by A. A. Milne
While she was at breakfast Mis' Abby Winslow came in.
"Mercy," Mis' Winslow said, "is it breakfast—early? I've been up hours, frosting the cakes."
"What cakes?" Mary asked idly.
Mis' Winslow flushed dully. "I ain't baked anything much in weeks before," she answered ambiguously, and hurried from the subject.
"The little fellow's coming in on the Local, is he?" she said. "You ain't heard anything different?"
"Nothing different," Mary replied. "Yes, of course he's coming. They left there Saturday, or I'd have heard. The man he's with is going to get home to-night for Christmas with his folks in the City."
"Going down to meet him of course, ain't you," Mis' Winslow pursued easily.
"Why, yes," said Mary.
"Well," Mis' Winslow mounted her preparation, "I was thinking it would be kind of dark for you to bring him in here all alone. Don't you want I should come over and keep up the lights and be here when you get here?"
She watched Mary in open anxiety. If she were to refuse, it would go rather awkwardly. To her delight Mary welcomed with real relief the suggestion.
"I'd be ever so much obliged," she said; "I thought of asking somebody. I'll have a little supper set out for him before I leave."
"Yes, of course," Mis' Winslow said, eyes down. "I'll be over about seven," she added. "If the train's on time, you'll be back here around half past. The children want to go down with you—they can be at Mis' Moran's when you go by. You'll walk up from the depot, won't you? You do," she said persuasively; "the little fellow'll be glad to stretch his legs. And it'll give the children a chance to get acquainted."
"I might as well," Mary assented listlessly. "There's no need to hurry home, as I know of, except keeping you waiting."
"Oh, I don't mind," Mis' Winslow told her. "Better come around through town, too. It's some farther, but he'll like the lights. What's the little chap's name?" she asked; "I donno's I've heard you say."
Mary flushed faintly. "Do you know," she said, "I don't know his name. I can't remember that Lily ever told me. They always called him just Yes, because he learned to say that first."
"'Yes!'" repeated Mis' Winslow, blankly. "Why, it don't sound to me real human."
Later in the day, Mis' Mortimer Bates and Mis' Moran came in to see Mary. Both were hurried and tired, and occasionally one of them lapsed into some mental calculation. "We must remember something for the middle of the table," Mis' Bates observed to Mis' Moran, under cover of Mary's putting wood in the stove. And when Mary related the breaking of the bracket lamp, the two other women telegraphed to each other a glance of memorandum.
"Don't it seem funny to you to have Christmas coming on to-morrow and no flurry about it?" Mary asked.
"No flurry!" Mis' Bates burst out. "Oh, well," she amended, "of course this Christmas does feel a little funny to all of us. Don't you think so, Mis' Moran?"
"I donno," said Mary, thoughtfully, "but what, when folks stop chasing after Christmas and driving it before them, Christmas may turn around and come to find them."
"Mebbe so," Mis' Moran said with bright eyes, "mebbe so. Oh, Mary," she added, "ain't it nice he's coming?"
Mary looked at them, frowning a little. "It seemed like the thing had to happen," she said; "it'll fit itself in."
Before dark she took a last look about the child's room. The owl paper, the puppy washbasin, the huge calendar with its picture of a stag, the shelves for whatever things of his own he had, all pleased her newly. She had laid on his table her grandfather's Bible with pictures of Asiatic places. Below his mirror hung his father's photograph, that young face, with the unspeakable wistfulness of youth, looking somewhere outside the picture. It made her think of the passionate expectation in the face of the picture that Jenny had brought.
"Young folks in pictures always look like they was setting store by something that ain't true yet," Mary thought. "It makes you kind of feel you have to pitch in and make whatever it is come true, a little… ."
It was when Mis' Winslow came back toward seven o'clock that there was news of Jenny. Mary had been twice to her door in the course of the day, and had come away feeling, in her inquiry, strangely outside the moment and alien to its incidence, as if she were somehow less alive than those in Jenny's house.
"Jenny's got a little girl," Mis' Winslow said.
Mary stood staring at her. It seemed impossible. It was like seeing the hands of time move, like becoming momentarily conscious of the swing and rush of the earth, like perceiving the sweep of the stream of stars in which our system moves… . She was startled and abashed that the news so seized upon her. Little that had ever happened to herself seemed so poignant, so warmed its place in sensation. While Mis' Winslow's mind marked time on details of time and pounds, as is the way with us immortals when another joins our ranks, Mary was receiving more consciousness. There are times when this gift is laid on swiftly, as with hands, instead of coming when none knows. Rather than with the child whom she was to meet, her thought was with Jenny as she left Mis' Winslow in the doorway and went down the street.
"Expect you back in about half an hour if the train's on time," Mis' Winslow called.
Mary nodded, and turned into the great cathedral aisle that was Old Trail Street, now arched and whitened, spectral in the dark, silver with starlight… .
… Capella was in the east, high and bright, and as imperative as speech. Mary's way lay north, so that that great sun went beside her, and there was no one else abroad but these two. A coat of ice had polished the walks, so she went by the road, between the long white mounds that lined it. The road, whose curves were absorbed in the dimness, had thus lost its look of activity and lay inert as any frozen waterway. Only a little wind, the star's sparkle, and Mary's step and breath seemed living things—but from the rows of chimneys up and down the Old Trail Road, faint smoke went up, a plume, a wreath, a veil, where the village folk, invisible within quiet roof and wall, lifted common signals; and from here a window and there a window, a light shone out, a point, a ray, a glow, so that one without would almost say, "There's home."
The night before Christmas; and in not one home was there any preparation for to-morrow, Mary thought, unless one or two lawless ones had broken bounds and contrived something, from a little remembrance for somebody to a suet pudding. It was strange, she owned: no trees being trimmed, no churches lighted for practice, and the shops closed as on any other night. Only the post office had light—she went in to look in her box. Affer was there at the telegraph window, and he accosted her.
"Little boy's comin' to-night, is he?" he said, as one of the sponsors for that arrival.
"I'm on my way to the train now," Mary answered, and noted the Christmas notice with its soiled and dog-eared list still hanging on the wall. "It was a good move," she insisted to herself, as she went out into the empty street again.
"You got a merry Christmas without no odds of the paper or me either," Affer called after her; but she did not answer save with her "Thank you, Mr. Affer."
"Why do they all pretend to think it's so fine for me?" she wondered. "To cheer me up, I guess," she thought grimly.
To-night they were all sharing the aloofness from the time, an aloofness which she herself had known for years. All save Jenny. To Jenny's house, in defiance of that dog-eared paper in the post office, Christmas had come. Not a Christmas of "present trading," not a Christmas of things at all; but Christmas. Unto them a child was born.
"Jenny's the only one in this town that's got a real Christmas," thought Mary, on her way to meet her own little guest.
The Simeon Buck North American Dry Goods Exchange was dark, too, and from its cave of window the gray Saint Nicholas looked out, bearing his flag—and he to-night an idle, mummy thing of no significance. The Abel Ames General Merchandise Emporium was closed, but involuntarily Mary stopped before it. In its great plate-glass window a single candle burned. She stood for a moment looking.
"Why, that's what t
hey do, some places, to let the Christ-child in," Mary thought. "I wonder if Abel knows. How funny—for a store!"
Some one whom she did not know passed her and looked too.
"Kind o' nice," said the other.
"Real nice," Mary returned, and went on with a little glow.
Abel's candle, and the arc light shining like cold blue crystal before the dark Town Hall, and the post-office light where the dog-eared list hung and the telegraph key clicked out its pretence at hand touching with all the world, these were the only lights the street showed—save Capella, that went beside her and, as she looked, seemed almost to stand above the town.
At Mis' Moran's house on the other side of the square, the children were waiting for her—Bennet and Gussie and Tab and Pep and little Emily. They ran before Mary in the road, all save little Emily, who walked clasping Mary's hand.
"Aren't you staying up late, Emily?" Mary asked her.
"Yes," assented the child, contentedly.
"Won't you be sleepy?" Mary pursued.
"I was going to stay awake anyhow," she said; "I ain't goin' sleep all night. We said so. We're goin' stay 'wake and see Santa Claus go by."
"Go by?" Mary repeated.
"Yes," the child explained; "you don't think that'll hurt, do you?" she asked anxiously. "And then," she pursued, "if we don't see him, we'll know he's dead everywheres else, too. An' then we're goin' bury him to-morrow morning, up to Gussie's house."
At the station, no one was yet about. The telegraph instrument was clicking there, too, signaling the world; a light showed in the office behind a row of sickly geraniums; the wind came down through the cut and across the tracks and swept the little platform. But the children begging to stay outside, Mary stood in a corner by the telegraph operator's bay window and looked across to the open meadows beyond the tracks and up at the great star. The meadows, sloping to an horizon hill, were even and white, as if an end of sky had been pulled down and spread upon them. Utter peace was there, not the primeval peace that is negation, but a silence that listened.
"'While shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground,… '" Mary thought and looked along the horizon hill. The time needed an invocation from some one who watched, as many voices, through many centuries, had made invocation on Christmas Eve. For a moment, looking over the lonely white places where no one watched, as no one—save only Jenny—watched in the town, Mary forgot the children… .
The shoving and grating of baggage truck wheels recalled her. Just beyond the bay window she saw little Emily lifted to the truck and the four others follow, and the ten heels dangle in air.
* * *
"Now!" said Pep. And a chant arose:
"'Twas the night before Christmas when all
through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with
care
In the hope that Saint Nicholas soon would
be there… ."
* * *
Upborne by one, now by another, now by all three voices, the verses went on unto the end. And it was as if not only Tab and Pep and Bennet and Gussie and little Emily were chanting, but all children who had ever counted the days to Christmas and had found Christmas the one piece of magic that is looked on with kindness by a grown-up world. The magic of swimming holes, for example, is largely a forbidden magic; the magic of loud noises, of fast motion, of living things in pockets, of far journeys, of going off alone, of digging caves, of building fires, of high places, of many closed doors, words, mechanisms, foods, ownerships, manners, costumes, companions, and holidays are denied them. But in Christmas their affinity for mystery is recognized, encouraged, gratified, annually provided for. The little group on the baggage truck chanted their watch over a dead body of Christmas, but its magic was there, inviolate. The singsong verses had almost the dignity of lyric expression, of the essence of familiarity with that which is unknown. As if, because humanity had always recognized that the will to Christmas was greater than it knew, these words had somehow been made to catch and reproduce, for generations, some faint spirit of the midwinter mystery.
The 'bus rattled up to the platform and Buff Miles leaped down and blanketed his horses, talking to them as was his wont.
* * *
"So, holly and mistletoe,
So, holly and mistletoe,
So, holly, and mistletoe,
Over and over and over, oh… ."
* * *
he was singing as he came round the corner of the station.
"It ain't Christmas yet," he observed defensively to Mary. "It ain't forbid except for Christmas Day, is it?"
He went and bent over the children on the truck.
"Look alive as soon as you can do it," Mary heard him say to them, and wondered.
She stood looking up the track. Across the still fields, lying empty and ready for some presence, came flashing the point of flame that streamed from the headlight of the train. The light shone out like a signal flashed back to the star standing above the town.
Chapter 12
Ten minutes after Mary Chavah had left her house, every window was lighted, a fire was kindled in the parlour, and neighbours came from the dark and fell to work at the baskets they had brought.
It was marvelous what homely cheer arose. The dining-room table, stretched at its fullest length and white-covered, was various with the yellow and red of fruit and salads, the golden brown of cake and rolls, and the mosaic of dishes. The fire roared in the flat-topped stove on whose "wings" covered pans waited, and everywhere was that happy stir and touch and lift, that note of preparation which informs a time as sunshine or music will strike its key.
"My land, the oven—the warming oven. Mary ain't got one. However will we keep the stuff hot?" Mis' Winslow demanded. "What time is it?"
"We'd ought to had my big coffee-pot. We'd ought to set two going. I donno why I didn't think of it," Mis' Moran grieved.
"Well," said Mis' Mortimer Bates, "when the men get here—if they ever do get here—we'll send one of 'em off somewheres for the truck we forgot. What time is it?"
"Here comes a whole cartload of folks," Mis' Moran announced. "I hope and pray they've got the oysters—they'd ought to be popped in the baking oven a minute. What time did you say it is?"
"It's twenty minutes past seven," Mis' Winslow said, pushing her hair straight back, regardless of its part, "and we ain't ready within 'leven hundred miles."
"Well, if they only all get here," Mis' Bates said, ringing golden and white stuffed eggs on Mary's blue platter; "it's their all being here when she gets here that I want. I ain't worried about the supper—much."
"The road's black with folks," Mis' Moran went on. "I'm so deadly afraid I didn't make enough sandwiches. Oh, I donno why it wasn't given me to make more, I'm sure."
"Who's seeing to them in the parlour? Who's getting their baskets out here? Where they finding a place for their wraps? Who's lighting the rest of the lamps? What time is it?" demanded Mis' Winslow, cutting her cakes.
"Oh," said Mis' Bates from a cloud of brown butter about the cooking stove, "I donno whether we've done right. I donno but we've broke our word to the Christmas paper. I donno whether we ain't going to get ourselves criticized for this as never folks was criticized before."
Mis' Moran changed her chair to the draughtless corner back of the cooking stove and offered to stir the savoury saucepan.
"I know it," she said, "I know it. We never planned much in the first start. It grew and it grew like it grew with its own bones. But mebbe there's some won't believe that, one secunt."
Mis' Winslow straightened up from the table and held out a hand with fingers frosting-tipped.
"Well," she said, with a great period, "if we have broke our word to the Christmas paper, I'd rather stand up here with my word broke this way than with it kept so good it hurt me. Is it half-past seven yet?"
"I wish Ellen Bourne was h
ere," Mis' Bates observed. "She sent her salad dressing over and lent her silver and her Christmas rose for the table—but come she would not. I wonder if she couldn't come over now if we sent after her, last minute?"
Simeon Buck, appearing a few minutes later at the kitchen door to set a basket inside, was dispatched for Ellen Bourne, the warming oven, and the coffee-pot, collectively. He took with him Abel Ames, who was waiting for him without. And it chanced that they knocked at the Bournes' door just after Ben Helders had driven away with the little boy, so that the men found the family still in the presence of the little tree.
"Hello," said Simeon, aghast, "Christmassing away all by yourselves, I'll be bound, like so many thieves. I rec'lect not seeing your names on the paper."
"No, I didn't sign," Ellen said. "I voted against it that night at the town meeting, but I guess nobody heard me."
"Well," said Simeon, "and so here you've got a Christmas of your own going forward, neat as a kitten's foot—"
"Ain't you coming over to Mary Chavah's?" Abel broke in with a kind of gentleness. "All of you?"
Ellen smote her hands together.
"I meant to go over later," she said, "and take—" She paused. "I thought we'd all go over later," she said. "I forgot about it. Why, yes, I guess we can go now, can't we? All three of us?"
Abel Ames stood looking at the tree. He half guessed that she might have dressed it for no one who would see it. He looked at Ellen and ventured what he thought.