HOLLY AT THE DOOR[16]

Agnes Sligh Turnbull

On the outside—that is, in the smart little suburban town of Branchbrook—Christmas week had begun most auspiciously. A light fall of snow made the whole place look like an old-fashioned holiday greeting card; the neat English stuccos and Colonial clapboards set back in wide lawns, seemed to gather their flocks of clipped little pine and spruce shrubbery closer to them and suggest through their fresh curtained windows the thought of bright wood fires and mistletoe and shining Christmas cheer soon to come.

In the parish room of St. Andrew’s small gray stone church the children were practicing carols while pigeons cooed on the roof. And down in the village center great boxes of holly wreaths stood in the street before all the grocery store windows, and bevies of slender little virgin pine trees, ready and waiting for the great moment to which they had been born, leaned against all the shop door-ways.

The postman smiled beneath his staggering load, thinking of later benefactions; and the windows of Beverly’s Fine Food Stuffs, the town’s most exclusivemarket, were caparisoned with every delicacy which even a Christmas epicure might desire.

Strangers spoke to each other, children laughed gleefully, shop men made jokes with their customers, everybody was busy, friendly, somehow relaxed from the ordinary conventional aloofness, because Christmas was only five days away. Everything was just as it should be, on the outside.

But on the inside—that is to say, in the big Colonial home of the Bartons which had been built just long enough before prices went up to make it seem now more of an abode of wealth than it really was—here the week had begun in the worst way possible. Monday morning had started with a quarrel.

Alice Barton had not rested well the night before. She had fully planned to spend all Sunday afternoon and evening addressing Christmas cards. That would have seen them all safely in the postman’s hands this morning.

But the plan had been frustrated by the Levitts’ dropping in for a call, staying to tea and spending the evening. And it had been Tom’s fault entirely. He was the one that simply kept them. Of course she had to be decently polite. They sat listening to the radio until eleven. After that she had been too tired to start the cards. And here they were all to do now, this morning, more than a hundred of them, on top of all the regular day’s work and the committee meeting at eleven. And she must get a few more hours shopping in! That would be hectic now but there was no help for it. And all her packages wereyet to be tied up, and Mrs. Dunlop’s bridge-luncheon on Wednesday and Catherine’s friend coming Thursday! Shemustnot forget about the guest room curtains! Why had she let Catherine have any one come at Christmas time!

The dull headache she had when she rose became a splitting pain. She scarcely spoke to Tom as she dressed except for one brief and fitting retort to his: “Now don’t spend all day in the bath room. I have to shave!”

She went down stairs, mechanically checking off the things she must tell Delia, the maid.

Tom was down before the children. He opened the front door for the newspaper which Delia always forgot to bring in and came toward the table with his brows drawn. It was not a propitious moment, but the thing had to be done.

“Tom.”

“Darned if they haven’t given that murderer another reprieve! How do they ever expect to have....”

“Listen, Tom! There’s something I want to ask you.”

“A pretty kind of justice! Wrap all the little murderers up in pink wool blankets for fear they get cold in the neck, and forget the poor cuss that’s been killed! You know, Alice, what ought to be done is this....”

“Yes, but Tom, listen. I’ll simply have to have a little more money.” (It was dreadful to have to ask him now when he was all stirred up over this thingin the paper!) “I’ll just have to do some more shopping, just a few little things I forgot, and I’d rather be free to go about instead of sticking to the charge accounts. If you could give me....”

Tom was suddenly all attention. His dark eyes were looking at her keenly. He broke in.

“Why I gave you an extra twenty-five last Friday.”

“I know, Tom, but it took every cent of it for the cards. And even then I had to spend most of the day trying to find respectable ones within my price.” Tom’s face looked thunderous.

“Do you mean to tell me that it takestwenty-five dollarsnow to send out Christmas cards?Twenty-five dollars!Why, Good Heavens, that would buy two tons of coal. That’s the sheerest piece of criminal waste I ever heard of!”

Alice’s face darkened too. “Well, what are you going to do about it? You know the kind everybody sends us. We can’t look like pikers. It would have cost fifty dollars to get the engraved kind I wanted. I won’t send out cheap stereotyped ones, so all that’s left for me is to try to pick out something artistic and individual, at least for the people we care most about. It’s no easy job, and this is the thanks I get!”

“You bet you’ll get none from me. Do you know how I feel? I hate Christmas! Nothing but money, money beforehand, and nothing but bills, bills, bills afterward. It’s enough to drive a man crazy. And what’s the sense of it? You send a lot of cards to people that barely look at ’em and throw ’em in thefire! You women exchange a bunch of junk that you never use. And as a family, we spend money like drunken sailors on a lot of extravagant things we’ve no business having. And old Dad, poor boob, gets a good dinner out of it and then he pays and pays and pays for the next six months! That’s the way I’ve got it doped out!”

Alice’s face was frozen in sharp lines. “If that’s the way you feel about it I suppose I needn’t hope for my coat.”

“Coat! What coat?”

“Tom, as if you didn’t know perfectly well what I wanted this year more than anything. The short fur coat! Why I’ve talked about it all fall. I think every woman in town has one but me. I can’t wear my big seal one shopping and marketing! And my cloth one is simply gone! Why, I thought all the time you knew, and that you’d surely....” There were almost tears in her voice.

“So it’s come to that, has it! A woman has to have a special kind of fur coat to do her marketing in! Too bad! Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you but you can’t bank on one this year—unless you’d like to mortgage the house!”

He got up abruptly from the table. Young Tom and Catherine had just come into the dining room in time for the last speech. They looked at their parents with cool, amused eyes. It was not the first quarrel they had witnessed in the last years since they had left childhood behind. Catherine, a day pupil at Miss Bossart’s finishing school, and young Tom, aSenior in High School, were startlingly mature. They were calmer, more cynical, more unemotional than their parents. They touched life with knowing fingers that never trembled. Alice marveled at them.

She rose now too and followed Tom into the library. He sat down a moment at the desk and then flicked her a slip of paper.

“There’s fifty. And that’s all, remember, until next month’s allowance!”

Alice’s voice was like cold steel. “Thanks. I’m sure I’ll enjoy spending it since it’s so very generously given.”

Tom did not answer. He got into his overcoat, called a general good-by and left the house.

Alice came back to the children. Young Tom looked up quizzically. “Well, Mums, that ought to hold him for a while, eh, what?” he remarked as he helped himself hugely to the omelette.

Catherine’s brows were slightly puckered. “Say, Mother, am I going to get my watch? Dad was in such a vile humor, I’m scared. Really I’ll feel like a pauper down there at Miss Bossart’s unless I get something a little bit flossy. And this old watch, I’ve had since I was twelve. There isn’t another round gold one in school. Everything’s platinum now! Heavens, it’s not much to ask for compared to what most of the girls are getting. Jean and Hilda know they’re getting cars of their own! And flocks of them are getting marvelous fur coats.”

“Well, you have your new coat,” Alice reminded her.

“Oh, yes,” Catherine agreed with a faint, deprecating sigh, “such as it is.”

Alice opened her lips for a quick remonstrance and closed them again. Oh, what was the use! The children were always ungrateful. They had no real appreciation these days of what their parents gave them. With them it was take, take, take, and never a thought of value received.

Young Tom looked up from his toast and marmalade with his most winning smile.

“Say, Mums, can you let me have a fiver out of your new pile? I’m in the very dickens of a hole.”

Alice fastened quick eyes upon him. “Where has your allowance gone?” she asked sharply.

“Well, gee, it’s so small to begin with I can hardly see it and then just now round Christmas time there’s always such a darned lot of extras!”

Catherine cut in sweetly: “Such as bouquets of orchids for Miss Doris Kane!”

“Orchids!” Alice almost screamed the word. “Tom, you don’t mean for a minute to tell me you’re sending orchids to a girl! High School children sending orchids! I never in my life heard of anything so wickedly absurd!”

“Well, gosh, Mums, what are you going to do? That’s what all the girls want now for the dances, and a fellow can’t look like a piker! I’ve got to order some for to-night. Lend me five, won’t you, just to run me over? What we ought to have is a charge account at the florist’s. That’s what all the other fellows’ folks have.”

“No doubt,” Alice said sarcastically. “It’s barely possible that some of your friends’ fathers may have more money to pay their bills than your father has. But I suppose you never thought of that! Well, I’ll give you five this time, but I don’t want you ever to ask me again for such a purpose.”

“And now if he’s through,” Catherine broke in, “what about me? Is there any reason why I should be broke while my handsome young brother sends orchids to Doris Kane? You should see what the girls are giving each other for Christmas. It makes me sick to hand out the things I have. They look like a rummage sale compared with the rest! I did want one decent thing for Jean, but I’m terribly short.”

She looked at her mother challengingly.

Alice made a desperate gesture with her hands. “All right,” she said, “you can have it. Of course it doesn’t matter whether I’m short or not! I’m at the place where I don’t care much what happens!”

Her head throbbed miserably as she borrowed the two five-dollar bills from her housekeeping purse and gave them to the children. She had a vivid perception that each thought they should have been tens. Their thanks were scant and careless. They had only received their just due, and scarcely that!

Alice felt sick as she climbed the stairs to the den where she kept her desk. Now for the cards. Christmas was a hard, trying time. She would be glad when it was over.

She began in frantic haste, selecting, addressing, searching her note book and the telephone directoryfor streets and numbers. Five, ten, fifteen finished, stamped, ready.

Suddenly she picked up an alien from the carefully chosen mass that lay about her, a cheap little card that she knew she had never bought. Either she or the sales girl must have caught it up by mistake with some of the others. It was a commonplace little card of the folder variety that carries a sentimental verse inside. Alice opened it mechanically before tossing it into the waste basket. And there beneath her eyes were these words:

Oh what, my dear, of Christmas cheer could any one wish more,Than candle-light and you within, and holly at the door!

Oh what, my dear, of Christmas cheer could any one wish more,

Than candle-light and you within, and holly at the door!

She stared at the words unbelievingly. Not for thirty years had she thought of that old song. And now suddenly she heard it in her father’s voice, just as he used to sing it Christmas after Christmas as he went through the house with his hammer in one hand and a dangling bough of green in the other.

And holly at the door, and holly at the door!With candle-light and you within, and holly at the door!

And holly at the door, and holly at the door!

With candle-light and you within, and holly at the door!

She hummed the old melody under her breath, and then she found herself bending over the desk, face in hands, weeping, while over her swept great waves of homesickness, poignant pangs of yearning for a place and a time that had drifted out of her consciousness.

At last she raised her head and leaned it against the high back of the chair. It seemed almost as thoughinvisible fingers had pressed it there, had closed her eyes, had made the pen drop from her passive hand. All at once she was back in the little town of her childhood where she had not been, and where not even her mind had traveled vividly, these long years.

Christmas time in Martinsville! Christmas in the small frame house that had been home. Mother singing blithely as she stuffed the turkey in the kitchen. Father standing proudly by, watching her every movement. For the turkey was an event. One turkey a year, to be ordered after due consideration from one of the farmers near town, to be received with a small flurry of excitement when it arrived and to be picked and prepared for the oven by Mother’s own skilful fingers.

“I suppose we should ask Miss Amanda for dinner to-morrow. The Smiths usually have her but they’re away this year,” Mother was saying.

Father agreed. “Maybe we’d better. It’s not nice to think of anybody sitting down all by themselves to a cold bite on Christmas!”

“When we have so much,” Mother went on. “You’d better stop and ask her when you go for the mail to-night.”

Footsteps on the porch. Father and Mother break into smiles. “There’s Alice,” they exclaim in unison.

Quick stamping of snow on the scraper, quick opening of the door, a quick rush of cold wind and a quick, joyous child’s voice.

“Mother, the holly’s come; Father, look at this! Isn’t it lovely? Mr. Harris just got in now with thewagon from Wanesburg. And he brought a big box of it. He has wreaths, too, but they’re a quarter apiece. I think the bunch is prettier and it was only a dime. Look at the berries!”

The child’s cheeks are as scarlet as her red toboggan and sweater, that Mother herself had knitted. Her blue eyes are shining and eager, her light hair tossed by the wind.

“Put it up quick, Father, and I’ll get the red ribbon for it.” She flies up stairs, stumbling in her haste.

Suddenly, laughter below, expostulation, hurrying feet in the front hall. “Alice, Alice, don’t open the under drawer of my bureau! Youdidn’t, did you? Mercy, we had such a scare! The ribbon’s in the top drawer, left hand side. Now mind, no looking any where else!”

“And holly at the door....”

Father’s big voice booming out happily.

Alice skips down the stairs. “I never peeped! Honestly. But what can it be you have for me? It’s something to wear! Oh, I can’t wait.”

“And holly at the door....”

Father’s hammer tapping smartly, then the gay swinging green branch with its brave little bow of red. They all have to go out to admire it.

“And, Father, you should see the church! It’s wonderful this year. George Davis and Mr. Parmley climbed up on two ladders and tied the greens to the big cross rafter and fastened a silver star rightat the top. It’s never been so pretty. And the tree! Mother, it reaches the ceiling! And Mrs. Davis was putting little white lambs under it and shepherds. We saw it when we were there practicing for to-night. Oh, IhopeI don’t forget my speech.”

Immediately, concentrated, proud interest. Father and Mother sit down to listen once again. Alice stands in front of the table, her hands primly by her sides, her face upraised in gentle seriousness.

“The milk-white sheep looked up one night,And there stood an angel all in white,And though he spoke no words to them,He was there on the hills of Bethlehem,That very first Christmas morning!“The lowing cattle meekly stoodNear to a manger rough and rude....”

“The milk-white sheep looked up one night,And there stood an angel all in white,And though he spoke no words to them,He was there on the hills of Bethlehem,That very first Christmas morning!

“The milk-white sheep looked up one night,

And there stood an angel all in white,

And though he spoke no words to them,

He was there on the hills of Bethlehem,

That very first Christmas morning!

“The lowing cattle meekly stoodNear to a manger rough and rude....”

“The lowing cattle meekly stood

Near to a manger rough and rude....”

On and on goes the sweet childish voice to the end.

“And the time will come, so the wise men say,When the wolf and the lamb together shall play,And a little child shall lead the way,The child of that first Christmas morning.”

“And the time will come, so the wise men say,

When the wolf and the lamb together shall play,

And a little child shall lead the way,

The child of that first Christmas morning.”

“Pshaw!” says Father, poking the fire to hide the tender mist in his eyes. “You couldn’t forget that if you tried!”

“Of course you couldn’t,” Mother reassures. “Only remember to speak loud enough that they can hear you in the back of the church.”

“And all the girls have new dresses,” Alice exclaims, coming excitedly down to earth again. “And I said I had one too. That wasn’t a fib, was it, Mother? It really is new, for me, even if it is Aunt Jennie’s old one dyed.”

“Of course,” Mother stoutly agrees. “And all the trimmings are new. That light cashmere certainly took the dye well.”

“I don’t see how you got it such a beautiful shade of red. It’s just like the holly!”

“You must remember, my dear,” Father puts in with loving pride, “that your mother is a very wonderful person.”

The soft early dusk of Christmas Eve falls upon Martinsville. Father starts down to the post-office for the mail. Mother prepares a light supper to be eaten in the kitchen because of the general haste. For the big Sunday School entertainment and “treat” is at seven-thirty. Alice sets out with her small pail to go to a neighbor’s for the daily supply of milk.

It is so still in the village street. All white and hushed. Just a little stirring like wings in the church yard pines. The child stops, breathless, clasping her hands to her breast, the small pail dangling unheeded, her whole tender young soul caught up suddenly in a white mystery. Christmas Eve! The baby in the manger. The gold stars looking down just as they were to-night, and the angels sweeping through the sky on soft shining wings, singingsinging.

It seemed almost as though they would appear anymoment there where the stars were brightest, right back of the church steeple.

Why, it was real. It was true! Christmas Eve was happening again, within her, down deep, deep in her heart somewhere, as she stood there all quiet and alone in the snow. The wonderful aching beauty of it! It was as though she and the big wide star-swept night had a secret together. Or perhaps it was sheand God.

Down the street comes a quick, clear jingle-jangle-jingle. A sleigh has just turned the corner. Alice starts and runs the rest of the way to the neighbors!

“And two quarts, please, Mother says, if you can spare it, because to-morrow’s Christmas!”

She is dressed for the entertainment in the new dyed dress, her long curls showing golden above its rich red. Father and Mother suddenly begin to consult together in low voices in the kitchen. They come out at last impressively.

“Would she rather have one of her presents, not the big one but the other one, now, so she could wear it to-night? Would she?”

Alice stands considering delightedly, blue eyes like stars, “The big present would still be left for to-morrow?” she queries eagerly.

“You bet!” Father assures her.

“Then—I—believe—I’ll—take the other—now!”

Mother brings it out. A hair ribbon! Just the color of the dress. Bigger and broader than any she has ever had. It is finally perched like a scarlet tanager above the golden curls!

There is the sound of talking, laughing voices passing outside. Scrunch, scrunch, scrunch, of many feet in the snow. People going to the entertainment. The little church up the street is all alight. It is time to go! They start out in the fresh, frosty air. Father follows her and Mother along the narrow snowy path, humming the Holly Song softly to himself.

All at once there was a shrill persistent ringing. It was not of a church bell or passing sleighs. It kept on ringing. The woman in the chair before the desk littered with Christmas cards came slowly back to her surroundings. She grasped the telephone dazedly. “This is Mrs. Barton. What meeting?... Oh, yes.... No, I can’t come.... I’m—I’m not well.”

She hung up the receiver abruptly. The Committee meeting at eleven! It seemed suddenly far away. Her one longing was to get back again to the past where she had just now been living; to those fresh, sweet realities of long ago. She closed her eyes, terrified lest the illusion was lost completely. But slowly, softly, surely, the little snowy village of Martinsville closed in again around her. She was once more the child, Alice.

She was falling asleep on Christmas Eve. The entertainment had been wonderful. She hadn’t forgotten her speech, not a word, and the girls all thought her dress was lovely and her hair ribbon had felt so big and pretty and floppy on her head, and the Ladies Quartette had sung “O Holy Night” for a surprise. Nobody knew they had been practicing, and it was so beautiful it had hurt her inside. And the treat candyhad ever so many more chocolates in it than last year, and it was snowing again and she could hear the faint jingle-jangle-jingle of the sleighs still going up and down Main Street, and she was so happy! And to-morrow would really be Christmas.

Then all at once it was morning. Father and Mother were talking in low, happy voices in their room. She could hear Father creaking softly down the back stairs to start the fire before she got awake. The stockings would be all filled. Goodness, it was hard to wait.

Then at last a great noise in the front hall. Father shouting “Merry Christmas! My Christmas gift! Merry Christmas up there!”

It is time now. She flings her chill little body into her red wrapper and slippers and scurries down the stairs. A big fire in the grate! The three big bulging stockings! Father and Mother stand by until she empties hers first. She feels it with delicious caution. Oranges, apples and nuts in the toe. A funny little bumpy thing above. That would be one of Father’s jokes. But at the top a mysterious soft,squashy package! She withdraws it slowly. She opens one tiny corner, gasps, opens a little more. Then gives a shrill cry. “Mother!Itcouldn’tbe a—amuff!”

She pulls it out, amazed ecstasy on her face. “Itisa muff! Oh, Father, to think of your getting me a muff.” She clasps the small scrap of cheap fur to her breast. “Oh, Mother, I never was so happy.”

A subdued sound drew louder, became a sharp rap at the door. Martinsville receded. The woman in thechair opened her eyes with a dull realization of the present. Delia stood in the door-way, black and ominous. “What about them bed-room curtains?” she demanded.

Alice Barton rose slowly. With a great effort she brought her mind back to the problems of the day. She led the way to the guest room with Delia after her, grumbling inaudibly. Perhaps her eyes were still misted over with sweet memories, for somehow the curtains did not look so bad. “We’ll let them go as they are, Delia. You have enough extras to do.”

Delia departed in pleased surprise, and Alice sat down in the quiet room before a mirror, and peered into it. Almost she expected to see the child she had once been, the tender, smiling young mouth, the soft, eager eyes, the tumbled curls.

Instead she saw a middle aged face with all the spontaneous light gone out of it. There were hard lines in it which no amount of expensive “facials” had been able to smooth away. There was a bitter, unlovely droop to the lips.

Alice regarded herself steadily. Where along the way had she lost the spirit of that child who had this day come back to her?

The outward changes of her life passed in review. It was soon after that last happy Christmas in Martinsville that the little town had been swept by disease. The old village doctor had neither knowledge nor equipment to restrain it. When it was over, many homes had been desolated, and Alice, a bewildered little orphan, had gone to Aunt Jennie’s in the city.

The changed way of living had been at first startling and then strangely commonplace. She had been fluidly adaptable. She had gone to a fashionable finishing school, had made a smart début, had met Tom, fallen deeply in love and then married him with all the circumstance Aunt Jennie had ordained.

Then had come life in Branchbrook and the beginning for herself of the curious nameless game Aunt Jennie had taught her, of belonging, of keeping up with most; of being ahead of many. A game with no noticeable beginning and no possible end. And of course one had to keep on playing it, for if one stopped it meant being dropped. Life would be insupportable after that.

And yet, would it? The game wasn’t making any of them happy as it was. Back of her own restless home she saw again Father and Mother and the little girl named Alice. They had all been so joyously content with each other, had found life with its few small pleasures so wholesome and sweet to the taste.

The woman rose trembling to her feet. Suppose she stopped playing the game! Suppose she didn’t care whether she belonged or not. What if she tried walking in the simple ways of her mother?

She stood there thinking in new terms, startled out of all her old standards, crying out to the past to guide her. And then suddenly she raised her arms above her head in a gesture of emancipation.

She examined her extra shopping list for which she had asked the money that morning. All the itemswere expensive courtesies that need not be rendered if considered apart from the game. She crossed them out one by one.

All that day as she went about her duties, she was conscious of an invisible companion: a child with eager, happy eyes walked beside her, watched her as she helped Delia with the big fruit cake, as she fastened a bough of holly to the door with her own hands.

The child was still close to her in the shadows when she lighted the tall candelabra at dusk and drew the tea-table to the fireside. Just the fire-light and candle shine to greet Tom when he came. She sat very still on the big divan, waiting. Would he feel the new quiet that possessed her? Would he forgive her for having made all the other Christmases times of confusion and worry? She wondered.

The children were not home yet when Tom came. He hung his coat in the hall closet and entered the living room heavily. He looked tired. His glance swept over the tall lighted candles, and the shining tea table. “What’s coming off here? A tea-fight?” he said.

Alice stretched her hands toward him.

“You are the only guest, Tom. You and the children.”

The man came nearer in surprise, caught her hands, peered into her face. Then his own softened. “What is it?” he asked.

They sank down together on the divan, hands still clasped tightly, something old and yet new, flooding back and forth between them.

“What is it?” Tom asked again. “There is something ... tell me.”

And then suddenly the woman knew that into her own hard faded eyes there had come again the gladness of youth.

“I had a visit to-day,” she said slowly, “from a little girl of thirty years ago. A little girl I had forgotten. She brought me something precious.”

Tom looked at her wonderingly. “Will she comeagain?Often?” he begged.

Alice shook her head and smiled. “There is no need,” she answered softly. “For she and her gift have cometo stay!”

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