The Christmas Megapack
Page 62
Elder Blake looked up—and William Sewall thought he had never seen a sweeter smile on a human face, young or old. “You are kind to come and tell me so, George,” said he. “I had thought never to preach again. It did me good.”
“It did us good, sir,” said Sam Burnett. He had waited an instant for Fraser to speak, but saw that the cold in the head was in the ascendancy again. “It did me so much good that I can hardly wait till I get back to town to hunt up a man I know, and tell him I think he was in the right in a little disagreement we had a good while ago. I’ve always been positive he was wrong. I suppose the facts in the case haven’t changed—” he smiled into the dim blue eyes—“but somehow I seem to see them differently. It doesn’t look to me worth while to let them stand between us any longer.”
“Ah, it’s not worth while,” agreed the old man quickly. “It’s not worth while for any of us to be hard on one another, no matter what the facts. Life is pretty difficult, at its best—we can’t afford to make it more difficult for any human soul. Go back to town and make it right with your friend, Mr. Burnett. I take it he was your friend, or you wouldn’t think of him tonight.”
“Was—and is!” declared Sam, with conviction. “He’s got to be, whether he wants to or not. But he’ll want to—I know that well enough. We’ve been friends from boyhood—we’d just forgotten it, that’s all.”
There was a little pause. The old man sat with his white head leaning against the high back of his chair, his face upturned, his eyes—with an appeal in them—resting first upon the face of Asa Fraser, then upon that of George Tomlinson. With a common impulse, William Sewall and Samuel Burnett moved aside together, turning their backs upon the three.
Asa Fraser lifted his eyes and met those of George Tomlinson. With a palpable effort—for he was a man of few words—he spoke.
“George,” said he, “I guess I made a mistake, thinking as I did.”
“Asey,” responded Tomlinson quickly, “I guess you weren’t the only one that’s made a mistake.” And he held out his hand.
Fraser grasped it. With his other hand he raised his handkerchief and blew his nose once more, violently—and finally. From this point the smile in his eyes usurped the place of the moisture which had bothered him so unwontedly, and put it quite to rout.
If you imagine that this little drama had escaped the attention of the departing congregation, headed the other way, you are much mistaken. The congregation was not headed the other way. From the moment when Burnett, Fraser and Tomlinson had started toward the pulpit, the congregation, to a man, had paused, and was staring directly toward them. It continued to stare, up to the moment when the handshaking took place. But then—eyes turned and met other eyes. Hearts beat fast, lips trembled, feet moved. Unquestionably something had happened to the people of North Estabrook.
Do you know how sometimes the ice goes out of a river? From shore to shore it has been frozen, cold and hard. For many months it has grown solid, deepening and thickening until it seems as if there could be no life left beneath. Then, at last, comes sunshine and rain and warmth. The huge mass looks as impenetrable as ever, but all at once, some day—crack!—the first thin, dark line spreads across the surface. Then—crack, crack!—crack, crack!—in every direction the ice is breaking up. Look quickly, now, if you would see that frozen surface stretching seamless between shore and shore—for suddenly dark lanes of water open up, which widen while you watch—and soon, incredibly soon, the river has burst its bonds and is rushing freely once more between its banks, with only the ever-diminishing blocks of melting ice upon its surface to tell the story of its long imprisonment.
Even so, on that memorable Christmas night, did the ice in the North Estabrook church break up. Crack!—George Tomlinson and Asa Fraser, old friends but sworn foes, had shaken hands. Crack! Mrs. Tomlinson and Mrs. Fraser, tears running frankly down their cheeks, had followed the example of their husbands—and glad enough to do it, for their homes lay side by side, and each had had a hard time of it getting along without the other. Miss Jane Pollock, seeing Mrs. Maria Hill’s fruitless search for her handkerchief, had long since drawn out one of her own—she always carried two—and had held it in her hand, ready to offer it, if she could just get to the point. But when she saw, upon the pulpit platform, those two gripping hands, somehow she suddenly reached the point. Crack!—With no difficulty whatever Miss Pollock slipped the handkerchief into Mrs. Hill’s hand, whispering commiseratingly: “I presume you’ve got one somewhere, Maria, but you just can’t lay your hand on it. Don’t take the trouble to return it—it isn’t of any value.”
And Mrs. Hill, accepting the handkerchief, wiped away the unmanageable tears, and turning round answered fervently; “I guess I will return it, Jane, if it’s only so’s to come to your house again—if you’ll let me in, after all I’ve said.”
Even as they smiled, shamefacedly but happily, at each other, similar scenes were being enacted. All about them spread the breaking ice. Incredible, that it should happen in a night? Not so. The forces of Nature are mighty, but they are as weakness beside the spiritual forces of Nature’s God.
XI.
“Well, Billy Sewall, have you taken your young friend home and put him to bed?”
The questioner was Ralph Fernald, sitting with the rest of the family—or those members of it who were not still attending to the wants of little children—before the fireplace, talking things over. They had been there for nearly an hour, since the service, but Sewall had only just come in.
“I’ve taken him home,” Sewall replied. “But there was no putting him to bed. I think he’ll sit up till morning—too happy to sleep, the fine old man.”
They had saved the big armchair for him, in the very centre of the circle, but he would have none of it. He went over to a corner of the inglenook, and dropped upon the floor at his sister Margaret’s feet, with his arm upon her knee. When somebody protested Guy interfered in his defence.
“Let him alone,” said he. “He gets enough of prominent positions. If he wants to sit on the fence and kick his heels a while, let him. He’s certainly earned the right to do as he pleases tonight. By George!—talk about magnificent team-work! If ever I saw a sacrifice play I saw it tonight.”
Sewall shook his head. “You may have seen teamwork,” said he, “though Mr. Blake was the most of the team. But there was no sacrifice play on my part. It was simply a matter of passing the ball to the man who could run. I should have been down in four yards—if I ever got away at all.”
John Fernald looked at his wife with a puzzled smile. “What sort o’ talk is that?” he queried. Then he went on: “I suppose you boys are giving the credit to Elder Blake—who ought to have it. But I give a good deal to William Sewall, whose eyes were sharp enough to see what we’ve been too blind to find out—that the old man was the one who could deal with us and make us see light on our quarrel. He did make us see it! Here I’ve been standing off, pluming myself on being too wise to mix up in the fuss, when I ought to have been doing my best to bring folks together. What a difference it does make, the way you see a thing!”
He looked round upon the group, scanning one stirred face after another as the ruddy firelight illumined them. His glance finally rested on his daughter Nan. She too sat upon the floor, on a plump red cushion, with her back against her husband’s knee. Somehow Nan and Sam were never far apart, at times like these. The youngest of the house of Fernald had made perhaps the happiest marriage of them all, and the knowledge of this gave her father and mother great satisfaction. The sight of the pair, returning his scrutiny, with bright faces, gave John Fernald his next comment.
“After the preachers, I guess Nancy and Samuel deserve about the most credit,” he went on. “It was the little girl’s idea, and Sam stood by her, right through.” He began to chuckle. “I can see Sam now, towing those two old fellows up to the pulpit. I don’t believe they’d ever have got there without him. There certainly is a time when a man’s hand on your arm mak
es it a good deal easier to go where you know you ought to go.”
“It would have taken more than my hand to tow them away,” said Sam Burnett, “after they found out how it felt to be friends again. Nobody could come between them now, with an axe.”
“The music helped,” cried Nan, “the music helped more than anything, except the sermon. Think how Margaret worked over that!—and Carolyn over that crazy little old organ! And Guy and Ed and Charles hung all those greens—”
“I tacked the pulpit stair-carpet,” put in Oliver, gravely. “While you’re assigning credit, don’t forget that.”
“I stoked those stoves,” asserted Ralph. “That left-hand one—Christopher!—I never saw a stove like that to hand out smoke in your face. But the church was warm when I got through with ’em.”
“You all did wonderfully well,” came Mother Fernald’s proud and happy declaration.
“All but me,” said a voice, from the centre of the group. It was a voice which nobody had ever expected to hear in an acknowledgment of failure of any sort whatsoever, and all ears listened in amazement.
“I did nothing but discourage everybody,” went on the voice, not quite evenly. “I believe I’m apt to do that, though I never realized it before. But when that wonderful old man was speaking it came to me, quite suddenly, that the reason my husband’s family don’t like me better—is—because—it is my nature always to see the objections to a thing, and to discourage people about it, if I can. I—want to tell you all that—I’m going to try to help, not hinder, from now on.”
There was never a deeper sincerity than breathed in these astonishing words from Marian, Oliver’s wife. Astonishing, because they all understood, knowing her as they did—Oliver was oldest, and had been first to marry—what a tremendous effort the little speech had cost her, a proud woman of the world, who had never seemed to care whether her husband’s family loved her or not, so that they deferred to her.
For a moment they were all too surprised and touched—for there is nothing more touching than humility, where it is least expected—to speak. Then Ralph, who sat next Marian, brought his fist down on his knee with a thud.
“Bully for you!” said he.
Upon Marian’s other side her husband’s mother slipped a warm, delicate hand into hers. Nan, leaning past Sam’s knee, reached up and patted her sister-in-law’s lap. Everybody else smiled, in his or her most friendly way, at Oliver’s wife; and Oliver himself, though he said nothing, and merely continued to stare fixedly into the fire, looked as if he would be willing to tack pulpit stair-carpets for a living, if it would help to bring about such results as these.
“Marian’s right in calling him a ‘wonderful old man.’” Guy spoke thoughtfully. “He got us all—Fernalds as well as Tomlinsons and Frasers. He hit me, square between the eyes, good and hard—but I’m glad he did,” he owned, with characteristic frankness.
They all sat gazing into the fire in silence, for a little, after that, in the musing way of those who have much to think about. And by and by Father Fernald pulled out his watch and scanned it by the wavering light.
“Bless my soul!” he cried. “It’s close on to twelve o’clock! You children ought to be in bed—oughtn’t they, Mother?”
There was a murmur of laughter round the group, for John Fernald was looking at his wife over his spectacles in just the quizzical way his sons and daughters well remembered.
“I suppose they ought, John,” she responded, smiling at him. “But you might let them sit up a little longer—just this once.”
He looked them over once more—it was the hundredth time his eyes had gone round the circle that night. It was a goodly array of manhood and womanhood for a father to look at and call his own—even William Sewall, the brother of his son’s wife, seemed to belong to him tonight. They gave him back his proud and tender glance, every one of them, and his heart was very full. As for their mother—but her eyes had gone down.
“Well,” he said, leaning over to clasp her hand in his own, as she sat next him, “I guess maybe, just this once, it won’t do any harm to let ’em stay up a little late, They’re getting pretty big, now.... And it’s Christmas Night.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“The Santa Trap,” by Robin Aurelian, was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January 1997. Copyright © 1997, 2012 by Robin Aurelian.
“Can’t See the Tree for the Forest,” by Skadi meic Beorh, was originally published in After Thieves Watch: Stories of Childhood and of Fantasies, by Skadi meic Beorh; Rockville, MD: Wildside Press, 2010. Copyright © 2010, 2012 by Skadi meic Boerh.
“The Gift,” by Marilyn “Mattie” Brahen, was originally published in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, Winter 1994. Copyright © 1994, 2012 by Marilyn “Mattie” Brahen.
“The Christmas Eve Ghost,” by Ernest Dudley, was originally published in abridged form in The Star, 1947, and in complete form in The Private Eye, by Ernest Dudley; London: John Long, 1948. Copyright © 1947, 1948 by Ernest Dudley; Copyright © 2012 by Susan Dudley-Allen. Published by arrangement with the author’s literary estate’s agent, Cosmos Literary Agency.
“Lazelle Family Christmas,” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman, was originally published in Tomorrow Speculative Fiction, December 1993. Copyright © 1993, 2012 by Nina Kiriki Hoffman.
“The Christmas Crazies: A Griff & Fats Story,” by Gary Lovisi, was originally published in Hellbent on Homicide, by Gary Lovisi; England: The Do-Not Press, 1997. Copyright © 1997, 2012 by Gary Lovisi.
“A Hell of a Christmas,” by Michael McCarty, was originally published in A Hell of a Job: Business as Usual, by Michael McCarty; Santa Rosa, CA: Damnation Books, 2010. Copyright © 2010, 2012 by Michael McCarty.
“Scrooge 3000,” by Michael McCarty, was originally published in Little Creatures, by Michael McCarty; Sam’s Dot Publishing, 2008. Copyright © 2008, 2012 by Michael McCarty.
“Dog Eat Dog: A Christmas Tale,” by Robert Reginald, was originally published in Katydid & Other Critters: Tales of Fantasy and Mystery, by Robert Reginald; Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press, 2001. Copyright © 2001, 2012 by Robert Reginald.
“The Christmas Bane,” by S. Clayton Rhodes, was originally published in Appalachian Winter Hauntings: Weird Holiday Tales from the Mountains, edited by Michael Knost and Mark Justice; Woodland Press, 2009. Copyright © 2009, 2012 by S. Clayton Rhodes.
THE MEGAPACK SERIES
The Adventure Megapack
The Christmas Megapack
The Second Christmas Megapack
The Cowboy Megapack
The Craig Kennedy Scientific Detective Megapack
The Cthulhu Mythos Megapack
The Ghost Story Megapack
The Horror Megapack
The Macabre Megapack
The Martian Megapack
The Military Megapack
The Mummy Megapack
The Mystery Megapack
The Science Fiction Megapack
The Second Science Fiction Megapack
The Third Science Fiction Megapack
The Fourth Science Fiction Megapack
The Fifth Science Fiction Megapack
The Penny Parker Megapack
The Tom Corbett, Space Cadet Megapack
The Tom Swift Megapack
The Vampire Megapack
The Western Megapack
The Wizard of Oz Megapack
AUTHOR MEGAPACKS
The Andre Norton Megapack
The B.M. Bower Megapack
The Murray Leinster Megapack
The Second Murray Leinster Megapack
The Andre Norton Megapack
The Rafael Sabatini Megapack
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