"'For should he come not by the road, and come not by the hill,And come not by the far sea-way, yet come he surely will.Close all the roads of all the world—Love's road is open still.'
"Do you believe that is true?"
"Not for me," he answered in a hoarse voice, so bitter, so resentful that it startled her, coming as it did after long silence. He gripped the arms of his chair again, as if in pain too great to endure, and then burst out vehemently, "Everyroad is closed to me now! It wouldn't be so hard if there was any prospect of the end coming soon, but I may have to hang on this way for years—just a living death! Caged in this helpless hulk of a body, a drag on every one and a misery to myself!Heavens!If I could only end it all!"
"Oh, Jack!" begged Mary, starting up, tears in her eyes. "Don't talk that way! You're not a drag on anybody! We couldn't live without you! You've been so brave—just like Aldebaran in the Jester's Sword. 'So bravely did he bear his lot, it seemed a kingly spirit dwelt among us!' Don't you know that just having you with us is more to us than anything else in the whole world?"
She was fairly wringing her hands in her distress over this revelation of the overwhelming bitternessof Jack's soul. For months he had been so cheerful, hiding his real feelings under a playfulness of manner, that it was a shock to her to find that his cheerfulness was only assumed. Because he "had met his hurt so bravely and made no sign" she, like the Jester, thought "the struggle had grown easier with time, and that he really felt the gladness that he feigned." Like the Jester, too, she was "at her wit's end for a reply." She could think of no word of comfort.
The loud halloo which sounded just then in a familiar voice from up the creek, was a welcome interruption. The next instant Norman came in sight around the curve. He was standing up in a flat-bottomed boat, poling down stream towards them, with the vigor and skill of a young Indian. It was a clumsy, home-made affair, with "The Swan" painted in blue letters on the side.
"She's mine for the winter!" he announced joyfully, as soon as he was within speaking distance. "A man who lives up past Klein's crossing rented it to me. I'm to chop wood awhile every Saturday to pay for the use of it."
Norman was so interested in his new possession that he could not see that he had interrupted a conversation of tragic seriousness.
"Come on and get in, Mary," he urged. "It's great. Beats those old rafts you used to pole at Lee's ranch, all hollow. Don't you want to try it?"
Mary hesitated. To go off and leave Jack sitting on the creek-bank, unable to accompany her, would emphasize his crippled condition. To refuse to leave him would only be added proof in his present sensitive mood that he was a "drag on every one."
"The sun is dropping so low we ought to be starting home before it begins to get chilly," she said with a meaning glance towards Jack, which to her relief Norman interpreted aright. He answered cheerfully,
"Oh, go on! It's a cinchyouwon't get chilly if you push that old boat along as fast as I did, and if we get cold waiting for you, it won't be many minutes till we'll be 'seen, a-rolling down the Bowling Green' towards home."
"All right, then," said Mary, climbing in as he climbed out to hold the boat steady for her. "I won't go far, but I'm surely glad to get out on the water again."
She took the oar he handed her, and with a skilful push against the bank she sent the boat glidingout into the stream. As she went off she thought: "That was considerate of Norman, to put it the way he did—to include Jack with himself as a matter of course, and not to remind him of his helplessness by saying he'd stay and take care of him. Norman has lots of tact for a boy of his age; more than I have. I must have hurt Jack many a time by my inconsiderate speeches, but I had no idea he felt so horribly sensitive about being dependent."
All the way up the creek she was so occupied with thinking of what Jack had said, and so depressed over the depths of mental suffering which his exclamations revealed, that she plied her oar mechanically, only partly awake to the scenes about her. But the long even strokes, first on one side and then the other, sent her darting forward through the water so rapidly that she soon reached a turn in the creek which she had never passed before, and as she rounded the curve such a beautiful sight greeted her that she cried out in pleased surprise, "How perfectlyheavenly!"
On one side the bank towered up into a high, steep cliff, straight as a wall. It was completely covered with ferns; delicate, feathery maiden-hair ferns, as luxuriantly green as in mid-summer. Inthis sheltered spot they were still left untouched by the frost, although it was now December. Everywhere else vegetation was dry and sere, but the green freshness of this bank was accounted for by a number of tiny water-falls splashing down from unseen springs above, and sending a light spray in every direction, as fine as mist.
"I'm coming straight back here in the morning," she said to herself, "and dig up a lot of these ferns before the frost gets them. I can't think of anything lovelier to send to Gay for a Christmas greeting than a clump of them growing in a box—a rustic box covered with bark and dainty lichens. One would be nice for Mrs. Rochester, too. She's just the kind that would appreciate such a gift. Well, that solves two of my hardest problems of what to give." That trip up the creek inThe Swanwas a voyage of discovery in more ways than one, for Mary came upon the fact that she had grown older in the last quarter of an hour, quite as suddenly and unexpectedly as she had come upon the fern-bank. That cry of Jack's, "Heavens! If I could only end it all!" had shocked her into a deeper understanding of pain, and human limits of endurance.
She had always prided herself on her ability toimagine herself in other people's places, and until now had believed that she fully understood and appreciated the depths of Jack's suffering. Now she saw that she had not even begun to fathom it. His bravery had deceived her. All the while that she had been thinking that he was growing accustomed to his lot and that time was making it easier for him to bear, a fire of rebellion was smouldering fiercely within him, making each day one of new torture.
She sent the boat down stream with long swift strokes.
Because she could plaster up her own small hurts with platitudes and proverbs, and ease her disappointments by counting her blessings "as one would count the beads upon a rosary" she had vainly imagined that all this would be balm for him. How many times she had offered him such comfort, feeling with childish complacency that she was helping to ease his pain. She understood now. A sugarplum may help one to forget a bee-sting, but a death-thrust is another matter.
Absorbed in her thoughts, she sent the boat down stream with long, swift strokes, not noticing how fast it was going. Helped by the current, she came in sight of Jack and Norman before she had mentally adjusted herself to her new view-point. She was afraid that as soon as she and Jack were left alone again they would find themselves facing the same wall of blank despair, and she dreaded it. So to gain time, she began calling to them about the wonderful bank of ferns she had discovered, and made several awkward thrusts of the oar in an attempt to land, before she finally ran the boat up on the bank.
But Norman did not leave them alone. Deciding that that secluded spot would be a good place to chain the boat, and that it was time to be doing his evening chores, he slipped the padlock key in his pocket and handed the oar over to Mary, saying, "You carry this and I'll wheel the chair."
Jack had taken a new grip on his courage, and if Mary could have but known it, it was by the help of one of the very means she had branded as futile, a few moments before. The sight of the bloodstone on his watch-fob, as he glanced at the time, recalled the story of the poor Jester who had been born in Mars month, like himself, and for that reason had cause to claim undaunted courage as the "jewel of his soul." The merest flicker of a smile crossed Jack's grimly-set lips as he looked down at the bloodstone and thought of all it stood for; and pulling himself together he whispered the Jester'svow between clenched teeth: "I'll keep my oath until the going down of one more sun."
When Mary joined them he was chaffing Norman quite as usual, and immediately began to joke about the awkward landing she had made. On the way home Norman laughed often, thinking that Jack was in one of his jolliest moods; but Mary walked beside them, the oar over her shoulder, saying to herself, "And under all this brave show,he's feeling every minute that he'd be glad to die!"
When she reached the house Mrs. Ware met them at the door, and Mary, passing in quietly as Norman began telling about the boat, suddenly remembered that that was not the natural way for her to come home. Whenever she had any news she fairly tumbled into the house in her haste to tell it. The boys knew that she had discovered the bank of ferns, and that it was as exciting as Norman's discovery of a boat, because it would provide some of her Christmas presents without cost. Yet here she was walking in as calmly as if she were fifty years old and had outgrown her girlish enthusiasms. It certainly was not natural.
So she turned back and interrupted Norman, because that was what she always did when she was in a hurry to tell things, and she tried to make herdescription as full of life and color as she usually did; but all the time she had a feeling that she was acting.
Mrs. Ware expressed her interest with many pleased exclamations as she always did when Mary came to her with any new-found cause for rejoicing, but Mary, suddenly grown keen of vision, saw the look of anxiety and weariness that seemed to lie in the back of her eyes behind the smile. "I wonder," she mused, "if mamma is acting, too, if her gladness is only on the surface, and she smiles to keep up her courage and ours, as they say little boys whistle in the dark. Oh, it's dreadful to grow up if one has to lose faith in this being a good old world. It used to seem so happy all the time, and now it's all so sorrowful and out of joint."
She went into her room to wash her hands and get an apron before going out into the kitchen to help prepare supper. As she stood tying the apron-strings, she looked up at Lloyd Sherman's picture which hung over her bed, as it used to hang in Warwick Hall and at Lone Rock, when she pretended that it was Lloyd'sshadow-self, the chum to whom she could carry all her troubles, sure of silent sympathy. But somehow, while the beautiful eyes smiled down into hers as kindly as they had alwaysdone, they did not bring the sense of her presence. They did not speak to her as they had done those other times when she turned to them for the imagined communion that always brightened her spirits.
"It's never seemed the same since I knew she was engaged," Mary thought with a sigh. "Of course I know she's just as fond of me as she was before, but I can't help feeling that she's so taken up with other things now, her life so heavenly full since she has found her prince, that shecan'ttake the same interest in my affairs."
As she passed the mirror she turned back for a second glance. The first had shown her the fresh unlined face of a girl of seventeen, but judging by the way she felt she was sure there should be wrinkles. The weight of world-weariness and disillusionment and foreboding which depressed her, certainly could not belong to youth. They must be the property of an old woman, in her sixties at least.
CHRISTMAS
Tendays before Christmas Mary opened the bottom drawer of her bureau, in which she had placed each gift as soon as it was finished, and sitting down on the floor beside it, proceeded to take an inventory of the packages within. They were all wrapped, stamped and addressed, but she had made them ready without a single Christmas thrill. There was nothing in the climate or surroundings to suggest the holiday season, and she compared this year's preparations with the year before at Warwick Hall, when the very air seemed charged with a spirit of delightful expectancy; when everybody had secrets and went around smiling and humming snatches of carols which the choir-girls were practising for the service in the chapel.
Mechanically she counted the bundles and checked them off her list: the ones for Holland, for Joyce, for Eugenia, the bunny doll with the chamois skin head which she had made for littlePatricia. She was very well satisfied with them all, as well as with the fancy trifles she had made for Lloyd and Betty and the girls at school, with whom she still kept up a correspondence. They were inexpensive, but they were original and appropriate.
Allowing for the crowded condition of the mails, she decided that the packages which had the longest distance to go should be started that very day. These she took from the drawer and piled on her bed, and then got out her pen to begin the writing of her Christmas letters.
Now one may make all sorts of dainty gifts, and tie them with holly ribbon, and send them away in Christmasy looking packages which will bring a glow to the heart of the one who opens them, and yet do it all without one spark of festal feeling herself. But it is impossible to write a Christmas letter and put the proper zest into its greetings, unless one is a-tingle with it. When Mary discovered that fact, she tore up the sheets on which she had made various beginnings, and put the cork in her ink-bottle.
"I can't do it any more than I could keep Thanksgiving on the Fourth of July or New Year's on April Fool's day," she thought. "Luckily the letters travel faster than second-class mail, so I'lltake my packages to the post-office now, and then go out in the boat awhile, and think about snow and sleigh-bells and holly berries till I work myself up to the proper mood."
As she started out of the door her mother called to her to remind her that they needed eggs. That meant that Mary was to go around by the Metz place to get them on her way home, which would take so much longer that there wouldn't be much time for meditation in the boat. But it was in going for the eggs that she came across the very inspiration of which she was in quest.
Mr. Metz and his wife were sitting on a bench in the sunny garden near the kitchen door, when Mary opened the gate. Looking up the path between the stiff rows of coxcombs and prince's feather, she could see that the old lady was knitting, as usual. He sat with a newspaper across his knees, and his spectacles folded in one hand. The other grasped the end of his long white beard which flowed almost to his lap.
They were both singing; singing with the quavering voices of age, a song which they had brought with them from their far away youth in the beloved Fatherland. It was a song of Christmas joy which they had carolled many a timearound a candle-lighted tree. Their voices were thin and tremulous, and broke now and then on the high notes, but it was a gay little tune, very sweet and full of cheer; and Mary, who stopped to listen just inside the gate, was thankful that they had not heard the latch click. When it came to an end she waited a moment, hoping there would be another verse, but they began to talk, and she started on up the path. But halfway to the house she paused again, for they had begun another song.
"Am Weinachtsbaum die Lichter brennen!"
Their voices came to a sudden stop at the end of that line, however, as they became aware of an approaching visitor. Mary hurried forward saying, "Oh, I understood one word of it. You were singing about a Christmas tree, weren't you? The children in the blue cottages across from us have been talking about a 'Weinachtsbaum' all week. Please don't stop. It sounded so sweet as I came in at the gate."
At some other time the old couple might have been hard to persuade, but the holiday season was their high-tide of the year, and its return always swept them along with a rush of happy memories, to a state of enjoyment that was almost childish in its outward manifestation. Finding that Marywas really interested in hearing them talk of the customs of their youth, they began a series of reminiscences so interesting that she could have listened all day.
Seventy Christmases they could remember distinctly, besides the dim impressions of several earlier ones. In the course of describing them it came about quite naturally that they should sing her the interrupted song.
The old man, because he spoke better English than his wife, interpreted the verses first. But even his speech was halting and broken, and he pulled his white beard desperately, and used many despairing gestures when he could not find the right word. She, clicking her needles, kept up a constant nodding while he explained.
"On the Christmas tree the lights are burning. The children gaze at the what you call it—picture—scene—till the eye laughs and the heart laughs and the old look Himmelwartz, heavenwards that means, with blessed rapture."
"Yah, yah!" nodded the old wife, prompting him as he paused. "Zwei Engel"—
"Two angels appear," he repeated, going haltingly on with the next verse. Mary could not understand all that he tried to convey, but shecaught the meaning of the last part, that the day brings God's blessing to young and old alike, to the white as well as the brown hair.
"It is the same all over the world," he said, clearing his throat preparatory to singing the lines he had just translated.
"We will be alone this year. We cannot go to our children and they cannot come to us. But we shall not feel alone. We will make ready one little tree, and in our hearts we will join hands with all the happy ones who greet theWeinachtsbaum. We will be part of that circle which reaches around the whole wide world."
The quavering old voices took up the tune, and although Mary recognized only three words, Christmas-tree, angels and heavenward, there was something in the zest with which they sung it, something in the expression of the wrinkled old faces, which gave her the inspiration she was in search of. It was as if she had brought to them a little unlighted candle, and they had kindled it at the flame of their own glowing ones.
When Mary went home she was more like her accustomed self than she had been for days. She went dancing into the house with the eggs, and immediately set about the writing of her Christmasletters in her usual resourceful way. Mrs. Ware looked up, much amused, to see her piling some fresh orange peel and bits of broken cedar on the table beside her ink-bottle.
"There's nothing like that combination of smells to make you think that Santa Claus is coming straight down the chimney," exclaimed Mary gravely, catching her mother's amused glance. "You may think it is foolish, but really it makes all the Christmases I have ever known stand right up in a row in front of me, whenever I smell that smell."
She rubbed a bit of the fresh peel and then a piece of the cedar between her palms to bring out the pungent fragrance, and afterwards, from time to time, bent over it for another whiff to bring her new inspiration.
By the twentieth of December the last letter and the last out-of-town package but one was started on its way. Gay's box of ferns, a mass of luxuriant, feathery greenness, sat on a window-sill, waiting for its time to go. The crate in which it was to be shipped stood ready in the wood-shed, even to the address on the express-tag. Then time began to drag. The next two days, although the shortest in the year, seemed many times longer than usual.
"It's like trying to keep things hot when somebody is late and keeps dinner waiting," complained Mary. "If you can't eat when it's all ready, some of the things are sure to dry up and some to get cold. I was worked up to quite a festive state of mind day before yesterday, but my enthusiasm is all drying up and cooling off now."
"Here's something to warm it over again," announced Norman, coming in from the express office with a box on his shoulder. "Here's the first gift to arrive. Let's open up right now, and open each thing that comes after thiswhenit comes instead of waiting for one grand surprise on Christmas morning. You never will try my way, and it would spread the pleasure out and make it last lots longer if you only would. You're bound to get more enjoyment out of each thing if you give your undivided attention to it."
For once Norman's suggestion, made yearly, was not opposed, and as he pried the lid off the box Mary flopped down on the floor beside it, Jack wheeled his chair closer, and Mrs. Ware came in from the next room in answer to their eager calls that it was from Joyce.
Each one of the studio family had contributed to the filling of the box. The holly-wreaths on top,tied with great bows of wide red ribbon, were from Miss Henrietta Robbins.
"Don't you know," exclaimed Mary, as she lifted them out and held them up for them all to admire, "that Miss Henrietta has turned that studio into a perfect bower of Christmas greens? She gives it all the elegant costly touches that Joyce never could afford, just as she's put the finishing touch on these wreaths with this beautiful ribbon. It's wide enough and satiny enough for a sash."
"And isn't it just like little Mrs. Boyd to sendthis!" she cried a moment later, when the opening of a fancy pasteboard box revealed a doll about six inches long, dressed like a ballet dancer. Its fluffy scarlet skirts hid the leaves of a needle-book, concealed among its folds, and from the ends of the sash, by which it was intended to dangle, hung a tiny emery bag in the shape of a strawberry, and a little silk thimble-case.
"She got the idea for that from the Ladies' Home Magazine, I am sure. She adores the pages that tell how to evolve your entire spring outfit from a shoe-string and a strip of left-over embroidery. It's not that she's trying to economize. Joyce says she has the piece-bag habit. The girls tease herabout not being able to see a scrap of goods without wishing to find some way to use it, but they love the homey flavor her home-made things give to the house. She is as old-fashioned and dear in her ways as she is in her ideas of art."
"That is an unusually pretty doll," remarked Mrs. Ware as Mary swung it around by its sash.
"Yes," she answered, "it's the kind Hazel Lee and I were always wishing for. Ours were flaxen haired, and this has raven curls. We would have called her 'Lady Agatha' if we had had her then. I believe I'll name her that now," she added with a glance towards Jack to see if he understood the allusion.
But Jack was not noticing. He was turning the pages of a handsomely illustrated work on Geology, a book he had long wanted to own. Joyce had had little to spend this year compared with last, but in her hurried shopping expeditions, she had considered the tastes and needs of each one so well that every gift was hailed with delight.
"Norman's way is a dandy one," acknowledged Mary, as she opened a box of fine stationery engraved with her monogram, the first she had ever owned. "Now I can write my note to Gay on this. If we had waited I should have had to use the commonpaper that we buy at the drug-store by the pound, because it is cheap. And it's so nice too, to have these holly-wreaths beforehand."
She danced away to hang them in the windows, and to swing the Lady Agatha from a corner of the mirror over her bureau, where her hidden needle-book could readily be reached. Then she thriftily gathered up every bit of ribbon and tinsel from the discarded wrappings, smoothed out the tissue paper and picked loose from it all the adhering seals that had not been broken in the process of tearing open the packages.
"Here's seven whole seals with holly on them," she announced to her mother, "six with Santa Claus heads and four with the greeting Merry Christmas. I'm going to use them over again in doing up the rest of my packages. That box that the doll came in is exactly what I want to put the candy in that I made for the Barnabys. And that plain one that holds the stuffed dates that Lucy Boyd sent will do for the candy I'm going to send Mr. and Mrs. Metz. All I'll need to do is to cover it with some of this holly paper and tie it with the same gold cord. I'll find a use for nearly everything I've saved before the week is over."
She said it in a tone of such deep satisfactionthat Norman looked up from the book and other gifts in which he had seemed absorbed, to laugh at her.
"Mary is like that old woman who wrote those recipes for cheap pies in that old New England cook-book we have at home," he said to his mother. "She thinks 'a little Ingenuity added to almost any material that comes to hand will make a tasty pie!' You ought to send the Ladies' Home Magazine some pointers, Mary, on 'How to make Christmas gifts for others on the wrappings of those sent you.' Didn't some one say something about thescrap-baghabit awhile ago?"
Mary's only answer was a saucy grimace. She could afford to let him tease her about her squirrel instinct for hoarding, when it gave her so much satisfaction to add to her store of scraps. She had all sorts of things to draw on in emergencies. In the one month they had been in Bauer she had nearly filled a shoe-box with odds and ends. She had sheets of tin-foil, saved from packages of chocolate, picture cards, little bottles and boxes and various samples of toilet articles sent out by firms who advertise their goods in that way.
For the next two days every mail brought greetings and remembrances to some one of the family,sometimes to all, so that the hours slipped by at a fairly rapid pace. One of the gifts which gave Mary most pleasure was the chiffon scarf that Lloyd sent. It was like the one Roberta wore the first evening Mary had seen her, and which she rapturously compared to "a moonbeam spangled with dew-drops," only she thought hers far lovelier than Roberta's. A dozen times a day she slipped into her room to take the floating, filmy web from its box, and spread it out to gloat over it. She had to try the effects of different lights on it, sunshine and moonlight and the rays of the lamp. She spread it over different dresses, white, pink and green, to see which produced the prettiest glimmers, and Norman caught her once posing before a mirror with it draped over head, and teased her all the rest of the evening.
Betty's gift was a simple, inexpensive one, intended merely as a greeting. It was only a green bay-berry candle, but the card tied to it by a scarlet bow bore the verse:
"This bay-berry candle's tongue of flameBears message. Prithee hear it!While it burns mid your Christmas greensI'm with you all in spirit!"
"I'm glad that it's a big fat candle," said Mary, passing it around for each one to enjoythe spicy, aromatic fragrance. "It'll burn a long time."
She lighted it Christmas eve and put it in the centre of the table with one of the holly-wreaths laid around the base, and the tongue of flame did seem to "bear message." It started Mary to talking of her absent friend; of the bloodstone and the Good Times book Betty had given her. Of Betty's clear brown eyes and dearer ways, of Betty's sweet consideration for others, of her talent for writing which was sure to make her famous some day. She talked of her all during supper, not noticing that Jack was unusually silent, and that his eyes rested oftener on the candle than it did on his plate.
As they left the table Mr. Metz appeared at the door like a veritable old Santa Claus, with his long white beard and eyes a-twinkle. In one arm he carried a big round hat-box full of nuts, in the other two bottles of home-made wine. His own pecan trees and vineyard had furnished his offering. He thanked them so volubly in his broken way for the little gifts that Norman had carried over when he went for the milk, and delivered his nuts and wine with such benign smiles and a flow of good wishes from his wife and himself, thatMary gave a skip of pleasure when she closed the door after him. She went back to the kitchen singing:
"'Now jingle, jingle, come Kris Kringle!' Oh, I feel as if the old fellow himself had really been here. He and Betty's candle have given me a real Night-before-Christmas-and-all-through-the-house feeling. It's lovely!"
They had had supper so early that it was barely dusk outdoors when she and Norman started to take the box of ferns to the rectory. When they had passed the cotton field, the bend in the road soon brought them to the edge of the village, and the beginning of the short thoroughfare which led to the main street, past the cotton-gin and the Free Camp-yard.
The Free Camp-yard was always an interesting place to both of them, and they never passed it without looking in. It was a large lot surrounded by a high board fence. Low sheds were built along one side within the enclosure, in which both men and beasts might find shelter in time of storm. Usually they slept in the open, however, with little campfires here and there to boil their coffee and give them light. Peddlers, hucksters and belated country people were its usual patrons. But sometimesone saw a family of armadillo hunters on their way to the curio dealers, with crates full of the queer nine-banded shells which can be made into baskets, simply by tying the head and tail together.
One evening Mary saw two country belles, putting the finishing touches to their toilets behind a wagon, by the aid of a pocket-mirror. They had come in for one of the Saturday night balls, held regularly in the town hall. The week before, part of a disbanded freak show had taken refuge in the camp-yard. Norman, peeping through a knot-hole, the gate being shut, had seen the Armless Man scratch a match and light a fire with his toes.
It was deserted to-night, except for a dilapidated covered wagon which had driven in a few minutes before. It was drawn by a big bony horse and a dejected little burro, and piled high with household goods. A gaunt, rough-looking man with a week's stubble of red beard on his chin, was beginning to unhitch. His wife, who was only a young thing, and pretty in a worn, faded way, put down the sleeping baby that she had been holding, and stretched her arms wearily. She seemed too tired and listless to move till one of the two children, who were climbing down over the wheel, fell and began to whimper. A pair of hounds that hadtrailed along behind dropped down under the wagon as if they had followed a long way and were utterly exhausted.
"Did you ever see anything so forlorn in all your life!" exclaimed Norman as they passed on. "And Christmas eve, too. I don't suppose those poor little kids will have a thing."
"No, I suppose not," answered Mary. "It seems a shame, too, when there'll probably be a tree in every house in Bauer. Mrs. Metz says that is one custom that they keep up here as faithfully as they do in the old country. Even the poorest families will manage to get one somehow."
"Those were cute kids," Norman went on, too much interested in what he had just seen to put the subject by. "That oldest little girl with the yellow curls looked like a big doll, and the little one is almost as pretty."
He spoke of them again on the way back, after they had left the ferns at the rectory, and turned homeward. The lights were beginning to twinkle all down the long street. In every house they passed, where the shades had not been drawn, they could see a tree, standing all ready for the lighting, from gift-laden base to top-most taper. As they drew near the camp-yard again they saw the red-whiskeredman going into the corner grocery with a tin pail on his arm. At the camp-yard gate they looked in. A small fire had been started, over which a battered coffee-pot had been set to boil. The burro and the bony horse were munching fodder near the wagon, but the woman and the children had disappeared.
"There they are," whispered Mary, pointing down the road a little way to a group standing in front of the pretty green and white cottage next to the cotton gin. The lace curtains had been dropped over the windows, but they did not hide the gay scene within. The family was having its celebration early, because the two small lads for whom it was designed were so young that their bedtime came early. They were handsome little fellows, one in kilts and the other just promoted to trousers. The gifts hanging from the lighted boughs were many and costly. The two little ones outside looking in, had never seen anything so fine and beautiful before, and stood gazing in round-eyed wonder. Attracted by the music they had strayed down from the camp-yard, and their mother had followed with the sleeping baby thrown across her shoulder, to bring them back. Now she, too, stood and stared.
The phonograph was still playing when Maryand Norman reached the gate, so they paused to listen, also, more interested in the watchers outside however, than the revellers within.
Presently Mary turned to the woman, saying, "It's pretty,isn'tit?" in such a friendly way that her remark called out an equally friendly response, and in a few moments she had learned what she wanted most to know about the strangers. They were moving on to the next county, having already been two days and a night on the road. Her man thought he could find work in the cedar brakes.
They stood talking until the phonograph stopped, then a glance over her shoulder told the woman that her husband was returning to the wagon, and she turned to go. The children were loath to leave, however.
"It's their first sight of Sandy Claws," she remarked as if to explain their unwillingness. Then as one of them stumbled and caught at her skirts she added impatiently, "I reckon it's likely to be your last. He don't care anything for the likes ofus."
It was said so bitterly, that as Norman trudged on in the opposite direction with his sister, he exclaimed in a regretful tone, "It's too bad that we didn't find out about them sooner, in time to fixsomething for them. It sort of spoils my own Christmas to think of those kids going without."
"They are not going without," replied Mary promptly, who had been thinking rapidly as she walked. "We've got to get something ready for them before they shut their eyes to-night."
"Huh, I'd like to know how you'll do it this late," Norman answered.
She laughed in reply, saying teasingly, "Who was it said that 'A little Ingenuity added to almost any material that comes to hand will make a tasty pie?' Well, it will make a tasty tree too. If you'll help I'll have one ready in an hour."
His skeptical "I don't believe it! Why, youcan't!" was all she needed to start her to working out her resolution with the force of a young whirlwind. She could plan with lightning-like rapidity when any need arose.
"I said if you'd all help," she reminded him.
As soon as he had expressed a hearty willingness to do anything he could to carry "Sandy Claws" to the camp-yard, she began.
"The minute we get home, you hack off one of the bottom branches of that cedar tree outside the gate; a good bushy one about three feet high. Put it into the box that Joyce's presents came in, andnail it in place with cleats made from the lid. Better weight it with some stones in the bottom, and we can tack green crêpe paper all over the base. We've nothing but ordinary white candles, but we can cut them in two, and wire them on with hairpins, and cover the pins with tinfoil out of my scrap-box that you make so much fun of. That will beyourpart.
"There's some corn already popped, waiting till I get back, to be made into balls. I'll get mamma to string it instead, and Jack to make a lot of little gilt cornucopias out of some stuff I've saved. I'm sure he'll donate the candy cane Joyce sent as a joke, although he is so fond of old-fashioned striped peppermint sticks. We'll break it up into short pieces and hang that on. And we can tie up a few dates and nuts into tiny packages. There are fancy papers and ribbons galore in that aforesaid scrap-box. I'll think of more after we get started. Come on, let's race the rest of the way. The one who gets there first can tell the others."
Norman reached the front door several yards ahead of Mary, but he did not claim his privilege. He merely rushed into the kitchen for a hatchet, calling as he dashed out again, "Sixty minutes to make a Christmas tree in! Everybody get towork." Mary did not stop to take off her hat. Throwing off her coat, she began talking "on the bounce" as Jack said, for she hurried from one room to the other, explaining at the top of her voice, while she gathered up pop-corn, scrap-box, paste-tube and scissors. Her enthusiasm was so contagious, her description of the camp-yard pilgrims so appealing, that by the time she had finished her breathless account of them Jack had begun cutting squares of gilt paper and Mrs. Ware was stringing corn as if they were working to win a wager.
The race against time was the most exciting experience they had had in Bauer. They watched the clock with many laughing exclamations, but were working too fast to talk much. In twenty minutes Norman brought in a shapely little tree firmly fastened on a green base. In thirty minutes more the candles were wired in place; a few skilful twists had turned part of the tinfoil into silvery ornaments to hang beneath, while the rest had gone to the making of a great star to blaze on the top-most bough. White strings of pop-corn were festooned around it like garlands of snow. Every branch was bright with gilt and silver and blue and red packages, holding only a nut or a sweetmeatit is true, but adding much to the gay attire of the tree.
A little pocket-mirror flashed from one bough, a fancy sample bottle of perfume hung from another. A miniature cake of scented soap and many fluttering picture cards bore witness to the resources of the scrap-box. Then exclaiming over a sudden happy thought Mary darted into the bedroom and took down Lady Agatha. Three snips of the scissors robbed her of the needle book hidden under her fluffy scarlet skirts and of the emery bag and thimble case tied to her sash ends, and left her no longer useful; only so ornamental that any little girl would have been glad to take her to her arms and affection.
"I know Mrs. Boyd wouldn't mind my passing it on to those children," Mary said as she tied it to one of the highest branches, "if she knew that it makes me happy as well as them."
"But," asked Norman, "what if Goldilocks and her sister both want to play with it at the same time? What will the left-out one do?"
Mary thought an instant and then flew to the tray of her trunk to snatch out a woolly toy lamb, that had fallen to her lot from the mock Christmas tree at Warwick Hall.
"I brought it down to Texas with me because Dorene said that 'everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go.' I expected to keep it always as a reminder of that lovely evening, but—" with a half stifled sigh, "it will do them more good than me."
When that was in place she gave one last glance around the room to see what else she could appropriate. Her eyes fell on the holly wreaths.
"Those red bows will make lovely hair-ribbons," she cried. "We can spare two of them. Hurry, mamma, and help me untie them! The needle-book may as well gotoo. Pin it on, Norman, and stick a date in the thimble bag and swing it up, Jack."
In the meantime Norman had been lighting the candles in order that they might see how it looked when it was all ashine, and it stood now, a very creditable and a very bright little tree. There were none of the spun-glass birds and crystal icicles and artificial fruits that had made little Patricia's tree such a gorgeous affair the year before, and were probably making it beautiful to-night, but there was sparkle and color and glow and charm of beribboned packages, enough to make little eyes who saw such a sight for the first time believe that it was the work of magic hands.
"Done!" cried Mary triumphantly, "and in only fifty-eight minutes!"
"Well, I didn't believe it would be possible," acknowledged Norman. "I'll bet it's the only tree in Texas trimmed in such short order."
When he and Mary reached the camp-yard again, they found the family sitting around the smouldering fire, listening to the phonograph which was still playing in the cottage down the road. The quilts were spread out in the wagon, ready for the night, but the children, who had slept most of the afternoon on their tiresome journey, could not be induced to climb in while the music lasted.
The two bearers of Yule-tide cheer set the tree down and reconnoitered through cracks in the fence. "The man looks awfully down in the mouth," whispered Norman. "So does she. Shall we tell them 'Sandy Claws' sent it?"
"No," Mary whispered back. "They look so forlorn and friendless, and the woman seemed to feel so left out of everything, that it might do them good to tell them we brought it because the angels sang peace on earth, good-will to men, and that it's a sort of sign that they'renotleft out. They're to have a part in it too."
Norman turned his eye from the knot-hole togape at her. "Well!" was his whispered ejaculation. "If you want allthatsaid you'll have to say it yourself. I'm no preacher."
"Come on then," said Mary boldly. She knew what she wanted to convey to them but the words stuck in her throat, and she never could remember afterwards exactly what she blurted out as they put the tree down in front of the astonished family and then turned and ran. However, her words must have carried some of the good cheer she intended, for when she and Norman paused again outside, she at the knot-hole this time and he at the crack, it gave them each a queer little flutter inside to see the expression on the pleased faces and hear their exclamations of wonder.
"They couldn't be more surprised if it had dropped right down out of the sky," whispered Norman. "Now the kids are getting over their daze a bit. They're hopping around just like they saw the Kramer boys do."
"See, they've found Lady Agatha," answered Mary. "Justlookat Goldilocks now! Did you ever see such an ecstatic little face. I wouldn't have missed it for anything. Now they've got the lamb. I'm so glad I thought of it, for the Kramershad a whole bunch of little white sheep around the base of their tree."
They were both very quiet when they finally turned away from the fence and started home. They did not speak till they reached the white moonlighted road, stretching past the cotton field. Then Mary looked up at the stars saying reverently, "Somehow I feel as if we'd been taking part in thefirstChristmas. It was a sort of camp-yard that the Star of Bethlehem led to. Don't you remember, 'there was no room in the inn' for the Child and His mother? It was a manger the gold and frankincense and myrrh were carried to. I feel as if we'd been following along—a little way at least—on the trail of the Wise Men."
"Me too," confessed Norman. Then nothing more was said for a long time. Mary could find no words for the next thoughts which puzzled her. She was picturing all the Christmas trees of the world brought together in one place, and trying to imagine the enormous forest they would make. Then she fell to wondering what it was about them that should make "the eye laugh and the heart laugh, and bring a blessing to the silver hair as well as brown" as the old couple had sung in the garden. All over the world it was so.
Since looking into the windows at other peoples' trees, and then causing one to bloom and bear fruit herself for the homeless campers, she felt that she had joined hands with that circle which reaches around the world. She was no longer an alien and stranger among the people of Bauer. The "Weinachtsbaum" had given her a happy bond of understanding and kinship. It had taken the hard, hopeless look out of the older faces around the camp-fire, for awhile at least, and made the little ones radiant. And at home—she remembered gratefully how Jack had burst out whistling several times while he helped to trim it. And the tune that came in such lusty, rollicking outbursts was one which he never whistled except when he was in high good humor with himself and all the universe. She was sure that he wasn't acting then—he couldn't have been just pretending that he was glad, for it sounded as it always used to do back at the Wigwam. She wondered why the tree had had that effect.
And then, like an answer, a verse popped into her thoughts; one that she had spelled out long ago for Grandmother Ware, letter by letter, one little finger pointing to each in turn. It was a verse from Revelation, about the tree that stands on eitherside of the river, clear as crystal, "which bare twelve manner of fruit, and the leaves were for the healing of the nations."
Then all of a sudden she understood why those shining boughs with their strange fruitage of gifts have power to bring hope and good cheer to lonely hearts the world over. They are the symbols, which the Spirit of Christmas sets ashine, of that Tree of Life. And the Spirit of Christmas is only another name for Love, and it is Love alone, the human and divine together, which can bring about the healing needed by hearts in every nation.
All this did not come to Mary in words. She could not have expressed it to any one else, but it sent her on her way, deeply, quietly glad.
Next morning while she was stooping before the oven, basting the turkey which the Barnabys had sent with their greetings, Jack called her to the front window where he was sitting.
A covered wagon was creaking slowly by, drawn by a big horse and a little burro. The cover was looped up, and in the back end, carefully tied to the tail-gate, stood the tree which had taken them fifty-eight minutes to prepare, but whose memory would not be effaced in that many years from the minds of the two children, seated on the quilts beside it.
"I'm so glad you got to see them," said Mary. "Aren't they dear? And oh, look! Goldilocks is still holding Lady Agatha, and the other one's hugging the woolly lamb!"
When the wagon was entirely out of sight Mary started back to her turkey basting, but stopped a moment to take another look at the gifts spread out on the side table. Several things had been added to them that morning; a dissected puzzle picture which Norman had made for her, a spool case that Jack had whittled out, and a strip of exquisitely embroidered rosebuds that Mrs. Ware had wrought to be put into a white dress. There was also a pot of white hyacinths from the rectory, and Mary held her face down against the cool snow of their blossoms, taking in their sweetness in long breaths.
"It's been a pretty full Christmas, hasn't it!" exclaimed Jack as he watched her.
"It's really been one of the nicest I ever had," she answered, "for one reason because it's lasted so long. Norman's plan is a success."
That night after supper Norman insisted on taking his mother down into the village to look at the lighted windows. After they had gone Mary took out her Good Times book to record the happeningsof the day. She had a few more notes of acknowledgment to write also, and was glad that Jack was busy with his own writing. She noticed that he was using India ink and a crow-quill pen, but thought nothing of that as he was always experimenting with them.
Joyce was not the only one of the children who had inherited artistic ability. Jack never attempted pictures, but he did beautiful lettering; odd initials and old English script, and had copied verses for calendars and fly-leaf inscriptions. Joyce said some of his pen-and-ink work was as beautifully done as the letters she had seen in old missals, made by the monks.
Nearly an hour went by. Mary addressed her last envelope. He laid down his pen and pushed a narrow strip of cardboard towards her.
"I've made you one more present to end the day with, Mary," he said jokingly. "It's a bookmark."
Inside a narrow border of conventional scrollwork was one line, and the line was from the verse which she had quoted so disastrously that day at the creek-bank:
"Close all the roads of all the world,Love'sroad is open still!"
As she looked up to speak he interrupted her hurriedly:
"Yes, I know how miserable I made you that day with my outburst against fate, and I've felt that you've never believed me since when I laughed and joked and said that I enjoyed things. But that was only one time that I gave way, just once that I got down in the dumps and I don't want you to think that is my usual state of feelings. Really I'm getting more out of life than you imagine. I'm putting up the best fight I can. I just wanted you to know that although every other road in the world is closed against me I can still scrape along pretty comfortably because that last line is true. Love's road is open still. You all have made it a good wide one for me, and made it worth while for me to travel it with you cheerfully to the end. I'm perfectly willing to,now."
"Oh, Jack!" cried Mary in a voice that trembled with both joy and tears. "I've had a happy Christmas, but knowing you feel that way is the very best part of all!"