The Christmas Megapack

by Reginald Robert

  “Put a notice in the post office,” advised Guy, comfortably crossing his legs and grinning at his father, “and tell Aunt Eliza and Miss Jane Pollock, and the thing is done. Sam, I think I see you spending the next two days at the top of ladders, hanging greens. I have a dim and hazy vision of you on your knees before that stove that always used to smoke when the wind was east—the one in the left corner—praying to it to quit fussing and draw. A nice, restful Christmas vacation you’ll have!”

  Sam Burnett looked at his wife. “She’s captain,” said he. “If she wants to play with the old meeting-house, play she shall—so long as she doesn’t ask me to preach the sermon.”

  “You old dear!” murmured Nan, jumping up to stand behind his chair, her two pretty arms encircling his stout neck from the rear. “You could preach a better sermon than lots of ministers, if you are only an upright old bank cashier.”

  “Doubtless, Nancy, doubtless,” murmured Sam, pleasantly. “But as it will take the wisdom of a Solomon, the tact of a Paul, and the eloquence of the Almighty Himself to preach a sermon on the present occasion that will divert the Tomlinsons and the Frasers, the Hills and the Pollocks from glaring at each other across the pews, I don’t think I’ll apply for the job. Let Billy Sewall tackle it. There’s one thing about it—if they get to fighting in the aisles Billy’ll leap down from the pulpit, roll up his sleeves, and pull the combatants apart. A virile religion is Billy’s, and I rather think he’s the man for the hour.”

  II.

  “Hi, there, Ol—why not get something doing with that hammer? Don’t you see the edge of that pulpit stair-carpeting is all frazzled? The preacher’ll catch his toes in it, and then where’ll his ecclesiastical dignity be?”

  The slave-driver was Guy, shouting down from the top of a tall step-ladder, where he was busy screwing into place the freshly cleaned oil-lamps whose radiance was to be depended upon to illumine the ancient interior of the North Estabrook church. He addressed his eldest brother, Oliver, who, in his newness to the situation and his consequent lack of sympathy with the occasion, was proving but an indifferent worker. This may have been partly due to the influence of Oliver’s wife, Marian, who, sitting—in Russian sables—in one of the middle pews, was doing what she could to depress the laborers. The number of these, by the way, had been reinforced by the arrival of the entire Fernald clan, to spend Christmas.

  “Your motive is undoubtedly a good one,” Mrs. Oliver conceded. She spoke to Nan, busy near her, and she gazed critically about the shabby old walls, now rapidly assuming a quite different aspect as the great ropes of laurel leaves swung into place under the direction of Sam Burnett. That young man now had Edson Fernald and Charles Wetmore—Carolyn’s husband—to assist him, and he was making the most of his opportunity to order about two gentlemen who had shown considerable reluctance to remove their coats, but who were now—to his satisfaction—perspiring so freely that they had some time since reached the point of casting aside still other articles of apparel. “But I shall be much surprised,” Mrs. Oliver continued, “if you attain your object. Nobody can be more obstinate in their prejudice than the people of such a little place as this. You may get them out—though I doubt even that—but you are quite as likely as not to set them by the ears and simply make matters worse.”

  “It’s Christmas,” replied Nan. Her cheeks were the color of the holly berries in the great wreaths she was arranging to place on either side of the wall behind the pulpit. “They can’t quarrel at Christmas—not with Billy Sewall preaching peace on earth, good will to men, to them.—Jessica, please hand me that wire—and come and hold this wreath a minute, will you?”

  “Nobody expects Marian to be on any side but the other one,” consolingly whispered merry-faced Jessica, Edson’s wife—lucky fellow!—as she held the wreath for Nan to affix the wire.

  “What’s that about Sewall?” Oliver inquired. “I hadn’t heard of that. You don’t mean to say Sewell’s coming up for this service?”

  “Of course he is. Margaret telephoned him this morning, and he said he’d never had a Christmas present equal to this one. He said it interested him a lot more than his morning service in town, and he’d be up, loaded. Isn’t that fine of Billy?” Nan beamed triumphantly at her oldest brother, over her holly wreath.

  “That puts a different light on it.” And Mr. Oliver Fernald, president of the great city bank of which Sam Burnett was cashier, got promptly down on the knees of his freshly pressed trousers, and proceeded to tack the frazzled edge of the pulpit stair-carpet with interest and skill. That stair-carpet had been tacked by a good many people before him, but doubtless it had never been stretched into place by a man whose eye-glasses sat astride of a nose of the impressive, presidential mold of this one.

  “Do I understand that you mean to attempt music?” Mrs. Oliver seemed grieved at the thought. “There are several good voices in the family, of course, but you haven’t had time to practice any Christmas music together. You will have merely to sing hymns.”

  “Fortunately, some of the old hymns are Christmas music, of the most exquisite sort,” began Nan, trying hard to keep her temper—a feat which was apt to give her trouble when Marian was about. But, at the moment, as if to help her, up in the old organ-loft, at the back of the church, Margaret began to sing. Everybody looked up in delight, for Margaret’s voice was the pride of the family, and with reason. Somebody was at the organ—the little reed organ. It proved to be Carolyn—Mrs. Charles Wetmore. For a moment the notes rose harmoniously. Then came an interval—and the organ wailed. There was a shout of protest, from the top of Guy’s step-ladder:

  “Cut it out—cut out the steam calliope!—unless you want a burlesque. That organ hasn’t been tuned since the deluge—and they didn’t get all the water out then.”

  “I won’t hit that key again,” called Carolyn. “Listen, you people.”

  “Listen! You can’t help listening when a cat yowls on the back fence,” retorted Guy. “Go it alone; Margaret, girl.”

  But the next instant nobody was jeering, for Margaret’s voice had never seemed sweeter than from the old choir-loft.

  “Over the hills of Bethlehem, Lighted by a star, Wise men came with offerings, From the East afar....”

  It took them all, working until late on Christmas Eve, to do all that needed to be done. Once their interest was aroused, nothing short of the best possible would content them. But when, at last, Nan and Sam, lingering behind the others, promising to see that the fires were safe, stood together at the back of the church for a final survey, they felt that their work had been well worth while. All the lights were out but one on either side, and the dim interior, with its ropes and wreaths of green, fragrant with the woodsy smell which veiled the musty one inevitable in a place so long closed, seemed to have grown beautiful with a touch other than that of human hands.

  “Don’t you believe, Sammy,” questioned Nan, with her tired cheek against her husband’s broad shoulder, “the poor old ‘meeting-house’ is happier tonight than it has been for a long, long while?”

  “I think I should be,” returned Sam Burnett, falling in with his wife’s mood, “if after a year and a half of cold starvation somebody had suddenly warmed me and fed me and made me hold up my head again. It does look pretty well—much better than I should have thought it could, when I first saw it in its barrenness.—I wonder what the North Estabrook people are thinking about this—that’s what I wonder. Do you suppose the Tomlinsons and the Pollocks and the rest of them have talked about anything else today?”

  “Not much else.” Nan smiled contentedly. Then suddenly: “O Sam—the presents aren’t all tied up! We must hurry back. This is the first Christmas Eve I can remember when the rattling of tissue paper wasn’t the chief sound on the air.”

  “If this thing goes off all right,” mused Burnett, as he examined the stoves once more, before putting out the lights, “it’ll be the biggest Christmas present North Estabrook ever had. Peace and good will—Jove, b
ut they need it! And so do we all—so do we all.”

  III.

  “There go pretty near every one of the Fernalds, down to the station. Land, but there’s a lot of ’em, counting the children. I suppose they’re going to meet Guy’s wife’s brother, that they’ve got up here to lead these Christmas doings tonight. Queer idea, it strikes me.”

  Miss Jane Pollock, ensconsed behind the thick “lace curtains” of her “best parlour,” addressed her sister, who lay on the couch in the sitting-room behind, an invalid who could seldom get out, but to whom Miss Jane was accustomed faithfully to report every particle of current news.

  “I suppose they think,” Miss Jane went on, with asperity, “they’re going to fix up the fuss in that church, with their greens and their city minister preaching brotherly love. I can tell him he’ll have to preach a pretty powerful sermon to reach old George Tomlinson and Asa Fraser, and make ’em notice each other as they pass by. And when I see Maria Hill coming toward me with a smile on her face and her hand out I’ll know something’s happened.”

  “I don’t suppose,” said the invalid sister rather timidly, from her couch, “you would feel, Sister, as if you could put out your hand to her first?”

  “No, I don’t,” retorted Miss Jane, very positively. “And I don’t see how you can think it, Deborah. You know perfectly well it was Maria Hill that started the whole thing—and then talked about me as if I was the one. How that woman did talk—and talks yet! Don’t get me thinking about it. It’s Christmas Day, and I want to keep my mind off such disgraceful things as church quarrels—if the Fernald family’ll let me. A pretty bold thing to do, I call it—open up that church on their own responsibility, and expect folks to come, and forget the past. —Debby, I wish you could see Oliver’s wife, in those furs of hers. She holds her head as high as ever—but she’s the only one of ’em that does it disagreeably—I’ll say that for ’em, if they are all city folks now. And of course she isn’t a Fernald. —Here comes Nancy and her husband. That girl don’t look a minute older’n when she was married, five years ago. My, but she’s got a lot of style! I must say her skirts don’t hang like any North Estabrook dressmaker can make ’em. They’re walking—hurrying up to catch the rest. Sam Burnett’s a good-looking man, but he’s getting a little stout.”

  “Jane,” said the invalid sister, wistfully, “I wish I could go tonight.”

  “Well, I wish you could. That is—if I go. I haven’t just made up my mind. I wonder if folks’ll sit in their old pews. You know the Hills’ is just in front of ours. But as to your going, Deborah, of course that’s out of the question. I suppose I shall go. I shouldn’t like to offend the Fernalds, and they do say Guy’s wife’s brother is worth hearing. There’s to be music, too.”

  “I wish I could go,” sighed poor Deborah, under her breath. “To be able to go—and to wonder whether you will! —O Lord—” she closed her patient eyes and whispered it—“make them all choose to go—to Thy house—this Christmas Day. And to thank Thee that the doors are open—and that they have strength to go. And help me to bear it—to stay home!”

  IV.

  “The problem is—” said the Reverend William Sewall, standing at the back of the church with his sister Margaret, and Guy Fernald, her husband, and Nan and Sam Burnett—the four who had, as yet, no children, and so could best take time, on Christmas afternoon, to make the final arrangements for the evening—“the problem is—to do the right thing, tonight. It would be so mighty easy to do the wrong one. Am I the only man to stand in that pulpit—and is it all up to me?”

  He regarded the pulpit as he spoke, richly hung with Christmas greens and seeming eagerly to invite an occupant.

  “I should say,” observed his brother-in-law, Guy, his face full of affection and esteem for the very admirable figure of a young man who stood before him, “that a fellow who’s just pulled off the sort of service we know you had at St. John’s this morning, wouldn’t consider this one much of a stunt.”

  Sewall smiled. “Somehow this strikes me as the bigger one,” said he. “The wisest of my old professors used to say that the further you got into the country the less it mattered about your clothes but the more about your sermon. I’ve been wondering, all the way up, if I knew enough to preach that sermon. Isn’t there any minister in town, not even a visiting one?”

  “Not a one. You can’t get out of it, Billy Sewall, if you have got an attack of stage-fright—which we don’t believe.”

  “There is one minister,” Nan admitted. “But I’d forgotten all about him, till Father mentioned him last night. But he doesn’t really count at all. He’s old—very old—and infirm.”

  “Superannuated, they call it,” added Sam Burnett. “Poor old chap. I’ve seen him—I met him at the post-office this morning. He has a peaceful face. He’s a good man. He must have been a strong one—in his time.”

  “Had he anything to do with the church trouble?” Sewall demanded, his keen brown eyes eager.

  Nan and Guy laughed.

  “Old ‘Elder Blake’?—not except as he was on his knees, alone at home, praying for the fighters—both sides,” was Guy’s explanation. “So Father says, and nobody knows better what side people were on.”

  “If I can get hold of a man whose part in the quarrel was praying for both sides, I’m off to find him,” said Sewall, decidedly. He picked up his hat as he spoke. “Tell me where he lives, please.”

  “Billy!” His sister Margaret’s voice was anxious. “Are you sure you’d better? Perhaps it would be kind to ask him to make a prayer. But you won’t—”

  “You won’t ask him to preach the sermon, Billy Sewall—promise us that,” cried Guy. “An old man in his dotage!”

  Sewall smiled again, starting toward the door. Somehow he did not look like the sort of fellow who could be easily swayed from an intention once he had formed it—or be forced to make promises until he was ready. “You’ve got me up here,” said he, “now you’ll have to take the consequences. Where did you say ‘Elder Blake’ lives?”

  And he departed. Those left behind stared at one another, in dismay.

  “Keep cool,” advised Sam Burnett. “He wants the old man’s advice—that’s all. I don’t blame him. He wants to understand the situation thoroughly. Nothing like putting your head into a thing before you put your foot in. It saves complications. Sewall’s head’s level—trust him.”

  V.

  “I can’t—” said a very old man with a peaceful face—now wearing a somewhat startled expression—“I can’t quite believe you are serious, Mr. Sewall. The people are all expecting you—they will come out to hear you. I have not preached for—” he hesitated—“for many years. I will not say that it would not be—a happiness. If I thought I were fit. But—”

  “If I were half as fit,” answered Sewall, gently, “I should be very proud. But I’m—why, I’m barely seasoned, yet. I’m liable to warp, if I’m exposed to the weather. But you—with all the benefit of your long experience—you’re the sort of timber that needs to be built into this strange Christmas service. I hadn’t thought much about it, Mr. Blake, till I was on my way here. I accepted the invitation too readily. But when I did begin to think, I felt the need of help. I believe you can give it. It’s a critical situation. You know these people, root and branch. I may say the wrong thing. You will know how to say the right one.”

  “If I should consent,” the other man said, after a silence during which, with bent white head, he studied the matter, “what would be your part? Should you attempt—” he glanced at the clerical dress of his caller—“to carry through the service of your—Church?”

  Sewall’s face, which had been grave, relaxed. “No, Mr. Blake,” said he. “It wouldn’t be possible, and it wouldn’t be—suitable. This is a community which would probably prefer any other service, and it should have its preference respected. A simple form, as nearly as possible like what it has been used to, will be best—don’t you think so? I believe there is to be consid
erable music. I will read the Story of the Birth, and will try to make a prayer. The rest I will leave to you.”

  “And Him,” added the old man.

  “And Him,” agreed the young man, reverently. Then a bright smile broke over his face, and he held out his hand. “I’m no end grateful to you, sir,” he said, a certain attractive boyishness of manner suddenly coming uppermost and putting to flight the dignity which was at times a heavier weight than he could carry. “No end. Don’t you remember how it used to be, when you first went into the work, and tackled a job now and then that seemed too big for you? Then you caught sight of a pair of shoulders that looked to you broader than yours—the muscles developed by years of exercise—and you were pretty thankful to shift the load on to them? You didn’t want to shirk—Heaven forbid!—but you just felt you didn’t know enough to deal with the situation. Don’t you remember?”

  The old man, with a gently humorous look, glanced down at his own thin, bent shoulders, then at the stalwart ones which towered above him.

  “You speak metaphorically, my dear lad,” he said quaintly, with a kindly twinkle in his faded blue eyes. He laid his left hand on the firm young arm whose hand held his shrunken right. “But I do remember—yes, yes—I remember plainly enough. And though it seems to me now as if the strength were all with the young and vigorous in body, it may be that I should be glad of the years that have brought me experience.”

  “And tolerance,” added William Sewall, pressing the hand, his eyes held fast by Elder Blake’s.

  “And love,” yet added the other. “Love. That’s the great thing—that’s the great thing. I do love this community—these dear people. They are good people at heart—only misled as to what is worth standing out for. I would see them at peace. Maybe I can speak to them. God knows—I will try.”