ON THE WAY TO THE BLOOMING.THE CHRISTMAS THORN.
ON THE WAY TO THE BLOOMING.
ON THE WAY TO THE BLOOMING.
BY LOUISE STOCKTON.
IN the December of 1752, Roger Lippett was a boy of ten years, and “Dan,” his dog, was six months old and had to be taught to swim. To this pleasing duty Roger addressed himself whenever he had a chance, and the only draw-back was that his mother would allow no wet dog upon her sanded floor, and as Roger had to be wherever Dan was, he had often a tedious time in waiting for such a very curly dog to get dry.
But this Sunday afternoon the two had taken a long walk after the swim, and when they came back Dan was dry and uncommonly clean and white.
In the little parlor Roger found the usual Sunday company. In an arm-chair on one side of the fireplace sat Simon Mitchels, the school-master; opposite to him, on a three-legged stool, was Caleb Dawe, the parish clerk, and on the settle, in front of the fire, was Roger’s cousin, old Forbes the miller, and short Daniel Green, the sexton. His mother sat in her high-backed chair by the window, and Phœbe Rogers’ younger sister was near her playing gleefully with a kitten.
“Christmas!” said Caleb; “there’ll be no Christmas! What between the New Way and the Old Way, we’ll all go astray. It is a popish innovation at the best, and if King George knew his duty, he’d put his foot on it.”
“Nonsense!” said Simon, testily; “when a thing is wrong, ’tis wrong, and if you mean to make it right, you must not mind a little temporary trouble. King George knows that just as well as any one, and so do you! If you wanted a new roof on your house you would first have to take the old one off.”
“Not Caleb,” said old Forbes. “Caleb ’d patch the old one until it was new-made over.”
“Yes,” replied Simon, “that is just what we have been doing with the year—patching and patching. Now here comes King George, and says, ‘Look here, this is 1752, and if we are ever going to have a decent regular year with the proper number of days in it, ’tis time we were about it.’ But you people who patch roofs object because it alters the dates for one year a day or two. Thanks be to the King, however, he has the power.”
“Alters the dates a day or two!” repeated Caleb. “You yourself said the New Way would take eleven days out of the year.”
“Only this year,” Simon replied; “afterward it will be all right. It is but to bring the first of January in the right place.”
“It was right enough,” persisted Caleb. “And I say no one, king or no king, has any right to take eleven days away from the English people.”
Then Mistress Margery Lippett spoke:
“For my part,” she said, “I think the New Way unchristian. Mistress Duncan, you know, has a fine crowing little boy, and when the squire asked how old he was, she told him—’twas but a day so ago—three months and two weeks; and he laughed, and told her she would have to take the two weeks off. NowthatI call unchristian, and not dealing justly with the child.”
At this the school-master laughed, and taking his pipe out of his mouth, and pushing his velvet skull-cap a little farther back, he replied:
“They were both right, Mistress Margery. Both of them. The mother counts by weeks—very good—the squire by the proper calendar. One makes the child three months and two weeks, and she is right; the other deducts eleven days to fit the calendar, and he, too, is right.”
“Out with it,” cried Caleb; “out with such a calendar! Why, the whole realm will be in confusion. None of us will ever know how old we are, or when the church-days are due; but I doubt if, in spite of it all, the Pope’s new calendar doesn’t keep the squire’s rent-day straight. They’ll look out for that.”
“I suppose,” said Simon, “you all think the year was created when the world was?”
“Of course it was,” said Mistress Margery; “didn’t He make the day and the night, and do you suppose He would have passed the year over?”
“You are about right,” said Simon; “but the trouble is we are just finding out what His year is? See here, Roger,” and he turned his head to the boy, “do you know how many different kinds of years we can reckon?”
“Not I, master,” said Roger.
“Well, I’ll tell you. Suppose you wanted a measure of time answering to a year, you might reckon from the time the apples blow to when they blow again, but if a frost or a blight seize them, you’d be out with your count, wouldn’t you?”
“Truly,” said Mistress Margery, who delighted to see how well Roger understood his learned master.
“Well, then,” resumed the teacher, “you would soon find that if you wanted a regular, unchangeable guide, one unaffected by seasons, by droughts, heats, or hostile winds, you would look to the skies. You would, perhaps, if you were wise enough, and had observed—you would single out some special star; you would take close notice of its position, note its changes, then you would say, ‘When that comes back to the very spot where it was when I began to watch it, that time I shall count as my year.’ Do you follow me?”
“That I do,” said Roger.
“That, then, is one way in which a year was once calculated, and the star chosen gave three hundred and sixty-five days for a year.”
“Now that is a calendar, true and unchangeable, and correct beyond what a Pope can make,” said Caleb.
“That, Roger,” said Simon, taking no notice of Caleb, “is called a Sidereal year. Now, come you here, Phœbe, and tell me what is a Lunar year?”
“A year of moons,” said Phœbe, her bright eyes dancing.
“You have the making of a scholar in you,” said Simon; “’tis a pity you are a girl. A Lunar yearisa year of twelve moons. This Lunar year has but three hundred and fifty-four days, still it served the purposes of the Chaldeans, the Persians, and Jews.
“Then there was the Solar year, calculated by the sun; and it and the Lunar year agreed so badly that every three years another lunar month had to be counted in to keep the one from running away from the other. Now, I suppose you all think,” looking at the group around the fireside, “that all these years began the first of January and ended the thirty-first of December?”
“It is but just that they should,” said old Forbes, Caleb disdaining to speak.
“Butthey didn’t,” said Simon. “The Jews began their year in March; in Greece it began in June, and certain Eastern Christians began theirs in August.”
“That isn’t England,” said Caleb, in a tone of contempt.
“Truly not,” said Simon; “but the English year used to begin the twenty-fifth of December, until the coronation of William the Conqueror—when was that, Phœbe?”
“In 1066,” said Phœbe, smoothing her teacher’s ruffles with the air of a petted and privileged child.
“It was January the first, 1066,” resumed Simon; “and it was judged so important an event that it was ordered that ever afterthe year should begin on that day. But I can tell you worse than that of England. There are places in England to-day, where they reckon their year from the twenty-fifth of March!
“But long before William’s time,” he continued, “the Romans had ideas, and they thought it wise to straighten up the year for their own use. So Julius Cæsar—when did he begin to reign, Phœbe?”
“I don’t know,” said she.
“In 63, B. C.” said Roger, eagerly.
“No, that was Cæsar Augustus, and we are coming to him. Julius Cæsar lived before that, and he arranged the years so that all the even numbers among the months, except February, had thirty days, and all the odd ones thirty-one. Do you understand that?”
“Not I,” said Phœbe, frankly.
“January is the first month; it is not an even number?”
“No,” said Phœbe.
“March is the third month, and so is not an even number?”
“No,” said Phœbe again.
“They each then, being odd, had thirty-one days, while May and July, and the other even months, except February, had thirty days. That was all very easy, and the length of the year seemed settled; but when Cæsar Augustus came on the throne he was not satisfied. ‘What,’ said he, ‘shall Julius Cæsar in his month of July have thirty-one days, and I, in my month of August, have but thirty!’ And so he at once made August longer.”
“He was very foolish,” said Phœbe. “I was born in February, wasn’t I, mother? andIdon’t care because Roger was born in December, when there are more days.”
“But you are not a Cæsar,” replied her teacher. “At any rate this Cæsar made the year all wrong again; and in 1582 Gregory, who was Pope, set to work to help matters. He had to drop some days, I believe, in the first year just as we are going to now. The French and Italian people, and some others, were wise enough to see this improvement at once, and they adopted Pope Gregory’s year; but we, for nearly two hundred years more, have been getting along with the old way, and our new year comes ahead of almost everybody else’s, and those who travel get their dates badly mixed.”
“Surely,” said Roger, “itwouldbe best to have the same year the world over.”
“So King George thinks,” said Simon; “but Caleb here says not, and quarrels because eleven days have to be dropped out of this one year, so that for all aftertime the years, months, and days, will go on in an even, regular and seemly manner.”
“And I rightly object,” replied Caleb; “and when the proper Christmas-day comes I shall keep it, and no king, no pope, and no Julius Cæsar,nobody, shall ever make me change the blessed day for any other falsely called by its name.” And Caleb put his hands to his three-legged stool, and lifting it and himself at the same moment, brought it down with a bang.
“Well, we can’t go wrong about Christmas-day,” said Mistress Margery, “if we but follow the blooming of the Glastonbury Thorn.”
“That we cannot,” answered old Forbes. “For hundreds and hundreds of years, long before popes or calendars were thought of, that Thorn has bloomed every Christmas Eve, and not only the one at Glastonbury, but every sacred slip cut from it and planted has remembered the birthday of The Childand never failed to blossom!”
“That is all superstition,” said Simon; “the plant naturally blossoms twice a year—that is all.”
“Indeed that is not all,” cried Mistress Margery. “I was born and raised at Quainton, but seven miles from here, and there, as you all know, is a fine tree grown from a Glastonbury slip, and many’s the time when, with the whole village, have I gone out to see the blooming.”
“And when did it bloom, mother?” asked Phœbe.
“Always on Christmas Eve. The blossoms were snow white, and by Christmas night they were gone.”
“But, mother,” said Roger, “why is the Glastonbury tree the best, if this at Quainton blooms as well?”
“Because it was the first one planted, of course,” said Mistress Margery; “I know no other reason.”
Phœbe saw the little smile upon Simon’s face, and taking his coat lappets in both hands, she bent her pretty little head in front of his, and said:
“Tell us, master.”
“You think,” he answered, “that I must know all the old wives’ stories? Well, I will tell you this one. Joseph of Arimathea, you know, gave his sepulchre to receive the body of the Lord. Into it the blessed angels went, and out from it, upon the third day, came the Risen Saviour. From that hour, until the one in which he saw the Lord return unto the skies, Joseph followed Him, and then all Palestine became to him empty and weary. There were people who doubted the resurrection; people who said that Joseph himself was one who aided in a deception; and so, tired of it all, he took his staff in hand and wandered until he came to England, and to Glastonbury. On Christmas-day he climbed the hill where the old, old church now stands, and here, in sign that his wanderings were over, he planted his staff. At once it rooted, it shot forth leaves, it blossomed, and the scent of the milk-white flowers filled the air. From that time to the days when Charles and Cromwell fought, it has blossomed on Christmas Eve; but then it was cut down by some impious hand, yet still all the slips, the twigs, which had been cut off by pilgrims, have kept the sacred birthday; and as your mother says, the one in Quainton can as well as the other decide between the Old calendar and the New.”
“I am glad to hear thee say so,” exclaimed Mistress Margery, with brightening eyes, “and if you choose to journey with us when next we go to Quainton, you are heartily welcome to our company, and I’ll bespeak thee a honest welcome from my sister who, like my Phœbe here, has a strong leaning toward learning.”
“Nay,” said the school-master, looking a little ashamed of himself; “I but told the story to amuse the child. The plant is merely a sort of hawthorn from Aleppo, and regularly blooms twice in the year, if the weather be but mild.”
But although Mistress Margery was much disappointed that he had no desire to go to Quainton, she found both Roger and Phœbe bent upon witnessing the Christmas blooming.
“I don’t know,” said she, lightly, “but that between the Old Way, and the New, the Thorn will be confused, and not know when it should bloom.”
“It will not bloom on your new Christmas, take my word for that,” said Forbes; “and if the children will wait until the true day comes, I myself will take them along, for I have a mind to see it myself.”
“But, cousin Forbes,” said Phœbe, “itmaybloom on the new day.”
The little people had their way. On the morning of the twenty-fourth of December, by the New Style, but the thirteenth by Caleb’s count, Roger and Phœbe started off, mounted on their mother’s own steady white horse, Phœbe behind her brother, with the bag containing their holiday clothes, while to Roger was given their lunch, and a bottle of blackberry wine for their aunt, with whom they were to lodge in Quainton.
The morning was cold and bleak, but the children rode merrily on. It was the first time they had been trusted alone on such an expedition, and Phœbe at once proposed that they should play that Roger was a wandering knight, and she one of the fair, distressed damsels who were always met by knights when on their travels.
“I would,” said Roger, “if you could find another knight to whom I could give battle, but it is rather tame to be pacing along here with you behind me, and no danger ahead.”
“I wish then,” said Phœbe, “that mother had not wanted cousin Forbes’ horse, for, perhaps, he would have lent it to us, and then, with such a horse, we could have been a knight and a lady out hawking, and I would have given you a race.”
“That would have been a rarely good plan,” said Roger, looking up the level road, “and I do not like to lose it. Ho, lady,” he cried, looking behind him, “thy father is in pursuit!” And clapping both feet to the sides of the horse, he put him to his speed.
“Oh, Roger! oh, sir Knight!” exclaimed Phœbe, “my hood—if I could but tie it!”
“I cannot wait for hoods,” said the knight, in a stern voice; “when we reach my castle thou shalt have twenty-two, and a crown beside.”
The lady would not have doubted this for the world, but she nevertheless loosened one hand, clinging desperately to her protector with the other, and pulled off the hood, held it, and clutched her knight who, with cries of “on Selim, on!” urged poor old Dobbin to his best.
There was, indeed, a clatter of horses’ hoofs behind, and with it a loud cry, Phœbe turned her head.
“Oh, sir Knight!” she cried with very short breath; “my fatherisnear at hand! Hasten, oh, hasten!”
And sure enough, some one was! He was short and stout, and looked much more like a butcher’s boy than a gentle lady’s father; and he was certainly in pursuit, and he called again and again, but the only effect was to make the flying knight more vigorously kick the sides of his horse, and more vehemently push on. But as fortune would have it the father’s horse was the swiftest, and in spite of the knight’s best efforts he was down along-side.
“What do you mean?” he exclaimed, “by racing off in this way! If I didn’t know that was Mistress Margery Lippett’s horse I would have let you go on, seeing that you haven’t sense enough to know he has lost a shoe.”
At this Roger quickly stopped his steed.
“Which one?” he exclaimed—“Here Phœbe, I must get down—the hind foot shoe is gone.”
ON THE ROAD ONCE MORE.
ON THE ROAD ONCE MORE.
“Oh, Roger,” cried Phœbe, “what would mother say! She is so careful of Dobbin, and she charged us to take heed of him; and Roger,mustwe go home, do you think?”
“Of course not,” replied Roger, “and see here Dick,” for he now recognized his pursuer, “cannot you tell me where to find a blacksmith?”
“There is one at Torrey,” said Dick, “a mile down that road. It is the nearest place, but it will take you out of your way, if you are going to the Blooming as am I, who must be off, or my master will take my ears in pay for my tarrying.”
It was easy enough to find the blacksmith’s shop, but the blacksmith was not there, although he would soon be back, his wife said. Roger tied his horse, and then he and Phœbe wandered about until he declared it was lunch time; so they came back, and were about to eat their lunch by the stile, when the smith’s wife saw them, and calling them into her kitchen, spread a table for them, and added a cold pie and some milk to their repast.
But still the man did not come, and Roger waited in great impatience. He was almost ready to start off again for Quainton, but Phœbe was so sure that the penalty of injuring Dobbin would be the never trusting of them alone again, that he was afraid to risk it. Then there came a man with two horses to be shod, and he waited and scolded and stamped his feet, and then the blacksmith came, but he at once attended to the man, and so Dobbin had to wait. But at last Dobbin was shod, and Roger mounted, and then the blacksmith lifted Phœbe up.
“Where are you going?” said the smith.
“To Quainton,” replied Roger; “we are going to see the Blooming.”
“Why, so are we,” said the man. “It is late for you children to be on the road. If I had known all this I would have shod your horse first. You had better wait for us.”
“Oh, no,” replied Phœbe, “we have first to go to our aunt’s. It would frighten her greatly to have us come so late.”
Roger looked down the road. It was certainly late in the afternoon, but the road was direct, and so he said good-by, and off old Dobbin trotted.
It now seemed as if the mile out of the way had stretched itself to two, and it was fast growing dark when they reached a mile-stone three miles from Quainton. Little Phœbe was certain they should be lost riding on in the dark; but not so Roger.
“There is no fear of that,” said he stoutly, “we will meet others going.”
And Roger was right. The nearer they got to Quainton the greater became the throng of people, and they were one and all going to the Blooming.
They came from the lanes, from over the fields, out of every hamlet, from every road. They were in wagons; they were on foot and on horse-back; two old ladies were in a sedan-chair, and at last they overtook an old man carried like “a lady to London,” by two great sons. As it grew dark and darker, and no stars came out to brighten the sky, wandering lights began to shine forth and torches, candles, lanterns, gleamed out on the roadside and flickered in the bushes and among the trees. There was in every group much talking and discussion; and it was easy to be seen that most of the people were of Caleb’s opinion, and doubted the new way of arranging the year; but it was equally clear that they meant the slip from the Glastonbury thorn to decide the matter for them.
Roger kept close behind a travelling-carriage which was attended by two horsemen carrying torches, and greatly to his joy it went into Quainton and passed directly by his aunt’s home.
“There is no use in stopping,” cried Phœbe, as the house came in sight, “it is all shut up and dark, and aunt Katherine has surely gone with the others.”
This was so likely to be the case that Roger urged on his horse, and again overtook the carriage. When they reached the field in which the Thorn-tree stood it was already filled with flickering, moving lights, and was all astir with people and voices.
Roger jumped down, lifted Phœbe, and then tying Dobbin to an oak sapling which still rustled with dried and brown leaves, he turned to his sister and, hand in hand, they hastened to where the Thorn was growing, and around which stood a large group.
The tree was bare, leafless, and looked as if dead.
“If that blooms to-night,” said a woman, “’twill be a miracle.”
“It is always a miracle,” said a grave and sober-looking man by her side.
Phœbe held closely to her brother’s hand; but the scene was too wonderful to promise much talking on her part. The darkness, the dim and shadowy trees and bushes, the tramping of unseen horses, the confusion of voices, the laughing and complaining of children, the moving lights, the thronging people, and in the centre of it all a ring of light and a dense group around the tree, made a wonderful picture.
Nearer and nearer the people pressed, the parish beadle in advance, with his watch in his hand, a man by his side swinging his lantern so that the light would fall directly upon it. Many eyes were bent on it.
It grew late, and the crowd became silent, gathering closer around the tree.
“Twenty minutes of twelve—a quarter of twelve—five minutes of twelve!” proclaimed the beadle.
The tree was still bare, and gave no signs of bloom.
“Twelve o’clock!”
And off in the distance pealed the bells, ushering in King George’s Christmas.
The torches flared upon the tree; the people in the rear of the crowd stood on tiptoe and craned their necks to see the milk-white bloom.
But the tree was silent and bare!
King George could not be right.
The next day aunt Katherine came out of the room where she was putting her bed linen away in the lavender-scented press.
“The church-bells have done ringing,” she said. “Run, children, and see if any one has gone.”
Off flew Phœbe with Roger after her, and when she reached the church-yard, the only person she saw was Marian Leesh, a neighbor’s child, looking over the wall at the minister and the clerk who were standing by the door. When the clergyman saw Phœbe he came toward her.
“Child,” he said, “what is the meaning of this? Is it possible that the people refuse to keep the Christmas-day? Where is your family?”
“We do not belong here,” said Phœbe; “we came to see the Blooming. We are at aunt Katherine’s, and she is looking over her linen press.”
The minister frowned.
“And the rest of the people?”
“They are all at work,” cried Roger, coming up; “the cooper has his shop open, and the mercer is selling, and they have all put away the cakes and the mistletoe, and there is to be no Christmas until the true day comes.”
“Nonsense!” cried the minister. “Jacob, bring me my hat!” and without taking off his gown he strode down into the village.
But it was all in vain; the minister talked and scolded, but the people went on with their work. They would not go to church; they would not sing their carols nor hang holly and mistletoe boughs.
“This New Way might do for lords and ladies,” they said, “but as for them the Christmas kept by their fathers, and marked by the blooming of the Thorn, was their Christmas,” and so the sexton closed the church, and the discomfited minister went home; and he was the only person in Quainton who that day ate a Christmas dinner.
When the news came to London and to the court of how these people, and others in different villages, refused to adopt the New Style, the little fat king and his lords and ladies laughed; but they soon found it was a serious matter, and so it was ordered that the churches should be opened also on “old Christmas” and sermons preached on that day wherever the people wished them. And thus it was that our sixth of January, known as “Twelfth Night,” “little,” or “old Christmas,” came to be a holiday.
But Roger and Phœbe spent one year of their lives without a Christmas. They returned home upon the twenty-sixth, and found that there the New Christmas had been kept; and as they could not go back to Quainton when the Old Christmas came, they missed it altogether.
As for the Thorn-tree! Who can tell whether it still blooms? In the chronicles which tell of the Glastonbury bush, and of the Quainton excitement, there is no mention made of its after blooming; and the chances are Phœbe’s mother was a true prophet when she said it was possible that between the Old Style and the New Style the Thorn would become confused and bloom no more for any Christmas-day.