CHRISTMAS ----------------------------------------------------------------------- THE MACMILLAN COMPANYNEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGODALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO. , LIMITEDLONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTAMELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [Illustration: "MARY FILLED HER ARMS WITH HAY AND TURNED TO THEMANGER"] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CHRISTMAS A STORY BYZONA GALEAUTHOR OF "THE LOVES OF PELLEAS AND ETARRE""FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE, " ETC. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BYLEON V. SOLON New YorkTHE MACMILLAN COMPANY1912All rights reserved ----------------------------------------------------------------------- COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY THE McCLURE PUBLICATIONS, INCORPORATED. COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1912. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing Co. --Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass. , U. S. A. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ILLUSTRATIONS "Mary filled her arms with hay, and turned to themanger" Frontispiece FACING PAGE "He stood looking at it from part way across the road" 76 "Across the still fields came flashing the point offlame" 110 "The children began to sing, 'Go bury Saint Nicklis'" 150 "Their way led east between high banks of snow" 200 "The three men stepped into the lamplight" 240 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CHRISTMAS I It was in October that Mary Chavah burned over the grass of her lawn, and the flame ran free across the place where in Spring her wild flowerbed was made. Two weeks later she had there a great patch of purpleviolets. And all Old Trail Town, which takes account of its neighbours'flowers, of the migratory birds, of eclipses, and the like, came to seethe wonder. "Mary Chavah!" said most of the village, "you're the luckiest womanalive. If a miracle was bound to happen, it'd get itself happened toyou. " "I don't believe in miracles, though, " Mary wrote to Jenny Wing. "Thesecome just natural--only we don't know how. " "That _is_ miracles, " Jenny wrote back. "They do come natural--we don'tknow how. " "At this rate, " said Ellen Bourne, one of Mary's neighbours, "you'll behaving roses bloom in your yard about Christmas time. For a Christmaspresent. " "I don't believe in Christmas, " Mary said. "I thought you knew that. ButI'll take the roses, though, if they come in the Winter, " she added, with her queer flash of smile. When it was dusk, or early in the morning, Mary Chavah, with her longshawl over her head, stooped beside the violets and loosened the earthabout them with her whole hand, and as if she reverenced violets morethan finger tips. And she thought:-- "Ain't it just as if Spring was right over back of the air all thetime--and it could come if we knew how to call it? But we don't know. " But whatever she thought about it, Mary kept in her heart. For it was asif not only Spring, but new life, or some other holy thing were nearerthan one thought and had spoken to her, there on the edge of Winter. And Old Trail Town asked itself:-- "Ain't Mary Chavah the funniest? Look how nice she is abouteverything--and yet you know she won't never keep Christmas at all. No, sir. She ain't kept a single Christmas in years. I donno why. .. . " II Moving about on his little lawn in the dark, Ebenezer Rule was aware oftwo deeper shadows before him. They were between him and the leaflesslilacs and mulberries that lined the street wall. A moment before he hadbeen looking at that darkness and remembering how, once, as a littleboy, he had slept there under the wall and had dreamed that he had akingdom. "Who is't?" he asked sharply. "Hello, Ebenezer, " said Simeon Buck, "it's only me and Abel. We're all. " Ebenezer Rule came toward them. It was so dark that they could barelydistinguish each other. Their voices had to do it all. "What you doing out here?" one of the deeper shadows demanded. "Oh, nothing, " said Ebenezer, irritably, "not a thing. " He did not ask them to go in the house, and the three stood thereawkwardly, handling the time like a blunt instrument. Then Simeon Buck, proprietor of the Simeon Buck North American Dry Goods Exchange, plungedinto what they had come to say. "Ebenezer, " he said, with those variations of intonation which mean aneffort to be delicate, "is--is there any likelihood that the factorywill open up this Fall?" "No, there ain't, " Ebenezer said, like something shutting. "Nor--nor this Winter?" Simeon pursued. "No, sir, " said Ebenezer, like something opening again to shut with abang. "Well, if you're sure--" said Simeon. Ebenezer cut him short. "I'm dead sure, " he said. "I've turned over myorders to my brother's house in the City. He can handle 'em all and nothave to pay his men a cent more wages. " And this was as if something hadbeen locked. "Well, " said Simeon, "then, Abel, I move we go ahead. " Abel Ames, proprietor of the Granger County Merchandise Emporium ("TheA. T. Stewart's of the Middle West, " he advertised it), sighedheavily--a vast, triple sigh, that seemed to sigh both in and out, as aschoolboy whistles. "Well, " he said, "I hate to do it. But I'll be billblowed if I want tothink of paying for a third or so of this town's Christmas presents andcarrying 'em right through the Winter. I done that last year, and Fourthof July I had all I could do to keep from wishing most of the crowdMerry Christmas, 'count of their still owing me. I'm a merchant and acitizen, but I ain't no patent adjustable Christmas tree. " "Me neither, " Simeon said. "Last year it was _me_ give a silk cloak anda Five Dollar umbrella and a fur bore and a bushel of knick-knicks tothe folks in this town. My name wa'n't on the cards, but it's me that'spaid for 'em--_up_ to now. I'm sick of it. The storekeepers of this townmay make a good thing out of Christmas, but they'd ought to get some ofthe credit instead of giving it all, by Josh. " "What you going to do?" inquired Ebenezer, dryly. "Well, of course last year was an exceptional year, " said Abel, "owing--" He hesitated to say "owing to the failure of the Ebenezer Rule FactoryCompany, " and so stammered with the utmost delicacy, and skipped ameasure. "And we thought, " Simeon finished, "that if the factory wasn't going toopen up this Winter, we'd work things so's to have little or noChristmas in town this year--being so much of the present giving fallson us to carry on our books. " "It ain't only the factory wages, of course, " Abel interposed, "it's thefolks's savings being et up in--" "--the failure, " he would have added, but skipped a mere beat instead. "--and we want to try to give 'em a chance to pay us up for lastChristmas before they come on to themselves with another celebration, "he added reasonably. Ebenezer Rule laughed--a descending scale of laughter that seemed tohave no organs wherewith to function in the open, and so never gotbeyond the gutturals. "How you going to fix it?" he inquired again. "Why, " said Simeon, "everybody in town's talking that they ain't goingto give anybody anything for Christmas. Some means it and some don't. Some'll do it and some'll back out. But the churches has decided to omitChristmas exercises altogether this year. Some thought to have speakingpieces, but everybody concluded if they had exercises without orangesand candy the children'd go home disappointed, so they've left the wholething slide--" "It don't seem just right for 'em not to celebrate the birth of our Lordjust because they can't afford the candy, " Abel Ames observed mildly, but Simeon hurried on:-- "--slide, and my idea and Abel's is to get the town meeting to vote apetition to the same effect asking the town not to try to do anythingwith their Christmas this year. We heard the factory wasn't going toopen, and we thought if we could tell 'em that for sure, it would settleit--and save him and me and all the rest of 'em. Would--would you bewilling for us to tell the town meeting that? It's to-night--we're onthe way there. " "Sure, " said Ebenezer Rule, "tell 'em. And you might point out to 'em, "he added, with his spasm of gutturals, "that failures is often salutarymeasures. Public benefactions. Fixes folks so's they can't spend theirmoney fool. " He walked with them across the lawn, going between them and guiding themamong the empty aster beds. "They think I et up their savings in the failure, " he went on, "when allI done is to bring 'em face to face with the fact that for years they'vebeen overspending themselves. It takes Christmas to show that up. Thiswhole Christmas business is about wore out, anyhow. Ain't it?" "That's what, " Simeon said, "it's a spendin' sham, from edge to edge. " Abel Ames was silent. The three skirted the flower beds and came out onthe level sweep of turf before the house that was no house in thedarkness, save that they remembered how it looked: a square, smokedthing, with a beard of dead creepers and white shades lidded over itsnever-lighted windows--a fit home for this man least-liked of the threehundred neighbours who made Old Trail Town. He touched the elbows of theother two men as they walked in the dark, but he rarely touched anyhuman being. And now Abel Ames suddenly put his hand down on that ofEbenezer, where it lay in the crook of Abel's elbow. "What you got there?" he asked. "Nothing much, " Ebenezer answered, irritably again. "It's an old glass. I was looking over some rubbish, and I found it--over back. It's a fieldglass. " "What you got a field glass out in the dark for?" Abel demanded. "I used to fool with it some when I was a little shaver, " Ebenezer said. He put the glass in Abel's hand. "On the sky, " he added. Abel lifted the glass and turned it on the heavens. There, above thelittle side lawn, the firmament had unclothed itself of branches and layin a glorious nakedness to three horizons. "Thunder, " Abel said, "look at 'em look. " Sweeping the field with the lens, Abel spoke meanwhile. "Seems as if I'd kind of miss all the fuss in the store aroundChristmas, " he said, --"the extra rush and the trimming up and all. " "Abel'll miss lavishin' his store with cut paper, I guess, " said Simeon;"he dotes on tassels. " "Last year, " Abel went on, not lowering the glass, "I had a little kidcome in the store Christmas Eve, that I'd never see before. He ask' meif he could get warm--and he set down on the edge of a chair by thestove, and he took in everything in the place. I ask' him his name, andhe just smiled. I ask' him if he was glad it was Christmas, and he says, Was I. I was goin' to give him some cough drops, but when I come backfrom waiting on somebody he was gone. I never could find out who he was, nor see anybody that saw him. I thought mebbe this Christmas he'd comeback. Lord, don't it look like a pasture of buttercups up there? Here, Simeon. " Simeon, talking, took the glass and lifted it to the stars. "Cut paper doin's is all very well, " he said, "but the worst nightmareof the year to the stores is Christmas. I always think it's come to be'Peace on earth, good will to men and extravagance of women. ' Quite anice little till of gold pieces up there in the sky, ain't there? I'dkind o' like to stake a claim out up there--eh? Lay it out along aboutaround that bright one down there--by Josh, " he broke off, "look at thatbright one. " Simeon kept looking through the glass, and he leaned a little forward totry to see the better. "What is it?" he repeated, "what's that one? It's the biggest star Iever see--" The other two looked where he was looking, low in the east. But they sawnothing save boughs indeterminately moving and a spatter of sparklingpoints not more bright than those of the upper field. "You look, " Simeon bade the vague presence that was his host; butthrough the glass, Ebenezer still saw nothing that challenged his sight. "I don't know the name of a star in the sky, except the dipper, " hegrumbled, "but I don't see anything out of the ordinary, anyhow. " "It is, " Simeon protested; "I tell you, it's the biggest star I eversaw. It's blue and purple and green and yellow--" Abel had the glass now, and he had looked hardly sooner than he hadrecognized. "Sure, " he said, "I've got it. It _is_ blue and purple and green andyellow, and it's as big as most stars put together. It twinkles--yes, sir, and it swings. .. . " he broke off, laughing at the mystification ofthe others, and laughed so that he could not go on. "Is it a comet, do you s'pose?" said Simeon. "No, " said Abel, "no. It's come to stay. It's our individual privatestar. It's the arc light in front of the Town Hall you two are lookingat. " They moved to where Abel stood, and from there, up the rise of ground tothe east, they could see Simeon's star, shining softly and throwinglong rays, it seemed, almost to where they stood: the lamp that markedthe heart of the village. "Shucks, " said Simeon. "Sold, " said Ebenezer. "Why, I don't know, " said Abel, "I kind of like to see it through theglass. It looks like it was a bigger light than we give it credit for. " "It's a big enough light, " said Ebenezer, testily. It was his own plantat the factory that made possible the town's three arc lights, and thesehad been continued by him at the factory's closing. "No use making fun of your friends' eyesight because you're all oftwenty minutes younger than them, " Simeon grumbled. "Come on, Abel. Itmust be gettin' round the clock. " Abel lingered. "A man owns the hull thing with a glass o' this stamp, " he said. "Howmuch does one like that cost?" he inquired. "I'll sell you this one--" began Ebenezer; "wait a week or two and I maysell you this one, " he said. "I ain't really looked through it myselfyet. " Not much after this, the two went away and left Ebenezer in the darkyard. He stood in the middle of his little grass plot and looked through hisglass again. That night there was, so to say, nothing remote about thesky, save its distance. It had none of the reticence of clouds. It madeyou think of a bed of golden bells, each invisible stalk trying on itsown account to help forward some Spring. As he had said, he did not knowone star from another, nor a planet for a planet with a name. It hadbeen years since he had seen the heavens so near. He moved about, looking, and passed the wall of leafless lilacs and mulberries. Starshung in his boughs like fruit for the plucking. They patterned patchesof sky. He looked away and back, and it was as if the stars repeatedthemselves, like the chorus of everything. "You beggars, " Ebenezer said, "awful dressed up, ain't you? It must befor something up there--it ain't for anything down here, let me tellyou. " He went up to his dark back door. From without there he could hear KateKerr, his general servant, who had sufficient personality to compel theterm "housekeeper, " setting sponge for bread, with a slapping, hollowsound and a force that implied a frown for every down stroke of the ironspoon. He knew how she would turn toward the door as he entered, withher way of arching eyebrows, in the manner of one about to recite thesymptoms of a change for the worse--or at best to say "about the same"to everything in the universe. And when Kate Kerr spoke, she alwayswhispered on the faintest provocation. A sudden distaste for the entire inside of his house seized Ebenezer. Heturned and wandered back down the little dark yard, looking up at thehigh field of the stars, with only his dim eyes. "There must be quite a little to know about them, " he thought, "ifanybody was enough interested. " Then he remembered Simeon and Abel, and laughed again in his way. "I done the town a good turn for once, didn't I?" he thought; "I'vefixed folks so's they can't spend their money fool!" Two steps from Ebenezer's front gate, Simeon and Abel overtook a woman. She had a long shawl over her head, and she was humming some faint airof her own making. "Coming to the meeting, Mary?" Simeon asked as they passed her. "No, " said Mary Chavah, "I started for it. But it's such a nice nightI'm going to walk around. " "Things are going to go your way to that meeting, I guess, " said Simeon;"ain't you always found fault with Christmas?" "They's a lot o' nonsense about it, " Mary assented; "I don't ever bothermyself much with it. Why?" "I donno but we'll all come round to your way of thinking to-night, "said Simeon. "For just this year!" Abel Ames called back, as they went on. "You can't do much else, I guess, " said Mary. "Everybody dips Christmasup out of their pocketbooks, and if there ain't nothing there, theycan't dip. " The men laughed with her, and went on down the long street toward thetown. Mary followed slowly, under the yellowing elms that made greatgolden shades for the dim post lamps. And high at the far end of thestreet down which they went, hung the blue arc light before the TownHall, center to the constellation of the home lights and the shop lightsand the street lights, all near neighbours to the stream and sweep ofthe stars hanging a little higher and shining as by one sun. III It was interesting to see how they took the proposal to drop thatChristmas from the calendar there in Old Trail Town. It was so eminentlya sensible thing to do, and they all knew it. Oh, every way they lookedat it, it was sensible, and they admitted it. Yet, besides Mary Chavahand Ebenezer Rule, probably the only person in the town whosesatisfaction in the project could be counted on to be unfeigned waslittle Tab Winslow. For Tab, as all the town knew, had a turkey broughtup by his own hand to be the Winslows' Christmas dinner, but such hadbecome Tab's intimacy with and fondness for the turkey that he wasprepared to forego his Christmas if only that dinner were foregone, too. "Theophilus Thistledown is such a human turkey, " Tab had been heardexplaining patiently; "he knows me--and he knows his name. He don't_expect_ us to eat him . .. Why, you _can't_ eat anything that knows itsname. " But every one else was just merely sensible. And they had beendiscussing Christmas in this sensible strain at the town meeting thatnight, before Simeon and Abel broached their plan for standardizingtheir sensible leanings. Somebody had said that Jenny Wing, and Bruce Rule, who was Ebenezer'snephew, were expected home for Christmas, and had added that it "didn'tlook as if there would be much of any Christmas down to the station tomeet them. " On which Mis' Mortimer Bates had spoken out, philosophicalto the point of brutality. Mis' Bates was little and brown and quick, and her clothes seemed always to curtain her off, so that her figurewas no part of her presence. "I ain't going to do a thing for Christmas this year, " she declared, asnearly everybody in the village had intermittently declared, "not aliving, breathing thing. I can't, and folks might just as well know it, flat foot. What's the use of buying tinsel and flim-flam when you'reeating milk gravy to save butter and using salt sacks for handkerchiefs?I ain't educated up to see it. " Mis' Jane Moran, who had changed her chair three times to avoid adraught, sat down carefully in her fourth chair, her face twitching alittle as if its muscles were connected with her joints. "Christmas won't be no different from any other day to our house thisyear, " she said. "We'll get up and eat our three meals and sit down andlook at each other. We can't even spare a hen--she might lay if wedidn't eat her. " Mis' Abby Winslow, mother of seven under fifteen, looked up from herrocking-chair--Mis' Winslow always sat limp in chairs as if they werereaching out to rest her and, indeed, this occasional yielding to theforce of gravity was almost her only luxury. "You ain't thinking of the children, Mis' Bates, " she said, "nor youeither, Jane Moran, or you couldn't talk that way. We can't have no realChristmas, of course. But I'd planned some little things made out ofwhat I had in the house: things that wouldn't be anything, and yet wouldseem a little something. " Mis' Mortimer Bates swept round at her. "Children, " she said, "ought to be showed how to do without things. Bennet and Gussie ain't expecting a sliver of nothing for Christmas--nota sliver. " Mis' Winslow unexpectedly flared up. "Whether it shows through on the outside or not, " she said, "I'll betyou they are. " "My three, " Mis' Emerson Morse put in pacifically, "have been kept frompopping corn and cracking nuts all Fall so's they could do bothChristmas night, and it would seem like something that _was_ something. " "That ain't the idea, " Mis' Bates insisted; "I want them learnt to dowithout--" ("They'll learn that, " Mis' Abby Winslow said; "they'lllearn. .. . ") "Happening as it does to most every one of us not to have noChristmas, they won't be no distinctions drawn. None of the children canbrag--and children is limbs of Satan for bragging, " she added. (She wasremembering a brief conversation overheard that day between Gussie andPep, the minister's son:-- "I've got a doll, " said Gussie. "I've got a dollar, " said Pep. "My mamma went to a tea party, " said Gussie. "My mamma give one, " said Pep. Gussie mustered her forces. "My papa goes to work every morning, " shetopped it. "My papa don't have to, " said Pep, and closed the incident. ) "I can't help who's a limb of Satan, " Mis' Winslow replied doggedly, "Ican't seem to sense Christmas time without Christmas. " "It won't _be_ Christmas time if you don't have any Christmas, " Mis'Bates persisted. "Oh, yes it will, " Mis' Winslow said. "Oh, yes, it will. You can't stopthat. " It was Mis' Bates, who, from the high-backed plush rocker, rapped withthe blue glass paperweight on the red glass lamp and, in the absence ofMr. Bates, called the meeting to order. The Old Trail Town Society wasorganized on a platform of "membership unlimited, dues nothing buttaking turns with the entertaining, officers to consist of: President, the host of the evening (or wife, if any), and no minutes to botherwith. " And it was to a meeting so disposed on the subject of Christmasthat Simeon Buck rose to present his argument. "Mr. President, " he addressed the chair. "It's Madam President, you ninny geese, " corrected Buff Miles, _sottovoce_. "It had ought to be Madam Chairman, " objected Mis' Moran; "she ain't thecontinuous president. " "Well, for the land sakes, call me Mis' Bates, formal, and go ahead, "said the lady under discussion. "Only I bet you've forgot now what youwas going to say. " "Not much I did _not_, " Simeon Buck continued composedly, and, ignoringthe interruptions, let his own vocative stand. Then he presented amemorandum of a sum of money. It was not a large sum. But when he quotedit, everybody looked at everybody else, stricken. For it was a sum largeenough to have required, in the earning, months of work on the part ofan appalling proportion of Old Trail Town. "From the day after Thanksgiving to the night before Christmas lastyear, " said Simeon, "that is the amount that the three hundredsouls--no, I guess it must have been bodies--in our town spent in thelocal stores. Now, bare living expenses aside, --which ain't very muchfor us all, these days, --this amount may be assumed to have been spentby the lot of us for Christmas. Of course there was those, " continuedMr. Buck, looking intelligently about him, "who bought most of theirChristmas stuff in the City. But these--these economic traitors onlymake the point of what I say the more so. Without them, the town spentthis truly amazing sum in keeping the holidays. Now, I ask you, frank, could the town afford that, or anything like that?" Buff Miles spoke out of the extremity of his reflections. "That's a funny crack, " he said, "for a merchant to make. Why not leave'em spend and leave 'em pay?" "Oh, I'll leave 'em _pay_ all right, " rejoined Simeon, significantly, and stood silent and smiling until there were those in the room whouncomfortably shifted. Then he told them the word he bore from Ebenezer Rule that as they hadfeared and half expected, the factory was not to open that Winter atall. Hardly a family represented in the rooms was not alsorepresentative of a factory employee, now idle these seven months, asthey were periodically idle at the times of "enforced" suspension of thework. "What I'm getting at is this, " Simeon summed it up, "and Abel Ames, here, backs me up--don't you, Abel?--that hadn't we all ought to come tosome joint conclusion about our Christmas this year, and roust the townup to it, like a town, and not go it blind and either get in up to ournecks in debt, same as City folks, or else quit off Christmas, individual, and mebbe hurt folks's feelings? Why not move intelligent, like a town, and all agree out-and-out to leave Christmas go by thisyear? And have it understood, thorough?" It was very still in the little rooms when he had finished. There seemsto be no established etiquette of revolutions. But something of theunconsciousness of the enthusiast was upon Mis' Mortimer Bates, and shespoke before she knew:-- "So's we can be sure everybody else'll know it and not give somethingeither and be disappointed too, " she assented. "Well, I bet everybody'dbe real relieved. " "The churches has sanctioned us doing away with Christmas this year bydoing away with it themselves, " observed Mis' Jane Moran. "That'd oughtto be enough to go by. " "It don't seem to me Christmas is a thing for the churches to decideabout, " said Simeon, thoughtfully. "It seems to me the matter is up tothe merchants and the grocers and the family providers. We're the onesmost concerned. Us providers have got to scratch gravel to get togetherany Christmas at all, if any. And speaking for us merchants, I may say, we'll lay in the stock if folks'll buy it. But if they can't afford topay for it, we don't want the stock personally. " "I guess we've all had the experience, " observed Mis' Jane Moran, "ofannouncing we wasn't going to give any gifts _this_ year, and then hadsomebody send something embroidered by hand, with a solid month's workon it. But if we all agree to secede from Christmas, we can lay down thelaw to folks so's it'll be understood: _No Christmas for nobody_. " "Not to children?" said Mis' Abby Winslow, doubtfully. "My idea is to teach 'em to do entirely without Christmas, " harped Mis'Bates. "We can't afford one. Why not let the children share in thefamily privation without trying to fool 'em with make-shift presents andboiled sugar?" Over in a corner near the window plants, whose dead leaves she had beenpicking off, sat Ellen Bourne--Mis' Matthew Bourne she was, but nearlyeverybody called her Ellen Bourne. There is some law about these things:why instinctively we call some folk by the whole name, some by theirfirst names, some by the last, some by shortening the name, some by aname not their own. Perhaps there is a name for each of us, if only weknew where to look, and folk intuitively select the one most like that. Perhaps some of us, by the sort of miracle that is growing every day, got the name that is meant for us. Perhaps some of us struggle alongwith consonants that spell somebody else. And how did some names getthemselves so terrifically overused unless by some strange might, say, akind of astrological irregularity. .. . Ellen Bourne sat by the window andsuddenly looked over her shoulder at the room. "If we've got the things made, " she said, "can't we give 'em? If it's tochildren?" "I think if we're going to omit, we'd ought to omit, " Mis Bates held herown; "it can't matter to you, Ellen, with no children, so. .. . " Shecaught herself sharply up. Ellen's little boy had died a Christmas ortwo ago. "No, " Ellen said, "I ain't any children, of course. But--" "Well, I think, " said Mis' Jane Moran, "that we've hit on the only waywe could have hit on to chirk each other up over a hard time. " "And get off delicate ourselves same time, " said Buff Miles. From thefirst Buff had been advocating what he called "an open Christmas, " andthere were those near him at the meeting to whom he had confided someplan about "church choir Christmas carol serenades, " which he was loathto see set at naught. Not much afterward Simeon Buck put the motion:-- "Mis' Chairman, " he said, "I move you--and all of us--that the Old TrailTown meeting do and hereby does declare itself in favour of strikingChristmas celebrations from its calendar this year. And that wecirculate a petition through the town to this effect, headed by ournames. And that we all own up that it's for the simple and regretfulreason that not a mother's son of us can afford to buy Christmaspresents this year, and what's the use of scratching to keep upappearances?" For a breath Abel Ames hesitated; then he spoke voluntarily for thefirst time that evening. "Mr. President, I second the hull of that, " said he, slowly, and withoutlooking at anybody; and then sighed his vast, triple sigh. There was apparently nobody to vote against the motion. Mis' Winslow didnot vote at all. Ellen Bourne said "No, " but she said it so faintly thatnobody heard save those nearest her, and they felt a bit embarrassed forher because she had spoken alone, and they tried to cover up theminute. "Carried, " said the Chair, and slipped out in the kitchen to put on thecoffee. At the meeting there was almost nobody who, in the course of theevening, did not make or reply to some form of observation on one theme. It was:-- "Well, I wish Mary Chavah'd been to the meeting. She'd have enjoyedherself. " Or, "Well, won't Mary Chavah be glad of this plan they've got? She'swanted it a good while. " Or, "We all seem to have come to Mary Chavah's way of thinking, don'twe? You know, she ain't kept any Christmas for years. " Unless it was Abel Ames. He, in fact, made or replied to almost noobservations that evening. He drank his coffee without cream, sugar, orspoon, --they are always overlooking somebody's essentials in this way, and such is Old Trail Town's shy courtesy that the omission is nevermentioned or repaired by the victim, --and sighed his triple sigh atintervals, and went home. "Hetty, " he said to his wife, who had not gone to the meeting, "they putit through. We won't have no Christmas creditors this year. We don'thave to furnish charged Christmas presents for nobody. " She looked up from the towel she was featherstitching--she was a littlewoman who carried her head back and had large eyes and the long, curvedlashes of a child. "I s'pose you're real relieved, ain't you, Abel?" she answered. "My, yes, " said Abel, without expression. "My, yes. " * * * * * They all took the news home in different wise. "Matthew, " said Ellen Bourne, "the town meeting voted not to have anyChristmas this year. That is, to ask the folks not to have any--'countof expense. " "Sensible move, " said Matthew, sharpening his ax by the kitchen stove. "It'll be a relief for most folks not to have the muss and the clutter, "said Ellen's mother. "Hey, king and country!" said Ellen's old father, whittling a stick, "Iain't done no more'n look on at a Christmas for ten years and more--withno children around so. " "I know, " said Ellen Bourne, "I know. .. . " The announcement was greeted by Mortimer Bates with a slap of the knee. "Good-by, folderol!" he said. "We need a sane Christmas in the world agood sight more'n we need a sane Fourth, most places. Good work. " But Bennet and Gussie Bates burst into wails. "Hush!" said Mis' Bates, peremptorily. "You ain't the only ones, remember. It's no Christmas for nobody!" "I thought the rest of 'em would have one an' we could go over totheirs. .. . " sobbed Gussie. "I'd rather p'etend it's Christmas in other houses even if we ain't it!"mourned Bennet. "Be my little man and woman, " admonished Mis' Mortimer Bates. At the Morans, little Emily Moran made an unexpected deduction:-- "I _won't_ stay in bed all day Christmas!" she gave out. "Stay in bed!" echoed Mis' Moran. "Why on this earth should you stay inbed?" "Well, if we get up, then it's Christmas and you can't stop it!" littleEmily triumphed. When they told Pep, the minister's son, after a long preparation bystory and other gradual approach, and a Socratic questioning cleverlywinning damning admissions from Pep, he looked up in his father's facethoughtfully:-- "If they ain't no Christ's birthday this year, is it a lie that Christwas born?" he demanded. And secretly the children took counsel with one another: Would BuffMiles, the church choir tenor, take them out after dark on ChristmasEve, to sing church choir serenades at folks' gates, or would he not?And when they thought that he might not, because this would beconsidered Christmas celebration and would only make the absence ofpresent-giving the more conspicuous, as in the case of the Sundayschools themselves, they faced still another theological quandary: Forif it was true that Christ was born, then Christmas was his birthday;and if Christmas was his birthday, wasn't it wicked not to pay anyattention? Alone of them all, little Tab Winslow rejoiced. His brothers and sistersmade the time tearful with questionings as to the effect on SantaClaus, and how would they get word to him, and would it be Christmas inthe City, and why couldn't they move there, and other matters denotingthe reversal of this their earth. But Tab slipped out the kitchen door, to the corner of the barn, where the great turkey gobbler who had beennamed held his empire trustingly. "Oh, Theophilus Thistledown, " said Tab to him, "you're the only one inthis town that's goin' to have a Christmas. You ain't got to be et. " IV The placard was tacked to the Old Trail Town post-office wall, between asummons to join the Army and the Navy of the United States, and thereward offered for an escaped convict--all three manifestoes registeringsomething of the stage of society's development. NOTICE Owing to the local business depression and to the current private decisions to get up very few home Christmas celebrations this year, and also to the vote of the various lodges, churches, Sunday schools, etc. , etc. , etc. , to forego the usual Christmas tree observances, the merchants of this town have one and all united with most of the folks to petition the rest to omit all Christmas presents, believing that the Christmas spirit will be kept up best by all agreeing to act alike. All that's willing may announce it by signing below and notifying others. THE COMMITTEE. There were only three hundred folk living in Old Trail Town. Already twothirds of their signatures were scrawled on the sheets of foolscaptacked beneath the notice. On the day after her return home, Jenny Wing stood and stared at thenotice. Her mother had written to her of the town's talk, but theplacard made it seem worse. "I'll go in on the way home and see what Mary says, " she thought, andasked for the letter that lay in Mary Chavah's box, next her own. Theygave her the letter without question. All Old Trail Town asks for itsneighbour's mail and reads its neighbour's postmarks and gets to knowthe different Writings and to inquire after them, like persons. ("Heain't got so much of a curl to his M to-day, " one will say of asuperscription. "Better write right back and chirk 'im up. " Or, "Here'sHer that don't seal her letters good. Tell her about that, why don'tyou?" Or, "This Writing's a stranger to me. I'll just wait a minute tosee if birth or death gets out of the envelope. ") As she closed Mary's gate and hurried up the walk, in a keen windflowing with little pricking flakes, Jenny was startled to see bothparlour windows open. The white muslin curtains were blowing idly as ifJune were in the air. Turning as a matter of course to the path that ledto the kitchen, she was hailed by Mary, who came out the front door witha rug in her hands. "Step right in this way, " said Mary; "this door's unfastened. " "Forevermore!" Jenny said, "Mary Chavah! What you got your house allopen for? You ain't moving?" A gust of wind took Mary's answer. She tossed the rug across the icyrailing of the porch and beckoned Jenny into the house, and into theparlour. And when she had greeted Jenny after the months of herabsence:-- "See, " Mary said exultantly, "don't it look grand and empty? Look at itfirst, and then come on in and I'll tell you about it. " The white-papered walls of the two rooms were bare of pictures; thefloor had been sparingly laid with rugs. The walnut sofa and chairs, thetable for the lamp, and the long shelves of her grandfather'sbooks--these were all that the room held. A white arch divided the twochambers, like a benign brow whose face had long been dimmed away. Itwas all exquisitely clean and icy cold. A little snow drifted inthrough the muslin curtains. The breath of the two women showed. "What on earth you done that for?" Jenny demanded. Mary Chavah stood in the empty archway, the satisfaction on her face notveiling its pure austerity. She was not much past thirty-three, but shelooked older, for she was gaunt. Her flesh had lost its firmness, herdressmaking had stooped her, her strong frame moved as if it habituallyshouldered its way. In her broad forehead and deep eyes and somewhat inher silent mouth, you read the woman--the rest of her was obscured inher gentle reticence. She had a gray shawl, blue-bordered, foldedtightly about her head and pinned under her chin, and it wrapped her toher feet. "I feel like a thing in a new shell, " she said. "Come on in where it'swarm. " Instead of moving her dining-room table to her kitchen, as most of OldTrail Town did in Winter, Mary had moved her cooking stove into thedining room, had improvised a calico-curtained cupboard for theutensils, and there she lived and sewed. The windows were bare. "I'll let the parlour have curtains if it wants to, " she had said, "butin the room I live in I want every strip of the sun I can get. " There were no plants, though every house in Old Trail Town had a windowof green, and slips without number were offered. .. . ". .. You can have flowers all you want, " she said once; "I like 'em toowell to box 'em up in the house. " And there were no books. "I don't read, " she admitted; "I ain't ever read a book in my life but"Pilgrim's Progress" and the first four chapters of "Ben Hur. " What'sthe use of pretending, when books is such a nuisance to dust?Grandfather's books in the parlour--oh, they ain't books. They'refurniture. " But she had a little bookcase whose shelves were filled with herpatterns--in her dressmaking she never used a fashion plate. "I like to make 'em up and cut 'em out, " she sometimes told her friends. "I don't care nothing whatever about the dresses when they getdone--more fool the women for ornamenting themselves up like lampshades, I always think. But I just do love to fuss with the paper andmake it do like I say. Land, I've got my cupboard full of more patternsthan I'd ever get orders for if I lived to be born again. " She sat down before the cooking stove and drew off her woolen mittens. She folded a hand on her cheek, forcing the cheek out of drawing by herhand's pressure. There was always about her gestures a curiousnakedness--indeed, about her face and hands. They were naïve, perfectlylikely to reveal themselves in their current awkwardness and ugliness ofmomentary expression which, by its very frankness, made a new law as itbroke an old one. "Don't you tell folks I've been house cleaning, " she warned Jenny. "Thetown would think I was crazy, with the thermometer acting up zero so. Anyway, I ain't been house cleaning. I just simply got so sick to deathof all the truck piled up in this house that I had to get away from it. And this morning it looked so clean and white and smooth outdoors that Ifelt so cluttered up I couldn't sew. I begun on this room--and then Ikept on with the parlour. I've took out the lambrequins and 'levenpictures and the what-not and four moth-catching rugs and four sofapillows, and I've packed the whole lot of 'em into the attic. I've donethe same to my bedroom. I've emptied my house out of all the stuff thefolks' and the folks' folks and their folks--clear back to GrandmotherHackett had in here--I mean the truck part. Not the good. And I guessnow I've got some room to live in. " Jenny looked at her admiringly, and asked: "How did you ever do it? Ican't bear to throw things away. I can't bear to move things from wherethey've been. " "I didn't use to want to, " said Mary, "but lately--I do. The Winter's soclean, you kind of have to, to keep up. What's the news?" "Here's a letter, " Jenny said, and handed it. "I didn't look to see whoit's from. I guess it's a strange Writing, anyway. " Mary glanced indifferently at it. "It's from Lily's boy, out West, " shesaid, and laid the letter on the shelf. "I meant, what's the news aboutyou?" Jenny's eyes widened swiftly. "News about me?" she said. "Who said therewas any news about me?" "Nobody, " Mary said evenly; "but you've been gone most a year, ain'tyou?" "Oh, " Jenny said, "yes. .. . " For really, when Old Trail Town stopped to think of it, Jenny Wing wasMrs. Bruce Rule, and had been so for a year. But no one thought ofcalling her that. It always takes Old Trail Town several years to adoptits marriages. They would graduate first to "Jenny Wing that was, " andthen to "Jenny Wing What's-name, " and then to "Mis' Rule that was JennyWing. .. . " ". .. You tell me some news, " Jenny added. "Mother don't ever write muchbut the necessaries. " "That's all there's been, " Mary Chavah told her; "we ain't had noluxuries for news in forever. " "But there's that notice in the post office, " cried Jenny. "I come hometo spend Christmas, and there's that notice in the post office. Motherwrote nobody was going to do anything for Christmas, but she never wroteme that. I've brought home some little things I made----" "Oh--Christmas!" Mary said. "Yes, they all got together and concludedbest not have any. You know, since the failure--" Mary hesitated--Ebenezer Rule was Bruce Rule's uncle. "I know, " said Jenny, "it's Uncle Ebenezer. I don't know how I'm goingto tell Bruce when he comes. To think it's in our family, the reasonthey can't have any Christmas. .. . " "Nonsense, " said Mary, briskly; "no Christmas presents is realsensible, my way of thinking. It's been 'leven years since I've given aChristmas present to anybody. The first Christmas after mother died, Icouldn't--I just couldn't. That kind of got me out of the idea, andthen I see all the nonsense of it. " "The _nonsense_?" Jenny repeated. "If you don't like folks, you don't want to give nothing to them or takenothing from them. And if you do like 'em you don't want to have to waitto Christmas to give 'em things. Ain't that so?" Mary Chavah put it. "_No_, " said Jenny; "it ain't. Not a bit so. " And when Mary laughed, questioned her, pressed her, "It seems perfectly awful to me not to havea Christmas, " Jenny could say only, "I feel like the Winter didn't haveno backbone to it. " "It's a dead time, Winter, " Mary assented. "What's the use of trickingit up with gewgaws and pretending it's a live time? Besides, if youain't got the money, you ain't got the money. And nobody has, this year. Unless they go ahead and buy things anyway, like the City. " Jenny shook her head. "I got seven Christmas-present relatives and tenChristmas-present friends, and I've only spent Two Dollars and Eightycents on 'em all, " she said, "for material. But I've made little thingsfor every one of 'em. It don't seem as if that much had ought to hurtany one. " Jenny looked past her out the window, somewhere beyond the snow. "They's something else, " she added, "it ain't all present giving. .. . " "Nonsense, " said Mary Chavah, "take the present trading away fromChristmas and see how long it'd last. I was in the City once forChristmas. I'll never forget it--never. I never see folks work like thefolks worked there. The streets was Bedlam. The stores was worse. 'What'll I get him?. .. ' 'I've just got to get something for her. .. . ' 'Itdon't seem as if this is nice enough after what she give me lastyear. .. . ' I can hear 'em yet. They spent money wicked. And I said tomyself that I was glad from my head to my feet that I was done withChristmas. And I been preaching it ever since. And I'm pleased this townhas had to come to it. " "It ain't the way I feel, " said Jenny. She got up and wandered to thewindow and hardly heard while Mary went on with more of the sort. "Itseems kind of like going back on the ways things are, " Jenny said, asshe turned. Then, as she made ready to go, she broke off and smote herhands together. "Oh, " she said, "it don't seem as if I could bear it not to haveChristmas--not _this_ year. " "You mean your and Bruce's first Christmas, " said Mary. "Mark my words, he'll be glad to be rid of the fuss. Men always are. Come on out thefront door if you're going, " said Mary. "You might as well use it whenit's open. " As Jenny passed the open parlour door, she looked in again at the bareroom. "Don't you _like_ pictures?" she asked abruptly. "I like 'em when I like 'em, " Mary answered. "I didn't like them I hadup here--I had a shot stag and a fruit piece and an eagle with a childin its claws. I've loathed 'em for years, but I ain't ever had the heartto throw 'em out till now. They're over behind the coal bin. " Jenny thought. "They's a picture over to mother's, " she said, "that sheain't put up because she ain't had the money to frame it. I guess I'llbring it over after supper and see if you don't want it up here--frameor no frame. " She looked at Mary and laughed. "If I bring it to youto-night, " she said, "it ain't a Christmas present--legal. But if I wantto call it a Christmas present inside me, the town can't help that. " "What's the picture?" Mary asked. "I don't know who it represents, " said Jenny, "but it's nice. " When Jenny had gone, Mary Chavah stood in the snow shaking the rug shehad left outside, and looking at the clean, white town. "It looks like it was waiting for something, " she thought. A door opened and shut. A child shouted. In the north east a shiningbody had come sparkling above the trees--Capella of the brightness ofone hundred of our suns, being born into the twilight like a littlestar. .. . Mary closed the parlour windows and stood for a moment immersed in thequiet and emptiness of the clean rooms. "This looks like it was waiting for something, too, " she thought. "Butit ought to know it won't get it, " she added whimsically. Then she went back to the warm room and saw the letter on the shelf. Shemeant to go in a moment to the stable to make it safe there for thenight; so, with the gray shawl still binding her head and falling to herfeet, she sat by the stove and read the letter. V ". .. Because she wasn't sick but two days and we never thought of her dying till she was dead. Otherwise we'd have telegraphed. She was buried yesterday, right here, and we'll get some kind of stone. You say how you think it'd ought to be marked. That's about all there is to tell except about _Yes_. He's six years old now and Aunt Mary this ain't a place for him. He's a nice little fellow and I hate for him to get rough and he will if he stays here. I'll do the best I can and earn money to help keep him but I want he should come and live with you. .. . " "I won't have him!" said Mary Chavah, aloud. ". .. He could come alone with a tag all right and I could send his things by freight. He ain't got much. You couldn't help but like him and I hate for him to get rough. Please answer and oblige your loving Nephew, "JOHN BLOOD. " Mary kept reading the letter and staring out into the snow. Her sisterLily's boy--they wanted to send him to her. Lily's boy and AdamBlood's--the man whose son she had thought would be her son. It wastwenty years ago that he had been coming to the house--this samehouse--and she had thought that he was coming to see her, had neverthought of Lily at all till Lily had told her of her own betrothal tohim. It hurt yet. It had hurt freshly when he had died, seven years ago. Now Lily was dead, and Adam's eldest son, John, wanted to send thislittle brother to her, to have. "I won't take him, " she said a great many times, and kept reading theletter and staring out into the snow. For Lily she had no tears--she seldom had tears at all. But after alittle while she was conscious of a weight through her and in her, aching in her throat, her breast, her body. She rose and went near tothe warmth of the fire, then to the freedom of the window against whichthe snow lay piled, then she sat down in the place where she worked, beside her patterns. The gray shawl still bound her head, and it wasstill in her mind that she must go to the barn and lock it. But she didnot go--she sat in the darkening room with all her past crowding it. .. . . .. That first day with Adam at the Blood's picnic, given at hishome-coming. They had met with all that perilous, ready-made intimacywhich a school friendship of years before had allowed. As she had walkedbeside him she had known well what he was going to mean to her. Sheremembered the moment when he had contrived to ask her to wait until theothers went, so that he might walk home with her. And when they hadreached home, there on the porch--where she had just shaken the rugs inthe snow--Lily had been sitting, a stool--one of the stools now atlength banished to the shed--holding the hurt ankle that had kept herfrom the picnic. Adam had stayed an hour, and they had sat beside Lily. He had come again and again, and they had always sat beside Lily. Maryremembered that those were the days when she was happy in _things_--inthe house and the look of the rooms and of the little garden from theporch, and of the old red-cushioned rocking-chairs on the tiny "stoop. "She had loved her clothes and her little routines, and all these thingshad seemed desirable and ultimate because they two were sharing them. Then one day Mary had joined Lily and Adam there on the porch, and Lilyhad been looking up with new eyes, and Mary had searched her face, andthen Adam's face; and they had all seemed in a sudden nakedness; andMary had known that a great place was closed against her. Since then house and porch and garden and routines had become like thoseof other places. She had always been shut outside something, and alwaysshe had borne burdens. The death of her parents, gadflys of need, worstof all a curious feeling that the place closed against her was somehowherself--that, so to say, she and herself had never once met. She usedto say that to herself sometimes, "There's two of me, and we don'tmeet--we don't meet. " "And now he wants me to take her boy and Adam's, " she kept saying; "I'llnever do such a thing--never. " She thought that the news of Lily's death was what gave her the strange, bodily hurt that had seized her--the news that what she was used to wasgone; that she had no sister; that the days of their being together andall the tasks of their upbringing were finished. Then she thought thatthe remembering of those days of her happiness and her pain, and theache of what might have been and of what never was, had come to tortureher again. But the feeling was rather the weight of some imminent thing, the ravage of something that grew with what it fed on, the grasp uponher of something that would not let her go. .. . She had never seen them after their marriage, and so she had never seeneither of the children. Lily had once sent her a picture of John, butshe had never sent one of this other little boy. Mary tried to recallwhat they had ever said of him. She could not even remember hisbaptismal name, but she knew that they had called him "Yes" because itwas the first word he had learned to say, and because he had said it toeverything. "The baby can say 'Yes, '" Lily had written once; "I guessit's all he'll ever be able to say. He says it all day long. He won'ttry to say anything else. " And once later: "We've taken to calling thebaby 'Yes, ' and now he calls himself that. 'Yes wants it, ' he says, and'Take Yes, ' and 'Yes is going off now. ' His father likes it. He says yesis everything and no is nothing. I don't think that means much, but wecall him that for fun. .. . " But Mary could not remember what the child'sreal name was. What difference did it make? As if she could have a childmeddling round the house while she was sewing. But of course this wasnot the real reason. The real reason was that she could not bring up achild--did she not know that? ". .. He's six years old now and Aunt Mary this ain't a place for him. He's a nice little fellow and I hate for him to get rough and he will ifhe stays here. .. . " She tried to think who else could take him. They had no one. Adam, sheknew, had no one. Some of the neighbours there by the ranch . .. It wasabsurd to send him that long journey . .. So she went through it all, denying with all the old denials. And all the while the weight in herbody grew and filled her, and she was strangely conscious of her breath. "What ails me?" she said aloud, and got up to kindle a light. She wasamazed to see that it was seven o'clock, and long past her supper hour. As she took from the clock shelf the key to the barn, some one rapped atthe back door and came through the cold kitchen with friendlyfamiliarity. It was Jenny, a shawl over her head, her face glowing withthe cold, and in her mittened hands a flat parcel. "My hand's most froze, " Jenny admitted. "I didn't want to roll thisthing, so I carried it flat out, and it blew consider'ble. It's thepicture. " "Get yourself warm, " Mary bade her. "I'll undo it. Who is it of?" sheadded, as the papers came away. "That's what I don't know, " said Jenny, "but I've always liked itaround. I thought maybe you'd know. " It was a picture which, in those days, had not before come to Old TrailTown. The figure was that of a youth, done by a master of the times--thehead and shoulders of a youth who seemed to be looking passionately atsomething outside the picture. "There it is, anyhow, " Jenny added. "If you like it enough to hang itup, hang it up. It's a Christmas present!" Jenny laughed elfishly. Mary Chavah held the picture out before her. "I do, " she said; "I could take a real fancy to it. I'll have it up onthe wall. Much obliged, I'm sure. Set down a minute. " But Jenny could not do this, and Mary, the key to the barn still in herhands, followed her out. They went through the cold kitchen where therefrigerator and the ironing board and the clothes bars and all thefamiliar things stood in the dark. To Mary these were sunk in a greatobscurity and insignificance, and even Jenny being there was unimportantbeside the thing that her letter had brought to think about. Theystepped out into the clear, glittering night, with its clean, whiteworld, and its clean, dark sky on which some story was written in stars. Capella was shining almost overhead--and another star was hanging brightin the east, as if the east were always a dawning place for some newstar. "Mary!" said Jenny, there in the dark. "Yes, " Mary answered. "You know I said I just couldn't bear not to have any Christmas--_this_Christmas?" "Yes, " Mary said. "Did you know why?" "I thought because it's your and Bruce's first--" "No, " Jenny said, "that isn't all why. It's something else. " She slipped her arm within Mary's and stood silent. And, Mary still notunderstanding, -- "It's somebody else, " Jenny said faintly. Mary stirred, turned to her in the dimness. "Why, Jenny!" she said. "Soon, " said Jenny. The two women stood for a moment, Jenny saying a little, Mary quiet. "It'll be late in December, " Jenny finished. "That seems so wonderful tome--so wonderful. Late in December, like--" The cold came pricking about them, and Jenny moved to go. Mary, theshawled figure on the upper step, looked down on the shawled figurebelow her, and abruptly spoke. "It's funny, " Mary said, "that you should tell me that--now. I haven'ttold you what's in my letter. " "What was?" asked Jenny. Mary told her. "They want I should have the little boy, " she ended it. "Oh. .. . " Jenny said. "Mary! How wonderful for you! Why, it's almost nextas wonderful as mine!" Mary hesitated for a breath. But she was profoundly stirred by whatJenny had told her--the first time, so far as she could recall, thatnews like this had ever come to her directly, as a secret and a marvel. News of the village births usually came in gossip, in commiseration, insuspicion. Falling as did this confidence in a time when she wasre-living her old hope, when Adam's boy stood outside her threshold, themoment quite suddenly put on its real significance. "We can plan together, " Jenny was saying. "Ain't it wonderful?" "Ain't it?" Mary said then, simply, and kissed Jenny, when Jenny cameand kissed her. Then Jenny went away. Mary went on to the barn, and opened the door, and listened. She hadbrought no lantern, but the soft stillness within needed no vigilance. The hay smell from the loft and the mangers, the even breath of thecows, the quiet safety of the place, met her. She was wondering atherself, but she was struggling not at all. It was as if concerning thelittle boy, something had decided for her, in a soft, fierce rush offeeling not her own. She had committed herself to Jenny almost withoutwill. But Mary felt no exultation, and the weight within her did notlift. "I really couldn't do anything else but take him, I s'pose, " shethought. "I wonder what'll come on me next?" All the while, she was conscious of the raw smell of the clover in thehay of the mangers, as if something of Summer were there in the cold. VI Mary Chavah sent her letter of blunt directions concerning her sister'sheadstone and the few belongings which her sister had wished her tohave. The last lines of the letter were about the boy. "Send the little one along. I am not the one, but I don't know what elseto tell you to do with him. Let me know when to expect him, and put hisname in with his things--I can't remember his right name. " When the answer came from John Blood, a fortnight later, it said that ayoung fellow of those parts was starting back home shortly to spendChristmas, and would take charge of the child as far as the City, andthere put him on his train for Old Trail Town. She would be notifiedjust what day to expect him, and John knew how glad his mother wouldhave been and his father too, and he was her grateful Nephew. P. S. Hewould send some money every month "toward him. " The night after she received this letter, Mary lay long awake, facingwhat it was going to mean to have him there: to have a child there. She recalled what she had heard other women say about it, --strayutterances, made with the burdened look that hid a secret complacency, akind of pleased freemasonry in a universal lot. "The children bring so much sand into the house. You'd think it washorses. " ". .. The center table looks loaded and ready to start half the time . .. But I can't help it, with the children's books and truck. " ". .. Never would have another house built without a coat closet. Thechildren's cloaks and caps and rubbers litter up everything. " ". .. Every one of their knees out, and their underclothes outgrown, andtheir waists soiled, the whole time. And I do try so hard. .. . " Now with all these bewilderments she was to have to do. She wondered ifshe would know how to dress him. Once she had watched Mis' Winslow dressa child, and she remembered what unexpected places Mis' Winslow hadbuttoned--buttonholes that went _up and down_ in the skirt bands, and soon. Armholes might be too small and garters too tight, and how was oneever to know? If it were a little girl now . .. But a little boy. .. . Whatwould she talk to him about while they ate together? [Illustration: "HE STOOD LOOKING AT IT FROM PART WAY ACROSS THE ROAD"] She lay in the dark and planned--with no pleasure, but merely becauseshe always planned everything, her dress, her baking, what she would sayto this one and that. She would put up a stove in the back parlour, andgive him the room "off. " She was glad that the parlour was empty andclean--"no knick-knacks for a boy to knock around, " she found herselfthinking. And a child would like the bedroom wallpaper, with the owlborder. When Summer came he could have the room over the dining room, with the kitchen roof sloping away from it where he could dry hishazelnuts--she had thought of the pasture hazelnuts, first thing. Therewere a good many things a boy would like about the place: the bird housewhere the martins always built, the hens, the big hollow tree, thepasture ant hill. .. . She would have to find out the things he liked toeat. She would have to help him with his lessons--she could do that foronly a little while, until he would be too old to need her. Then maybethere would come the time when he would ask her things that she wouldnot know. .. . She fell asleep wondering how he would look. Already, not from anyimpatience to have this done, but because that was the way in which sheworked, she had his room in order; and her picture of his father was bythe mirror, the young face of his father. Something faded had beenwritten below the picture, and this she had painstakingly rubbed awaybefore she set the picture in its place. Next day, while she was workingon Mis' Jane Moran's bead basque that was to be cut over and turned, shelaid it aside and cut out a jacket pattern, and a plaited waistpattern--just to see if she could. These she rolled up impatiently andstuffed away in her pattern bookcase. "I knew how to do them all the while, and I never knew I knew, " shethought with annoyed surprise. "I s'pose I'll waste a lot of timepottering over him. " It was so that she spent the weeks until the letter came telling herwhat day the child would start. On the afternoon of the day the lettercame, she went down town to the Amos Ames Emporium to buy a washbasinand pitcher for the room she meant the little boy to have. She stoodlooking at a basin with a row of brown dogs around the rim, when overher shoulder Mis' Abby Winslow spoke. "You ain't buying a Christmas present for anybody, are you?" she askedwarningly. Mary started guiltily and denied it. "Well, what in time do you want with dogs on the basin?" Mis' Winslowdemanded. Almost against her own wish, Mary told her. Mis' Winslow was one ofthose whose faces are invariable forerunners of the sort of thing theyare going to say. With eyebrows, eyes, forehead, head, and voice shetook the news. "He is! Forever and ever more. When's he going to get here?" "Week after next, " Mary said listlessly. "It's an awful responsibility, ain't it--taking a child so?" Mis' Winslow's face abruptly rejected its own anxious lines and let theeyes speak for it. "I always think children is like air, " she said; "you never realize howhard they're pressing down on you--but you do know you can't livewithout them. " Mary looked at her, her own face not lighting. "I'd rather go along like I am, " she said; "I'm used to myself the way Iam. " "Mary Chavah!" said Mis' Winslow, sharply, "a vegetable sprouts. Can'tyou? Is these stocking caps made so's they won't ravel?" she inquiredcapably of Abel Ames. "These are real good value, Mary, " she addedkindly. "Better su'prise the little thing with one of these. A red one. " Mary counted over her money, and bought the red stocking cap and thebasin with the puppies. Then she went into the street. The sense ofoppression, of striving, that had seldom left her since that night inthe stable, made the day a thing to be borne, to be breasted. The airwas thick with snow, and in the whiteness the dreary familiarity of thedrug store, the meat market, the post office, the Simeon Buck Dry GoodsExchange, smote her with a passion to escape from them all, to breed newfamiliars, to get free of the thing that she had said she would do. "And I could, " she thought; "I could telegraph to John not to send him. But Jenny--she can't. I don't see how she stands it. .. . " The thought may have been why, instead of going home, she went to seeJenny. A neighbor was in the sitting room with Mrs. Wing. Jenny met Maryat the kitchen door and stood against a background of clothes drying onlines stretched indoors. "Don't you want to come upstairs?" Jenny said. "There ain't a fire upthere--but I can show you the things. " She had put them all in the bottom drawer, as women always do; and, aswomen always do, had laid them so that all the lace and embroidery andpink ribbons possible showed in a flutter when the drawer was opened. Jenny took the things out, one at a time, unfolded, discussed, compared, with all the tireless zeal of a robin with a straw in its mouth or of atree, blossoming. "Smell of them, " Jenny bade her. "Honestly, wouldn'tyou know by the smell who they are for?" "I donno but you would, " Maryadmitted awkwardly, and marveled dumbly at the newness Jenny wasfeeling in that which, after all, was not new! When these things were all out, a little tissue-paper parcel was leftlying in the drawer. "There's one more, " Mary said. Jenny flushed, hesitated, lifted it. "That's nothing, " she said; "before I came I made some little things forits Christmas. I thought maybe it would come first, and we'd have theChristmas in my room, and I made some little things--just for fun, youknow. But it won't be fair to do it now, with the whole town so setagainst our having any Christmas. Mary, it just seems as though I had tohave a Christmas this year!" "Oh, well, " said Mary, "the baby'll be your Christmas. The town can'thelp that, I guess. " "I know, " Jenny flashed back brightly, "you and I have got the best ofthem, haven't we? We've each got one present coming, anyway. " "I s'pose we have. .. . " Mary said. She looked at Jenny's Christmas things--a ribbon rattle, a crochetedcap, a first picture book, a cascade of colored rings--and then in grimhumour at Jenny. "It'll never miss its Christmas, " she said dryly. "Don't you think so?" said Jenny, soberly. "I donno. It seems as if it'dbe kind o' lonesome to get born around Christmas and not find any goingon. " She put the things away, and closed the drawer. For no appreciablereason, she kept it locked, and the key under the bureau cover. "Do you know yet when yours is coming?" Jenny asked, as she rose. "Week after next, " Mary repeated, --"two weeks from last night, " sheconfessed, "if he comes straight through. " "I think, " said Jenny, "I think mine will be here--before then. " When they reached the foot of the stair, Mary unexpectedly refused to goin the sitting room. "No, " she said, "I must be getting home. I just come out for a minute, anyway. I'm--I'm much obliged for what you showed me, " she added, andhesitated. "I've got his room fixed up real nice. There's owls on thewall paper and puppies on the washbasin, " she said. "Come in when youcan and see it. " It was almost dusk when Mary reached home. While she was passing thebillboard at the corner--a flare of yellow letters, as if Colour and theAlphabet had united to breed a monster--she heard children shouting. Ablock away, and across the street, coming home from Rolleston's hillwhere they had been coasting, were Bennet and Gussie Bates, littleEmily, Tab Winslow, and Pep. Nearly every day of snow they passed herhouse. She always heard them talking, and usually she heard, across atthe corner, the click of the penny-in-the-slot machine, which no childseemed able to pass without pulling. To-night, as she heard them coming, Mary fumbled in her purse. Three, four, five pennies she found and ranacross the street and dropped them in the slot machine, and gained herown door before the children came. She stood at her dark threshold, andlistened. She had not reckoned in vain. One of the children pushed downon the rod, in the child's eternal hope of magic, and when magic cameand three, four, five chocolates dropped obediently in their hands, Marylistened to what they said. It was not much, and it was not verycoherent, but it was wholly intelligible. "Look at!" shrieked Bennet, who had made the magic. "_Did_ it?" cried Gussie, and repeated the operation. "It--it--it never!" said Tab Winslow, at the third. "Make it again--make it again!" cried little Emily, and they did. "Gorry, " observed Pep, in ecstasy. When it would give no more, they divided with the other children and ranon, their red mittens and mufflers flaming in the snow. Mary stoodstaring after them for a moment, then she closed her door. "I wonder what made me do that, " she thought. In her dining room she mended the fire without taking off her hat. Itwas curious, she reflected; here was this room looking the way itlooked, and away off there was the little fellow who had never seen theroom; and in a little while he would be calling this room home, andlooking for his books and his mittens, and knowing it better than anyother place in the world. And there was Jenny, with that bottomdrawerful, and pretty soon somebody that now was not, would be, andwould be wearing the drawerful and calling Jenny "mother, " and wouldknow her better than any one else in the world. Mary could not imaginethat little boy of Lily's getting used to her--Mary--and callingher--well, what would he call her? She hadn't thought of that. .. . "Bother, " thought Mary Chavah, "there's going to be forty nuisancesabout it that I s'pose I haven't even thought of yet. " She stood by the window. She had not lighted the lamp, so the worldshowed white, not black. Snow makes outdoors look big, she thought. Butit was big--what a long journey it was to Idaho. Suppose . .. Somethinghappened to the man he was to travel with. John Blood was only a boy; hewould probably put the child's name and her address in the littletraveler's pocket, and these would be lost. The child was hardly oldenough to remember what to do. He would go astray, and none of themwould ever know what had become of him . .. And what would become of him?She saw him and his bundle of clothes alone in the station in theCity. .. . She turned from the window and mechanically mended the fire again. Shedrew down the window shade and went to the coat closet to hang away herwraps. Then abruptly she took up her purse, counted out the money in thefirelight, and went out the door and down the street in the dusk, andinto the post office, which was also the telegraph office, --one whichthe little town owed to Ebenezer Rule, and it a rival to the othertelegraph office at the station. "How much does it cost to send a telegram?" she demanded. "Idaho, " sheanswered the man's question, flushing at her omission. While the man, Affer by name, laboriously looked it up, --coveringincredible little dirty figures with an incredibly big dirtyforefinger, --Mary stood staring at the list of names tacked below thedog-eared Christmas Notice. She remembered that she had not yet signedit herself. She asked for a pencil--causing confusion to the littlefigures and delay to the big finger--and, while she waited, wrote hername. "A good, sensible move, " she thought, as she signed. When Affer gave her the rate, thrusting finger and figures jointlybeneath the bars, --solicitous of his own accuracy, --Mary filed hermessage. It was to John Blood, and it read:---- "Be sure you tie his tag on him good. " VII Ebenezer Rule had meant to go to the City before cold weather came. Hehad there a small and decent steam-warmed flat where he boiled his owneggs and made his own coffee, read his newspapers and kept his counsel, descending nightly to the ground-floor café to dine on ambiguous dishesat tables of other bank swallows who nested in the same cliff. But asthe days went by, he found himself staying on in Old Trail Town, withthis excuse and that, offered by himself to himself. As, for example, that in the factory there were old account books that he must gothrough. And having put off this task from day to day and finding atlast nothing more to dally with, he set out one morning for the ancientbuilding down in that part of the village which was older than the restand was where his business was conducted when it was conducted. It had snowed in the night, and Buff Miles, who drove the villagesnowplow, was also driver of "the 'bus. " So on the morning after asnowfall, the streets always lay buried thick until after the 8. 10Express came in; and since on the morning following a snowfall the 8. 10Express was always late, Old Trail Town lay locked in a kind of circularargument, and everybody stayed indoors or stepped high through drifts. The direct way to the factory was virtually untrodden, and Ebenezer madea detour through the business street in search of some semblance of a"track. " The light of a Winter morning is not kind, only just. It is just to thesky and discovers it to be dominant; to trees, and their lines are seento be alive, like leaves; to folk, and no disguise avails. Summer givescomplements and accessories to the good things in a human face. Winteraffords nothing save disclosure. In the uncompromising cleanness of thatwash of Winter light, Ebenezer Rule was himself, for anybody to see. Looking like countless other men, lean, alert, preoccupied, his tallfigure stooped, his smooth, pale face like a photograph too muchretouched, this commonplace man took his place in the day almost as oneof its externals. With that glorious pioneer trio, mineral, vegetableand animal; and with intellect, that worthy tool, he did his day's work. His face was one that had never asked itself, say, of a Winter morning:_What else?_ And the Winter light searched him pitilessly to find thatquestion somewhere in him. Before the Simeon Buck North American Dry Goods Exchange, Simeon Buckhimself had just finished shoveling his walk, and stood wiping his snowshovel with an end of his muffler. When he saw Ebenezer, he shook themuffler at him, and then, over his left shoulder, jabbed the air withhis thumb. "Look at here, " he said, his head reënforcing his gesture toward hisshow window, "look what I done this morning. Nice little touch--eh?" In the show window of the Exchange--Dry Goods Exchange was just the nameof it for the store carried everything--a hodgepodge of canned goods, lace curtains, kitchen utensils, wax figures, and bird cages had beenranged round a center table of golden oak. On the table stood a figurethat was as familiar to Old Trail Town as was its fire engine and itssprinkling cart. Like these, appearing intermittently, the figure hadseized on the imagination of the children and grown in association untilit belonged to everybody, by sheer use and wont. It was a _papier-mâché_Santa Claus, three feet high, white-bearded, gray-gowned, with tallpointed cap--rather the more sober Saint Nicholas of earlier days thanthe rollicking, red-garbed Saint Nick of now. Only, whereas for years hehad graced the window of the Exchange, bearing over his shoulder alittle bough of green for a Christmas tree, this season he stoodtreeless, and instead bore on his shoulder a United States flag. On aplacard below him Simeon had laboriously lettered:-- High Cost of Living and too much fuss Makes Folks want a Sane Christmas Me Too. S. C. "Ain't that neat?" said Simeon. Ebenezer looked. "What's the flag for?" he inquired dryly. "Well, " said Simeon, "he had to carry something. I thought of a toygun--but that didn't seem real appropriate. A Japanese umbrella wasn'texactly in season, seems though. A flag was about the only thing I couldthink of to have him hold. A flag is always kind of tasty, don't youthink?" "Oh, it's harmless, " Ebenezer said, "harmless. " "No hustling business, " Simeon pursued, "can be contented with just_not_ doing something. It ain't enough not to have no Christmas. You'vegot to find something that'll express nothing, and express it forcible. In business, a minus sign, " said Simeon, "is as good as a plus, if youcan keep it whirling round and round. " This Ebenezer mulled and chuckled over as he went on down the street. Hewondered what the Emporium would do to keep up with the Exchange. But inthe Emporium window there was nothing save the usual mill-end displayfor the winter white goods sale. Ebenezer opened the store door and put his head in. "Hey, " he shouted at Abel, back at the desk, "can't you keep up withSimeon's window?" Abel came down the aisle between the lengths of white stuff plaited intofolds at either side. The fire had just been kindled in the stove, andthe air in the store was still frosty. Abel, in his overcoat, wasblowing on his fingers. "I ain't much of any heart to, " said he, "but the night before ChristmasI guess'll do about right for mine. " "What'll you put up?" Ebenezer asked, closing the door behind him. "Well, sir, " said Abel, "I ain't made up my mind full yet. But I'll bebillblowed if I'm going to let Christmas go by without saying somethingabout it in the window. " "Night before Christmas'll be too late to advertise anything, " saidEbenezer. "If I was in trade, " he said, half closing his eyes, "I'd fillmy window up with useful articles--caps and mittens and stockings andwarm underwear and dishes and toothbrushes. And I'd say: 'Might as wellafford these on what you saved out of Christmas. ' You'd ought to get allthe advertising you can out of any situation. " Abel shook his head. "I ain't much on such, " he said lightly--and then looked intently atEbenezer. "Jenny's been buying quite a lot here for her Christmas, " hesaid. Ebenezer was blank. "Jenny?" he said. "Jenny Wing? I heard she was here. I ain't seen her. Is she bound to keep Christmas anyhow?" "Just white goods, it was, " said Abel, briefly. Ebenezer frowned his lack of understanding. "I shouldn't think her and Bruce had much of anything to buy anythingwith, " he said. "I s'pose you know, " he added, "that Bruce, the youngbeggar, quit working for me in the City after the--the failure? Threw uphis job with me, and took God knows what to do. " Abel nodded gravely. All Old Trail Town knew that, and honoured Brucefor it. "Headstrong couple, " Ebenezer added. "So Jenny's bent on havingChristmas, no matter what the town decides, is she?" he added, "it'slike her, the minx. " "I don't think it was planned that way, " Abel said simply; "she's onlybuying white goods, " he repeated. And, Ebenezer still staring, "Surelyyou know what Jenny's come home for?" Abel said. A moment or two later Ebenezer was out on the street again, his faceturned toward the factory. He was aware that Abel caught open the doorbehind him and called after him, "Whenever you get ready to sell me thatthere star glass, you know. .. . " Ebenezer answered something, but hisresponses were so often guttural and indistinguishable that his will toreply was regarded as nominal, anyway. He also knew that now, justbefore him, Buff Miles was proceeding with the snowplow, cutting a firm, white way, smooth and sparkling for soft treading, momentarily borderedby a feathery flux, that tumbled and heaped and then lay quiet in aglitter of crystals. But his thought went on without these things andwithout his will. Bruce's baby! It would be a Rule, too. .. . The third generation, thethird generation. And accustomed as he was to relate every experience tohimself, measure it, value it by its own value to him, the effect of hisreflection was at first single: The third generation of Rules. _Was heas old as that?_ It seemed only yesterday that Bruce had been a boy, in a blue necktie tomatch his eyes, and shoes which for some reason he always put on wrong, so that the buttons were on the inside. Bruce's baby. Good heavens! Ithad been a shock when Bruce graduated from the high school, a shock whenhe had married, but his baby . .. It was incredible that he himselfshould be so old as that. . .. This meant, then, that if Malcolm had lived, Malcolm might have hada child now. .. . Ebenezer had not meant to think that. It was as if the Thought came andspoke to him. He never allowed himself to think of that other life ofhis, when his wife, Letty, and his son Malcolm had been living. Nobodyin Old Trail Town ever heard him speak of them or had ever been answeredwhen Ebenezer had been spoken to concerning them. A high white shaft inthe cemetery marked the two graves. All about them doors had beenclosed. But with the thought of this third generation, the doors allopened. He looked along ways that he had forgotten. As he went he was unconscious, as he was always unconscious, of thelittle street. He saw the market square, not as the heart of the town, but as a place for buying and selling, and the little shops were to himnot ways of providing the town with life, but ways of providing theirkeepers with a livelihood. Beyond these was a familiar setting, arrangedthat day with white background and heaped roofs and laden boughs, thehouses standing side by side, like human beings. There they were, likethe chorus to the thing he was thinking about. They were all thinkingabout it, too. Every one of them knew what he knew. Yet he never saw thebond, but he thought they were only the places where men lived who hadbeen his factory hands and would be so yet if he had not cut them away:Ben Torrey, shoveling off his front walk with his boy sweeping behindhim; August Muir, giving his little girl a ride on the snow shovel;Nettie Hatch, clearing the ice out of her mail box, while hersister--the lame one--watched from her chair by the window, interestedas in a real event. Ebenezer spoke to them from some outpost ofconsciousness which his thought did not pass. The little street was notthere, as it was never there for him, as an entity. It was merely astreet. And the little town was not an entity. It was merely where helived. He went behind Buff Miles and the snowplow--as he always went--asif space had been created for folk to live in one at a time, and as ifthis were his own turn. When he reached the bend from the Old Trail to the road where thefactory was, he understood at last that he had been hearing a song sungover a great many times. ". .. One for the way it all begun, Two for the way it all has run, What three'll be for I do forget, But what's to be has not been yet. .. . So holly and mistletoe, So holly and mistletoe, So holly and mistletoe, Over and over and over, oh. " Buff, who was singing it, looked over his shoulder, and nodded. "They said you can't have no Christmas on Christmas Day, " he observed, grinning, "but I ain't heard nothing to prevent singing Christmas carolsright up to the day that is the day. " Ebenezer halted. "How old are you?" he abruptly demanded of Buff--whom he had known fromBuff's boyhood. "Thirty-three, " said Buff, "dum it. " "You and Bruce about the same age, ain't you?" said Ebenezer. Buff nodded. "Well, " said Ebenezer, "well. .. . " and stood looking at him. Malcolmwould have been his age, too. "Going down to the factory, are you?" Buff said. "Wait a bit. I'll hikeon down ahead of you. " He turned the snowplow down the factory road, as if he were making atriumphal progress, fashioning his snow borders with all the freedom ofsome sculpturing wind on summer clouds. "One for the way it all begun, Two for the way it all has run. .. . " he sang to the soft push and thud and clank of his going. He swept acircle in front of the little house that was the factory office, as ifhe had prepared the setting for a great event; and Ebenezer, followingin the long, bright path, stepped into the hall of the house. For thirty years he had been accustomed to enter the little house withhis mind ready to receive its interior of desks and shelves and safesand files. To-day, quite unexpectedly, as he opened the door, the thingthat was in his mind was a hall stair with a red carpet, and a parlouradjoining with figured stuff at the windows and a coal fire in thestove. .. . And thirty-five years ago it had been that way, when he andhis wife and child had lived in the little house where his business wasthen just starting at a machine set up in the woodshed. As his projecthad grown and his factory had arisen in the neighbouring lots, thefamily had moved farther up in the town. Remembrance had been divorcedfrom this place for decades. To-day, without warning, it waited for himon the threshold. He had asked his bookkeeper to meet him there, but the man had not yetarrived. So Ebenezer himself kindled a fire in the rusty office stove, in the room where the figured curtains had been. The old account booksthat he wanted were not here on the shelves, nor in the cupboards of thecold adjoining rooms. They dated so far back that they had been filedaway upstairs. He had not been upstairs in years, and his first impulsewas to send his bookkeeper, when he should appear. But this, after all, was not Ebenezer's way; and he went up the stairs himself. Each upper room was like some one unconscious in stupor or death, andstill as distinct in personality as if in some ancient activity. Therewas the shelf he had put up in their room, the burned place on the floorwhere he had tipped over a lamp, tattered shreds of the paper she hadhung to surprise him, the little storeroom which they had cleared outfor Malcolm when he was old enough, and whose door had had to be keptclosed because innumerable uncaged birds lived there. .. . When he had gone through the piles of account books in a closet andthose he sought were not found among them, he remembered the trunkful upin the tiny loft. He let down from the passage ceiling the ladder he hadonce hung there, and climbed up to the little roof recess. Light entered through four broken panes of skylight. It fell in a faintrug on the dusty floor. The roof sloped sharply, and the trunks andboxes had been pressed back to the rim of the place. Ebenezer put hishands out, groping. They touched an edge of something that swayed. Helaid hold of it and drew it out and set down on the faint rug of lighta small wooden hobbyhorse. He stood staring at it, remembering it as clearly as if some one had setbefore him the old white gate which he bestrode in his own boyhood. Itwas Malcolm's hobbyhorse, dappled gray, the tail and the mane missingand the paint worn off--and tenderly licked off--his nose. When they hadmoved to the other house, he had bought the boy a pony, and this horsehad been left behind. Something else stirred in his memory, the name bywhich Malcolm had used to call his hobbyhorse, some ringing name . .. Buthe had forgotten. He thrust the thing back where it had been and went onwith his search for the account books. By the time he had found them and had got down again in the office, thebookkeeper was there, keeping up the fire and uttering, with someacumen, comments on the obvious aspects of the weather, of the climate, of the visible universe. The bookkeeper was a young man, very ready toagree with Ebenezer for the sake of future favour, but with thewistfulness of all industrial machines constructed by men from humanpotentialities. Also, he had a cough and thin hands and a little familyand no job. "Get to work on this book, " Ebenezer bade him; "it's the one that beganthe business. " The man opened the book, put it to his nearsighted eyes, frowned, andglanced up at Ebenezer. "I don't think it seems. .. . " he began doubtfully. "Well, don't think, " said Ebenezer, sharply; "that's not needful. Readthe first entries. " [Illustration: "ACROSS THE STILL FIELDS CAME FLASHING THE POINT OFFLAME"] The bookkeeper read:-- Picking hops (4 days) . . . . $1. 00 Sewing (Mrs. Shackell). . . . . 60 Egg money (3-1/4 dozen) . . . . 75 Winning puzzle. . . . . . . . 2. 50 ----- $4. 86 Disbursed: Kitchen roller. . . . . . . . $ . 10 Coffee mill . . . . . . . . . . 50 Shoes for M. . . . . . . . . 1. 25 Water colors for M. . . . . . . 25 Suit for M. . . . . . . . . . 2. 00 Gloves--me. . . . . . . . . . . 50 ----- $4. 75 Cash on hand: 11 cents. The bookkeeper paused again. Ebenezer, frowning, reached for the book. In his wife's fine faded writing were her accounts--after the elevencents was a funny little face with which she had been wont to illustrateher letters. Ebenezer stared, grunted, turned to the last page of thebook. There, in bold figures, the other way of the leaf, was his ownaccounting. He remembered now--he had kept his first books in the backof the account book that she had used for the house. Ebenezer glanced sharply at his bookkeeper. To his annoyance, the manwas smiling with perfect comprehension and sympathy. Ebenezer avertedhis eyes, and the bookkeeper felt dimly that he had been guilty of anindelicacy toward his employer, and hastened to cover it. "Family life does cling to a man, sir, " he said. "Do you find it so?" said Ebenezer, dryly. "Read, please. " At noon Ebenezer walked home alone through the melting snow. And theThought that he did not think, but that spoke to him without hisknowing, said:-- "Winning a puzzle--Two Dollars and a half. She never told me she triedto earn a little something that way. " VIII "If we took the day before Christmas an' had it for Christmas, " observedTab Winslow, "would that hurt?" "Eat your oatmeal, " said Mis' Winslow, in the immemorial manner ofadults. "Would it, would it, would it?" persisted Tab, in the immemorial mannerof youth. "And have Theophilus Thistledown for dinner that day instead?" Mis'Winslow suggested with diplomacy. On which Tab ate his oatmeal in silence. But, like adults immemorially, Mis' Winslow bore far more the adultmanner than its heart. After breakfast she stood staring out the pantrywindow at the sparrows on the bird box. "It looks like Mary Chavah was going to be the only one in Trail Town tohave any Christmas after all, " she thought, "that little boy coming toher, so. " He was coming week after next, Mary had said, and Mis' Winslow had heardno word about it from anybody else. When "the biggest of the work" ofthe forenoon was finished, Mis' Winslow ran down the road to EllenBourne's. In Old Trail Town they always speak of it as running down, orin, or over, in the morning, with an unconscious suiting of terms toinformalities. Ellen was cleaning her silver. She had "six of each"--six knives, sixforks, six spoons, all plated and seldom used, pewter with black handlesserving for every day. The silver was cleaned often, though it was neveron the table, save for company, and there never had been any companysince Ellen had lost her little boy from fever. Having noarticulateness and having no other outlet for emotion, she fed her griefby small abstentions: no guests, no diversions, no snatches of songabout her work. Yet she was sane enough, and normal, only in dearth ofsane and normal outlets for emotion, for energy, for personality, shehad taken these strange directions for yet unharnessed forces. "Mercy, " observed Mis' Winslow, warming her hands at the cooking stove, "you got more energy. " ". .. Than family, I guess you mean, " Ellen Bourne finished. Ellen waslittle and fair, with slightly drooping head, and eyebrows curved to achildlike reflectiveness. "Well, I got consider'ble more family than I got energy, " said Mis'Winslow, "so I guess we even it up. Seven-under-fifteen eats up energylike so much air. " "Hey, king and country, " said Ellen's old father, whittling by the fire, "you got family enough, Ellen. You got your hands full of us. " He rubbedhis hands through his thin upstanding silver hair on his little pinkhead, and his fine, pink face took on the look of father which rarelyintruded, now, on his settled look of old man. "I donno what she'd do, " said Ellen's mother, "with any more around hereto pick up after. We're cluttered up enough, as it is. " She was an oldlady of whose outlines you took notice before your attention lay furtherupon her--angled waist, chin, lips, forehead, put on her a succession ofzigzags. But her eyes were awake, and it was to be seen that she did notmean what she said and that she was looking anxiously at Ellen in thehope of having deceived her daughter. Ellen smiled at her brightly, andwas not deceived. "I keep pretty busy, " she said. Mis' Abby Winslow, who was not deceived either, hastened to the subjectof Mary. "I should think Mary Chavah had enough to do, too, " she said, "but she'sgoing to take Lily's little boy. Had you heard?" "No, " Ellen said, and stopped shaving silver polish. "He's coming in two weeks, " Mis' Winslow imparted; "she told me soherself. She's got his room fixed up with owls on the wall paper. She'sbought him a washbasin with a rim of puppies, and a red stocking cap. Isaw her. " "How old is he?" Ellen asked, and worked again. "I never thought to ask her, " Mis' Winslow confessed; "he must be quitea little fellow. But he's coming alone from some place out West. " "Hey, king and country, " Ellen's father said; "I'd hate to have a boycome here, with my head the way it is. " "And keeping the house all upset, " Ellen's mother said, and asked Mis'Winslow some question about Mary; and when she turned to Ellen again, "Why, Ellen Bourne, " she said, "you've shaved up every bit of thatcleaning polish and we're most done cleaning. " Ellen was looking at Mis' Winslow: "If you see her, " Ellen said, "youask her if I can't do anything to help. " Later in the day, happening in at Mis' Mortimer Bates's, Mis' Winslowfound Mis' Moran there before her, and asked what they had heard "aboutMary Chavah. " Something in that word "about" pricks curiosity itssharpest. "Have you heard about Mary Chavah?" "It's too bad about MaryChavah. " "Isn't it queer about Mary Chavah?"--each of these is likesetting flame to an edge of tissue. Omit "about" from the language, andyou abate most gossip. At Mis' Winslow's phrase, both women's eyebrowscurved to another arc. Mis' Winslow told them. "Ain't that nice?" said Mis' Moran, wholeheartedly; "I couldn't bring upanother, not with my back. But I'm glad Mary's going to know what itis. .. . " Mis' Mortimer Bates was glad, too, but being by nature a nonconformist, she took exception. "It's an awful undertaking for a single-handed woman, " she observed. But this sort of thing she said almost unconsciously, and the other twowomen regarded it with no more alarm than any other reflex. "It's no worse starting single-handed than being left single-handed, "offered Mis' Winslow somewhat ambiguously. "Lots does that's thrifty. " "Seems as if we could do a little something to help her get ready, seem's though, " Mis' Moran suggested; "I donno what. " "I thought I'd slip over after supper and ask her, " Mis' Winslow said;"maybe I'd best go now--and come back and tell you what she says. " Mis' Winslow found Mary Chavah sitting by her pattern bookcase, cuttingout a pattern. Mary's face was flushed and her eyes were bright, and shewent on with her pattern, thrilled by it as by any other creating. "I just thought of this, " Mary explained, looking vaguely at hervisitor. "It come to me like a flash when I was working on Mis' Bates'sbasque. Will you wait just a minute, and then I'll explain it out toyou. " Without invitation, Mis' Winslow laid aside her coat and waited, watching Mary curiously. She was cutting and folding and pinning hertissue paper, oblivious of any presence. Alarm, suspense, doubt, solution, triumph, came and went, and neither woman was conscious thatthe flame of creation burned and breathed in the room as truly as if theproduct were to be acknowledged. "There!" Mary cried at last. "See it--can't you see it?--in gray wool?" It was the pattern for a boy's topcoat, cunningly cut in new lines ofseam and revers, with a pocket, a bit of braid, a line of buttons laidin as delicately as the factors in any other good composition. Mis'Winslow inevitably recognized its utility, exclaimed, and wondered. "Mary Chavah! How did you know how to do things for children?" "How did you know how?" Mary inquired coolly. "Why, I've had 'em, " Mis' Winslow offered simply. "Do you honestly think that makes any difference?" Mary asked. Mis' Winslow gasped, in the immemorial belief that the physical basis ofmotherhood is the guarantee of both spiritual and physical equipment. "Could you have cut out that coat?" Mary asked. Mis' Winslow shook her head. She was of those whose genius is forcutting over. "Well, " said Mary, "I could. It ain't having 'em that teaches you to dofor 'em. You either know how, or you don't know how. That's all. " Mis' Winslow reflected that she could never make Mary understand--thoughany mother, she thought complacently, would know in a minute. Thecutting of the coat did give her pause; but then, she summed it up, coat included, "Mary was queer"--and let it go at that. "I didn't know, " Mis' Winslow said then, "but what I could help you someabout the little boy's coming. Seven-under-fifteen does teach yousomething, you've got to allow. Mebbe I could tell you something, nowand then. Or if we could do anything to help you get ready for him. .. . " "Oh, " said Mary, in swift penitence, "thank you, Mis' Winslow. After hecomes, maybe. But these things now I don't mind doing. The realnuisance'll come afterwards, I s'pose. " Mis' Winslow smiled in soft triumph. "_Nuisance!_" she said. "That's what I meant comes to you by having 'em. You don't think so much of the nuisance part as you did before. " "Then you don't look the thing in the face, " said Mary, calmly. "That'sall about that. " "Well, " Mis' Winslow said pacifically, "when's he coming?" "A week from Tuesday. A week from to-morrow, " Mary told her. Mis' Winslow looked at her intently, with the light of calculation inher narrowed eyes. "A week from Tuesday, " she said. "A week from Tuesday, " she repeated. "_A week from Tuesday!_" she exclaimed. "Why, Mary Chavah. That'sChristmas Eve. " It was some matter of recipes that was absorbing Mis' Bates and Mis'Moran when Mis' Winslow breathlessly returned to them. They were deep intradition, and in method, its buttonhole relation. During the wearyperiod when nutrition has been one of the two great problems thetremendous impulse that has nourished the world was alive in the facesof the two women, a kind of creative fire, such as had burned in Mary atthe cutting of her pattern. Asparagus escalloped with toast crumbs andbutter was for the moment symbol of all humanity's will to keep alive. "Ladies, " said Mis' Winslow, with no other preface, "what do you think?Mary Chavah's little boy is coming from Idaho with a tag on, and when doyou s'pose he's going to get here? Christmas Eve. " "Christmas Eve, " repeated Mis' Bates, whose mind never lightly forsookold ways or embraced a contretemps; "what a funny time to travel. " "Likely catch the croup and be down sick on Mary's hands the firstthing, " said Mis' Moran. "It's a pity it ain't the Spring of the year. " Mis' Winslow looked at them searchingly to see if her thought too faroutdistanced theirs. "What struck me all of a heap, " she said, "is his getting here then. _That_ night. Christmas Eve. " The three woman looked at one another. "That's so, " Mis' Moran said. "Him--that child, " Mis' Winslow put it, "getting here Christmas Eve, used to Christmas all his life, ten to one knowing in his head what hehopes he'll get. And no Christmas. And him with no mother. And her onlya month or so dead. " "Well, " said Mis' Mortimer Bates, "it's too bad it's happened so. But ithas happened so. You have to say that to your life quite often, Inotice. I don't know anything to do but to say it now. " Mis' Winslow had not taken off her cloak. She sat on the edge of herchair, with her hands deep in its pockets, her black knit "fascinator"fallen back from her hair. She was looking down at her cloth overshoes, and she went on speaking as if she had hardly heard what Mis' Bates hadinterposed. "He'll get in on the express, " she said; "Mary said so. She don't haveto go to the City to meet him. The man he travels with is going to puthim on the train in the City. The little fellow'll get here after dark. After dark on Christmas Eve. " "And no time for anybody to warn him that there won't be any Christmaswaiting for him, " Mis' Moran observed thoughtfully. "And like enough he'll bring a little something for Mary for a present, "Mis' Winslow went on. "How'll she feel _then_?" "Ain't it too bad it ain't last year?" Mis' Moran mourned. "Everythingcomes too late or too soon or not at all or else too much so, 'seemsthough. " Mis' Bates's impulse to nonconformity had not prevented her foreheadfrom being drawn in their common sympathy; but it was a sympathy thatsaw no practical way out and existed tamely as a high window and not asa wide door. "Well, " she said, "Mary ain't exactly the one to see it so. You'll neverget her to feel bad about anybody not having a Christmas. I donno, if itwas any other year, as she'd be planning any different. " "No, " said Mis' Winslow, thoughtfully, "Mary won't do anything. But wecould. " Mis' Bates's forehead took alarm--the alarm of the sympathetic hearerwho is challenged to be doer. "_Do?_" she repeated. "You can't go back on the paper at this late day. And you can't give him a Christmas and every other of our children nothave any just because we're their parents and still living. There ain'ta thing to do. " Mis' Winslow's eyes were still on her overshoes. "I don't believethere's _never_ 'not a thing' to do, " she said, "I don't believe it. " Mis' Bates looked scandalized. "That's nonsense, " she said sharply, "andit's sacrilegious besides. When God means a thing to happen, there's nota thing to do. What about earthquakes and--and cancers?" "I don't believe he ever means earthquakes and cancers, " said Mis'Winslow, to her overshoes. "Prevent 'em, then!" challenged Mis' Bates, triumphantly. Mis' Winslow looked up. Her eyes were shining as they had shonesometimes when one of her seven-under-fifteen had given its first signof consciousness of more than self. "I believe we'll do it some day, " she said. "I believe there's more tous than we've got any idea of. I believe there's so much to us that oneof us that found out about it and told the rest would get hounded out oftown. But even now, I bet there's enough to us to do something everytime--something every time, no matter what. And I believe there'ssomething we can do about this little orphaned boy's Christmas, if wenip our brains on to it in the right place. " "Oh, dear, " said Mis' Moran, "sometimes when I think about Christmas Ialmost wish we almost hadn't done the way we're going to do. " Mis' Bates stiffened. "Jane Moran, " she said, "do you think it's right to go head over heelsin debt to celebrate the birth of our Lord?" "No, " said Mis' Moran, "I don't. But--" "And you know nobody in Old Trail Town could afford any extravagancethis year?" "Yes, " said Mis' Moran, "I do. Still--" "And if part could and part couldn't, that makes it all the worse, don'tit?" "I know, " said Mis' Moran, "I know. " "Well, then, " said Mis' Bates triumphantly, "we've done the only waythere is to do. Land knows, I wish there was another way. But thereain't. " Mis' Winslow looked up from her overshoes. "I don't believe there's never 'no other way, '" she said. "There'salways another way. .. . " "Not without money, " said Mis' Bates. "Money, " Mis' Winslow said, "money. That's like setting up one day ofpeace on earth, good will to men, and asking admission to it. " "Mis' Winslow, " said Mis' Moran, sadly, "what's the use of sayinganything? You know as well as I do that Christmas is abused all up anddown the land, and made a day of expense and extravagance and folksoverspending themselves. And we've stopped all that in Old Trail Town. And now you're trying to make us feel bad. " "I ain't, " said Mis' Winslow, "we felt bad about it already, and youknow it. I'm glad we've stopped all that. But I wish't we had somethingto put in its place. I wish't we had. " "What in time are them children doing?" said Mis' Moran, abruptly. The three women looked. On the side lawn, where a spreading balsam hadbeen left untrimmed to the ground, stood little Emily Moran and Gussieand Bennet and Tab and Pep. And the four boys had their caps in theirhands, and Gussie, having untied her own hood, turned to take off littleEmily's. The wind, sweeping sharply round the corner of the house, blewtheir hair wildly and caught at muffler ends. Mis' Bates and Mis'Moran, with one impulse, ran to the side door, and Mis' Winslowfollowed. "Emily, " said Mis' Moran, "put on your hood this minute. " "Gussie, " said Mis' Bates, "put on your cap this instant second. Whatyou got it off for? And little Emily doing as you do--I'm su'prised atyou. " The children consulted briefly, then Pep turned to the two women, by nowcoming down the path, Mis' Bates with her apron over her head, Mis'Moran in her shawl. "Please, " said Pep, "it's a funeral. An' we thought we'd ought to takeour caps off till it gets under. " "A funeral, " said Mis' Bates. "Who you burying?" "It's just a rehearsal funeral, " Pep explained; "the real one's going tobe Christmas. " By now the two women were restoring hood and stocking cap to the littlegirls, and it was Mis' Winslow, who had followed, who spoke to Pep. "Who's dead, Pep?" she asked. Between the belief of "Who's dead?" and the skepticism of "Who youburying?" the child was swift to distinguish. "Sandy Claus, " he answered readily. Mis' Winslow stood looking down at him. Pep stepped nearer. "We're doing it for little Emily, " he said confidentially. "She couldn'tget it straight about where Sandy Claus would be this Christmas. Therest of us--knew. But Emily's little--so we thought we'd play bury himon her 'count. " Mis' Bates, who had not heard, turned from Gussie. "Going to do _what_ on Christmas?" she exclaimed. "You ain't to do athing on Christmas. Or ain't you grown up, after all?" "Well, we thought a Christmas funeral wouldn't hurt, " interposed Bennet, defensively. "Can't we even have a funeral for fun on Christmas?" heended, aggrieved. "It's Sandy Claus's funeral, " observed little Emily putting a curl fromher face. "We're goin' dress up a Sandy Claus, you know, " Pep added, _sotto voce_. "It's going to be right after breakfast, Christmas. " "Come on, come ahead, fellows, " said Bennet; "I'll be corpse. Keep yourlids on. I don't mind. Go ahead, sing. " Already Mis' Winslow was walking back to the house; the other two womenovertook her; and from the porch they heard the children begin tosing:-- "_Go bury Saint Nicklis. .. . _" The rest was lost in the closing of the door. Back in the sitting room the women stood looking at one another. Mis'Bates was frowning and all Mis' Moran's expressions were on the vergeof dissolving; but in Mis' Winslow's face it was as though she had foundsome new way of consciousness. "Ladies, " Mis' Winslow said, "them children are out there pretending tobury Santa Claus--and so are we. And I bet we can't any of us do it. " In the room, there was a moment of silence in which familiar thingsseemed to join with their way of saying, "We've been keeping still allthe while!" Then Mis' Winslow pushed her hair, regardless of itsparting, straight back from her forehead, --a gesture with which shecharacterized any moment of stress. "Ladies, " she said, "I don't want we should go back on our paper, either. But mebbe there's more to Christmas than it knows about--or thanwe know about. Mebbe we can do something that won't interfere with thepaper we've all signed, and yet that'll be something that is something. Mebbe they's things to use that ain't never been used yet. .. . Oh, Idonno. Nor I guess you donno. But let's us find out!" IX Christmas Week came. Cities by thousands made preparation. Great shops took on vast cargoesof silk and precious things and seemed ready to sail about, distributinggifts to the town, and thought better of it, and let folk come innumbers to them to pay toll for what they took. Banks opened their doorsand poured out, now a little trickling stream of pay envelopes, now atorrent of green and gold. Flower stalls drew tribute from a millionpots of earth where miracles had been done. Pastry counters, those mockcommissariats, delicately masking as servants to necessity, made readytheir pretty pretences to nutrition. The woods came moving in--acres ofliving green, taken in their sleep, their roots left faithful to atryst with the sap, their tops summoned to bear an hybrid fruitage. Fromcathedrals rose the voices of children now singing little carols andhymns in praise of the Christ-child, now speaking little verses inpraise of the saint, Nicholas, now clamouring for little newpossessions. And afar from the fields that lay empty about the clusteredroofs of towns came a chorus of voices of the live things, beast andfowl, being offered up in the gorgeous pagan rites of the day. Hither and yonder in every city the grown townsfolk ran. The most hadlists of names, --Grace, Margaret, Laura, Alice, Miriam, John, Philip, Father, Mother, --beautiful names and of rich portent, so that, remembering the time, one would have said that these were entered therewith some import of special comradeship, of being face to face, ofhaving realized in little what will some day be true in large. But onlooking closer, the lists were found to have quite other connotations:as, Grace, bracelet; Margaret, spangled scarf; Laura, chafing-dish;Philip, smoking set; Father (Memo: Ask mother what she thinks he'dlike). And every name, it seemed, stood for some bestowal of newproperty, mostly of luxuries, and chiefly of luxuries of decoration. Andthe minds of the buying adults were like lakes played upon by clouds andstorm birds and lightning, and, to be sure, many stars--but all inunutterable confusion. Also from the cargo-laden shops there came other voices in thousands, but these were mostly answers. And when one, understanding Christmas, listened to hear what part in it these behind the counter played, heheard from them no voice of sharing in the theory of peace, or even oftruce, but instead:-- "Two a yard and double width. Jewelry is in the Annex. Did you wantthree pairs of each? Veils and neckwear three aisles over. Leather, glassware, baskets, ribbons, down the store beyond the notions. Toys anddolls are in the basement--toys and dolls are in the basement. Jewelryis in the Annex. .. . " So that a great part of the town seemed some strong chorus of invocationto new possessions. But there were other voices. Whole areas of every town lay, perforce, within the days of Christmas Week--it must have been so, for there isonly one calendar to embrace humanity, as there is only one way of birthand breath and death, one source of tears, one functioning for laughter. But to these reaches of the town the calendar was like another thing, for though it was upon them in name, its very presence was withdrawn. Inthose ill-smelling stairways and lofts there was little to divulge theimminence of anything other than themselves. And wherever some echo ofChristmas Week had crept, the wistfulness or the lust was for possessionalso; but here one could understand its insistence. So here the voicessaid only, "I wish--I wish, " and "I choose this--and this, " at windows;or, "If I had back my nickel. .. . " "Don't you go expecting nothink!" Andover these went the whirr of machinery, beat of treadles, throb ofengines, or the silence of forced idleness, or of the disease ofdereliction. It was a time of many pagan observances, as when some weredecked in precious stuffs and some were thrown to lions. To all these in the towns Christmas Week came. And of them all not manystood silent and looked Christmas Week in the face. Yet it is a humanexperience that none is meant to die without sharing. For the season isthe symbol of what happens to folk if they claim it. Christmas is the time of withdrawal of most material life. It is thetime when nature subtracts the externals, hides from man the phenomenaof even her evident processes. Left alone, his thought turns inward andoutward--which is to say, it lays hold upon the flowing force soslightly externalized in himself. If he finds in his own being athousand obstructions, a thousand persons, --dogs, sorcerers, whoremongers, --he will try to escape from them all, back to theexternals. But if he finds there a channel which the substance of beingis using, he will be no stranger, but a familiar, with himself. Onlywhen the channel has been long cleared, when there has left it allconsciousness of striving, of self in any form, only when he findshimself empty, ready, immaculate, will he have the divine adventure. Forit is then that in him the spirit of God will have its birth, then thathe will first understand his own nature . .. The nature of being. Then the turn of the year comes in, the year begins to mount. Birth isin it, growth is in it, Spring is in it. Sometime, away back inbeginnings, they knew this. They knew that the time of the Wintersolstice is in some strange fashion the high moment of the year, as thebeginning of new activity in nature and in the gods. They solemnized thereturn of the fiery sun wheel; they traced in those solstice days theoperations on earth of Odin and Berchta. They knew in themselves a thingthey could not name. And when the supreme experience took place inChrist, they made the one experience typify the other, and becameconscious of the divine nature of this nativity. So, by the illuminati, the prophets, the adepts, the time that followed was yearly setaside--forty days of dwelling within the temple of self, forty days ofreverence for being, of consciousness of new birth. Then the emergence, then the apotheosis of expression typifying and typified by Spring--thetime when bursting, pressing life almost breaks bounds, when birth andthe impulse to birth are in every form of life, without and within. These festivals are not arbitrary in date. They grow out of theuniversal experience. Is it not then cause for stupefaction that this time of "divinebestowal" should have become so physical a thing? From the ancientperception, to have slipped into a sense of annual social comradeshipand good will and peace was natural and fine--to live in the little whatwill some day be true in the large. But from this to have plunged downinto a time of frantic physical bestowals, of "present trading, " oflists of Grace and Margaret and Philip, of teeming shops with huntingand hunted creatures within, of sacrificial trees and beasts, of asovereign sense of good for me and mine and a shameless show of Lordand Lady Bountiful . .. How can that have come about, how can the greatfestival have been so dishonoured? Not all dishonoured, for within it is its own vitality which nothing candishonour. Through all the curious variations which it receives at ourhands, something shines and sings: self-giving, joy giving, a vast, dimupflickering on humanity of what this thing really is that it seeks toobserve, this thing that grips men so that no matter what they areabout, they will drop it at the touch of the gong and turn to someexpression, however crooked and thwarted, of the real spirit of thetime. If in war, then bayonets are stacked and holly-wreathed, andcandles stuck on each point! If at sea, some sailor climbs out on thebowsprit with a wreath of green. If on the western plains, a turkeywishbone for target will make the sport, at fifty paces; if at home, some great extravagance or some humble gift or some poignant wish willpoint the day; if at church, then mass and carol; in certain hearts, reverence, --everywhere the time takes hold of folk and receives whateverof greatness or grotesqueness they choose to give it. .. . So, too, theactual and vital experience which it brings to humanity is universal, isoffered with cosmic regularity, cannot be escaped. Through all thetumult of the time, Christmas Week and the time that lies near to it isalways waiting to claim its own, to take to itself those who will not bedeceived, who see in the stupendous yearly pageant only the usualspectacle of humanity trying to say divine things in terms of thingsphysical, because the time for the universal expression is not yet come. When that time comes . .. When the time of the worship of _things_ shallbe past; when the tribal sense of holiday shall have given place to thefamily sense, and that family shall be mankind; when shall never be seenthe anomaly of celebrating in a glorification of little familytables--whose crumbs fall to those without--the birth of him whopreached brotherhood; and the mockery of observing with wanton spendingthe birth of him who had not where to lay his head; when the rudimentsof divine perception, of self-perception, of social perception, shallhave grown to their next estate; when the area of consciousness shall beextended yet farther toward the outermost; when that new knowledge withwhich the air is charged shall let man begin to know what he is . .. Whenthat time comes, they will look back with utmost wonder at our uncouthgropings to note and honour something whose import we so obscurelydiscern; but perhaps, too, with wonder that so much of human love anddivining should shine for us through the mists we make. X Two days before Christmas Ellen Bourne went through the new-fallen snowof their wood lot. Her feet left scuffled tracks clouded about by thebrushing of her gown's wet hem and by a dragging corner of shawl. Shecame to a little evergreen tree, not four feet tall, with low-growingboughs, and she stood looking at it until her husband, who was alsofollowing the snow-filled path, overtook her. "Matthew, " she said then, "will you cut me that?" Matthew Bourne stood with his ax on his shoulder and looked a questionin slow preparation to ask one. [Illustration: "THE CHILDREN BEGAN TO SING 'GO BURY SAINT NICKLIS'"] "I just want it, " she said; "I've--took a notion. " He said that she had a good many notions, it seemed to him. But he cutthe little tree, with casual ease and no compunctions, and they draggedit to their home, the soft branches patterning the snow and obscuringtheir footprints. "It's like real Christmas weather, " Ellen said. "They can't stop thatcoming, anyhow. " In the kitchen Ellen's father sat before the open oven door of thecooking stove, letting the snow melt from his heavy boots. "Hey, " he said, "I was beginning to think you'd forgot about supper. What was in the trap?" At once Ellen began talking rapidly. "Oh, " she said, "we'll have somemuffins to-night, father. The kind you like, with--" "Well, what was in the trap?" the old man demanded peevishly. "Whydon't you answer back? What was, Mat?" Matthew, drying his ax blade, looked at it with one eye closed. "Rabbit, " he said. "Where is it?" her father demanded. "It was a young one--not as big as your fist, " Ellen said. "I let it outbefore he got there. Where's mother?" "Just because a thing's young, it ain't holy water, " the old mancomplained. "Last time it was a squirrel you let go because it wasyoung--it's like being spendthrift with manna. .. . " he went on. Ellen's mother appeared, gave over to Ellen the supper preparations, contented herself with auxiliary offices of china and butter getting, and talked the while, pleased that she had something to disclose. "Ben Helders stopped in, " she told. "He's going to the City to-morrow. What do you s'pose after? A boy. He's going to take him to bring up andwork on the farm. " "Where's he going to get the boy?" Ellen asked. Her mother did not know, but Mrs. Helders was going to have a newdiagonal and she wanted the number of Ellen's pattern. Ben would stopfor it that night. Evenings their kitchen was a sitting room, and when the supper had beencleared away and the red cotton spread covered the table, Ellen askedher husband to bring in the little tree. She found a cracker box, handily cut a hole with a cooking knife, and set up the little tree bythe kitchen window. "What under the canopy--" said her mother, her voice cracking. "Oh, something to do in the evening, " Ellen answered. "Father's going topop me some corn to trim it with; aren't you, father? Mother, why don'tyou get you a good big darning needle and string what he pops?" "It'll make a lot of litter, " said her mother, but she brought theneedle, for something to do. "Hey, king and country, " said her father; "I'd ought to have somebodyhere to shell it for me. " "Who you trimming up a tree for?" her mother demanded; "I thought theywasn't to be any in town this year. " "It ain't Christmas yet, " Ellen said only. "I guess it won't do any hurttwo days before. " While the two worked, Ellen went to the cupboard drawer, and from behindher pile of kitchen towels she drew out certain things: walnuts, wrappedin shining yeast tinsel and dangling from red yarn; wishbones tied withstrips of bright cloth; a tiny box, made like a house, with rudely cutdoors and windows; eggshells penciled as faces; a handful of peanutowls; a glass-stoppered bottle; a long necklace of buttonhole twistspools. A certain blue paper soldier doll that she had made wasupstairs, but the other things she brought and fastened to the tree. Her husband smoked and uneasily watched her. He saw somewhat within herplan, but he was not at home there. "If the boy _had_ lived and _had_been up-chamber asleep now, " he thought once, "it'd be something like, to go trimming up a tree. But _this_ way--" "What you leaving the whole front of the tree bare for?" her motherasked. "The blue paper soldier goes there. I want it should see the blue papersoldier first thing. .. . " Ellen said, and stopped abruptly. "You talk like you was trimming the tree for somebody, " her motherobserved, aggrieved. "Maybe something might look in the window--going by, " Ellen said. "Get in there! Get your heads in there, ye beggars!" said the old man tothe popcorn. "I'd ought to have somebody here to pick up them shootingkernels, " he complained. In a little while, with flat-footed stamping, Ben Helders came in. Whenhe had the pattern number, by laborious copying against the wall underthe bracket lamp, Matthew said to him:-- "Going to get a boy to work out, are you?" Helders laughed and shifted. "He's going to work by and by, " he said. "We allow to have him toourselves a spell first. " "Keep him around the house till Spring?" "More, " said Helders. "You see, " he added, "it's like this with us . .. Family all gone, all married, and got their own. We figured to get holdof a little shaver and have some comfort with him before he goes towork, for life. " "Adopt him?" said Matthew, curiously. "That's pretty near it, " Helders admitted. "We've got one spoke for atthe City Orphand Asylum. " Ellen Bourne turned. "How old?" she asked. "Around five--six, we figure. " Helders said it almost sheepishly. Ellen stood facing the men, with the white festoons of popcorn in herhands. "Matthew, " she said, "let him bring us one. " Matthew stared. "You mean bring us a boy?" he asked. "I don't care which--girl or boy. Anything young, " Ellen said. "Good Lord, Ellen, " Matthew said, with high eyebrows, "ain't you gotyour hands full enough now?" Ellen Bourne lifted her hands slightly and let them fall. "No, " sheanswered. The older woman looked at her daughter, and now first she wassolicitous, as a mother. "Ellen, " she said, "you have, too, got your hands full. You're wore outall the time. " "That's it, " Ellen said, "and I'm not wore out with the things I want todo. " "Hey, king and country!" the old man cried, upsetting the popper. "Don'tget a child around here underfoot. I'm too old. I deserve grown folks. My head hurts me--" "Matthew, " said Ellen to her husband, "let Helders bring us one. To-morrow--for Christmas, Mat!" Matthew looked slowly from side to side. It seemed incredible that solarge a decision should lie with a man so ineffectual. "'Seems like we'd ought to think about it a while first, " he saidweakly. "Think about it!" said Ellen. "When haven't I thought about it? Whenhave I thought about anything else but him we haven't got any more?" "Ellen!" the mother mourned, "you don't know what you're taking onyourself--" "Hush, mother, " Ellen said gently; "you don't know what it is. You hadme. " She faced Helders. "Will you bring two when you come back to-morrownight?" she said; "and one of them for us?" Helders looked sidewise at Matthew, who was fumbling at his pipe. "Wouldn't you want to see it first, now?" Helders temporized. "And agirl or a boy, now?" "No--I wouldn't want to see it first--I couldn't bear to choose. Onehealthy--from healthy parents--and either girl or boy, " Ellen said, andstopped. "The nicest tree thing I've made is for a boy, " she owned. "It's a paper soldier. .. . I made these things for fun, " she added toHelders. For the first time Helders observed the tree. Then he looked in thewoman's face. "I'll fetch out a boy for you if you say so, " he said. "Then do, " she bade. When the four were alone again, Mat sat looking at the floor. "Everyheadlong thing I've ever done I've gone headlong over, " he saidgloomily. Ellen took a coin from the clock shelf. "When Ben goes past to-morrow, "she merely said, "you'll likely see him. Have him get some littlecandles for the tree. " "My head hurts me, " the old man gave out; "this ain't the place for agreat noisy boy. " Ellen put her hand on his shoulder almost maternally. "See, dear, " she said, "then you'd be grandfather. " "Hey?" he said; "not if it was adopted, I wouldn't. " "Why, of course. That would make it ours--and yours. See, " she cried, "you've been stringing popcorn for it already, and you didn't know!" "Be grandfather, would I?" said the old man. "Would I? Hey, king andcountry! Grandfather again. " Ellen was moving about the kitchen lightly, with that manner, whicheager interest brings, of leaving only half footprints. "Come on, mother, " she said, "we must get the popcorn strung for sure, now!" The mother looked up at the tree. "Seems as if, " she said, wrinkling herforehead, "I used to make pink tarleton stockings for your trees andfill 'em with the corn. I donno but I've got a little piece of pinktarleton somewheres in my bottom drawer. .. . " . .. Next night they had the bracket lamp and the lamp on the shelf andthe table hand lamp all burning. The little tree was gay with the whitecorn and the coloured trifles. The kitchen seemed to be centering in thetree, as if the room had been concerned long enough with the doings ofthese grown folk and now were looking ahead to see who should come next. It was the high moment of immemorial expectancy, when those who arealive turn the head to see who shall come after. "What you been making all day, daddy?" Ellen asked, tense at every soundfrom without. Her father, neat in his best clothes, blew away a last plume of shavedwood and held out something. "I just whittled out a kind of a clothespin man, " he explained. "I madeone for you, once, and you liked it like everything. Mebbe a boy won't?"he added doubtfully. "Oh, but a boy will!" Ellen cried, and tied the doll above the bluepaper soldier. "Hadn't they ought to be here pretty soon?" Matthew asked nervously. "Where's mother?" "She's watching from the front room window, " Ellen answered. Once more Helders came stamping on the kitchen porch, but this timethere was a patter of other steps, and Ellen caught open the door beforehe summoned. Helders stepped into the room, and with him was a littleboy. "This one?" Ellen asked, her eyes alive with her eagerness. But Helders shook his head. "Mis' Bourne, " he said, "I'm real dead sorry. They wa'n't but the one. Just the one we'd spoke for. " "_One!_" Ellen said; "you said Orphan Asylum. " "There's only the one, " Helders repeated. "The others is little bits ofbabies, or else spoke for like ours--long ago. It seems they do thatway. But I want you should do something: I want you and Matthew shouldtake this one. Mother and I--are older . .. We ain't set store so much. .. . " Ellen shook her head, and made him know, with what words she could find, that it could not be so. Then she knelt and touched at the coat of thechild, a small frightened thing, with cap too large for him and onemitten lost. But he looked up brightly, and his eyes stayed on theChristmas tree. Ellen said little things to him, and went to take downfor him some trifle from the tree. "I'm just as much obliged, " she said quietly to Helders. "I neverthought of there not being enough. We'll wait. " Helders was fumbling for something. "Here's your candles, I thought you might want them for somethin' else, "he said, and turned to Matthew: "And here's your quarter. I didn't getthe toy you mentioned. I thought you wouldn't want it, without thelittle kid. " Matthew looked swiftly at Ellen. He had not told her that he had sent byHelders for a toy. And at that Ellen crossed abruptly to her husband, and she was standing there as they let Helders out, with the little boy. Ellen's father pounded his knee. "But how long'll we have to wait? How long'll we have to wait?" hedemanded shrilly. "King and country, why didn't somebody ask him that?" Matthew tore open the door. "Helders!" he shouted, "how long did they say we'd have to wait?" "Mebbe only a week or two--mebbe longer, " Helders' voice came out of thedark. "They couldn't tell me. " Ellen's mother stood fastening up a fallen tinsel walnut. "Let's us leave the tree right where it is, " she said. "Even with ithere, we won't have enough Christmas to hurt anything. " XI On that morning of the day before Christmas, Mary Chavah woke early, while it was yet dark. With closed eyes she lay, in the grip of a dreamthat was undissipated by her waking. In the dream she had seen a littletown lying in a hollow, lighted and peopled, but without foundation. "It isn't born yet, " they told her, who looked with her, "and the peopleare not yet born. " "Who is the mother?" she had asked, as if everything must be born ofwoman. "You, " they had answered. On which the town had swelled and rounded and swung in a hollow ofcloud, globed and shining, like the world. "You, " they had kept on saying. The sense that she must bear and mother the thing had grasped her withall the sickening force of dream fear. And when the dream slipped intothe remembrance of what the day would bring her, the grotesque terrorhardly lessened, and she woke to a sense of oppression and comingcalamity such as not even her night of decision to take the child hadbrought to her, a weight as of physical faintness and sickness. "I feel as if something was going to happen, " she said, over and over. She was wholly ignorant that in that week just passed the word had beenliberated and had run round Old Trail Town in the happiest opensecrecy:-- ". .. Coming way from Idaho, with a tag on, Christmas Eve. We thought ifeverybody could call that night--just run into Mary's, you know, like itwas any other night, and take in a little something to eat--no presents, you know . .. Oh, of course, no presents! Just supper, in a basket. We'dall have to eat _some_-where. It won't be any Christmas celebration, ofcourse--oh, no, not with the paper signed and all. But just for us tokind of meet and be there, when he gets off the train from Idaho. " "Just . .. Like it was any other night. " That was the part that abatedsuspicion. Indeed, that had been the very theory on which thenonobservance of Christmas had been based: the day was to be treatedlike any other day. And, obviously, on any other day such a simple planas this for the welcoming of a little stranger from Idaho would havegone forward as a matter of course. Why deny him this, merely becausethe night of his arrival chanced to be Christmas Eve? When Christmas wasto be treated _exactly_ as any other day? If, in the heart of Mis' Abby Winslow, where the plan had originated, ithad originated side by side with the thought that the point of the planwas the incidence of Christmas Eve, she kept her belief secret. The openargument was unassailable, and she contented herself with that. EvenSimeon Buck, confronted with it, was silent. "Goin' back on the paper, are you?" he had at first said, "and hev acelebration?" "Celebration of what?" Mis' Winslow demanded; "celebration of thatlittle boy getting here all alone, 'way from Idaho. And we'd celebratethat any other night, wouldn't we? Of course we would. Our paper signingdon't call for us to give everybody the cold shoulder as I know of, justbecause it's Christmas or Christmas Eve, either. " "No, " Simeon owned, "of course it don't. Of course it don't. " As for Abel Ames, he accepted the proposal with an alacrity which he wasput to it to conceal. "So do, " he said heartily, "so do. I guess we can go ahead just like itwas a plain day o' the week, can't we?" "Hetty, " he said to his wife, whom that noon he went through the houseto the kitchen expressly to tell, "can you bake up a basket of stuff totake over to Mary Chavah's next Tuesday night?" She looked up from the loaf she was cutting, the habitual wonder of herchildish curved lashes accented by her sudden curving of eyebrows. "Next Tuesday?" she said, "Why, that's Christmas eve!" Abel explained, saying, "What of that?" and trying to speakindifferently but, in spite of himself, shining through. "Well, that's kind of nice to do, ain't it?" she answered. "My, yes, " Abel said, emphatically, "It's a thing to do--that's thething to do. " It was Mis' Mortimer Bates, the nonconformist by nature, in whom doubtscame nearest to expression. "I _don't_ know, " she said, "it kind of _does_ seem like hedging. " "They ain't anybody for it to seem to, " Mis' Winslow contendedreasonably, "but us. And we understand. " "We was going to do entirely without a Christmas this year. Entirelywithout, " Mis' Bates rehearsed. "Was we going to do entirely without everyday, week-day, year-in-and-year-out milk of human kindness?" Mis' Winslow demanded. "Well, then, let's us use a little of it, same as we would on a Mondaywash day. " No voice was raised in real protest. None who had signed the paper andnone who had not done so could take exception to this simple way ofhospitality to the little stranger with a tag on. And it was the gloryof the little town being a little town that they somehow let it be knownthat every one was expected to look in at Mary's that night. No one wasuninvited. And this was like a part of the midwinter mystery expressingitself unbidden. Mary alone was not told. She had consistently objected to the Christmasobservances for so long that they feared the tyranny of her custom. "Shemight not let us do it, " they said, "but if we all get there, she can'thelp liking it. She would on any other day. .. . " . .. So she alone in Old Trail Town woke that morning before Christmaswith no knowledge of this that was afoot. And yet the day was not likeany other day, because she lay there dreading it more. She had cleared out her little sleeping room, as she had cleared thelower floor. The chamber, with its white-plastered walls, and boardsnearly bare, and narrow white bed, had the look of a cell, in the firstlight struggling through the single snow-framed window. Here, since herchildhood she had lain nightly; here she had brought her thought of AdamBlood, and had seen the thought die and had watched with it; here shehad lain on the nights after her parents had died; here she had rested, body-sick with fatigue, in the years that she had toiled to keep herhome. In all that time there had gone on within her many kinds of death. She had arrived somehow at a dumb feeling that these dyings weregradually uncovering her self from somewhere within; rather, uncoveringsome self whose existence she only dimly guessed. "They's two of me, "she had thought more often of late "and we don't meet--we don't meet. "She lived among her neighbors without hate, without malice; for yearsshe had "meant nothing but love"--and this not negatively. The rebellionagainst Christmas was against only the falsity of its meaninglessobservance. The rebellion against taking the child, though somewhatgrounded in her distrust of her own fitness, was really the last vestigeof a self that had clung to her, in bitterness not toward Adam, buttoward Lily. Ever since she had known that the child was coming she hadfelt a kind of spiritual exhaustion, sharpened by the strange sense ofoppression that hung upon her like an illness. "I feel as if something was going to happen, " she kept saying. In a little while she leaned toward the window at her bed's head, andlooked down the hill toward Jenny's. Her heart throbbed when she saw alight there. Of late, when she had waked in the night, she had alwayslooked, but always until now the little house had been wrapped in thedarkness. Because of that light, she could not sleep again, and sopresently she rose, and in the sharp chill of the room, bathed anddressed, though what had once been her savage satisfaction in bravingthe cold had long since become mere undramatic ability to endure itwithout thinking. With Mary, life and all its constructive rites had wonwhat the sacrificial has never been able to achieve--the soul of thecasual, of, so to say, second nature, which is last nature, and naturetriumphant. While she was at breakfast Mis' Abby Winslow came in. "Mercy, " Mis' Winslow said, "is it breakfast--early? I've been up hours, frosting the cakes. " "What cakes?" Mary asked idly. Mis' Winslow flushed dully. "I ain't baked anything much in weeksbefore, " she answered ambiguously, and hurried from the subject. "The little fellow's coming in on the Local, is he?" she said. "Youain't heard anything different?" "Nothing different, " Mary replied. "Yes, of course he's coming. Theyleft there Saturday, or I'd have heard. The man he's with is going toget home to-night for Christmas with his folks in the City. " "Going down to meet him of course, ain't you, " Mis' Winslow pursuedeasily. "Why, yes, " said Mary. "Well, " Mis' Winslow mounted her preparation, "I was thinking it wouldbe kind of dark for you to bring him in here all alone. Don't you want Ishould come over and keep up the lights and be here when you get here?" She watched Mary in open anxiety. If she were to refuse, it would gorather awkwardly. To her delight Mary welcomed with real relief thesuggestion. "I'd be ever so much obliged, " she said; "I thought of asking somebody. I'll have a little supper set out for him before I leave. " "Yes, of course, " Mis' Winslow said, eyes down. "I'll be over aboutseven, " she added. "If the train's on time, you'll be back here aroundhalf past. The children want to go down with you--they can be at Mis'Moran's when you go by. You'll walk up from the depot, won't you? Youdo, " she said persuasively; "the little fellow'll be glad to stretch hislegs. And it'll give the children a chance to get acquainted. " "I might as well, " Mary assented listlessly. "There's no need to hurryhome, as I know of, except keeping you waiting. " "Oh, I don't mind, " Mis' Winslow told her. "Better come around throughtown, too. It's some farther, but he'll like the lights. What's thelittle chap's name?" she asked; "I donno's I've heard you say. " Mary flushed faintly. "Do you know, " she said, "I don't know his name. Ican't remember that Lily ever told me. They always called him just_Yes_, because he learned to say that first. " "'_Yes!_'" repeated Mis' Winslow, blankly. "Why, it don't sound to mereal human. " Later in the day, Mis' Mortimer Bates and Mis' Moran came in to seeMary. Both were hurried and tired, and occasionally one of them lapsedinto some mental calculation. "We must remember something for the middleof the table, " Mis' Bates observed to Mis' Moran, under cover of Mary'sputting wood in the stove. And when Mary related the breaking of thebracket lamp, the two other women telegraphed to each other a glance ofmemorandum. "Don't it seem funny to _you_ to have Christmas coming on to-morrow andno flurry about it?" Mary asked. "_No flurry!_" Mis' Bates burst out. "Oh, well, " she amended, "of coursethis Christmas does feel a little funny to all of us. Don't you thinkso, Mis' Moran?" "I donno, " said Mary, thoughtfully, "but what, when folks stop chasingafter Christmas and driving it before them, Christmas may turn aroundand come to find them. " "Mebbe so, " Mis' Moran said with bright eyes, "mebbe so. Oh, Mary, " sheadded, "ain't it nice he's coming?" Mary looked at them, frowning a little. "It seemed like the thing had tohappen, " she said; "it'll fit itself in. " Before dark she took a last look about the child's room. The owl paper, the puppy washbasin, the huge calendar with its picture of a stag, theshelves for whatever things of his own he had, all pleased her newly. She had laid on his table her grandfather's Bible with pictures ofAsiatic places. Below his mirror hung his father's photograph, thatyoung face, with the unspeakable wistfulness of youth, looking somewhereoutside the picture. It made her think of the passionate expectation inthe face of the picture that Jenny had brought. "Young folks in pictures always look like they was setting store bysomething that ain't true yet, " Mary thought. "It makes you kind of feelyou have to pitch in and make whatever it is come true, a little. .. . " It was when Mis' Winslow came back toward seven o'clock that there wasnews of Jenny. Mary had been twice to her door in the course of theday, and had come away feeling, in her inquiry, strangely outside themoment and alien to its incidence, as if she were somehow less alivethan those in Jenny's house. "Jenny's got a little girl, " Mis' Winslow said. Mary stood staring at her. It seemed impossible. It was like seeing thehands of time move, like becoming momentarily conscious of the swing andrush of the earth, like perceiving the sweep of the stream of stars inwhich our system moves. .. . She was startled and abashed that the news soseized upon her. Little that had ever happened to herself seemed sopoignant, so warmed its place in sensation. While Mis' Winslow's mindmarked time on details of time and pounds, as is the way with usimmortals when another joins our ranks, Mary was receiving moreconsciousness. There are times when this gift is laid on swiftly, aswith hands, instead of coming when none knows. Rather than with thechild whom she was to meet, her thought was with Jenny as she left Mis'Winslow in the doorway and went down the street. "Expect you back in about half an hour if the train's on time, " Mis'Winslow called. Mary nodded, and turned into the great cathedral aisle that was OldTrail Street, now arched and whitened, spectral in the dark, silver withstarlight. .. . . .. Capella was in the east, high and bright, and as imperative asspeech. Mary's way lay north, so that that great sun went beside her, and there was no one else abroad but these two. A coat of ice hadpolished the walks, so she went by the road, between the long whitemounds that lined it. The road, whose curves were absorbed in thedimness, had thus lost its look of activity and lay inert as any frozenwaterway. Only a little wind, the star's sparkle, and Mary's step andbreath seemed living things--but from the rows of chimneys up and downthe Old Trail Road, faint smoke went up, a plume, a wreath, a veil, where the village folk, invisible within quiet roof and wall, liftedcommon signals; and from here a window and there a window, a light shoneout, a point, a ray, a glow, so that one without would almost say, "There's home. " The night before Christmas; and in not one home was there anypreparation for to-morrow, Mary thought, unless one or two lawless oneshad broken bounds and contrived something, from a little remembrance forsomebody to a suet pudding. It was strange, she owned: no trees beingtrimmed, no churches lighted for practice, and the shops closed as onany other night. Only the post office had light--she went in to look inher box. Affer was there at the telegraph window, and he accosted her. "Little boy's comin' to-night, is he?" he said, as one of the sponsorsfor that arrival. "I'm on my way to the train now, " Mary answered, and noted the Christmasnotice with its soiled and dog-eared list still hanging on the wall. "Itwas a good move, " she insisted to herself, as she went out into theempty street again. "You got a merry Christmas without no odds of the paper or me either, "Affer called after her; but she did not answer save with her "Thank you, Mr. Affer. " "Why do they all pretend to think it's so fine for me?" she wondered. "To cheer me up, I guess, " she thought grimly. To-night they were all sharing the aloofness from the time, an aloofnesswhich she herself had known for years. All save Jenny. To Jenny's house, in defiance of that dog-eared paper in the post office, Christmas hadcome. Not a Christmas of "present trading, " not a Christmas of thingsat all; but _Christmas_. Unto them a child was born. "Jenny's the only one in this town that's got a real Christmas, " thoughtMary, on her way to meet her own little guest. The Simeon Buck North American Dry Goods Exchange was dark, too, andfrom its cave of window the gray Saint Nicholas looked out, bearing hisflag--and he to-night an idle, mummy thing of no significance. The AbelAmes General Merchandise Emporium was closed, but involuntarily Marystopped before it. In its great plate-glass window a single candleburned. She stood for a moment looking. "Why, that's what they do, some places, to let the Christ-child in, "Mary thought. "I wonder if Abel knows. How funny--for a store!" Some one whom she did not know passed her and looked too. "Kind o' nice, " said the other. "Real nice, " Mary returned, and went on with a little glow. Abel's candle, and the arc light shining like cold blue crystal beforethe dark Town Hall, and the post-office light where the dog-eared listhung and the telegraph key clicked out its pretence at hand touchingwith all the world, these were the only lights the street showed--saveCapella, that went beside her and, as she looked, seemed almost to standabove the town. At Mis' Moran's house on the other side of the square, the children werewaiting for her--Bennet and Gussie and Tab and Pep and little Emily. They ran before Mary in the road, all save little Emily, who walkedclasping Mary's hand. "Aren't you staying up late, Emily?" Mary asked her. "Yes, " assented the child, contentedly. "Won't you be sleepy?" Mary pursued. "I was going to stay awake anyhow, " she said; "I ain't goin' sleep allnight. We said so. We're goin' stay 'wake and see Santa Claus go by. " "Go by?" Mary repeated. "Yes, " the child explained; "you don't think that'll hurt, do you?" sheasked anxiously. "And then, " she pursued, "if we don't see him, we'llknow he's dead everywheres else, too. An' then we're goin' bury himto-morrow morning, up to Gussie's house. " At the station, no one was yet about. The telegraph instrument wasclicking there, too, signaling the world; a light showed in the officebehind a row of sickly geraniums; the wind came down through the cut andacross the tracks and swept the little platform. But the childrenbegging to stay outside, Mary stood in a corner by the telegraphoperator's bay window and looked across to the open meadows beyond thetracks and up at the great star. The meadows, sloping to an horizonhill, were even and white, as if an end of sky had been pulled down andspread upon them. Utter peace was there, not the primeval peace that isnegation, but a silence that listened. "'While shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on theground, . .. '" Mary thought and looked along the horizon hill. The timeneeded an invocation from some one who watched, as many voices, throughmany centuries, had made invocation on Christmas Eve. For a moment, looking over the lonely white places where no one watched, as noone--save only Jenny--watched in the town, Mary forgot the children. .. . The shoving and grating of baggage truck wheels recalled her. Justbeyond the bay window she saw little Emily lifted to the truck and thefour others follow, and the ten heels dangle in air. "Now!" said Pep. And a chant arose: "'Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care In the hope that Saint Nicholas soon would be there. .. . " Upborne by one, now by another, now by all three voices, the verses wenton unto the end. And it was as if not only Tab and Pep and Bennet andGussie and little Emily were chanting, but all children who had evercounted the days to Christmas and had found Christmas the one piece ofmagic that is looked on with kindness by a grown-up world. The magic ofswimming holes, for example, is largely a forbidden magic; the magic ofloud noises, of fast motion, of living things in pockets, of farjourneys, of going off alone, of digging caves, of building fires, ofhigh places, of many closed doors, words, mechanisms, foods, ownerships, manners, costumes, companions, and holidays are denied them. But inChristmas their affinity for mystery is recognized, encouraged, gratified, annually provided for. The little group on the baggage truckchanted their watch over a dead body of Christmas, but its magic wasthere, inviolate. The singsong verses had almost the dignity of lyricexpression, of the essence of familiarity with that which is unknown. Asif, because humanity had always recognized that the will to Christmaswas greater than it knew, these words had somehow been made to catchand reproduce, for generations, some faint spirit of the midwintermystery. The 'bus rattled up to the platform and Buff Miles leaped down andblanketed his horses, talking to them as was his wont. "So, holly and mistletoe, So, holly and mistletoe, So, holly, and mistletoe, Over and over and over, oh. .. . " he was singing as he came round the corner of the station. "It ain't Christmas yet, " he observed defensively to Mary. "It ain'tforbid except for Christmas Day, is it?" He went and bent over the children on the truck. "Look alive as soon as you can do it, " Mary heard him say to them, andwondered. She stood looking up the track. Across the still fields, lying emptyand ready for some presence, came flashing the point of flame thatstreamed from the headlight of the train. The light shone out like asignal flashed back to the star standing above the town. XII Ten minutes after Mary Chavah had left her house, every window waslighted, a fire was kindled in the parlour, and neighbours came from thedark and fell to work at the baskets they had brought. It was marvelous what homely cheer arose. The dining-room table, stretched at its fullest length and white-covered, was various with theyellow and red of fruit and salads, the golden brown of cake and rolls, and the mosaic of dishes. The fire roared in the flat-topped stove onwhose "wings" covered pans waited, and everywhere was that happy stirand touch and lift, that note of preparation which informs a time assunshine or music will strike its key. "My land, the oven--the warming oven. Mary ain't got one. However willwe keep the stuff hot?" Mis' Winslow demanded. "What time is it?" "We'd ought to had my big coffee-pot. We'd ought to set two going. Idonno why I didn't think of it, " Mis' Moran grieved. "Well, " said Mis' Mortimer Bates, "when the men get here--if they ever_do_ get here--we'll send one of 'em off somewheres for the truck weforgot. What time is it?" "Here comes a whole cartload of folks, " Mis' Moran announced. "I hopeand pray they've got the oysters--they'd ought to be popped in thebaking oven a minute. What time did you say it is?" "It's twenty minutes past seven, " Mis' Winslow said, pushing her hairstraight back, regardless of its part, "and we ain't ready within 'levenhundred miles. " "Well, if they only all get here, " Mis' Bates said, ringing golden andwhite stuffed eggs on Mary's blue platter; "it's their all being herewhen she gets here that I want. I ain't worried about the supper--much. " "The road's black with folks, " Mis' Moran went on. "I'm so _deadly_afraid I didn't make enough sandwiches. Oh, I donno why it wasn't givenme to make more, I'm sure. " "Who's seeing to them in the parlour? Who's getting their baskets outhere? Where they finding a place for their wraps? Who's lighting therest of the lamps? What time is it?" demanded Mis' Winslow, cutting hercakes. "Oh, " said Mis' Bates from a cloud of brown butter about the cookingstove, "I donno whether we've done right. I donno but we've broke ourword to the Christmas paper. I donno whether we ain't going to getourselves criticized for this as never folks was criticized before. " Mis' Moran changed her chair to the draughtless corner back of thecooking stove and offered to stir the savoury saucepan. "I know it, " she said, "I know it. We never planned much in the firststart. It grew and it grew like it grew with its own bones. But mebbethere's some won't believe that, one secunt. " Mis' Winslow straightened up from the table and held out a hand withfingers frosting-tipped. "Well, " she said, with a great period, "if we _have_ broke our word tothe Christmas paper, I'd rather stand up here with my word broke thisway than with it kept so good it hurt me. Is it half-past seven yet?" "I wish Ellen Bourne was here, " Mis' Bates observed. "She sent her saladdressing over and lent her silver and her Christmas rose for thetable--but come she would not. I wonder if she couldn't come over nowif we sent after her, last minute?" Simeon Buck, appearing a few minutes later at the kitchen door to set abasket inside, was dispatched for Ellen Bourne, the warming oven, andthe coffee-pot, collectively. He took with him Abel Ames, who waswaiting for him without. And it chanced that they knocked at theBournes' door just after Ben Helders had driven away with the littleboy, so that the men found the family still in the presence of thelittle tree. "Hello, " said Simeon, aghast, "Christmassing away all by yourselves, I'll be bound, like so many thieves. I rec'lect not seeing your names onthe paper. " "No, I didn't sign, " Ellen said. "I voted against it that night at thetown meeting, but I guess nobody heard me. " "Well, " said Simeon, "and so here you've got a Christmas of your owngoing forward, neat as a kitten's foot--" "Ain't you coming over to Mary Chavah's?" Abel broke in with a kind ofgentleness. "All of you?" Ellen smote her hands together. "I meant to go over later, " she said, "and take--" She paused. "Ithought we'd all go over later, " she said. "I forgot about it. Why, yes, I guess we can go now, can't we? All three of us?" Abel Ames stood looking at the tree. He half guessed that she might havedressed it for no one who would see it. He looked at Ellen and venturedwhat he thought. "Ellen, " he said, "if you ain't going to do anything more with that treeto-night, why not take some of the things off, and have Matthew set iton his shoulder, and bring it over to Mary's for the boy that'scoming?" Ellen hesitated. "Would they like it?" she asked. "Would folks?" Abel smiled. "I'll take the blame, " he said, "and you take the tree. "And seeing Simeon hesitate, "Now let's stop by for Mis' Moran'scoffee-pot, " he added. "Hustle up. The Local must be in. " So presently the tree, partly divested of its brightness, was carriedthrough the streets to the other house--in more than the magic whichattends the carrying in the open road of a tree, a statue, a cart filledwith flowers, --for the tree was like some forbidden thing that stillwould be expressed. "_He_ might not come till Christmas is 'way past, " Ellen thought, following. "She'll leave it standing a few days. We can go down thereand look at it--if he comes. " [Illustration: "THEIR WAY LED EAST BETWEEN HIGH BANKS OF SNOW"] A little way behind them, Simeon and Abel, with the coffee-pot and thewarming oven, were hurrying back to Mary's. They went down the desertedstreet where Abel's candle burned and Simeon's saint stood mute. "When I was a little shaver, " Abel said, "they used to have me stand inthe open doorway Christmas Eve, and hold a candle and say a verse. Iforget the verse. But I've always liked the candle in doors or windows, like to-night. Look at mine over there now--ain't it like somebodysaying something?" "Well, " said Simeon, not to be outdone, "when we come by my window justnow, the light hit down on it and I could of swore I see the saintsmile. " "Like enough, " said Abel, placidly, "like enough. You can't putChristmas out. I see that two weeks ago. " He looked back at his ownwindow. "If the little kid that come in the store last Christmas Evetries to come in again to-night, " he said, "he won't find it all pitchdark, anyway. I'd like to know who he was. .. . " Near the corner that turned down to the Rule Factory, they saw EbenezerRule coming toward them on the Old Trail Road. They called to him. "Hello, Ebenezer, " said Abel, "ain't you coming in to Mary Chavah'sto-night?" "I think not, " Ebenezer answered. "Come ahead, " encouraged Simeon. As they met, Abel spoke hesitatingly. "Ebenezer, " he said, "I was just figuring on proposing to Simeon here, that we stop in to your house--I was thinking, " he broke off, "how wouldit be for you and him and me, that sort of stand for the merchandise endof this town, to show up at Mary's house to-night--well, it's the womenhave done all the work so far--and I was wondering how it would be forus three to get there with some little thing for that little kid that'scoming to her--we could find something that wouldn't cost much--ithadn't _ought_ to cost much, 'count of our set principles. And take itto him. .. . " Abel ended doubtfully. Ebenezer simply laughed his curious succession of gutturals. "Crazy to Christmas after all, ain't you?" he said. But Simeon wheeled and stared at Abel. For defection in their own camphe had never looked. "I knew you'd miss it--I knew you'd miss it!" Simeon said excitedly, "cut paper and fancy tassels and--" "No such thing, " said Abel, shortly. "I was thinking of that boy gettinghere, that's all. And I couldn't see why we shouldn't do ourshare--which totin' coffee-pots and warming ovens _ain't_, as I seeit. " "Well, but my heavens, man!" said Simeon, "it's Christmas! You can't gogiving anybody anything, can you?" "I don't mean give it to him _for_ Christmas at all, " protested Abel. "Imean give it to him just like you would any other day. We'd likely takehim something if it wasn't Christmas? Sort of to show our good will, like the women with the supper? Well, why not take him some little thingeven if it is Christmas?" "Oh, well, " said Simeon, "that way. If you make it plain it ain't _for_Christmas--Of course, we ain't to blame for what day his train got inon. " "Sure we ain't, " said Abel, confidently. Ebenezer was moving away. "We'll call in for you in half an hour or so, " Abel's voice followedhim. "We'll slip out after the boy gets there. There won't be timebefore . .. What say, Ebenezer?" "I think not, " said Ebenezer; "you don't need me. " "Well--congratulations anyhow!" Abel called. Ebenezer stopped on the crossing. "What for?" he asked. "Man alive, " said Abel, "don't you know Bruce has got a little girl?" "No, " said Ebenezer, "I--didn't know. I'm obliged to you. " He turned from them, but instead of crossing the street to go to hishouse, he faced down the little dark street to the factory. He hadwalked past Jenny's once that evening, but without being able to forcehimself to inquire. He knew that Bruce had come a day or two before, butBruce had sent him no word. Bruce had never sent any word since theconditions of the failure had been made plain to him, when he hadresigned his position, refused the salary due him, and left Old TrailTown. Clearly, Ebenezer could make no inquiry under those circumstances, he told himself. They had cut themselves off from him, definitely. How definitely he was cut off from them was evident as he went down thedark street to the factory. He was strangely quickened, from head tofoot, with the news of the birth of Bruce's child. He went down towardthe factory simply because that was the place that he knew best, and hewanted to be near it. He walked in the snow of the mid-road, facing thewind, steeped in that sense of keener being which a word may pour in theveins until the body flows with it. The third generation; the next ofkin, --that which stirred in him was a satisfaction almost physical thathis family was promised its future. As he went he was unconscious, as he was always unconscious, of thelittle street. But, perhaps because Abel had mentioned Mary's house, henoted the folk, bound thither, whom he was meeting: Ben Torry, with abasket, and his two boys beside him; August Muir, carrying his littlegirl and a basket, and his wife following with a basket. Ebenezer spoketo them, and after he had passed them he thought about them for aminute. "Quite little families, " he thought. "I s'pose they get along. .. . Iwonder how much Bruce is making a week?" Nellie Hatch and her lame sister were watching at the lighted window, asif there were something to see. "Must be kind of dreary work for them--living, " he thought, ". .. Is'pose Bruce is pretty pleased . .. Pretty pleased. " At the corner, some one spoke to him with a note of pleasure in hisvoice. It was his bookkeeper, with his wife and two partly growndaughters. Ebenezer thought of his last meeting with his bookkeeper, andremembered the man's smile of perfect comprehension and sympathy, as ifthey two had something in common. "Family life does cling to a man, " he had said. That was his wife on his arm, and their two daughters. On that salary ofhis. .. . Was it possible, it occurred to Ebenezer, that she was savingegg money, earning sewing money, winning prizes for puzzles--as Lettyhad done? Outside the factory, the blue arc light threw a thousand shadows on thegreat bulk of the building, but left naked in light the little office. He stood looking at it, as he so rarely saw it, from part way across theroad. Seen so, it took on another aspect, as if it had emerged from somecostuming given it by the years. The office was painted brown, anddiscoloured. He saw it white, with lozenge panes unbroken, floweredcurtains at the windows, the light of lamp and wood stove shining out. And as sharply as if it had been painted on the air, he saw someunimportant incident in his life there--a four-wheel carriage drawn upat the door with some Christmas guests just arriving, and himself andLetty and Malcolm in the open doorway. He could not remember who theguests were, or whether he had been glad to see them, and he had no wishin the world to see those guests again. But the simple, casual, homelyincident became to him the sign of all that makes up everyday life, theeveryday life of folk--_of folks_--from which he had so long beenabsent. His eye went down the dark little street where were the houses of themen who were his factory "hands. " Just for a breath he saw them as theywere, --the chorus to the thing he was thinking about. They were allthinking about it, too. Every one of them knew what he knew. .. . Justfor a breath he saw the little street as it was: an entity. Then thesight closed, but through him ran again that sense of keener being, sopoignant that now, as his veins flowed with it, something deeper withinhim almost answered. He wheeled impatiently from where he stood. He wanted to do something. At the end of the street he could see them crossing under the light, ontheir way to Mary Chavah's. Abel and Simeon might stop for him . .. Buthow could he go there, among the folk whom he had virtually denied theirChristmas? What would they have to say to him? Yet what they should saywould, after all, matter nothing to him . .. And perhaps he would hearthem say something about Bruce and Jenny. Still, he had nothing to takethere, as Abel had suggested. What had he that a boy would want to have?Unless. .. . He thought for a moment. Then he crossed the street to what had been hishouse. He went in, seeing again the hallway and stair, red-carpeted, andthe door opened into the lamplit room beyond. He found and lighted anend of candle that he knew, and made his way up the stair. There he setthe candle down and lowered the ladder that led to the loft. In the loft, a gust of wind from the skylight blew out the flame of hislittle wick. In the darkness, the broken panes above his head lookeddown on him like a face, and that face the sky, thousand-eyed. Hemounted a box, pushed up the frame, and put out his head. The sky laynear. The little town showed, heaped roofs and lifting smoke, and hereand there a light. Sparkling in their midst was the light before theTown Hall, like an eye guarding something and answering to the lightbefore his factory and to the other light before the station, where theworld went by. High over all, climbing the east, came Capella, andseemed to be standing above the village. As he looked, the need to express what he felt beset Ebenezer. "Quite a little town, " he thought, "quite a little town. " He closed the glass, and groped in the darkness to where the roof, sloping sharply, met the door. There he touched an edge of somethingthat swayed, and he laid hold of and drew out that for which he hadcome: Malcolm's hobbyhorse. Downstairs in the hall he set it on the floor, examined it, rocked itwith one finger. The horse returned to its ancient office as if it wereirrevocably ordained to service. Ebenezer, his head on one side, stoodfor some time regarding it. Then he slipped something in its wornsaddle-pocket. Last, he lifted and settled the thing under his arm. "I donno but I might as well walk around by Mary Chavah's house, " hethought. "I needn't stay long. .. . " * * * * * At Mary Chavah's house the two big parlours, the hall, the stairs, thedining room, even the tiny bedroom with the owl wall paper, were filledwith folk come to welcome the little boy. And on the parlour table, setso that he should see it when first he entered, blazed Ellen Bourne'slittle tree. The coffee was hot on the stove, good things were ready onthe table, and the air was electric with expectation, with theexcitement of being together, with the imminent surprise to Mary, andwith curiosity about the little stranger from Idaho. "What'll we all say when he first comes in?" somebody asked. "Might say 'Merry Christmas, '" two or three suggested. "Mercy, no!" replied shocked voices, "not to Mary Chavah, especially. " But however they should say it, the time was quick with cheer. At quarter to eight the gate clicked. The word passed from one toanother, and by the time a step sounded on the porch the rooms werestill, save for the whispers, and a voice or two that kept unconsciouslyon in some remote corner. But instead of the door opening to admit Maryand her little boy, a hesitating knock sounded. Those nearest to the door questioned one another with startled looks, and one of them threw the door open. On the threshold stood Affer, thetelegraph operator, who thrust in a very dirty hand and a yellowenvelope. "We don't deliver nights, " he said, "but I thought she'd ought to havethis one. I'm going home to wash up, and then I'll be back, " he added, and left them staring at one another around the little lighted tree. XIII Before they could go out to find Mary, as a dozen would have done, shewas at the threshold, alone. She seemed to understand without wonder whythey were there, and with perfect naturalness she turned to them toshare her trouble. "He hasn't come, " she said simply. Her face was quite white, and because they usually saw her with a scarfor shawl over her head, she looked almost strange to them, for she worea hat. Also she had on an unfamiliar soft-coloured wrap that had beenher mother's and was kept in tissues. She had dressed carefully to go tomeet the child. "I might as well dress up a little, " she had thought, "and I guess he'll like colours best. " Almost before she spoke they put in her hands the telegram. They werepressing toward her, dreading, speechless, trying to hear what should beread. She stepped nearer to the light of the candles on the little tree, read, and reread in the stillness. When she looked up her face was soillumined that she was strange to them once more. "Oh, " she said, "it's his train. It was late for the Local. They've puthim on the Express, and it'll drop him at the draw. " The tense air crumpled into breathings, and a soft clamour filled therooms as they told one another, and came to tell her how glad they were. She pulled herself together and tried to slip into her natural manner. "It did give me a turn, " she confessed; "I thought he'd been--he'dgot. .. . " She went into the dining room, still without great wonder that they wereall there; but when she saw the women in white aprons, and the tablearrayed, and on it Ellen Bourne's Christmas rose blooming, she brokeinto a little laugh. "Oh, " she said, "you done this a-purpose for _him_. " "I hope, Mary, you won't mind, " Mis' Mortimer Bates said formally, "itbeing Christmas, so. We'd have done just the same on any other day. " "Oh, " Mary said, "_mind_!" They hardly knew her, she moved among them so flushed and laughing andconformable, praising, admiring, thanking them. "Honestly, Mary, " said Mis' Moran, finally, "we'll have you so you can'ttell Christmas from any other day--it'll be so nice!" The Express would be due at the "draw" ateight-thirty--eight-thirty-three, Affer told her when he came back, "washed up. " Mary watched the clock. She had not milked or fed the cowsbefore she went, because she had thought that _he_ would like to watchthe milking, and it would be something for him to do on that firstevening. So, when she could, she took her shawl and slipped out to theshed for the pails and her lantern, and went alone to the stable. Mary opened the door, and her lantern made a golden room of light withinthe borderless shadow. The hay smell from the loft and the mangers, theeven breathing of the cows, the quiet safety of the place, met her. Shehung her lantern in its accustomed place, and went about her task. Her mind turned back to the time that had elapsed since the Local camein at the Old Trail Town station. She had stood there, with the childrenabout her, hardly breathing while the two Trail Town men and a solitarytraveling man had alighted. There had been no one else. In terror lestthe child should be carried past the station, she had questioned theconductor, begged him to go in and look again, parleyed with him untilhe had swung his lantern. Then she had turned away with the children, utterly unable to formulate anything. There was no other train to stopat Old Trail Town that night. It must mean disaster . .. Indefinabledisaster that had somehow engulfed him and had not pointed the way thathe had gone. She recalled, now, that she had refused Buff Miles'sinvitation to ride, but had suffered him to take the children. Then shehad set out to walk home. On that walk home she had unlived her plans. Obscure speculations, stirring in her fear, at first tormented her, and then gave place to theconclusion that John had changed his mind, had seen perhaps that hecould not after all let the child go so far, had found some one else totake him; and that the morrow would bring a letter to tell her so. Inany case, she was not to have him. The conclusion swept her with thevigour of certainty. But instead of the relief for which she would havelooked, that certainty gave her nothing but desolation. Until the momentwhen the expectation seemed to die she had not divined how it had growninto her days, as subtly as the growth of little cell and little cell. And now the weight upon her, instead of lifting, soaring in thepossibility of the return of her old freedom, lay the more heavily, andher sense of oppression became abysmal. .. . "Something is going tohappen, " she had kept saying. "Something _has_ happened. .. . " So she had got on toward her own door. There the swift relief was likean upbearing into another air, charged with more intimate largess forlife. Now Mary sat in the stable in a sense of happy reality thatclothed all her feeling--rather, in a sense of superreality, which shedid not know how to accept. .. . So, slowly singing in her as she sat ather task, came that which had waited until she should open the way. .. . In the stable there was that fusion of shadow and light in which captivespaces reveal all their mystery. Little areas of brightness, offunctioning; then dimness, then the deep. Brightness in which surfacesof worn floor, slivered wall, dusty glass, showed values more specificthan those of colour. Dimness in which gray rafters with wavering edges, rough posts each with an accessory of shadow, an old harness ingrotesque loops, ceased to be background and assumed rôles. Thebackground itself, modified by many an unshadowed promontory, wasaccented in caverns of manger and roof. The place revealed mystery andbeauty in the casual business of saying what had to be said. Mary filled her arms with hay, and turned to the manger. The raw smellof the clover smote her, and it was as sweet as Spring repromised. Shestood for a moment with the hay in her arms, her breath comingswiftly. .. . Down on the marsh, not half an hour away, he was coming to her, to bewith her, as she had grown used to imagining him. She had thought thathe was not coming, and he was almost here. .. . She knew now that she wasglad of this, no matter what it brought her; glad, as she had neverknown how to be glad of anything before. He was coming--there was athrill in the words every time that she thought them. Already she waswelcoming him in her heart, already he was here, already he was borninto her life. .. . . .. With a soft, fierce rush of feeling not her own, it seemed to herthat her point of perception was somehow drawn inward, as if she nolonger saw from the old places, as if something in her that was not usedto looking, looked. In the seat where her will had been was no will. Butsomewhere in there, beyond all conflict, she felt _herself_ to be. Beyond a thousand mists, volitions, little seekings for comfort, rebellions at toil, the cryings of personality for its physical own, shestood at last, herself within herself. And that which, through the slowprocess of her life and of life and being immeasurably before her, hadbeen seeking its expression, building up its own vehicle of incarnation, quite suddenly and simply flowered. It was as if the weight and thestriving within her had been the pangs of some birth. She stood, aslight of heart as a little child, filled with peace and tenderexaltation. These filled her on the road which she took to meet him--and took alone, for she would have no one go with her. ("What's come over Mary?" theyasked one another in the kitchen. "She acts like she was somebody elseand herself too. ") The night lay about her as any other winter night, white and black, --a clean white world on which men set a pattern ofhighway and shelter, a clean dark sky on which a story is written instars; and between--no mystery, but only growth. Out toward thedrawbridge the road was not well broken. She went, stumbling in the rutsand hardly conscious of them. And Mary thought-- "Something in me is glad. "It's as if something in me knew how to be glad more than I ever knewhow alone. "For I'm nothing but me, here in Old Trail Town, and yet it's as ifSomething had come, secret, on purpose to make me know why to be glad. "It's something in the world bigger than I know about. "It's in me, and I guess it was in folks before me, and it will be infolks always. "It isn't just for Ebenezer Rule and the City. "It's for everybody, here in Old Trail Town as much as anywhere. "It's for folks that's hungry for it, and it's for folks that ain't. "It's always been in the world and it always will be in the world, andsome day we'll know what to do. " But this was hardly in her feeling, or even in her thought; it laywithin her thanksgiving that the child was coming; and he only a littleway down there across the marsh. . .. It seemed quite credible and even fitting that the mighty, rushing, lighted Express, which seldom stopped at Old Trail Town, should thatnight come thundering across the marsh, and slow down at the drawbridgefor her sake and the little boy's. Several coaches' length from whereshe stood she saw a lantern shine where they were lifting him down. Sheran ankle deep through the thinly crusted snow. "_That's_ it!" said the conductor. "All the way from Idaho!" and swunghis lantern from the step. "Merry Christmas!" he called back. The little thing clasping Mary's hand suddenly leaped up and down besideher. "Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!" he shouted with allhis might. Mary Chavah stood silent, and as the train drew away held out her hand, still in silence, for the boy to take. As the noise of the train lessened, he looked up. "Are you her?" he asked soberly. "Yes, " she cried joyously, "I'm her!" * * * * * Their way led east between high banks of snow. At the end of the roadwas the village, looking like something lying on the great white plateof the meadows and being offered to one who needed it. At the far end ofthe road which was Old Trail Road, hung the blue arc light of the TownHall, center to the constellation of the home lights and the shop lightsand the street lights. There, in her house, were her neighbours, gathered to do no violence to that Christmas paper of theirs, sincethere was to be no "present trading, " no "money spending. "Nevertheless, they had drawn together by common consent, and it wasChristmas Eve. She knew it now: There is no arbitrary shutting out ofthat for which Christmas stands. As its spirit was in the village, soits spirit is in the world--denied indeed, put upon, crowned withmockery, dragged in the dirt, bearing alien burdens, but through it allimmaculate, waiting for men to cross the threshold at which it neverceases to beckon to a common heritage: Home of the world, with athousand towers shining with uncounted lights, lying very near--abovethe village, at the end of the Old Trail Road, upon the earth at the endof a yet unbeaten path--where men face the sovereign fact of humanhood. . .. But all this lay within Mary's dumb thanksgiving that the child wasrunning at her side. And the vision that she saw streamed down fromCapella, of the brightness of an hundred of our suns, the star thatstood in the east above the village where she lived. Lanterns glowed through the roadside shrubbery, little kindly lights, like answers; and at a bend in the road voices burst about them, andBuff Miles and the children, Gussie and Bennet and Tab and Pep andlittle Emily, ran, singing, and closed about Mary and the child, andwent on with them, slipping into the "church choir Christmas carols, "and more, that Buff had been fain to teach them. The music filled thequiet night, rose, in the children's voices, like an invocation to alltime. "One for the way it all begun, Two for the way it all has run, What three'll be for I do forget, But what will be has not been yet. So holly and mistletoe, So holly and mistletoe, So holly and mistletoe Over and over and over, oh!" Between songs the children whispered together for a minute. "What's the new little boy's name?" asked Tab. Nobody knew. That would be something to find out. "Well, " Tab said, "to-morrow morning, right after breakfast, I'm goingto bring Theophilus Thistledown down and _lend_ him to him. " "Ain't we going to bury Sandy Claus right after breakfast?" demandedGussie. And all the children, even little Emily, answered: "No, let's not. " They all went on together and entered Mary's gate. Thosewithin, --hearing the singing, had opened the door, and they brought themthrough that deep arch of warmth and light. Afterward, no one couldremember whether or not the greeting had been "Merry Christmas, " butthere could have been no mistaking what everybody meant. XIV At his gate in the street wall lined with snow-bowed lilacs andmulberries, Ebenezer Rule waited in the dark for his two friends to comeback. He had found Kate Kerr in his kitchen methodically making a jar ofChristmas cookies. ("You've got to eat, if it is Christmas, " she haddefended herself in a whisper. ) And to her stupefaction he haddispatched her to Mary Chavah's with her entire Christmas baking in abasket. "I don't believe they've got near enough for all the folks I see going, "he explained it. While he went within doors he had left the hobbyhorse in the snow, closeto the wall; and he came back there to wait. The street had emptied. Bynow every one had gone to Mary Chavah's. Once he caught the gleam oflanterns down the road and heard children's voices singing. For sometime he heard the singing, and after it had stopped he fancied that heheard it. Startled, he looked up into the wide night lying serene abovethe town, and not yet become vexed by the town's shadows and interruptedby their lights. It was as if the singing came from up there. But thenight kept its way of looking steadily beyond him. . .. It came to Ebenezer that the night had not always been sounconscious of his presence. The one long ago, for example, when he hadslept beneath this wall and dreamed that he had a kingdom; those othernights, when he had wandered abroad with his star glass. Then the nightused to be something else. It had seemed to meet him, to admit him. Nowhe knew, and for a long time had known, that when he was abroad in thenight he was there, so to say, without its permission. As for men, hecould not tell when relation with them had changed, when he had begun tothink of them as among the externals; but he knew that now he ran alongthe surface of them and let them go. He never met them as _Others_, asbelonging to countless equations of which he was one term, and theyplaying that wonderful, near rôle of _Other_. Thus he had got along, asif his own individuation were the only one that had ever occurred and asif all the mass of mankind--and the Night and the Day--wereundifferentiated from some substance all inimical. Then this vast egoism had heard itself expressed in the mention ofBruce's baby--the third generation. But by the great sorcery wherewithNature has protected herself, this mammoth sense of self, when itextends unto the next generations, becomes a keeper of the race. Ebenezer had been touched, relaxed, disintegrated. Here was an interestoutside himself which was yet no external. Vast, level reaches lay aboutthat fact, and all long unexplored. But these were peopled. He saw thempeopled. .. . . .. As in the cheer and stir within the house where that night weregathered his townsfolk, his neighbours, his "hands. " He had thought thattheir way of meeting him, if he chose to go among them, would matternothing. Abruptly now he saw that it would matter more than he couldbear. They were in there at Mary's, the rooms full of little families, getting along as best they could, taking pride in their children, looking ahead, looking ahead--_and they would not know that heunderstood_. He could not have defined offhand what it was that heunderstood. But it had, it seemed, something to do with Letty's accountbook and Bruce's baby. .. . Gradually he let himself face what it was that he was wanting to do. Andwhen he faced that, he left the hobbyhorse where it was under the walland went into the street. He took his place among the externals of the Winter night, himselfunconscious of them. The night, with all its content, a thing ofexplicable fellowships, lay waiting patiently for those of its childrenwho knew its face. In the dark and under the snow the very elements ofearth and life were obscured, as in some clear wash correcting toostrong values. He moved along the village, and now his dominantconsciousness was the same consciousness in which that little villagelived. But he knew it only as the impulse that urged him on towardJenny's house. If he went to Jenny's, if he signified so that he wishednot to be cut off from her and Bruce and the baby, if he asked Bruce tocome back to the business, these meant a lifetime of modification to theboy's ideals for that business, and modification to the lives of the"hands" back there in Mary Chavah's house--and to something else. .. . "What else?" he asked himself. Mechanically he looked up and saw the heavens crowded with brightwatchers. In that high field one star, brighter than the others, hungover the little town. He found himself trying to see the stars as theyhad looked to him years ago, when they and the night had seemed to meansomething else. .. . "What else?" he asked himself. The time did not seem momentous. It was only very quiet. Nothing new wasthere, nothing different. It had always been so. The night lay in asovereign consciousness of being more than just itself. "Do you thinkthat you are all just you and nothing else?" it was seen to becompassionately asking. "What else?" Ebenezer asked himself. He did not face this yet. But in that hour which seemed pure essence, with no attenuating sound or touch, he kept on up the hill towardJenny's house. * * * * * Mary Chavah left ajar the door from the child's room to the room where, in the dark, the tree stood. He had wanted the door to be ajar "so thethings I think about can go back and forth, " he had explained. In the dining room she wrapped herself in the gray shawl and threw upthe two windows. New air swept in, cleansing, replacing, prevailing. Herguests had left her early, as is the way in Old Trail Town. Then she hadhad her first moments with the child alone. He had done the things thatshe had not thought of his doing but had inevitably recognized: Haddelayed his bed-going, had magnified and repeated the offices of hisjourney, had shown her the contents of his pockets, had repeatedlymentioned by their first names his playmates in Idaho and shown surprisewhen she asked him who they were. Mary stood now by the window consciousof a wonderful thing: That it seemed as if he had been there always. In the clean inrush of the air she was aware of a faint fragrance, coming to her once and again. She looked down at her garden, lyingwrapped in white and veiled with black, like some secret being. Threeelements were slowly fashioning it, while the fourth, a soft fire withinher, answered them. The fragrance made it seem as if the turn of theyear were very near, as if its prophecy, evident once in the Octoberviolets in her garden, were come again. But when she moved, she knewthat the fragrance came from within the room, from Ellen Bourne'sChristmas rose, blossoming on the table. .. . Above, her eye fell on thepicture that Jenny had brought to her on that day when she had all butemptied the house, as if in readiness. Almost she understood now thepassionate expectation in that face, not unlike the expectation of thosewho in her dream had kept saying "You. " [Illustration: "THE THREE MEN STEPPED INTO THE LAMPLIGHT"] There was a movement in her garden and on the walk footsteps. The threemen stepped into the rectangle of lamplight--Abel, Ames and Simeon, whohad left the party a little before the others and, hurrying back withthe gifts that they planned, had met Ebenezer at his gate, getting homefrom Jenny's house. In Abel's arms was something globed, like a littleworld; in Simeon's, the tall, gray-gowned Saint Nicholas taken from theExchange window, the lettered sign absent, but the little flag still inhis hand; and Ebenezer was carrying the hobbyhorse. If at him the othertwo had wondered somewhat, they had said nothing, in that fashion oftreating the essential which is as peculiar to certain simple, robustsouls as to other kinds of great souls. "Has the boy gone to bed?" Abel asked without preface. "Yes, " Mary answered, "he has. I'm sorry. " "Never mind, " Simeon whispered, "you can give him these in the morning. " Mary, her shawl half hiding her face, stooped to take what the threelifted. "They ain't presents, you know, " Abel assured her positively. "They'rejust--well, just to let him know. " Mary set the strange assortment on the floor of the dining room--thethings that were to be nothing in themselves, only just "to let himknow. " "Thank you for him, " she said gently. "And thank you for me, " she added. Ebenezer fumbled for a moment at his beaver hat, and took it off. Thenthe other two did so to their firm-fixed caps. And with an impulse thatcame from no one could tell whom, the three spoke--the first timehesitatingly, the next time together and confidently. "Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, " they said. Mary Chavah lifted her hand. "Merry Christmas!" she cried. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The following pages contain advertisements of Macmillan books by thesame author, and new fiction. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- THE OTHER BOOKS OF MISS GALE Mothers to Men Decorated cloth, 12mo, $1. 50 net; by mail, $1. 62 The author is singularly successful in detaching herself from all the wear and tear of modern life and has produced a book filled with sweetness, beautiful in ideas, charming in characterizations, highly contemplative, and evidencing a philosophy of life all her own. "One of the most widely read of our writers of short fiction. "--_The Bookman_. Friendship Village Cloth, 12mo, $1. 50 "As charming as an April day, all showers and sunshine, and sometimes both together, so that the delighted reader hardly knows whether laughter or tears are fittest. "--_The New York Times_. The Loves of Pelleas and Etarre Cloth, 12mo, $1. 50 "It contains the sort of message that seems to set the world right for even the most depressed, and can be depended upon to sweeten every moment spent over it. "--_San Francisco Chronicle_. Friendship Village Love Stories Decorated cloth, gilt top, 12mo, $1. 50 Miss Gale's pleasant and highly individual outlook upon life has never been revealed to better advantage than in these charming stories of the heart affairs of the young people of Friendship Village. THE MACMILLAN COMPANYPublishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York ----------------------------------------------------------------------- NEW MACMILLAN FICTION A MAN'S WORLDBy Albert Edwards Cloth, 12mo, $1. 25 net; postpaid, $1. 36 "A striking book that should attract wide attention. "--_New York Tribune_. "There never has been a book like 'A Man's World. ' . .. A novelist of skill and power. .. . His greatest gift is his power of creating the illusion of reality. .. . Vividness and conviction unite in the wonderful portrait of Nina. .. . There never has been such a character in American fiction before. .. . Nina will be one of the famous twentieth century heroines. "--_Brooklyn Eagle_. "It is a great book, full of the real things of life. .. . Zola might have written such a book had he lived in New York and not in Paris. Yet, it is doubtful if he could have told a better tale in a better way, for Nina and Ann are just as true to life as Nana and Ninon. "--_Chicago Record-Herald_. "The book is far from ordinary and its philosophy is extraordinary. "--_New York Times Book Review_. "A new type of human document--written in all sincerity and honesty. "--_New York Herald_. MY LOVE AND IBy Martin Redfield Cloth, 12mo, $1. 35 net; postpaid, $1. 47 Even the publishers do not know who the author of this remarkable book is. Its pages tell with powerful reality the struggle of a heart against the subtler problems of love and a solution not usually found in fiction. It is not an ordinary love story; it is, on the contrary, the intimate confession of a man's life. THE MACMILLAN COMPANYPublishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York ----------------------------------------------------------------------- NEW MACMILLAN FICTION--Continued THE RICH MRS. BURGOYNEBy Kathleen Norris Author of "Mother" Decorated cloth, 12mo, illustrated, $1. 25 net; postpaid, $1. 38 When it is rumored about in Santa Paloma that Mrs. Burgoyne, a widow and heiress to many millions, has bought an old-fashioned and somewhat run-down estate and intends to make her home in the little California town, food for gossip at all the bridge clubs is furnished for more than one meeting. To live well in Santa Paloma involves heavy expenditures for all sorts of social functions and many a family feels the strain which, however, they would not admit for worlds. The society clique think that everything will be run on even a more gorgeous scale with Mrs. Burgoyne's millions in the game, but they reckon without the possessor of these millions, as the successive events of the story show in a highly entertaining fashion. LONDON LAVENDERBy E. V. Lucas Decorated cloth, 12mo, $1. 35 net; postpaid, $1. 47 We meet again several of the fine characters with whom Mr. Lucas has already made us acquainted in his other novels as well as others equally interesting and entertaining. The intimate sketches of various phases of London life--visits to the Derby, Zoo, the National Gallery--are delightfully chronicled and woven into a novel that is a most charming entertainment. THE MACMILLAN COMPANYPublishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York ----------------------------------------------------------------------- NEW MACMILLAN FICTION--Continued THE DRIFTING DIAMONDBy Lincoln ColcordWith Frontispiece in Colors by Anton Fischer Decorated cloth, 12mo, $1. 25 net The strange effects which the possession of a gem of marvelous beauty and great value has upon several sharply differentiated characters is the thread with which this dramatic tale of events is woven. The combination of the mystical, the imaginative and the realistic makes very unusual reading. The diamond has the power of making its owner love it not for what it means in money, but for itself; it also has in it a lurking devil which portends evil happenings. The series of incidents which these qualities in the gem bring about, taken with the love story, which runs through it all, comprise a novel which holds the reader's attention from the very first adventure to the final outcome. * * * * * A New NovelBy James Lane Allen THE HEROINE IN BRONZE Decorated cloth, 12mo, $1. 35 net In "The Heroine in Bronze" Mr. Allen has written with exquisite felicity of thought and expression a novel that is unique and powerful. The story of a young man, --a writer, --the women he loves, and the great novel he writes, is the design threading a background which reveals Mr. Allen's profound understanding of life and his high spirituality. "The Heroine in Bronze" is the most vital contribution to American literature in recent years. THE MACMILLAN COMPANYPublishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York ----------------------------------------------------------------------- A BEAUTIFUL EDITION OF A BEAUTIFUL STORY The Christmas Edition of Kathleen Norris'sMOTHER Decorated cloth, 12mo, illustrations, $1. 25; by mail, $1. 36 "A little book that can be finished in an hour, but the sweet thoughts will remain in the mind long after the book has been set aside. .. . Before I had covered ten pages I realized that I had something worth its weight in gold. What theme could be more interesting to the ordinary reader than 'Mother, ' especially when it is a panegyric on maternal devotion? The author was fortunate in her selection and still happier in her treatment of it, for if there is anything that appeals, it is a true loyal discussion of mother and mother-love. In modern fiction we have too little of the chastening and purifying presence of real motherhood. Few books have the power of recalling worthy thoughts with the force and with the good effect possessed by this little book. "--_Catholic Columbian_. * * * * * A NEW EDITION OF A MASTERPIECE The Christmas Edition of Jack London'sTHE CALL OF THE WILD Decorated cloth, 12mo, profusely illustrated in color, $1. 50 net; by mail, $1. 63 To all readers of Jack London and particularly to those who love his masterpiece, this new edition of "The Call of the Wild" will mean much. Some of the previous issues of this great book were thought to be beautiful, but none of them seems so now in comparison with the latest one, the make-up of which is distinguished by a number of features. In the first place there are many full-page plates reproduced in color from paintings done by Mr. Bransom. More than this, the first two pages of each chapter are printed in colors and decorated with head pieces and drawings, while every other two pages carry black and white half tones in the text, also the work of Mr. Bransom. THE MACMILLAN COMPANYPublishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York