Kate started up and caught Mark’s arm. “Oh, Mark! I have it!” she whispered, “and we will—yes—that will be the very thing,” and so with more mumblings and mutterings, not one word of which could her father hear, the two raced upstairs to the top of the house and the garret.
IV.
Two hours later a group of young people led by Mark Dabney trooped out of Kate’s gate and turned down the Little Gray Lady’s street. Most of them wore long cloaks and were muffled in thick veils.
They were talking in low tones, glancing from side to side, as if fearing to be seen. The moon had gone under a cloud, but the light of the stars, aided by an isolated street lamp, showed them the way. So careful were they to conceal their identity that the whole party—there were six in all—would dart into an open gate, crouching behind the snow-laden hedge to avoid even a single passer-by. Only once were they in any danger, and that was when a sleigh gliding by stopped in front of them, the driver calling out in a voice which sounded twice as loud in the white stillness: “Where’s Mr. Dabney’s new house?” (evidently a stranger, for the town pump was not better known). No one else stopped them until they reached the Little Gray Lady’s porch.
Kate crept up first, followed by Mark, and peered in. So far as she could see everything was just as she had left it.
“The candle is still burning, Mark, and she’s put more wood on the fire. But I can’t find her. Oh, yes—there she is—in her big chair—you can just see the top of her head and her hand. Hush! don’t one of you breathe. Now, listen, girls! Mark and I will tiptoe in first—the front door is never fastened—and if she is asleep—and I think she is—we will all crouch down behind her until she wakes up.”
“And another thing,” whispered Mark from behind his hand—“everybody must drop their coats and things in the hall, so we can surprise her all at once.”
The strange procession tiptoed in and arranged itself behind the Little Gray Lady’s chair. Kate was dressed in her mother’s wedding-gown, flaring poke bonnet, and long, faded gloves clear to her shoulder; Mark had on a blue coat with brass buttons, a buff waistcoat, and black stock, the two points of the high collar pinching his ruddy cheeks—the same dress his father and Uncle Harry had worn, and all the young bloods of their day, for that matter. The others were in their grandmother’s or grandfather’s short and long clothes, Tom Fields sporting a tight-sleeved, high-collared coat, silk-embroidered waistcoat, and pumps.
Kate crept up behind her chair, but Mark moved to the fireplace and rested his elbow on the mantel, so that he would be in full view when the Little Gray Lady awoke.
At last her eyes opened, but she made no outcry, nor did she move, except to lift her head as does a fawn startled by some sudden light, her wondering eyes drinking in the apparition. Mark, hardly breathing, stood like a statue, but Kate, bending closer, heard her catch her breath with a long, indrawn sigh, and next the half-audible words: “No—it isn’t so—How foolish I am—” Then there came softly: “Harry”—and again in almost a whisper—as if hope had died in her heart—“Harry—”
Kate, half frightened, sprang forward and flung her arms around the Little Gray Lady.
“Why, don’t you know him? It’s Mark, Cousin Annie, and here’s Tom and Nanny Fields, and everybody, and we’re going to light all the candles—every one of them, and make an awful big fire—and have a real, real Christmas.”
The Little Gray Lady was awake now.
“Oh! you scared me so!” she cried, rising to her feet, rubbing her eyes. “You foolish Children! I must have been asleep—yes, I know I was!” She greeted them all, talking and entering into their fun, the spirit of hospitality now hers, saying over and over again how glad she was they came, kissing one and another; telling them how happy they made her; how since they had been kind enough to come, she would let them have a real Christmas—” Only,” she added quickly, “it will have to be by the light of one candle; but that won’t make any difference, because you can pile on just as much wood as you choose. Yes,” she continued, her voice rising in her effort to meet them on their own joyous plane—“pile on all the kindling, too, Mark; and Kate, dear, please run and tell Margaret to bring in every bit of cake she has in the pantry. Oh, how like your mother you are, Kate! I remember that very dress. And you, Mark! Why, you’ve got on the same coat I saw your father wear at the Governor’s ball. And you, too, Tom. Oh, what a good time we will all have!”
Soon the lid of the old piano was raised, a spinet, really, and one of the girls began running her fingers over the keys; and later on it was agreed that the first dance was to be the Virginia reel, with all the hospitable chairs and the fire screen and the gouty old sofa rolled back against the wall.
This all arranged, Mark took his place with the Little Gray Lady for a partner. The music struck up a lively tune and as quickly ceased as the sound of bells rang through the night air. In the hush that followed a sleigh was heard at the gate.
Kate sprang up and clapped her hands.
“Oh, they are just in time! There come the rest of them, Cousin Annie. Now we are going to have a great party! Let’s be dancing when they come in; keep on playing!”
At this instant the door opened and Margaret put in her head. “Somebody,” she said, with a low bow, “wants to see Mr. Mark on business.”
Mark, looking like a gallant of the old school, excused himself with a great flourish to the Little Gray Lady and strode out. In the hall, with his back to the light, stood a broad-shouldered man muffled to the chin in a fur overcoat. The boy was about to apologize for his costume and then ask the man’s errand, when the stranger turned quickly and gripped his wrist.
“Hush—not a word! Where is she?” he cried.
With a low whistle of surprise Mark pushed open the door. The stranger stepped in.
The Little Gray Lady raised her head.
“And who can this new guest be?” she asked—“and in what a queer costume, too!”
The man drew himself up to his full height and threw wide his coat: “And you don’t know me, Annie?”
She did not take her eyes from his face, nor did she move except to turn her head appealingly to the room as if she feared they were playing her another trick.
He had reached her side and stood looking down at her. Again came the voice—a strong, clear voice, with a note of infinite tenderness through it:
“How white your hair is, Annie; and your hand is so thin! Have I changed like this?”
She leaned forward, scanning him eagerly.
There was a little cry, then all her soul went out in the one word:
“Harry!”
She was inside the big coat now, his strong arms around her, her head hidden on his breast, only the tips of her toes on the floor.
When he had kissed her again and again—and he did and before everybody—he crossed the room, picked up the ghostly candle, and smothered its flame.
“I saw it from the road,” he laughed softly, “that’s why I couldn’t wait. But you’ll never have to light it again, my darling!”
I saw them both a few years later. Everything in the way of fading and wrinkling had stopped so far as the Little Gray Lady was concerned. If there were any lines left in her forehead and around the corners of her eyes, I could not find them. Joy had planted a crop of dimples instead, and they had spread out, smoothing the care lines. Margaret even claimed that her hair was turning brown gold once more, but then Margaret was always her loyal slave, and believed everything her mistress wished.
And now, if you don’t mind, dear reader, we will put everything back and shut the Little Gray Lady’s bureau drawer.
THE ROMANCE OF A CHRISTMAS CARD, by Kate Douglas Wiggin
I.
It was Christmas Eve and a Saturday night when Mrs. Larrabee, the Beulah minister’s wife, opened the door of the study where her husband was deep in the revision of his next day’s sermon, and thrust in her comely head framed in a knitted rigolette.
“Luther
, I’m going to run down to Letty’s. We think the twins are going to have measles; it’s the only thing they haven’t had, and Letty’s spirits are not up to concert pitch. You look like a blessed old prophet tonight, my dear! What’s the text?”
The minister pushed back his spectacles and ruffled his gray hair.
“Isaiah VI, 8: ‘And I heard the voice of the Lord, saying whom shall I send…? Then said I, Here am I, send me!’”
“It doesn’t sound a bit like Christmas, somehow.”
“It has the spirit, if it hasn’t the sound,” said the minister. “There is always so little spare money in the village that we get less and less accustomed to sharing what we have with others. I want to remind the people that there are different ways of giving, and that the bestowing of one’s self in service and good deeds can be the best of all gifts. Letty Boynton won’t need the sermon!—Don’t be late, Reba.”
“Of course not. When was I ever late? It has just struck seven and I’ll be back by eight to choose the hymns. And oh! Luther, I have some fresh ideas for Christmas cards and I am going to try my luck with them in the marts of trade. There are hundreds of thousands of such things sold nowadays; and if the ‘Boston Banner’ likes my verses well enough to send me the paper regularly, why shouldn’t the people who make cards like them too, especially when I can draw and paint my own pictures?”
“I’ve no doubt they’ll like them; who wouldn’t? If the parish knew what a ready pen you have, they’d suspect that you help me in my sermons! The question is, will the publishers send you a check, or only a copy of your card?”
“I should relish a check, I confess; but oh! I should like almost as well a beautifully colored card, Luther, with a picture of my own inventing on it, my own verse, and R. L. in tiny letters somewhere in the corner! It would make such a lovely Christmas present! And I should be so proud; inside of course, not outside! I would cover my halo with my hat so that nobody in the congregation would ever notice it!”
The minister laughed.
“Consult Letty, my dear. David used to be in some sort of picture business in Boston. She will know, perhaps, where to offer your card!”
At the introduction of a new theme into the conversation Mrs. Larrabee slipped into a chair by the door, her lantern swinging in her hand.
“David can’t be as near as Boston or we should hear of him sometimes. A pretty sort of brother to be meandering foot-loose over the earth, and Letty working her fingers to the bone to support his children—twins at that! It was just like David Gilman to have twins! Doesn’t it seem incredible that he can let Christmas go by without a message? I dare say he doesn’t even remember that his babies were born on Christmas eve. To be sure he is only Letty’s half-brother, but after all they grew up together and are nearly the same age.”
“You always judged David a little severely, Reba. Don’t despair of reforming any man till you see the grass growing over his bare bones. I always have a soft spot in my heart for him when I remember his friendship for my Dick; but that was before your time.—Oh! these boys, these boys!” The minister’s voice quavered. “We give them our very life-blood. We love them, cherish them, pray over them, do our best to guide them, yet they take the path that leads from home. In some way, God knows how, we fail to call out the return love, or even the filial duty and respect!—Well, we won’t talk about it, Reba; my business is to breathe the breath of life into my text: ‘Here am I, Lord, send me!’ Letty certainly continues to say it heroically, whatever her troubles.”
“Yes, Letty is so ready for service that she will always be sent, till the end of time; but if David ever has an interview with his Creator I can hear him say: ‘Here am I, Lord; send Letty!’”
The minister laughed again. He laughed freely and easily nowadays. His first wife had been a sort of understudy for a saint, and after a brief but depressing connubial experience she had died, leaving him with a boy of six; a boy who already, at that tender age, seemed to cherish a passionate aversion to virtue in any form—the result, perhaps, of daily doses of the catechism administered by an abnormally pious mother.
The minister had struggled valiantly with his paternal and parochial cares for twelve lonely years when he met, wooed, and won (very much to his astonishment and exaltation) Reba Crosby. There never was a better bargain driven! She was forty-five by the family Bible but twenty-five in face, heart, and mind, while he would have been printed as sixty in Who’s Who in New Hampshire, although he was far older in patience and experience and wisdom. The minister was spiritual, frail, and a trifle prone to self-depreciation; the minister’s new wife was spirited, vigorous, courageous, and clever. She was also Western-born, college-bred, good as gold, and invincibly, incurably gay. The minister grew younger every year, for Reba doubled his joys and halved his burdens, tossing them from one of her fine shoulders to the other as if they were feathers. She swept into the quiet village life of Beulah like a salt sea breeze. She infused a new spirit into the bleak church “sociables” and made them positively agreeable functions. The choir ceased from wrangling, the Sunday School plucked up courage and flourished like a green bay tree. She managed the deacons, she braced up the missionary societies, she captivated the parish, she cheered the depressed and depressing old ladies and cracked jokes with the invalids.
“Ain’t she a little mite too jolly for a minister’s wife?” questioned Mrs. Ossian Popham, who was a professional pessimist.
“If this world is a place of want, woe, wantonness, an’ wickedness, same as you claim, Maria, I don’t see how a minister’s wife can be too jolly!” was her husband’s cheerful reply. “Look how she’s melted up the ice in both congregations, so’t the other church is most willin’ we should prosper, so long as Mis’ Larrabee stays here an’ we don’t get too fur ahead of ’em in attendance. Me for the smiles, Maria!”
And Osh Popham was right; for Reba Larrabee convinced the members of the rival church (the rivalry between the two being in rigidity of creed, not in persistency in good works) that there was room in heaven for at least two denominations; and said that if they couldn’t unite in this world, perhaps they’d get round to it in the next. Finally, she saved Letitia Boynton’s soul alive by giving her a warm, understanding friendship, and she even contracted to win back the minister’s absent son some time or other, and convince him of the error of his ways.
“Let Dick alone a little longer, Luther,” she would say; “don’t hurry him, for he won’t come home so long as he’s a failure; it would please the village too much, and Dick hates the village. He doesn’t accept our point of view, that we must love our enemies and bless them that despitefully use us. The village did despitefully use Dick, and for that matter, David Gilman too. They were criticized, gossiped about, judged without mercy. Nobody believed in them, nobody ever praised them;—and what is that about praise being the fructifying sun in which our virtues ripen, or something like that? I’m not quoting it right, but I wish I’d said it. They were called wild when most of their wildness was exuberant vitality; their mistakes were magnified, their mad pranks exaggerated. If I’d been married to you, my dear, while Dick was growing up, I wouldn’t have let you keep him here in this little backwater of life; he needed more room, more movement. They wouldn’t have been so down on him in Racine, Wisconsin!”
Mrs. Larrabee lighted her lantern, closed the door behind her, and walked briskly down the lonely road that led from the parsonage at Beulah Corner to Letitia Boynton’s house. It was bright moonlight and the ground was covered with light-fallen snow, but the lantern habit was a fixed one among Beulah ladies, who, even when they were not widows or spinsters, made their evening calls mostly without escort. The light of a lantern not only enabled one to pick the better side of a bad road, but would illuminate the face of any male stranger who might be of a burglarious or murderous disposition. Reba Larrabee was not a timid person; indeed, she was wont to say that men were so scarce in Beulah that unless they were out-and-out ruffians it would be an insp
iration to meet a few, even if it were only to pass them in the middle of the road.
There was a light in the meeting-house as she passed, and then there was a long stretch of shining white silence unmarked by any human habitation till she came to the tumble-down black cottage inhabited by “Door-Button” Davis, as the little old man was called in the village. In the distance she could see Osh Popham’s two-story house brilliantly illuminated by kerosene lamps, and as she drew nearer she even descried Ossian himself, seated at the cabinet organ in his shirt-sleeves, practicing the Christmas anthem, his daughter holding a candle to the page while she struggled to adjust a circuitous alto to her father’s tenor. On the hither side of the Popham house, and quite obscured by it, stood Letitia Boynton’s one-story gray cottage. It had a clump of tall cedar trees for background and the bare branches of the elms in front were hung lightly with snow garlands. As Mrs. Larrabee came closer, she set down her lantern and looked fixedly at the familiar house as if something new arrested her gaze.
“It looks like a little night-light!” she thought. “And how queer of Letty to be sitting at the open window!”
Nearer still she crept, yet not so near as to startle her friend. A tall brass candlestick, with a lighted tallow candle in it, stood on the table in the parlor window; but the room in which Letty sat was unlighted save by the fire on the hearth, which gleamed brightly behind the quaint andirons—Hessian soldiers of iron, painted in gay colors. Over the mantel hung the portrait of Letty’s mother, a benign figure clad in black silk, the handsome head topped by a snowy muslin cap with floating strings. Just round the corner of the fireplace was a half-open door leading into a tiny bedroom, and the flickering flame lighted the heads of two sleeping children, arms interlocked, bright tangled curls flowing over one pillow.
Letty herself sat in a low chair by the open window wrapped in an old cape of ruddy brown homespun, from the folds of which her delicate head rose like a flower in a bouquet of autumn leaves. One elbow rested on the table; her chin in the cup of her hand. Her head was turned away a little so that one could see only the knot of bronze hair, the curve of a cheek, and the sweep of an eyelash.
The Second Christmas Megapack: 29 Modern and Classic Yuletide Stories Page 33
