The children, screaming with anticipation, surrounded him. He fished in one big pocket and produced a tiny cocker spaniel. Now the children were dumb with delight. Pietro held out his dark little hands, clutching with frantic speechlessness; Jean touched the miniature head with one finger; Max could only stand and gaze, longingly. It was Kathy to whom the doctor gave the dog, and she hugged it convulsively.
“A dog,” said Johnny, itching to take the dog himself.
“What did you think it was? A flea? He’s got a damn-fool registered name, with papers, but I call him Coffee, because that’s his color.”
“We’ll lose Mrs. Burnsdale when she sees it,” said Johnny.
“She won’t say a word. After all the lists she’s given me she’d better hold her tongue,” said the doctor, gratified by the pleasure and excitement he had created. “Kids ought to have dogs. Hey, you, fat-face,” he said to his favorite, Kathy, “let the other kids hold him too. Careful there, Pietro. That’s a baby, not a stuffed animal. Come on, now let Jean hold it, and Max too.”
The children, absorbed in the tiny creature, moved apart, and the doctor said to Johnny, “I’ve got a fine surprise for you, son, on Christmas Day. Can’t tell you yet. What’s the matter?” he asked, seeing Johnny was grave again.
“It’s what I told you. I’ve got to do something about this smog. It’s killing people. I am going to do what I can.”
“Oh you are, are you?” said the doctor. “The next time you get in trouble the mayor’ll personally escort you out of town. Let me know in time so we can get a new minister.”
Dr. McManus had arranged for his chauffeur to take Pietro and Jean to Midnight Mass. But before that time Johnny read to the children the old poem, “’Twas the Night before Christmas.” The children listened, crowded around Emilie’s bed, their mouths open, their eyes shining. It was their first Christmas; they could not get enough of the delight and wonder of it. Their stockings already hung at the fireplace in the parlor. The fragrance of mincemeat and pine hovered over all the house. Holly wreaths hung at the windows and on the door. The little tree was brave and twinkling with lights, glittering with tinsel. The ugliness of the parsonage had been alleviated by strings and festoons of red and green twined paper in every room.
Johnny thought that the joy and anticipation of the children made up to him for all the long years of his own deprived childhood. Those years were now compressed in an essence that threw out an incomparable scent, soothing and healing something in him.
Johnny, for the children’s pleasure, was fully dressed in his new black vestments, which gave him added dignity and even a touch of majesty. His white collar shimmered over the moderately priced broadcloth. He was not only a foster father but a priest, and even Pietro, growing more pert and mischievous every day, looked at him with respect.
The poem was hardly finished, and the children were just beginning their demands to hear it again, when Mrs Burnsdale came upstairs with a special-delivery letter for Johnny. “Another card for us,” said Johnny, pleased. He opened the envelope. A green slip of paper fell out. “Five hundred dollars!” exclaimed Johnny faintly. “From Dr. Stevens!” On his card Dr. Stevens had written somewhat cryptically, “God bless you and the children, dear Johnny, and protect you all in the coming year and forever, and forever give you courage and peace.”
Without warning, a frightful sense of foreboding clutched at Johnny’s throat. He read the card to himself now. Why should those simple words from one minister to another, ordinary words, and customary ones at this time of the year, sound so ominous? Courage and peace. A man always possessed them, with God. The foreboding grew stronger in him, a kind of amorphous terror struck at his heart. He looked at Emilie, basking contentedly on her pillows, immune to the deadly fog outside, her large blue eyes half closed in drowsiness. Even Dr. Kennedy had admitted that she was better, and his manner had intimated some hope.
He stood up abruptly. His dark face paled. Mrs. Burnsdale got up also. “What is it, Mr. Fletcher?” she asked fearfully.
“I don’t know,” he admitted slowly. “Something just came to me—. Things have been a strain lately, I guess.” He looked at the card in his hand, and the words “courage and peace” leaped at him as if wreathed in light. He blinked his eyes. The words fell back on the card and the light was gone. He was a mystic, like all true priests, and again the foreboding struck at him savagely. He could not accept those innocent words as a promise; they seemed to him a warning of some coming terror, and an exhortation to have faith in the ultimate outcome.
He went to each of the children and gave them a tender and paternal kiss. “Pietro and Jean, you’d better get ready, for you’re going early because of Pietro’s place in the choir tonight. Kathy and Max, you’ll be in bed in half an hour. See, it’s almost ten.” He lifted Emilie in his arms, and she cuddled against him, soft and fragile as a doll. “My darling, my darling,” he whispered in her ear. She wound her little arms about his neck and sighed blissfully. Her breathing was normal and quiet. The fragrance of her small body was, to him, the most wonderful scent in the world.
He put the child back into her bed, and almost immediately she fell asleep, holding his hand. He stood bent over her, and forgot everything else except his nameless fear. He prayed silently for the little one, and for the first time his full urgency had an answer. He could feel that old familiar wave of tenderness reaching out to him from the farthest space, almost too sweet and too powerful to be endured. His eyes filled with tears. All would be well for Emilie, and for all of them.
Mrs. Burnsdale remained behind to help Pietro and Jean, and to see that Kathy and Max went to bed. She often thought that the most improvement had come to Max. The dry peaks of his hair had been trained by her, with oil and brushes, to a smooth pompadour. The square face had color, and when he smiled he was an average boy. He chattered to her confidently as he put on his pajamas. “I’m going to have Christmas presents too,” he said with happy anticipation.
“Is that right?” asked Mrs. Burnsdale with mock severity. “Who said so? Didn’t we all give you Hanukkah presents, and didn’t you have a—a Menorah, candles and things, and didn’t you say prayers with your skullcap on? This is a racket, young man.”
Max, to her pleasure, gave her a sly and brimming smile. “No. I am lucky. I get Christmas presents too. I know.”
“It’s a good thing Catholics and Protestants celebrate the same holiday at the same time,” said Mrs. Burnsdale, “or there’d be three gift rackets in this house instead of two. There now, go and brush your teeth, and don’t forget the back ones, either.”
Johnny sat at his desk and considered his sermon. He looked at the middle drawer of his desk and was very still. He opened it finally, and took out the gold box. It lay in his palm, and it seemed to grow warm and heavy in his hand. After a time he wrapped it in paper, and put it far back in his desk. A slow, weak pain flooded him.
The yellow fog thickened outside. Johnny went to a window and looked at it. He could see nothing of anything but the fog, swirling like hordes of malignant ghosts in the light from the window. Dr. McManus said the hospitals were filling with young children and old people. Johnny’s jaw became stiff and hard. His next job would be the smog. It could wait no longer. Inversion. The warm ceiling of moist air hanging over the city, through which industrial smoke could not escape—but there should be no industrial smoke. There were ways of eliminating it, if greed did not interfere.
He looked at his watch. He was surprised to see that it was a quarter to twelve. Now he thought only of his sermon, and put everything else out of mind. If only a handful of people came it would be enough. Next year there would be more.
Now the bells of the churches began to sound, coming in ghostly echoes over the city. They joined together, retreating like the waves of the sea, then advancing, clearer and loud, and then fading. Johnny listened anxiously for the sound of the miserable little bells in his own steeple. They were supposed to answer now, in th
e joyous chorus. No bells answered. He started across the room when he heard, loud and clear and majestic, the most marvelous carillon of them all, triumphant, victorious.
He stood, agape, disbelieving. The carillon was playing the ancient hymn, “Adeste Fidelis,” in long and beautiful harmony, so close that it shook the parsonage. The walls vibrated; the lamps flickered in the waves of sound. The very floors trembled. “Come and behold Him!” the bells commanded, in powerful and lovely accents. “Born the King of Angels!”
“Oh God,” murmured Johnny. “Oh God, Oh Father!”
He felt someone beside him, and starting violently, he turned. Mrs. Burnsdale was there, smiling and crying. She said, “Oh, Mr. Fletcher! It was a surprise for you. The doctor did it. From Italy, he said.”
He put his arm about her, and there were tears on his own face. They listened as the bells announced the everlasting tidings of joy and hope and the Word made Flesh. They soared against the evil sky, defying it. They soared against all the walls of hatred and lust and anger and terror in the world. They called to the heavens and to the earth.
24
Johnny moved to the altar, dazed and shaken. The enormous and stately candlelight rose high over the pews. For a moment Johnny could not see. And then he saw that the church was not only full, but overflowing.
The pews had never been so tightly packed. People sat crowded together, and there were scores of strange faces there. The ushers were frantic. They had borrowed and begged every available folding seat, and it was not enough. The people had been coming since quarter after eleven. Now they stood at the sides of the church, and there was a thick formation in the rear. And still the open doors showed bobbing heads and faces, forcing themselves in, sidling into every available few inches of space. Beyond them, the steps were mobbed.
And, over all, the bells shouted their exultation so that the church shook. “Come, all ye faithful!” they urged, with ever-mounting rejoicing. And the faithful came, and looked up at Johnny, and smiled. It was like a sea smiling. The bells were the surging on an eternal shore. The candlelight rose higher, as if in response.
The choir answered in harmony, and, without a gesture or a word, the congregation in the pews spontaneously rose and their voices joined the choir and the bells. The walls shuddered and echoed. Ecstasy touched all faces. Johnny stood, and could not believe, and could only repeat in himself, “Oh God, Oh Father!” His tall, black-robed figure was like a statue in the light, against the cross.
Then, trembling, murmuring, the bells receded, and there was only the candlelight and the flowers and the people, and Johnny before the altar, and deep silence.
He said, “Now God so loved the world—”
The ancient, timeless, and eternal Gospel was spoken again, and, as always, it was new, a new message to man, shining like the sun, full of promise and glory and forgiveness and love, not old, not worn, not heavy with age, not dogged with weary and mechanical voices uttering a meaningless ritual dusty with bygone ages, but the triumphant call of the immediate hour, freshly born, freshly enunciated, announced like the blaze of trumpets from a hilltop, resounding from kingly palaces, and in the market places, the bazaars, the crowded, sweating streets of men.
“Unto you, all you tired and heavy-laden, unto you who are hopeless and sad and dwell in the darkness of sorrow, unto you who are caught in the web of your sins and your crimes and your agonies and your hells, unto you who weep and find no joy in your lives and no faith, unto you who are victims of injustice and despair, unto you who have been injured, and who injure, unto you whose lives are as stone and steel and you who are tormented with pain and the fear of death and whose children have abandoned you, and who weep in the night and find no peace therein, unto you who labor and find no sustenance in labor, and no meaning, unto you who may die tomorrow or the day after tomorrow and who cry in the darkness without an answering voice from man, unto you, the friendless and the homeless and the lost, unto you who hate in your grief and you who hate without reason but only through blind and ignorant envy, unto you without love and who have never been loved—
“Unto you, this night, a King has been born. A King of love and mercy and salvation and understanding, a King who will bind up your wounds and touch your blind eyes and take away your hatreds and your sorrows and comfort you, and who asks only of you, in accents of eternal love and compassion: Follow Me.
“Unto you, the Word has been made Flesh, out of love for you, out of mercy. Rejoice, therefore, that God has been born in your flesh, and waits for you in His Manger.
“Unto you, unto all men, God has come, to fulfill His promise of the ages. Follow Me. Sound, you bells, to the night! A King has been born, saying: ‘I am among you, even to the end of the world. Follow Me.’”
25
It was seldom that Johnny could not fall asleep at once, and quietly, after his prayers. But tonight, Christmas Eve, he could not sleep. He was oppressed with a feeling of profound dread, which had come upon him again the moment he had returned to the parsonage. He tried to analyze it; he remembered the joy and excitement of the children, the arrival of Dr. Stevens’s check, the bells, the incredible crowd in the church, the happy voices. Nothing but good had been his this day. Everywhere he had been offered love. He had comforted a dying woman, and brought her and her daughter together. He had thanked God for all these miracles which had come in a few hours to him. The dread remained.
He rolled on his bed. Jean was sleeping on the day bed near him; his breathing was regular in the darkness. Johnny decided a pipe might soothe him, so he got up carefully, threw on his old brown woolen bathrobe, and crept from the room. He felt his way downstairs, and cautiously clicked on the light in the parlor. Immediately the little tree sprang into brilliance, shimmering as if drenched in silver. He smiled. The children’s stockings bulged; as many smaller presents as possible lay under the tree. The children knew that larger and more exciting gifts were waiting for them under and around the big tree in the parish hall, for the house could not accommodate them.
He heard a faint whining, and went into the warm, clean kitchen. The puppy, Coffee, lay in a carton carefully lined with an old blanket, and newspaper was spread prudently about. He lifted his tawny head as Johnny entered, and the infant eyes brightened with eagerness. He whined again. Johnny picked him up, and the minute tail wagged frantically. The little head pressed against the palm of Johnny’s hand. He held the dog against his cheek, then set him down, found a saucepan, and opened the refrigerator. For a moment his nameless despair lifted when he saw the contents: the goose already stuffed, the pies, and the ice cream, all waiting for the festivities tomorrow. He took out milk, heated it, put in a little sugar, and poured the milk into a saucer. “There,” he murmured to the puppy, putting the saucer under the frenzied nose. The puppy drank rapidly, and Johnny stood and watched, smoking.
The old radiators hissed and gurgled comfortingly. But the house felt a trifle too warm. Johnny went downstairs and checked the furnace. It ate contentedly; the firebox was cherry-colored. On the stairs, going up, Johnny suddenly stopped. He had the sensation that he was not alone. His heart beat quickly, he went down again and searched the cellar, a long piece of kindling wood heavy and reassuring in his hand. But the cellar contained only the usual things. Now, he thought, I’m surely getting neurotic. He looked into the dark dining room, the little pantry, cold as ice, where the vegetables were kept. The puppy whined anxiously in the kitchen. Johnny went to soothe him, and the stealthy sensation followed, like a shadow. “Nonsense,” said Johnny aloud.
He turned off all the lights, a slight drowsiness came to him, very welcome. Yet when he was again in bed the premonition of disaster lay down on the pillow with him. He firmly tried to control it. Finally, out of pure weariness, he began to doze, but very lightly, part of his mind still awake. Once he thought he heard the faint closing of a door, decided a child was visiting the bathroom. Now a wind began to complain dully against the windows. Jean slept.
/> Johnny rose out of his drowse to hear the wild beating of his heart. It was then that he smelled smoke. He sat up, sniffing. It was definitely smoke.
He jumped out of the bed and ran to the door. The hallway was hot, and it was filled with billows of smoke. He felt rather than saw them. He coughed violently, and shut the door. He ran to the lamp, turned it on, panting. Jean sat up in bed, blinking. “Look, Jean,” said Johnny, trying to control his voice, “let me help you up, and then dress. Fast! Fast, Jean! The house is on fire!”
Jean said nothing; he only turned very white. Johnny pulled him to the edge of the bed. Then he saw that the smoke was gushing under the door. It was too late for dressing. He threw Jean his own blankets. “Wait!” he cried. He held a pillow against his face, rushed out into the hall, closing the door behind him. Now he shouted, as the very floorboards sent waves of heat against the soles of his thin slippers, “Fire! Fire!” He pounded on the door of Kathy’s and Mrs. Burnsdale’s room. There was a confused muttering inside, then Mrs. Burnsdale, suddenly realizing what she had heard, stumbled out of bed. “Don’t open the door yet!” cried Johnny. “Just put coats on you and Kathy.” He thought wildly of Max and Pietro, then remembered that because Jean had a slight sore throat they were sleeping on a couch in the room with Kathy and Mrs. Burnsdale. “Hurry,” he begged. “Hurry, for God’s sake.” His eyes were burning with heat and smoke. “And put blankets over your heads, and hold them tight against your faces. And shoes, shoes! Oh, God in heaven, Emilie!”
A Tender Victory Page 41
