XIIMARY CHRISTMAS DAYS
THERE are still Mary Christmas days in the Wescott village—days when the sun lies warm on the orchard grass and the petals drift through the bright air like great lazy snowflakes. Then Father Wescott puts away the town report and certain prophetic statistics as to the fall election, closes the office, and comes home at noon for the day, swinging up the street in precisely the manner of so many years ago. In the afternoon, under the apple trees, he drowses a bit over his paper, unless there happens to be a disturbing article on the spread of Radicalism, while the bees hum among the blossoms, and while Mrs. Wescott, whom the right of franchise has not changed a whit, completes a red mitten for her oldest grandson. But when the shadows grow longer and the village children drive home their cows, they talk of Mary Christmas. In the evening, as they siton the porch, Mrs. Wescott wears a shawl in whose delicate traceries are birds and butterflies, stars and tired sheep. Once Father Wescott shamefacedly took a string of red stones from his pocket and put it around his neck, where it glowed against his white collar and shirt, red as the geraniums in the porch boxes or as great drops of blood. It must be admitted, however, that during this procedure he was genuinely embarrassed and kept a vigilant eye on the driveway and the door.
North of Boston, in the city where William Howe, still a Democrat, is now president of his company, there are Mary Christmas days. When the first one comes in June, Mary Wescott hurries home from a mothers’ meeting or from the League of Women Voters, gives the surprised maid the remainder of the day, and gets dinner herself. Then, while she prepares the baby’s orange juice (for the times simply demand that she renounce sulphur and molasses), she tells the children of Mary Christmas and of all the manifold things that, because of Mary Christmas, happened to her when she wasa little girl. William comes home as the light softens to find a rush of children at the gate, apple blossoms on the table, and Mary in a blue gingham apron with some flour on her pink cheek. And that evening in a quiet house they wonder what on earth they can give their children to compensate for no Mary Christmas!
In the college town where Cynthia lives there are Mary Christmas days. When one steals over the campus and lures students from their books, Cynthia, too, is lured from Jeremy Taylor and Richard Baxter and other ecclesiastical heroes who, colleges so often decree, shall be studied in the spring. Forgetting them all for a season, Cynthia talks about words—the glory and magic that lie in so many of them:silent,holy,high,garden. And as her students listen, perhaps a trifle wonderingly, they see a blue light, the color of harebells in sunshine, creep into her clear gray eyes and linger there. But, although they do not know it, there is one word that she does not name—a word of three letters which years ago unlocked for her the treasure-house of ages.
There are Mary Christmas days in the city where John works, the city of Mr. Longfellow and, during her sojourn, of Mary Christmas herself. Now John has grown into one of those mysterious men who know all about stocks and bonds and reserve banks and the other entanglements of high finance. When he reads that “East Cuba Sugar 7½s were active in 106¼,” he is no more puzzled than you or I when we read that “Mr. and Mrs. Brown left immediately for Kansas City and points west.” Moreover, upon occasion he can talk in such terms. But when a Mary Christmas day brings drifting petals to the old gardens in Portland, and the sun lies warm on St. Stephen’s church, John forgets all matters of high finance. His associates have even known him to become irritated when asked a simple question concerning Missouri Pacific 4s. A restlessness drives him early from the office and sets him walking far into the country, along a coast road where the long shadows of the trees are mirrored in the still water. It is late when he comes back to his rooms, but not too late for him to light his pipe and to sit by his openwindow in the white moonlight. And more than once on nights like these—though we confess it in the strictest confidence—he has drawn from a faded green-and-gold box in his trunk a silk cap with many colors in orderly rows. This he puts upon his head in a most absurd fashion, for it is much too small for him; and, watching the blue spirals of smoke, he dreams of a certain day long ago when his father came up the street,wearing his collar and tie!