The Big Book of Christmas

by Anton Chekhov

  Whose hands are foul and red:

  * * *

  "Whose victims cry for vengeance

  From their dark, unhallowed graves."

  "He's drunk!" said the workhouse master,

  "Or else he's mad and raves."

  "Not drunk or mad," cried the pauper,

  "But only a haunted beast,

  Who, torn by the hounds and mangled,

  Declines the vulture's feast.

  * * *

  "I care not a curse for the guardians,

  And I won't be dragged away;

  Just let me have the fit out,

  It's only on Christmas Day

  That the black past comes to goad me,

  And prey on my burning brain;

  I'll tell you the rest in a whisper —

  I swear I won't shout again.

  * * *

  "Keep your hands off me, curse you!

  Hear me right out to the end.

  You come here to see how paupers

  The season of Christmas spend;.

  You come here to watch us feeding,

  As they watched the captured beast.

  Here's why a penniless pauper

  Spits on your paltry feast.

  * * *

  "Do you think I will take your bounty,

  And let you smile and think

  You're doing a noble action

  With the parish's meat and drink?

  Where is my wife, you traitors —

  The poor old wife you slew?

  Yes, by the God above me,

  My Nance was killed by you!

  * * *

  'Last winter my wife lay dying,

  Starved in a filthy den;

  I had never been to the parish —

  I came to the parish then.

  I swallowed my pride in coming,

  For ere the ruin came,

  I held up my head as a trader,

  And I bore a spotless name.

  * * *

  "I came to the parish, craving

  Bread for a starving wife,

  Bread for the woman who'd loved me

  Through fifty years of life;

  And what do you think they told me,

  Mocking my awful grief,

  That 'the House' was open to us,

  But they wouldn't give 'out relief'.

  * * *

  "I slunk to the filthy alley —

  'Twas a cold, raw Christmas Eve —

  And the bakers' shops were open,

  Tempting a man to thieve;

  But I clenched my fists together,

  Holding my head awry,

  So I came to her empty-handed

  And mournfully told her why.

  * * *

  "Then I told her the house was open;

  She had heard of the ways of that,

  For her bloodless cheeks went crimson,

  and up in her rags she sat,

  Crying, 'Bide the Christmas here, John,

  We've never had one apart;

  I think I can bear the hunger —

  The other would break my heart.'

  * * *

  "All through that eve I watched her,

  Holding her hand in mine,

  Praying the Lord and weeping,

  Till my lips were salt as brine;

  I asked her once if she hungered,

  And as she answered 'No' ,

  T'he moon shone in at the window,

  Set in a wreath of snow.

  * * *

  "Then the room was bathed in glory,

  And I saw in my darling's eyes

  The faraway look of wonder

  That comes when the spirit flies;

  And her lips were parched and parted,

  And her reason came and went.

  For she raved of our home in Devon,

  Where our happiest years were spent.

  * * *

  "And the accents, long forgotten,

  Came back to the tongue once more.

  For she talked like the country lassie

  I woo'd by the Devon shore;

  Then she rose to her feet and trembled,

  And fell on the rags and moaned,

  And, 'Give me a crust — I'm famished —

  For the love of God!' she groaned.

  * * *

  "I rushed from the room like a madman

  And flew to the workhouse gate,

  Crying, 'Food for a dying woman!'

  And the answer came, 'Too late.'

  They drove me away with curses;

  Then I fought with a dog in the street

  And tore from the mongrel's clutches

  A crust he was trying to eat.

  * * *

  "Back through the filthy byways!

  Back through the trampled slush!

  Up to the crazy garret,

  Wrapped in an awful hush;

  My heart sank down at the threshold,

  And I paused with a sudden thrill.

  For there, in the silv'ry moonlight,

  My Nance lay, cold and still.

  * * *

  "Up to the blackened ceiling,

  The sunken eyes were cast —

  I knew on those lips, all bloodless,

  My name had been the last;

  She called for her absent husband —

  O God! had I but known! —

  Had called in vain, and, in anguish,

  Had died in that den — alone.

  * * *

  "Yes, there, in a land of plenty,

  Lay a loving woman dead,

  Cruelly starved and murdered

  for a loaf of the parish bread;

  At yonder gate, last Christmas,

  I craved for a human life,

  You, who would feed us paupers,

  What of my murdered wife!"

  * * *

  'There, get ye gone to your dinners,

  Don't mind me in the least,

  Think of the happy paupers

  Eating your Christmas feast;

  And when you recount their blessings

  In your smug parochial way,

  Say what you did for me, too,

  Only last Christmas Day."

  Indian Pete's Christmas Gift

  H.W. Collingwood

  Indian Pete's Christmas Gift

  The moon was just peeping over the pines as Pete Shivershee slunk down the road from the lumber camp into the forest. Pete did not present a surpassingly dignified appearance as he skulked through the clearing, but he was not a very dignified person even at his best.

  * * *

  Most persons would have said, I think, that Pete's method of departure was hardly appropriate for one who had been selected by the citizens of Carter's Camp to go on an important mission. But Pete had his own reasons for his actions. He crept along behind the stumps and logs till he reached the forest. Then, as if the shadow gave him fresh courage and dignity, he drew himself upright, and started at a sharp trot down the road toward the village.

  * * *

  We have said that Pete had reasons for his conduct. They were good ones. In the first place, he was an Indian. Not a "noble son of the forest," such as Cooper loved to picture, but a mean, dirty, yellow-faced "Injun." Lazy and worthless, picking up a living about the lumber camps, working as little as he could, and eating and drinking as much as possible: such was the messenger. The mission was worse yet.

  * * *

  It was Christmas Eve. The snow covered the ground, and the ice had stilled for the time the mouth of the roaring river. It was Saturday night as well; and for some time past the lumbermen had been considering the advisability of keeping the good old holiday with some form of celebration suited to the occasion.

  * * *

  The citizens of Carter's Camp were not remarkably fastidious. They knew but one form of celebration, and they had no thought of hunting out new ones. The one thing needful to make a celebration completely successful was—liquor. This they
must have in order to do justice to the day.

  * * *

  The temperance laws of Carter's were very strict. Not that the moral sentiment of the place was particularly high, but it had been noticed that the amounts of labor and whisky were in inverse proportion. The more whisky, the less labor. It was a pure question of political economy. The foreman had often stated that he would prosecute to the fullest extent of the law the first man caught bringing whisky into camp. The foreman did not attempt, perhaps, to deny that his knowledge of the law was somewhat crude. He had forcibly stated, however, that should a case be brought before him, he would himself act as judge and jury, while his fist and foot would take the place of witness and counsel. There was something so terrible in this statement, coming as it did from the largest man in camp, that very little whisky had thus far been brought in.

  * * *

  Christmas had come, and the drinking element in Carter's Camp proposed that Pete Shivershee—the "Injun"—be sent to town for a quantity of the liquid poison, that the drinkers might "enjoy" themselves.

  * * *

  Bill Gammon found Pete curled up by the stove. He took him out of doors and explained the business in hand. Bill prided himself somewhat on his ability to "git work out of Injuns." Pete muttered only "all right." He took the money Bill gave him, and then slunk away down the road for the forest, as we have seen him.

  Bill felt so confident of the success of his experiment that he did not hesitate to inform the boys that Pete was "dead sure" to return. He would stake his reputation upon it.

  * * *

  Pete was in a hard position. If he loved anything in this world, it was whisky. If there was anything he feared, it was Bill's fist. The two were sure to go together. The money jingling in his pocket suggested unlimited pleasures, but over every one hung Bill's hard fist. He ran several miles through the forest, till, turning a corner of the road, he came upon a little clearing, in which stood a small log house. Pete knew the place well. Here lived Jeff Hunt with his wife, a French woman, and their troop of children.

  * * *

  Jeff was a person of little importance by the side of his wife, though, like all "lords of creation," he considered himself the legal and proper head of the family, as well as one of the mainstays of society. His part of the family government consisted, for the most part, in keeping the house supplied with wood and water, and in smoking his comfortable pipe in the corner, while his wife bent over her tub.

  * * *

  Mrs. Hunt was the only woman near the camp, and so all the laundry work fell to her. Laundry work in the pine woods implies mending and darning, as well as washing and ironing, and the poor little woman had her hands full of work surely. It was rub, rub, rub, day after day, over the steaming tub, with the children running about like little wolves, and Jeff kindly giving his advice from his comfortable corner. And even after the children were in bed at night, she must sit up and mend the clean clothes.

  * * *

  What a pack of children there were! How rough and strong they seemed, running about all day, all but poor little Marie, the oldest. She had never been strong, and now at last she was dying of consumption. She could not sit up at all, but lay all day on the little bed in the corner, watching her mother with sad, beautiful eyes.

  * * *

  The brave little Frenchwoman's heart almost failed her at times, as she saw how day by day the little form grew thinner, the eyes more beautiful, the cheeks more flushed. She knew the signs too well, but there was nothing she could do.

  * * *

  Pete was a regular visitor at Jeff's and always a welcome one. His work was to carry the washing to and from camp. He came nearer to feeling like a man at Jeff's house than at any other place he knew of. Everyone but Mrs. Hunt and little Marie called him only "Injun," but they always said "Mr. Shivershee." The "Meester Shivershee" of the little Frenchwoman was the nearest claim to respectability that Pete felt able to make. One night while carrying home the clothes, he dropped them in the mud. He never minded the whipping Bill Gammon gave him half as much as he did poor Mrs. Hunt's tears, to think how her work had gone for nothing.

  * * *

  As Pete came trotting down the road, Jeff stood in front of his house chopping stove-wood from a great log. A lantern, hung on a stump, provided light for his purpose. Pete stopped from sheer force of habit in front of the house, and Jeff, glad of any chance to interrupt his work, paused to talk with him.

  * * *

  "Walk in, Injun," said Jeff, hospitably. "Yer clo'es ain't quite ready, but the woman will hev 'em all up soon—walk in."

  * * *

  It suddenly came over Pete that this was his night for taking the clothes home, but his present errand was of far more importance than mere laundry work.

  * * *

  "Me no stop. I goin' ter town. Great work. Large bizness." By which vague hints he meant no doubt to impress Jeff with a sense of the dignity of his mission, and yet cunningly to keep its object concealed.

  * * *

  "Goin' to town, be ye? Great doin's ter camp ter-morrer, I s'pose. I'll be round ef I kin git away, but walk in, Injun, an' git yer supper, an' see the wimmin," and Jeff opened the door for Pete to pass in.

  * * *

  The thought of supper was too much for Pete and he slunk in after Jeff and stood in the corner by the door. The room was hardly an inviting one, and yet if Pete had been a white man some thoughts of "home, sweet home," must have passed through his mind. But he was only a despised "Injun."

  * * *

  A rough board table was laid for supper at one side of the room. In the corner little Marie lay with the firelight falling over her poor thin face. Pete must have felt, as he looked at her, like some hopeless convict gazing through his prison bars upon some fair saint passing before him. She seemed to be in another world than his; there seemed between them a gulf that could not be bridged. Three of the larger children were sobbing in the corner, while the rest formed a sorrowful group about an old box in which were two or three simple plants frozen and yellow. Mrs. Hunt was frying pork over the hot stove. As she looked up at Pete, he noticed that she had been crying.

  * * *

  Jeff was the very prince of hosts. He made haste to make Pete feel at home.

  * * *

  "Set by, Injun. So the boys is goin' ter kinder cellybrate ter-morrer, be they?"

  * * *

  But Pete felt that his mission must not be disclosed. "What matter is with kids?" he asked, to change the subject.

  * * *

  "Oh, they're jest a-yellin' about them flowers," explained Jeff. "Ye see they hev been a-trainin' some posies indoors against ter-morrer, ye know. Ter-morrer's Christmas, ye see, an' them kids they hed an idee they'd hev some flowers fer ter dekerate thet corner where the little gal is. Little gals, when they ain't well, like sech things, ye know."

  * * *

  Pete nodded. He was not aware of this love of diminutive females, but it would not show very good breeding to appear ignorant.

  * * *

  "Wall, ye see," continued Jeff, "they kep the flowers away from the little gal, meanin' ter s'prise her like. But jest this afternoon they gut ketched by the frost, an' now there they be stiffer'n stakes. It is kinder bad, ain't it—'specially ez it's Christmas, too?"

  * * *

  "What Crissmus?" put in Pete.

  * * *

  "Oh, Christmas? Wall, it's a sorter day like. It's somethin' like other days, an' yet it ain't. But then, Injun, I don't s'pose ye would understand ef I wuz ter tell ye." And Jeff concealed his own ignorance, as many wiser and better men have done, by assuming a tone too lofty for his audience.

  * * *

  But Mrs. Hunt could explain, even if Jeff could not. She paused on the way to the stove with a dish of pork in her hand.

  * * *

  "It eez the day of the good Lord, Meester Shivershee. It eez the day when the good Lord He was born, and when all people should be glad." But the little woman belied her o
wn creed as she thought of little Marie and the dead flowers.

  * * *

  I hardly think Pete gained a very clear idea of the day, even from Mrs. Hunt's explanation. It was, I fear, all Greek to him.

  * * *

  "What flowers fer?" he asked, as, in response to Jeff's polite invitation, he "sat by" and began supper.

  * * *

  "Wall, it's a sorter idee of the wimmin," explained Jeff. "Looks kinder pooty to see flowers round; ye see, kinder slicks up a room like. All these things hez ter come inter keepin' house, ye see, Injun." With which broad explanation Jeff helped himself to a piece of pork.

  * * *

  But Mrs. Hunt was bound to explain too. Her explanation was certainly more poetic.

  * * *

  "It eez the way we show our love for the good Lord, Meester Shivershee. What is more beautiful than the flowers? We take the flowers, and with much love we place them upon the walls, and we make others happy with them, and the good Lord, who loves us all, He is pleased,"—but here, seeing the sobbing children and the frozen plants, she could not help wiping her eyes upon her apron.