Chapter XXI: Another Christmas

It was Christmas eve. Nan was sitting before the dining-room fire curled up in a huge arm chair thinking. Her pale face had grown wonderfully sweet during the last few weeks; the curves about her mouth had softened; her eyes had lost their keen sparkle and gained a softer light instead. She seemed to have undergone a complete transformation, and any one seeing the headstrong hoyden of the year before would have found it difficult to recognize her in this gentle-mannered girl with her serene brow and patient eyes, to whom suffering had taught so hard a lesson. Her black dress and her parted hair gave her a wonderfully meek look. But Nan was not meek. She was merely controlled. The same hot passions still rose in her breast, but she tried to restrain them now.

This evening she was thinking over all that had happened during the past year; especially she was trying to project her thoughts into the future, and to imagine what would occur in the years to come. She had not yet become accustomed to the idea of life without her father. It seemed to her that he must be alive, and she often waked up in the night from such a vivid dream of him that it seemed as though he really stood beside her, and that she might feel his hand if she stretched forth her own in the dark. It was difficult to reconcile herself to living without the hope of his return; it was hard to convince herself that she must never look forward to receiving a letter from him again. But she knew it must be accomplished, and the effort would help to make a noble woman of her.

As she sat there in the dim room, with only the fire to light it, she wondered whether anything could make of her as noble a woman as was her "Aunt Isabel." In her heart she felt not. Aunt Isabel was simply perfect in the girl's sight, and if she could ever have been brought to doubt her perfection, why, there was Delia to prove it with her emphatic:

"No, ma'am! There ain't no one in this world like her. She is the best, the generousest, the most self-sacrificin' soul on earth--that she is, and I've known her ever since she was a child. If any one was to ask me the name of the woman I've most call to honor an' love, I'd say 'twas Isabel Blake Severance an' never stop a minute to think it over."

And both Nan and Delia had long ago decided that while other women might be more beautiful, no one could have softer, sunnier hair than Aunt Isabel, nor truer, tenderer eyes, nor a prettier nose nor a sweeter mouth. And Nan was quite confident that if one hunted the whole globe over one could not find dimples more entirely winning nor hands whose touch was so absolutely soothing and soft.

But Miss Severance could never be brought to admit these important facts, though Nan often sought to convince her of their truth. She was too busy a woman to have time to think whether she were beautiful or not.

"Good is the thing," she would say, in her brisk fashion. "If I can look in the glass and see the reflection of a good woman there, I have no right to regret that she is not a beautiful one."

Just now she was upstairs, busied with some matter of mysterious importance from which Nan was excluded. She and Delia had been shut into her room all the afternoon. Nan had ample time and opportunity for the manufacture of her own Christmas gifts, Aunt Isabel being so much occupied, behind closed door, with hers.

For quite a time now Nan had been forced to station herself in the regions below stairs, where she would hear the bell if it rang, so that Delia might be free to give all her attention to Miss Severance. Evidently great things were in operation above. Nan wondered what it could all be about.

Christmas had lost much of its joyousness this year, but still there was a little flavor of merriment left. Aunt Isabel had no sympathy with the hark-from-the-tombs-a-doleful-sound attitude. She thought it was one's duty to be as cheery and hopeful as possible, and not to add to the misery of the world at large by forcing it to witness one's private grief. She and Nan had their hours of tender mourning and sincere regret, but it was always Miss Severance's desire that no unwholesome brooding should be indulged in by either of them.

So the girl tried to restrain the tears that would rise at the thought of these saddened holidays, and endeavored to bring her mind to bear on more happy subjects. She thought of her plans for the next day; she made a mental recount of the gifts she had prepared, and then, somehow against her will, her memory took her back to that morning when she had heard of her father's death and listened to Miss Severance's story, and she lived over again those intense moments when it almost seemed to her her mother had been restored to her in this rare friend. The simple history had a peculiar fascination for the girl, and she liked to think that it was here, in these very rooms, that it all had been enacted.

She liked to look into those books of Miss Severance's that had her mother's name upon the fly-leaf, and she liked to think that they were given to "Bell with Florence's fond love."

Miss Severance had several photographs of her mother as a girl that Nan had never seen, and she was fond of looking them over and exclaiming at the "old-fashioned" frocks and quaintly arranged hair, and wondering whether this happy-looking girl ever discovered the sacrifice her friend had made for her.

One day Nan asked Miss Severance as much, but Aunt Isabel had shaken her head gravely and said:

"No, Nan, she never did. And don't think of that part of the story, my dear. It was no more than I ought to have done. You must not make a piece of heroism of it. I only told it to you because unless I had, it would have been difficult to explain why I left her and went so far away."

"Aunt Isabel," Nan said, "won't you tell me just what it was you gave up?" But Miss Severance shook her head.

What the girl could not at all comprehend was the fact of any one's being "not at peace" with Aunt Isabel. Aunt Isabel, who never was unjust nor unkind, nor anything but generous and good to every one. She thought if she could have spoken to her father she could have convinced him that he was mistaken about Aunt Isabel. But that was impossible now. Her father--again the hot tears came surging up, and her breast began to heave.

Suddenly she started. What was that? She jumped to her feet. Somebody was turning the knob of the street door and fitting a key in the lock. At first it was her impulse to cry out, but she mastered herself and ran quickly through the parlor and stood bravely on the threshold waiting for the door to open and admit the intruder. Her heart beat like a trip-hammer in her side, and the pulses in her wrists and temples throbbed painfully. She saw the door move inward, she felt the rush of cold outer air upon her face, and then--

In a moment she was locked in two strong arms, her head was pressed against a dear, broad chest, and she was crying "Father! Father!" in a perfect ecstasy of rapture and a tempest of tears.

For a few moments neither of them said a single word. They just clung to each other and wept--the strong man as well as the slender girl.

They seemed to lose all other thought in the joy of the meeting. Then somehow they found themselves in the library, and Nan, still sobbing for very happiness, was listening to her father as he told her how, for many months, he had been ill, but had tried to fight it off and overcome it, because he was so anxious to get home, and he could not bear to think he might be prevented. Then, just before his ship sailed, and after he had enrolled himself among the list of passengers, and bidden good-bye to those he knew, he was stricken down and for weeks lay unconscious, between life and death, as utterly unbefriended as though he had been in the midst of a wilderness. How he came to recover he never knew, but it seemed as though his great longing for home gave him strength to battle through the dreadful fever. Then, almost too feeble to stand, he was taken to the ship and borne to England, his body weak from suffering, but his heart strong with hope.

The voyage was a severe one, and before he reached London he had a relapse, so that when they entered port he had to be carried ashore, and, too ill to know or care what happened to him, was taken to a lodging-house and nursed back to health once more by the keeper herself, whose son was the steward of the ship on which he had crossed.

"You can fancy, Nannie, that I had only one thought all that time--to get back to you. The first move I was able to make was to the ship, and I sailed without having seen or spoken to a soul I knew in London. Then on board I met a friend, who told me of the report of my death, and I knew that you must have heard it. The people at the bank would communicate with Turner, I felt sure. Ah, what days those were! It seemed as though we should never reach land. But we got in to-day, and you can imagine that I have not lost one moment in coming to you, sweetheart. But how my girl has changed. Grown so tall and womanly. I'm afraid I've lost my little Wildfire. But the girl I've found in her stead is a hundred times dearer."

Then Nan clung to him again and they were very happy, feeling how good God was, and how very blessed it felt to be together.

For a while they both stopped talking and sat quite still, holding hands, while each heart offered up a prayer of gratitude.

They did not hear an upper door open, nor did they notice a light footstep in the hall above. But at the sound of a gentle voice calling "Nan!" they both started up, and the girl's grasp of her father's hand tightened, for she felt him suddenly start and tremble. She tried to answer but could not for the joy she felt and the quick fear of this other loss she would have to suffer now.

"Nan!"

Still the girl could not reply, though she tried, and her father's face had grown rigid and white, as though it were carved in marble.

Then down the stairs and through the hall came Aunt Isabel, stopping at the threshold of the dining-room door for a moment to accustom her eyes to the dimness within.

There she stood--the bright light from the hall lamp falling full upon her head and the ruddy glow of the fire illuminating her face.

Nan caught up her father's hand, for she felt him suddenly shrink and falter.

The little figure in the doorway neither stirred or moved.

For an instant there was perfect silence in the room, and then Nan saw her father stride forward with a look of the most wonderful happiness upon his face, and heard him utter one word in a tone that set her heart to beating.

"Bell!"

And somehow then she knew it all. In one brief flash she read the whole story, and she saw that it was to be completed at last, and that the loss she had feared she would not know at all, but something infinitely happier and more sweet.

THE END