IX

They went to the woods for Christmas greens, jolting along in the farm cart. The pine trees were all plumy and feathery with the snow that came sifting down from a lead-colored sky. The brook was frozen over, but if you listened hard you could hear it faintly chuckling, gurgling, flowing along under the ice. Victor, with his cheeks as red as his mittens, jumped up and down, shouted, fell flat in the snow and pretended to swim, because he was so happy. Just the snow was enough, just driving to the woods and bringing back that feathery, swishing green load was enough⁠—and beside these, Christmas was coming!

They all went up to the Sunday school room in the evening, to make the Christmas decorations for the church by the light of the dim oil lamps in their brackets. Lily and Victor made little bunches of cedar and laurel⁠—two sprays of laurel and one of cedar, and then two sprays of cedar and one of laurel⁠—and handed them up to the others, who bound them with string on long ropes. Lily had tried to make the ropes, but her sprays always came tumbling out, just as poor Aunt Priscilla’s did. How fragrant the evergreens were, and how black they made everyone’s hands! Even Mr. Lacey’s hands were black. He was bunching for Mamma, making her laugh with the ridiculous things he kept saying, and laughing himself, rich peals of tenor laughter. She could always understand his jokes⁠—so many good puns! Since he and she had become such friends, she had begun to make little jokes herself, and grow girlish and arch and saucy. The girls never laughed when she mispronounced humorously, or when she talked funny French and said “Silver plate” and “Fox pass,” but Mr. Lacey did, and it made her feel so young again.

When the decorations were finished, the ropes and the wreaths and the big star of box and holly to hang over the chancel, and when Mr. Almond’s knife was found, the scraps of pine and cedar were burnt in the stove, roaring up sudden and white, and then popping like little pistol shots. How fragrant! They all gathered around the stove to warm themselves before going out into the winter night, while Uncle Willie stood on a chair and blew out the lamps.

“Goodnight! Goodnight!” The light from the bobbing lanterns falls in circles on the snow, climbs up the tree-trunks and over the dark hedges. The stars are shining, the sleigh-bells are chiming. Wait! This is the perfect moment! Stay with us for a little while! But the moment is over. The bells are no longer loud and merry⁠—they are sad and faint⁠—they have passed⁠—they are still.

That moment before the parlor door was opened, Victor felt as if he would burst. And when he saw the Christmas tree he was struck dumb for a moment. Then he began to jump up and down, screaming with joy.

The tree was too tall even for the high parlor ceiling. Its head was bent over, and it looked as if it were bowing to them, holding out its dark green silver woven skirts, and bending its head, crowned with a silver star.

There were glass baskets and bells, and wax birds in their gilt wire cages. There were nets cut out of colored paper, holding candy, and more candy in small lace bags. There were gold and silver stars, and gilded walnuts, and strings of cranberries and popcorn. The stout shrimp-pink wax angel was there, swimming away, with a green twig under her for a life preserver. She was always there, every Christmas, and so was the cardboard folding church, with windows made of paper like colored glass, and sparkles all over the snow on the roof. By the church door stood a cardboard Santa Claus in a white fur coat, giving a basket of toys and pink and yellow apples to a little cardboard boy and girl. In front of the church on the snowy ground was printed a poem in German, and the Campion children felt as if it held such a secret, such an answer, if they could only read it! But none of them could, and Mamma couldn’t either.

On the end of a branch hung a little silver glass bell, and when Victor set it ringing gently with the tip of his finger it seemed to set another little bell ringing in his own heart.

They had their presents; they went to church, each wearing a sprig of holly, like so many plum puddings, and screamed:

“ ‘Shout the glad tidings, exultingly si-hi-hi-hi-hing!’ ”

They came home and had an enormous dinner; and now they were in the parlor, stuffed and sleepy. Mamma, in one of the fashionable new low chairs in which people lay stretched out with their chins propped on their chests, was half asleep in front of the fire, with “Poppies in the Corn” fallen to the floor beside her, only rousing now and then to ask one of the girls to stamp out sparks on the carpet that always proved to be bits of tinsel from the tree. May had fallen asleep on the sofa, and Lily was comfortably weeping over her new book and automatically eating the raisins she had found in her stocking that morning, while Maggie, in spite of her years, lay full length on the floor with Victor, languidly setting up and knocking over his Christmas tin soldiers.

And then there was a pealing of sleigh-bells at the door, and Martha scuffling through the hall, grumbling and tying on her apron as she went, to let in a whirl of snowy air and bells and laughing Mr. Lacey, buttoned warmly down to his ankles in a tight fawn-colored coat with a little fur collar, and wearing a low crowned brown derby hat like a mould of chocolate blancmange in a curly rimmed saucer.

“Oh, my gracious me!” cried Mamma, scrambling up in a panic, and settling her braids in what she could see of the overmantel mirror that gleamed in little chinks through Japanese fans as a pond gleams through an overgrowth of spatterdock pads. Mr. Lacey came bounding in, all chill and pink and fresh. He had brought Mamma a Christmas present⁠—a pug dog! Café au lait color, with a tight screw of tail and a squashed-up funny little black face, and with a big scarlet bow on its collar.

“Oh! Oh! For me?” cried Mamma. “Oh, you sweet pet!”

“Thank you, thank you!” caroled Mr. Lacey roguishly, trilling his laughter.

“Oh, Mr. Lacey! Fie! How can you? I mean this sweet little pet⁠—yes, it was a pet, so it was. Let me see, what shall I call it? What shall I call it, children?”

“Call it Trixie.”

“Call it Brownie.”

“What shall Mamma call the doggie, Victor, precious?”

“I don’t know, Mamma.”

“I didn’t like to think of you without any dog at all,” Mr. Lacey explained. For silky, black Trusty was dead. He was buried in the garden, and already a little peach tree was growing up out of his grave, from the stone of a peach that the weeping Lily had absentmindedly eaten at his burial.

“Call it Lassie, Mamma,” May suggested.

“That’s a good idea, honey. Lassie! That’s very pretty! Here, Lassie, Lassie, Lassie. Here, little Lassie!”

Mr. Lacey was in a quandary. How to tell her delicately that Lassie was a Laddie? Perhaps he had better get his sister to tell her⁠—but no. Em had a way of putting things so strongly. So presently⁠—not too soon to be embarrassing⁠—he called to the pug:

“Here, Lad! Here, sir!”

But Mamma couldn’t bring herself to say “Laddie”⁠—it would have made such a point of it! So, delicate as Mr. Lacey, she announced after a while that she had changed her mind, and was going to call her pug Brownie, after all.

Mr. Lacey liked everybody so much, he couldn’t believe that anyone didn’t like him. But Victor didn’t like him in spite of pennies, in spite of tricks with his fresh finely embroidered pocket handkerchiefs. He hated to be laughed at, and he knew that sooner or later Mr. Lacey would begin laughing.

“Well, sir!” cried Mr. Lacey, flinging a kind arm about the little boy’s stiff and unresponsive body. “You’re just the young gentleman I’ve been wanting to see. I have a question I want to ask you⁠—let’s see if you can answer me this. When⁠—do⁠—young ladies⁠—eat a musical instrument.”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know, Mr. ⸻,” Mamma prompted.

“I don’t know, Mr. Lacey.”

“You mean to say you don’t know when Miss Maggie, and Miss May, and Miss Lily, eat a musical instrument? A bright young gentleman like you? Oh, come! I don’t believe that, you know!”

“A flute?” ventured Victor uncertainly, and turned scarlet at Mr. Lacey’s peals of laughter.

“A flute! That’s good, upon my word! I must remember that one! No, my lad, I see I’ll have to tell you. When they have a pianoforte⁠—a piano⁠—for⁠—tea!” And his laughter pealed again, while Victor’s serious face remained unchanged.

“Well, never say die! Maybe you can tell me this one, young Sir Sobersides! What is the difference between a postage stamp and a bad boy?”

But Victor couldn’t tell him that, either.

Mr. Lacey wasn’t just a joker. No, indeed! He could talk about all sorts of deep subjects. He had read Mr. Darwin’s “Origin of Species” and his new book, “The Descent of Man”⁠—well, at least, not exactly read them, but he had glanced through them, and knew what they were all about. Mamma, of course, was horrified at the very idea (her idea) of Darwinism. She wasn’t descended from monkeys! And what about the Bible? But Mr. Lacey, leaning back with his fingertips pressed together and a neat boot wagging, said there might be something in it⁠—he didn’t say there was, mind you, but there might be. Mamma was almost in tears before she could persuade him to say that he himself didn’t believe a word of it.

The snowy twilight deepened, and the room was dark except for the firelight. The bunches of holly over the oil paintings of “The First Babe,” and “The Rendezvous,” of the cats and kittens with pink satin bows, and of the Italian peasants who seemed to spend all their time at fountains, melted into the gloomy background of the parlor paper, dark grey-green with shadowy vegetation and tendrils and swirls of gold. It was the time that they always lit the wax candles on the Christmas tree, and yet here was Mamma lying back in her chair with Brownie in her lap, just as if it were any ordinary day and she had nothing in the world to do but listen to Mr. Lacey complain because ladies were getting so mannish.

“Neckties, wristbands, shirt-collars and shirtfronts⁠—upon my word, my sister Em had on a waistcoat this morning I thought was my own, except that it was satin. You may call me old-fashioned⁠—”

“Oh, no, indeed, Mr. Lacey!”

“But I must say I like Lovely Woman to be womanly! All this agitation for Women’s Rights⁠—”

“Dreadful!” breathed Mamma.

“To my way of thinking,” said Mr. Lacey, gazing earnestly and admiringly at Mamma, “Woman’s Right is the right to reign supreme in the heart and home of mere man⁠—”

Oh, why didn’t he go home, so that they could light the candles? Victor could hardly stand it. He tried to comfort himself by ringing the little silver bell, but he couldn’t hear it through Mr. Lacey’s voice.