but stare. And stare they did!

Their father was coming up the street, laden with a huge and shining black bag or pack, which he carried most awkwardly by means of bands across one shoulder. By his side walked the strangest person the four Wescotts had ever seen. She was tall, and the queer folds of her black dress gave place above the waist to a velvet bodice of the same color, only laced with gold cord that tied at the throat. Her sleeves were full and white, and their edges of lace fell almost over her dark, long-fingered hands. They could see that her hair was as black and shining as her bodice or as the covering of her great bundle, for the handkerchief of red silk which had once covered it had fallen back and lay on her shoulders. They saw, too, the gold coins, suspended in tiny rings of gold, that hung from her ears, and the string of great red stones around her neck. Then, as she came nearer and they stared more breathlessly than ever, Roger at the coins, John at the necklace, Cynthia and Mary at the gold-laced bodice and peculiar sleeves, they saw that she had soft, dark eyes such as they had never seen before--eyes which, they somehow all at once knew, had looked upon things unfamiliar and far away.

At the gate their father recalled them to their senses.

“Children, this is our new friend, Mary Christmas,” he said, lifting the latch, and allowing his guest to precede him into the driveway. “Come and speak to her.”

They came forward then with the bows and curtsies which had been, as far back as they could remember, the necessary accompaniment to the reception of all visitors; but they were surprised almost to the point of being startled when this dark stranger with the great eyes bent suddenly and kissed the hands which they gave to her, at the same time murmuring unfamiliar words.

It was just at the moment when Mary Christmas kissed the dimple between the second and third finger of John’s square little hand that Mary Wescott saw something which the others had quite overlooked. There were traces of tears on the brown face of their guest--quite unmistakable, tiny paths, which, dry as they now were, bore certain and tragic proof in their downward course across her smooth cheeks. And as Mary Wescott stared at those barely discernible lines, a singular thing happened to her. She who had seen tears and the traces of them in plenty during her twelve years began to feel suddenly as though she had never really seen them before in all her life. Those dry, white stains on the face of Mary Christmas were doing a strange thing to her, which she did not understand or like at all. They were shutting out all the people about her, her father, John, Roger, Cynthia, even Mary Christmas herself, the sunlight, the drifting petals of apple blossoms, and in their places were trying to show her Things which were not things at all. They were making her dimly aware that the sorrows in the world, the pitiful sufferings of the aged, the bewildering anguish of young people, the broken hearts of little children, are all a part of a great mantle of sorrow that encircles the whole wide earth in its dark, smothering folds. She drew back frightened; but just at that moment her mother, in blue gingham, appeared on the front steps.

Now that blue gingham was a wonder-working fabric. It chased away the Things that Mary Wescott might have seen, and kept her a little girl for a whole year longer. The suddenness of it there on the porch brought back her father and the others, and, in spite of a peculiar clutching at her throat and the entirely absurd idea that she had been away somewhere, made her quite herself again. So when John, suddenly freeing himself from Cynthia’s grasp, ran boldly after Mary Christmas and his father and, to the astonishment of everyone, put his hand in the dark one of the stranger to lead her to his mother, she could follow with Roger and Cynthia, smiling at his unaccustomed friendliness and sharing their eager excitement in each new happening of this most extraordinary occasion.

That dinner and the afternoon hours that followed were memorable ones in Wescott history. Mary Christmas sat at the table in the seat of honor at their father’s right, those disturbing marks of tears quite washed from her face, the red silk handkerchief tied neatly over her dark hair. Appetites languished among the Wescott children; and for once penalties were mercifully withheld from those who could eat no potato. Four pairs of eyes traveled from headdress to gold lacings, from brown cheeks, now flushed with color, to long brown fingers; four pairs of ears strained to detect among the broken, rhythmic fragments of her speech familiar everyday words that they could understand.

Mary Christmas talked not only with her lips. She talked with her brows, her eyes, her hands, her whole body, in a mighty effort to convey by means of harsh, newly found words the story of her life to these, her new friends. Her country lay far across the ocean, across warm inland seas and great sand-swept deserts. It was a high land of tumbling, rockbound red hills and towering, snow-crowned mountains, of broad valleys with streams, of wide, treeless pastures--the homes of thousands of sheep. It was a land of bitter winters and dry, hot summers, thick with dust, which the wind whirled in great storms from the bordering deserts. Against the cold of those winters the people dug their homes in the sloping hillsides, long narrow houses with space for both men and animals, houses roofed with sods and partitioned with stones; and these dwellings were proof also against the hot, parching winds of summer. It was a land over which people had passed for centuries, people of many races, one succeeding another in the march of years, all journeying from the East to the West--hordes of people, sweeping onward with the mercilessness of locusts or of the country’s own burning wind. It was a land where in the spring snow-fed streams glistened on the high mountain-sides and slipped crystal clear through the valleys, with here and there the sound of tiny silver bells. Above all, it was the oldest land in all the world--older than India, than Egypt, than China with her walled towns, older than Jerusalem with Solomon’s Temple, older than the white, ancient cities of Assyria and Babylonia. Its red hills and snowy mountains and wide pastures and clear rivers had been there when Methuselah rounded his nine-hundredth year, and when Enoch took his solemn walk with God.

Mary Christmas loved this land. Even John understood that. When she talked of its clear waters and of its wandering flocks of sheep, a wistfulness haunted her voice like a melody; when she explained to the puzzled children how great bands of people had again and again laid it waste and desolate, numberless years before they were born, the sadness of long centuries burdened her words; when she spoke of its great age, her tones echoed like those of the organ at church, until in one supreme outburst of reverence she rose from her chair, her face uplifted, her arms spread wide after the manner of the ancient prophet in benediction upon his people.

But even as she stood with outstretched arms and glowing face, a change came over her features. The children saw it coming, and the awe in which they had listened, wide-eyed, to her description of this far-off, ancient land gave way to a kind of enchanting anticipation of what might happen next. The sorrowful lines about her mouth hardened until they became almost cruel; her long nose, with the bend in it so peculiarly unlike any that they had seen, widened at the nostrils with the great breaths which she was drawing; the sad yearning which had softened her eyes faded as a candle burns itself out in a dark room, and into the blackness of their depths there came an ominous red gleam. She was no longer a poet, a patriot, or a prophet. She was one who hates, bitterly, relentlessly.

Now her voice rose like the rising wind on the bare plains of her own land.

“I live there. I play--like him--like her--like you all. I chase birds and catch falling blossoms in my hair. Then I grow up. I go to a great city--to Erzerum.” To the listening children this strange word boomed like the sound of the town drum on Memorial Day. “I marry there--a good man. We have two children--a girl, a boy. My husband, he buy silks, laces, jewels, all beautiful from Persia, and sell them. We are happy. Then a year ago--when the blossoms fall--like this--the Turks come. They run through Erzerum--their horses run! They kill--they kill--they _kill_!”

Her words ended in a high succession of convulsive liquid notes. Her hands, which she had clasped above her head as her story mounted into tragedy, twined and knotted themselves together. For a moment grief dulled the ominous red gleam in her eyes, and the children saw with consternation that they swam with tears. But the tears did not fall, much to Mary Wescott’s relief. The hard lines came back around her mouth. Again her nostrils quivered.

“They kill my husband. They want to kill me and my children--but my husband--he hide us in a cave where he keep the silks and jewels. They do not find us. If they find us--_I_ kill--one--two--three! _I_ kill because they kill my husband!”

The fascinated children stared, half frightened, now at their guest who dared to use a word so tremendous in its import, and who, moreover, they felt sure, was entirely capable of its actual embodiment, now at their parents, between whom they had caught in passing certain questioning glances. Their father and mother, it must be admitted, were experiencing not a few misgivings at this bloodthirsty turn in Mary Christmas’ recital; for although they had not made a scientific study of the child from the embryo to the beginning of adolescence, they understood quite as clearly as modern parents that there are several things of which children may just as well remain in ignorance.

It was John who came to the rescue with quite the most satisfactory thing that ever happened. When the old clock on the mantel had ticked away those few monstrous, weighty seconds during which the Wescott children were about to embark their thoughts on perilous, uncharted seas, during which Mr. Wescott fruitlessly searched for new topics of conversation and Mrs. Wescott feared that her husband, for once in his life, had made a mistake in judgment, during which Mary Christmas sat with her hands knotted above her head and her revengeful words echoing in the still room, John suddenly knew exactly what to do. Nor was this strange if one stops to think about it. John was five years old--only a few short years removed from those light-filled days when he had known Everything. Perhaps some shadowy recollection of those days, some sense of that which was then luminous and orderly, came stealing upon him like the faint fragrance of violets in a fresh spring rain. Perhaps it was the knowledge which he had then--which we all have, but so soon forget--that made him suddenly understand the nothingness of hatred and revenge.

But explanations at best are tiresome things. The important fact now is, not how he knew what to do, but that he did it. He slipped from his chair on the other side of his mother, crossed the room behind his father, and walked straight into Mary Christmas’ lap with its ample folds of black. He must have walked straight into her heart, too, and driven out everything else but himself, for her arms came down and went around him, and her sudden tears made ultramarine spots on his blue gingham blouse. Then Mr. Wescott blew his nose mightily, and Mrs. Wescott fussed with the tea things, and Mary and Cynthia alike felt their throats grow big to bursting, and Roger shook a threatening fist at the surprised head of the baseball captain which had appeared in the window. And it all ended by Mary Christmas’ telling them of Raphael and little Mary, aged respectively five and seven, who were staying with their aunt in Erzerum until their mother could earn enough money to bring them across the ocean to America.

“To Portland,” explained Father Wescott to the children. “That’s where Mary Christmas lives now, when she’s not traveling about.”

The four Wescotts knew Portland. For years, in fact up to this very minute, they had held it in highest esteem. It was the largest city as well as one of the oldest in the State of Maine; it had been the scene of a battle in the Revolutionary War; it was the birthplace of their favorite poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. They had dreamed of going with their father some day to see Portland--its fort, the gray battleships in its wide harbor, the room in which Mr. Longfellow was born. Now all at once it had become a charmless place. Its years were but moments in the light of the centuries which had passed over the land of Mary Christmas; its single combat meaningless and trifling compared with the numberless battles which had succeeded one another upon those hoary plains. Even its Mr. Longfellow, venerable, indeed patriarchal as he looked in the school readers, was simply out of it when lined up for inspection between Methuselah and Enoch! Portland, heretofore a dream city, had, in view of this recent knowledge, become as dull, stale, and familiar as their own village. The one lure that it now possessed was the fact that Mary Christmas had chosen it as her new home.

“And now,” said Mary Christmas, all dark things faded from her face, “now I give gifts. Come!”

III

UNBURIED TREASURE

She rose from the table, still holding John by the hand, and led the way into the library, on the floor of which lay the great black bundle, like a mysterious treasure from a story-book of wonders. The excited children stood at the four points of the compass while with their father’s help she unbound the cords that held it in place. At last the shining black cover opened, disclosing yet other bundles which in their turn must be undone. The few slow seconds which the great clock in the corner ticked away seemed like hours before these smaller bundles disclosed their motley contents upon the library floor.

Here were household necessities of every sort from paring-knives, metal dishcloths, and packages of tacks to needles, thimbles, and spools of thread; articles of clothing--overalls, elastic suspenders, underwear for children, hairpins, dozens of pairs of stockings, collars of celluloid and linen, hair ribbons of entrancing colors, shoe laces, safety pins and pins that were not safe, tape measures, soap, scissors, tooth powder--all the hundred-and-one indispensable things for which families in the outlying districts of New England in those pre-Ford days of the nineties were often at a loss. Here were toys,--rubber dolls, rattles, spinning tops, blocks, bouncing balls, and jumping-ropes with shining, many-colored handles of wood,--toys for the birthdays of some Maine farmer’s children whose father could not get easily to town. And here, too, in a far recess of the smallest inside bundle, just as in the last and most precious box of an Arabian Night’s treasure chest, were certain intriguing parcels wrapped in fantastic, figured papers of blue and green and gold--parcels that sent out into the Wescott library, as on the wings of some invisible bird, a rich, spicy fragrance that made one suddenly oblivious of the stockings and the safety pins.

It was from these fascinating packages that Mary Christmas selected her gifts--that is, for all but Roger, whose longing eyes had never left a certain red-handled jumping-rope even when that strange, heavy fragrance had floated through the room. To Mary Wescott she gave a sewing-case in glossy black wood, inlaid with tiny flowers and birds of mother-of-pearl in delightful confusion. A tiny golden key, which held all the magic of golden keys everywhere, unlocked it with an unmistakable click, and the lifted cover revealed compartments with all manner of colored silks and threads, a pair of shining scissors, and a silver thimble. There must have been magic, indeed, in that golden key, as anyone would have suspected, for as Mary Wescott looked at the inside and tried on the thimble, she wondered how darning her stockings could ever have seemed a task.

For Cynthia there was the most entrancing napkin ring, of that loveliest shade of blue which makes one think of far-away hills in a September haze and of tall spikes of larkspur in the gathering dusk; and it, too, bore flowers whose inlaid petals and tiny, sparkling leaves formed a wreath around the ring. Could she ever again, she wondered as she fingered it, think folding her napkin irksome or needless?

When John’s turn came, Mary Christmas stood still for a moment and looked at him, standing sturdily apart from the others in his blue gingham suit, his chubby hands behind him, his wide, inquiring eyes intent upon her face. Then she laughed, like the sound of the spring streams in her own land, and drew out yet another package from the farthest recess of all. Turning her back, she laughed again, softly, as she undid the paper. Then, suddenly facing them, she took two quick steps toward John, and placed over his curly head and around his soft cheeks a silk cap made of the most bewildering colors in orderly rows and topped by the most piquant of gold tassels. What wonder that everyone applauded then, even to the baseball team that had been surreptitiously watching proceedings for a full hour from various stations about the porch and beneath the windows! For John in blue gingham, his cheeks flushed to a bright pink, his brown eyes shining with excitement and pleasure, some tendrils of golden hair escaping from the silken band of his new cap, which might have graced the dark head of some Eastern prince, was quite too rare a sight to be received in silence!

Mrs. Wescott was so engrossed in her youngest child that she was quite taken off her guard when her present came. She was trying to stifle a wish, which seemed to her vain and extravagant, namely, that some great painter might make a portrait of John in his new cap, when she became suddenly aware of something enfolding her like a white, fragrant mist. And there she was in Mary Christmas’ present, with her children laughing at the surprise on her face and her husband standing in amazed admiration beside her.

It was a shawl, but such a one as no Wescott had ever looked upon. At first its lacy fretwork seemed indistinct and fantastic, like the frost on a January windowpane. But as the children with careful fingers lifted portions of it to look through its tiny squares and to marvel at its fineness, they saw that pictures were woven within it--pictures in delicate traceries of birds, butterflies, and flowers. Then Mary Christmas swept it suddenly from their mother’s shoulders and held it widespread against her black skirt; and lo! across the high centre of it a flock of birds was winging its way as though across great stretches of sky. In the lower centre swarms of butterflies danced and hovered and poised among hundreds of flowers. But the corners, as Mary Christmas showed them each in turn, were the most wonderful of all. In the first, some tired sheep rested under a great tree; in the second, the moon and stars looked down upon a silent hill; a child danced in the third among falling flower-petals; in the last, a branching rosebush clambered over a high wall and sent sprays of swaying blossoms into some hidden garden. And as they looked at it and marveled, that same richly laden fragrance stole from it like an invisible presence and drifted away up the wide-mouthed fireplace, among the musty leaves of their father’s old books, and through the open window into the June sunlight.

“I made it,” said Mary Christmas, throwing it again over Mrs. Wescott’s shoulders; “some in Erzerum, some in Portland last winter--I made it. Now it is yours!”

“I can’t take it,” cried Mrs. Wescott, finding her voice with a great effort. “It’s too lovely for me--and all that work, too! John, tell her I can’t take it.”

But Mr. Wescott, astute in so many things, was really positively stupid about that shawl. He just stood and stared at his wife quite as though he had not seen her nearly every day for thirteen years, and made only the feeblest of protests as a weak echo to her own. Mary Christmas paid not the slightest heed to their remonstrances, except to shake her hands in a peculiarly final gesture. She was wholly concerned now with her gift for Mr. Wescott.

Now Father Wescott afforded a real problem. For him whom Mary Christmas most delighted to honor, what gift among all the articles in her great bundle was in the least suitable? She made a puzzled movement toward the stockings and suspenders, but drew back dissatisfied. She fingered cards of cuff buttons, combs in leather pockets, collars of all sorts, only to drop them almost immediately. The fragrant, figured parcels offered no solution. Obviously they contained nothing for a gentleman.

Then an idea came to Mary Christmas which made her halt in the inspection of her wares and laugh in glad relief. She knew now the very thing for Father Wescott, the thing that would suggest to him always the depths of her gratitude. With another of her quick movements she loosed the red necklace about her throat and threw it impulsively over the head of Mr. Wescott. It lay across his white collar and on the bosom of his white shirt, red as the geraniums in the porch tubs outside or as great drops of blood. And as Mary Christmas saw the stones pulsating there below Mr. Wescott’s surprised, embarrassed face, she did a most peculiar thing. She threw herself face downward on the library floor and kissed the self-polished toe of his shoe!

The four Wescotts were quite at a loss as to how to receive this last event in such a long and overwhelming train. The laugh had died away on Mary Christmas’ lips before she had thrown herself at their father’s feet. Apparently, then, the situation was not to be considered humorous. And yet the expression on their father’s face, to the older ones at least, banished seriousness. He had been sufficiently ill at ease when Mary Christmas had thrown the beads about his neck, but now that she lay prostrate before him, the embarrassment on his face had given place to a kind of empty foolishness which was irresistibly funny. So, in spite of the warning glances of their mother, they laughed--laughs which were echoed and re-echoed by the baseball team, and in which Mary Christmas, raising herself from the floor, joined, perhaps a little tolerantly.

Mr. Wescott then went to the stable, somewhat, it must be admitted, after the manner of one escaping from a situation, to harness the horses preparatory to carrying their guest and her great bundle a few miles on their way; and in his absence, while Mary Christmas tied up her wares in neat packages and placed them for wrapping in the black oilcloth, Mrs. Wescott explained to the children the reason for this singular expression of her gratitude.

Appearing suddenly that morning in the yard of a house on the outskirts of the village, she had startled the inmates, who were quite unused to peddlers of her description, into the fear that, with her dark face, uncertain speech, strange gestures, and outlandish clothing, she must mean evil--thievery, kidnapping, or worse. Suspicious and impulsive by nature, they had not stayed to question her, but, hailing the town sheriff who by ill luck was passing by, had demanded that she be taken before the judge to answer for misdeeds contemplated if, fortunately, not performed. Such had been the source of her anxious tears, the traces of which had so nearly troubled Mary Wescott, and such the occasion which had prompted Mr. Wescott, secure in her innocence, to protect and befriend her.

They drove away a few minutes later, Mr. Wescott holding the reins and Mary Christmas beside him, her great bundle securely tied to the back of the carriage. The children waved them up the hill and out of sight, repeating to themselves her farewell words:--

“Next year when the roads are dry and the petals fall--like this--I come again. You wait--for me?”

That night every Wescott dreamed of Mary Christmas. Mr. Wescott sat quite up in bed, declaiming indignantly his very words of that morning to her stupid accusers, and aroused Mrs. Wescott, who for what seemed hours had been enduring the hardships of a Monday in an Armenian kitchen. Roger killed three monstrous Turks, alone and single-handed, to avenge the death of Mary Christmas’ husband; while John was a shepherd boy, tending his sheep in wide pastures and wearing a many-colored cap, at which all of his silly sheep laughed again and again. As for Mary and Cynthia, they spent the night in a whirl of excitement in which Methuselah and Enoch strove to enlist Mr. Longfellow’s assistance in a headlong rush against hordes of barbarians. The State of Maine bard, however, obstinately declined to be “up and doing”; indeed, he proved himself worse than useless in the heat of the encounter, although he doubtless realized more fully than ever before the earnestness and the reality of life!

IV

A WILD CRAB-APPLE TREE

That winter, which everyone called an “old-fashioned” one because the harbor was frozen for miles toward the open sea and the snow blocked the roads in great, curving drifts, they planned and replanned the journey which Mary Christmas would make in the spring. Often in the evening, when the supper dishes were washed and put away, when Mr. Wescott was lost in the _Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan_ and the boys were popping corn over the glowing embers in the deep fireplace, Mrs. Wescott, Mary, and Cynthia would trace her way in the family atlas, which had been purchased at some sacrifice because it featured the State of Maine.

Leaving Portland, her great pack bulging with her wares, she would doubtless take the road to Brunswick, the seat of Bowdoin College, that venerable institution which had been the Alma Mater alike of Mr. Longfellow and of Father Wescott. From thence she would follow the coast, passing through Wiscasset, which held the oldest deed in America in its courthouse, through the friendly towns of Newcastle and Damariscotta, through Belfast and Searsport, once famous for their sea captains and for their gracious, white-winged clippers. The roads that she would travel would be like those they knew--roads that climbed rocky, fir-clad hills and at their summits gave one far-reaching stretches of sea with surf-swept islands and towering white lighthouses; lonely by-roads that led to scraggly farms and gray farmhouses, where lived people who fought a losing fight against the barren land; elm-shaded village roads bordered by green-shuttered houses and by white gates like their own. She would cross the wide Penobscot where it narrowed enough to encourage a ferry, and, passing through Bucksport with its gray fort and old graveyard, would come by easy stages over dark, tumbling hills, on which great shadows alternately marched and rested, to their own village.

“Only you can never be quite sure,” said Father Wescott, forsaking P. H. Sheridan, “that she won’t come through Castine. With summer visitors there, she ought to sell a lot of that hand-stuff.”

Then Mary Christmas’ route must be retraced just in case she did choose Castine; and they continued to bend over the map until the sharp, warm smell of burned pop-corn arrested their attention.

“Dear me, boys!” cried Mrs. Wescott. “Can’t you manage just one popperful without so many old maids and burned ones?”

Mr. Wescott said nothing, but the face that he again raised from P. H. Sheridan was mildly remonstrant. He was what people called in the nineties “a great hand” for hot buttered pop-corn.

At half-past eight, filled with pop-corn and a drowsy content, they went to bed to dream of Mary Christmas, while the bitterness of the cold made a solitude of the village, and the lighted windows, one by one, faded into the darkness without.

But just before the roads were really dry from the spring mud, before the falling of the apple blossoms told them that they might begin to watch with some certainty of fulfillment, something happened to the eldest of the Wescotts. It was, in fact, the same curious Thing to which she had been exposed on the day of Mary Christmas’ arrival, but from which she had been saved by the fortunate intervention of her mother’s blue gingham. This time, however, the attack came when she was alone. She had gone into a near-by pasture to hunt for early violets, and on the way home had climbed to the top of a great boulder, from whence she could look far out over the fields and woods. It was a favorite resting-place of hers, and until this particular day she had experienced only pleasure and satisfaction in the exertion of the stiff climb up the rock, in the sense of accomplishment when she had reached the top, when she could rest her warm, tired body against the trunk of a stunted pine and look out over the country. Through a vista in the fir trees she could see a sloping hillside in the vivid green of early spring, and on its summit a wild crab-apple tree, standing against the bluest sky imaginable and flushed with the pink of opening petals.

Then it happened! The beauty of that wild crab-apple, in which for years she had taken only pleasure, began to hurt her with a pain as real and sharp as any other pain. Before this it had been just a lovely thing to which their father had pointed with his cane, so that they might not miss it as they walked on a Sunday afternoon. Now, in one incomprehensible instant, it had become lovely unto tears!

Mary Wescott was almost frightened as she sat on the boulder and looked at the crab-apple tree. She was vaguely fearful lest this sadness which its sudden beauty had made her feel would stay with her and lend an aching loveliness to other long-accustomed, perfectly familiar things. The years from thirteen on seemed all at once dim, perilous ways to her. If one were made to feel pain and sadness by things which had hitherto given only joy, how could one walk safely through the weeks and months to come?

Feeling a sudden longing for the security of the Wescott kitchen and the very tangible occupation of setting the table, she climbed down the boulder and ran all the way home. She did not say anything to her mother about the crab-apple tree; she was beginning, curiously enough, to understand that there are Things that people do not tell, even to mothers. Mrs. Wescott, however, was a wise woman. Although she brought up her children before temperaments were discovered or Child Guidance Clinics and project methods were invented, she knew perfectly well that Mary’s age was an Age of Discovery; and when she saw Mary’s eyes she gave her an extra dose of sulphur and molasses, and suggested that they spend the afternoon making candy for the church sale.

But when two weeks later the drifting petals and the well-dried roads brought Mary Christmas once more over the hill, and they all ran to meet her with glad shouts, Mary Wescott looked at her with different eyes. For she saw in Mary Christmas what she never could have seen if the crab-apple tree had not finished what the traces of tears had begun.

V

THE GARDEN OF EDEN

That second visit of Mary Christmas always stood out in the Wescott mind as being particularly satisfying. In the first place, there were no formalities of introduction or of early acquaintance to be undergone. In other words, they could get right down to the business at hand, which was, as everyone must know, the asking of questions concerning that ancient and distant land the charm of which Mary Christmas had upon her first visit only suggested. Moreover, a year had wrought much improvement in Mary Christmas’ speech. Now there was little necessity to strain one’s ears for familiar words; in fact, there were few words that were unfamiliar. Only the curious rhythm in her voice had not changed, or the deep, rich tones that rose and fell with her changes of mood, or the lingering softness which she gave to especially loved words.

Nor was she averse to talking. After dinner, while their father interviewed a client in the library and their mother did some leftover household tasks, the children gathered around her in the warm sunlight of the orchard, white and fragrant with its falling blossoms, and asked the questions they had vainly asked one another all winter long.

“Is it really the oldest country in all the world, Mary Christmas--older than the Garden of Eden?”

Mary Christmas looked at them all as though she were trying to bridge the gulf between them and her, between their land and her own. There were time and agony in her eyes. Mary Wescott saw them there, though she did not know their names--wise, brooding, long-suffering things that were more ancient even than Mary Christmas’ land.

“Is it really the oldest country in all the world, Mary Christmas--older than the Garden of Eden?”

“It _is_ the Garden of Eden,” said Mary Christmas, smiling at the slow surprise that crept over their faces. “God made it the first of any land after He had parted the waters. He was tired of looking at just water, and so He made land. That was my land, where Erzerum is now--the Garden of Eden.”

“Where Adam and Eve lived, Mary Christmas? And all the trees in the world?”

“Yes,” said Mary Christmas. “Trees white like these by the rivers, and blossoms blowing through the air when the spring comes after the long winter.”

“And the Tree of Life, Mary Christmas? Is that in Erzerum, even now?”

“Yes,” said Mary Christmas. But her eyes grew dark when she told them that, and she would not describe the Tree of Life.