A Vintage Christmas

by Thomas Nelson

  “You and all the children—every one,” went on the teacher dreamily, as if he were reciting a lesson learned beforehand. “She told me to tell you to be sure and come. Shall I say that you will?”

  “Oh, yes, that is—I suppose—I don’t know,” said Mrs. Grant incoherently. “I never expected—yes, you may tell her we’ll come,” she concluded abruptly.

  “Thank you,” said the abstracted messenger, gravely lifting his hat and looking squarely through Mrs. Grant into unknown regions. When he had gone Mrs. Grant went in and sat down, laughing in a sort of hysterical way.

  “I wonder if it is all right. Could Cornelia really have told him? She must, I suppose, but it is enough to take one’s breath.”

  Mrs. Grant and Cornelia Millar were cousins, and had once been the closest of friends, but that was years ago, before some spiteful reports and ill-natured gossip had come between them, making only a little rift at first that soon widened into a chasm of coldness and alienation. Therefore this invitation surprised Mrs. Grant greatly.

  Miss Cornelia was a maiden lady of certain years, with a comfortable bank account and a handsome, old-fashioned house on the hill behind the village. She always boarded the schoolteachers and looked after them maternally; she was an active church worker and a tower of strength to struggling ministers and their families.

  “If Cornelia has seen fit at last to hold out the hand of reconciliation I’m glad enough to take it. Dear knows, I’ve wanted to make up often enough, but I didn’t think she ever would. We’ve both of us got too much pride and stubbornness. It’s the Turner blood in us that does it. The Turners were all so set. But I mean to do my part now she has done hers.”

  And Mrs. Grant made a final attack on the dishes with a beaming face.

  When the little Grants came home and heard the news, Teddy stood on his head to express his delight, the twins kissed each other, and Mary Alice and Gordon danced around the kitchen.

  Keith thought himself too big to betray any joy over a Christmas dinner, but he whistled while doing the chores until the bare welkin in the yard rang, and Teddy, in spite of unheard of misdemeanours, was not collared off into the porch once.

  When the young teacher got home from school that evening he found the yellow house full of all sorts of delectable odours. Miss Cornelia herself was concocting mince pies after the famous family recipe, while her ancient and faithful handmaiden, Hannah, was straining into moulds the cranberry jelly. The open pantry door revealed a tempting array of Christmas delicacies.

  “Did you call and invite the Smithsons up to dinner as I told you?” asked Miss Cornelia anxiously.

  “Yes,” was the dreamy response as he glided through the kitchen and vanished into the hall.

  Miss Cornelia crimped the edges of her pies delicately with a relieved air. “I made certain he’d forget it,” she said. “You just have to watch him as if he were a mere child. Didn’t I catch him yesterday starting off to school in his carpet slippers? And in spite of me he got away today in that ridiculous summer hat. You’d better set that jelly in the out-pantry to cool, Hannah; it looks good. We’ll give those poor little Smithsons a feast for once in their lives if they never get another.”

  At this juncture the hall door flew open and Mr. Palmer appeared on the threshold. He seemed considerably agitated and for once his eyes had lost their look of space-searching.

  “Miss Millar, I am afraid I did make a mistake this morning—it has just dawned on me. I am almost sure that I called at Mrs. Grant’s and invited her and her family instead of the Smithsons. And she said they would come.”

  Miss Cornelia’s face was a study.

  “Mr. Palmer,” she said, flourishing her crimping fork tragically, “do you mean to say you went and invited Linda Grant here tomorrow? Linda Grant, of all women in this world!”

  “I did,” said the teacher with penitent wretchedness. “It was very careless of me—I am very sorry. What can I do? I’ll go down and tell them I made a mistake if you like.”

  “You can’t do that,” groaned Miss Cornelia, sitting down and wrinkling up her forehead in dire perplexity. “It would never do in the world. For pity’s sake, let me think for a minute.”

  Miss Cornelia did think—to good purpose evidently, for her forehead smoothed out as her meditations proceeded and her face brightened. Then she got up briskly. “Well, you’ve done it and no mistake. I don’t know that I’m sorry, either. Anyhow, we’ll leave it as it is. But you must go straight down now and invite the Smithsons too. And for pity’s sake, don’t make any more mistakes.”

  When he had gone Miss Cornelia opened her heart to Hannah. “I never could have done it myself—never; the Turner is too strong in me. But I’m glad it is done. I’ve been wanting for years to make up with Linda. And now the chance has come, thanks to that blessed blundering boy, I mean to make the most of it. Mind, Hannah, you never whisper a word about its being a mistake. Linda must never know. Poor Linda! She’s had a hard time. Hannah, we must make some more pies, and I must go straight down to the store and get some more Santa Claus stuff; I’ve only got enough to go around the Smithsons.”

  When Mrs. Grant and her family arrived at the yellow house next morning Miss Cornelia herself ran out bareheaded to meet them. The two women shook hands a little stiffly and then a rill of long-repressed affection trickled out from some secret spring in Miss Cornelia’s heart and she kissed her new-found old friend tenderly. Linda returned the kiss warmly, and both felt that the old-time friendship was theirs again.

  The little Smithsons all came and they and the little Grants sat down on the long bright dining room to a dinner that made history in their small lives, and was eaten over again in happy dreams for months.

  How those children did eat! And how beaming Miss Cornelia and grim-faced, soft-hearted Hannah and even the absent-minded teacher himself enjoyed watching them!

  After dinner Miss Cornelia distributed among the delighted little souls the presents she had bought for them, and then turned them loose in the big shining kitchen to have a taffy pull—and they had it to their hearts’ content! And as for the shocking, taffyfied state into which they got their own rosy faces and that once immaculate domain—well, as Miss Cornelia and Hannah never said one word about it, neither will I.

  The four women enjoyed the afternoon in their own way, and the schoolteacher buried himself in algebra to his own great satisfaction.

  When her guests went home in the starlit December dusk, Miss Cornelia walked part of the way with them and had a long confidential talk with Mrs. Grant. When she returned it was to find Hannah groaning in and over the kitchen and the schoolteacher dreamily trying to clean some molasses off his boots with the kitchen hairbrush. Long-suffering Miss Cornelia rescued her property and despatched Mr. Palmer into the woodshed to find the shoe-brush. Then she sat down and laughed.

  “Hannah, what will become of that boy yet? There’s no counting on what he’ll do next. I don’t know how he’ll ever get through the world, I’m sure, but I’ll look after him while he’s here at least. I owe him a huge debt of gratitude for this Christmas blunder. What an awful mess this place is in! But, Hannah, did you ever in the world see anything so delightful as that little Tommy Smithson stuffing himself with plum cake, not to mention Teddy Grant? It did me good just to see them.”

  AUNT CYRILLA’S CHRISTMAS BASKET

  When Lucy Rose met Aunt Cyrilla coming downstairs, somewhat flushed and breathless from her ascent to the garret, with a big, flat-covered basket hanging over her plump arm, she gave a little sigh of despair. Lucy Rose had done her brave best for some years—in fact, ever since she had put up her hair and lengthened her skirts—to break Aunt Cyrilla of the habit of carrying that basket with her every time she went to Pembroke; but Aunt Cyrilla still insisted on taking it, and only laughed at what she called Lucy Rose’s “finicky notions.” Lucy Rose had a horrible, haunting idea that it was extremely provincial for her aunt always to take the big basket, packed full of c
ountry good things, whenever she went to visit Edward and Geraldine. Geraldine was so stylish, and might think it queer; and then Aunt Cyrilla always would carry it on her arm and give cookies and apples and molasses taffy out of it to every child she encountered and, just as often as not, to older folks too. Lucy Rose, when she went to town with Aunt Cyrilla, felt chagrined over this—all of which goes to prove that Lucy was as yet very young and had a great deal to learn in this world.

  That troublesome worry over what Geraldine would think nerved her to make a protest in this instance.

  “Now, Aunt C’rilla,” she pleaded, “you’re surely not going to take that funny old basket to Pembroke this time—Christmas Day and all.”

  “’Deed and ’deed I am,” returned Aunt Cyrilla briskly, as she put it on the table and proceeded to dust it out. “I never went to see Edward and Geraldine since they were married that I didn’t take a basket of good things along with me for them, and I’m not going to stop now. As for it’s being Christmas, all the more reason. Edward is always real glad to get some of the old farmhouse goodies. He says they beat city cooking all hollow, and so they do.”

  “But it’s so countrified,” moaned Lucy Rose.

  “Well, I am countrified,” said Aunt Cyrilla firmly, “and so are you. And what’s more, I don’t see that it’s anything to be ashamed of. You’ve got some real silly pride about you, Lucy Rose. You’ll grow out of it in time, but just now it is giving you a lot of trouble.”

  “The basket is a lot of trouble,” said Lucy Rose crossly. “You’re always mislaying it or afraid you will. And it does look so funny to be walking through the streets with that big, bulgy basket hanging on your arm.”

  “I’m not a mite worried about its looks,” returned Aunt Cyrilla calmly. “As for its being a trouble, why, maybe it is, but I have that, and other people have the pleasure of it. Edward and Geraldine don’t need it—I know that—but there may be those that will. And if it hurts your feelings to walk ’longside of a countrified old lady with a countrified basket, why, you can just fall behind, as it were.”

  Aunt Cyrilla nodded and smiled good-humouredly, and Lucy Rose, though she privately held to her own opinion, had to smile too.

  “Now, let me see,” said Aunt Cyrilla reflectively, tapping the snowy kitchen table with the point of her plump, dimpled forefinger, “what shall I take? That big fruit cake for one thing—Edward does like my fruit cake; and that cold boiled tongue for another. Those three mince pies too, they’d spoil before we got back or your uncle’d make himself sick eating them—mince pie is his besetting sin. And that little stone bottle full of cream—Geraldine may carry any amount of style, but I’ve yet to see her look down on real good country cream, Lucy Rose; and another bottle of my raspberry vinegar. That plate of jelly cookies and doughnuts will please the children and fill up the chinks, and you can bring me that box of ice-cream candy out of the pantry, and that bag of striped candy sticks your uncle brought home from the corner last night. And apples, of course—three or four dozen of those good eaters—and a little pot of my greengage preserves—Edward’ll like that. And some sandwiches and pound cake for a snack for ourselves. Now, I guess that will do for eatables. The presents for the children can go in on top. There’s a doll for Daisy and the little boat your uncle made for Ray and a tatted lace handkerchief apiece for the twins, and the crochet hood for the baby. Now, is that all?”

  “There’s a cold roast chicken in the pantry,” said Lucy Rose wickedly, “and the pig Uncle Leo killed is hanging up in the porch. Couldn’t you put them in too?”

  Aunt Cyrilla smiled broadly. “Well, I guess we’ll leave the pig alone; but since you have reminded me of it, the chicken may as well go in. I can make room.”

  Lucy Rose, in spite of her prejudices, helped with the packing and, not having been trained under Aunt Cyrilla’s eye for nothing, did it very well too, with much clever economy of space. But when Aunt Cyrilla had put in as a finishing touch a big bouquet of pink and white everlastings, and tied the bulging covers down with a firm hand, Lucy Rose stood over the basket and whispered vindictively:

  “Some day I’m going to burn this basket—when I get courage enough. Then there’ll be an end of lugging it everywhere we go like a—like an old market-woman.”

  Uncle Leopold came in just then, shaking his head dubiously. He was not going to spend Christmas with Edward and Geraldine, and perhaps the prospect of having to cook and eat his Christmas dinner all alone made him pessimistic.

  “I mistrust you folks won’t get to Pembroke tomorrow,” he said sagely. “It’s going to storm.”

  Aunt Cyrilla did not worry over this. She believed matters of this kind were fore-ordained, and she slept calmly. But Lucy Rose got up three times in the night to see if it were storming, and when she did sleep had horrible nightmares of struggling through blinding snowstorms dragging Aunt Cyrilla’s Christmas basket along with her.

  It was not snowing in the early morning, and Uncle Leopold drove Aunt Cyrilla and Lucy Rose and the basket to the station, four miles off. When they reached there the air was thick with flying flakes. The stationmaster sold them their tickets with a grim face.

  “If there’s any more snow comes, the trains might as well keep Christmas too,” he said. “There’s been so much snow already that traffic is blocked half the time, and now there ain’t no place to shovel the snow off onto.”

  Aunt Cyrilla said that if the train were to get to Pembroke in time for Christmas, it would get there; and she opened her basket and gave the stationmaster and three small boys an apple apiece.

  “That’s the beginning,” groaned Lucy Rose to herself.

  When their train came along Aunt Cyrilla established herself in one seat and her basket in another, and looked beamingly around her at her fellow travellers.

  These were few in number—a delicate little woman at the end of the car, with a baby and four other children, a young girl across the aisle with a pale, pretty face, a sunburned lad three seats ahead in a khaki uniform, a very handsome, imposing old lady in a sealskin coat ahead of him, and a thin young man with spectacles opposite.

  “A minister,” reflected Aunt Cyrilla, beginning to classify, “who takes better care of other folks’ souls than of his own body; and that woman in the sealskin is discontented and cross at something—got up too early to catch the train, maybe; and that young chap must be one of the boys not long out of the hospital. That woman’s children look as if they hadn’t enjoyed a square meal since they were born; and if that girl across from me has a mother, I’d like to know what the woman means, letting her daughter go from home in this weather in clothes like that.”

  Lucy Rose merely wondered uncomfortably what the others thought of Aunt Cyrilla’s basket.

  They expected to reach Pembroke that night, but as the day wore on the storm grew worse. Twice the train had to stop while the train hands dug it out. The third time it could not go on. It was dusk when the conductor came through the train, replying brusquely to the questions of the anxious passengers.

  “A nice lookout for Christmas—no, impossible to go on or back—track blocked for miles—what’s that, madam?—no, no station near—woods for miles. We’re here for the night. These storms of late have played the mischief with everything.”

  “Oh, dear,” groaned Lucy Rose.

  Aunt Cyrilla looked at her basket complacently. “At any rate, we won’t starve,” she said.

  The pale, pretty girl seemed indifferent. The sealskin lady looked crosser than ever. The khaki boy said, “Just my luck,” and two of the children began to cry. Aunt Cyrilla took some apples and striped candy sticks from her basket and carried them to them. She lifted the oldest into her ample lap and soon had them all around her, laughing and contented.

  The rest of the travellers straggled over to the corner and drifted into conversation. The khaki boy said it was hard lines not to get home for Christmas, after all.

  “I was invalided from South Africa three mont
hs ago, and I’ve been in the hospital at Netley ever since. Reached Halifax three days ago and telegraphed the old folks I’d eat my Christmas dinner with them, and to have an extra-big turkey because I didn’t have any last year. They’ll be badly disappointed.”

  He looked disappointed too. One khaki sleeve hung empty by his side. Aunt Cyrilla passed him an apple.

  “We were all going down to Grandpa’s for Christmas,” said the little mother’s oldest boy dolefully. “We’ve never been there before, and it’s just too bad.”

  He looked as if he wanted to cry but thought better of it and bit off a mouthful of candy.

  “Will there be any Santa Claus on the train?” demanded his small sister tearfully. “Jack says there won’t.”

  “I guess he’ll find you out,” said Aunt Cyrilla reassuringly.

  The pale, pretty girl came up and took the baby from the tired mother. “What a dear little fellow,” she said softly.

  “Are you going home for Christmas too?” asked Aunt Cyrilla.

  The girl shook her head. “I haven’t any home. I’m just a shop girl out of work at present, and I’m going to Pembroke to look for some.”

  Aunt Cyrilla went to her basket and took out her box of cream candy. “I guess we might as well enjoy ourselves. Let’s eat it all up and have a good time. Maybe we’ll get down to Pembroke in the morning.”

  The little group grew cheerful as they nibbled, and even the pale girl brightened up. The little mother told Aunt Cyrilla her story aside. She had been long estranged from her family, who had disapproved of her marriage. Her husband had died the previous summer, leaving her in poor circumstances.

  “Father wrote to me last week and asked me to let bygones be bygones and come home for Christmas. I was so glad. And the children’s hearts were set on it. It seems too bad that we are not to get there. I have to be back at work the morning after Christmas.”

  The khaki boy came up again and shared the candy. He told amusing stories of campaigning in South Africa. The minister came too, and listened, and even the sealskin lady turned her head over her shoulder.