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diff --git a/old/8brid10.zip b/old/8brid10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d3c4ca4 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/8brid10.zip diff --git a/old/9179-h.htm.2021-01-28 b/old/9179-h.htm.2021-01-28 new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6df6f30 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/9179-h.htm.2021-01-28 @@ -0,0 +1,4678 @@ +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> + +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" > + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"> + <head> + <title> + The Bride of the Mistletoe, by James Lane Allen + </title> + <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> + + body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify} + P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } + hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} + .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; } + blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} + .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} + .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} + div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } + div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; } + .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} + .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} + .pagenum {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal; + margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%; + text-align: right;} + pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} + +</style> + </head> + <body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bride of the Mistletoe, by James Lane Allen + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Bride of the Mistletoe + +Author: James Lane Allen + + +Release Date: October, 2005 [EBook #9179] +This file was first posted on September 11, 2003 +Last Updated: October 30, 2016 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRIDE OF THE MISTLETOE *** + + + + +Text file produced by Kevin Handy, Dave Maddock, and Distributed Proofreaders + +HTML file produced by David Widger + + + +</pre> + + <div style="height: 8em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h1> + THE BRIDE OF THE MISTLETOE + </h1> + <h2> + By James Lane Allen + </h2> + <h5> + Author Of “Flute And Violin,” “A Kentucky Cardinal,” “Aftermath,” Etc. + </h5> + <p> + <br /> <br /> <br /> + </p> + <p> + <b>TO ONE WHO KNOWS</b> + </p> + <p> + Je crois que pour produire il ne faut pas trop raissoner. Mais il faut + regarder beaucoup et songer à ce qu’on a vu. Voir: tout est là, et voir + juste. J’entends, par voir juste, voir avec ses propres yeux et non avec + ceux des maîtres. L’originalité d’un artiste s’indique d’abord dans les + petites choses et non dans les grandes. + </p> + <p> + Il faut trouver aux choses une signification qui n’a pas encore découverte + et tâcher de l’exprimer d’une façon personelle. + </p> + <p> + —GUY DE MAUPASSANT. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + PREFACE + </h2> + <p> + Any one about to read this work of fiction might properly be apprised + beforehand that it is not a novel: it has neither the structure nor the + purpose of The Novel. + </p> + <p> + It is a story. There are two characters—a middle-aged married couple + living in a plain farmhouse; one point on the field of human nature is + located; at that point one subject is treated; in the treatment one + movement is directed toward one climax; no external event whatsoever is + introduced; and the time is about forty hours. + </p> + <p> + A second story of equal length, laid in the same house, is expected to + appear within a twelvemonth. The same father and mother are characters, + and the family friend the country doctor; but subordinately all. The main + story concerns itself with the four children of the two households. + </p> + <p> + It is an American children’s story: + </p> + <p> + “A Brood of The Eagle.” + </p> + <p> + During the year a third work, not fiction, will be published, entitled: + </p> + <p> + “The Christmas Tree: An Interpretation.” + </p> + <p> + The three works will serve to complete each other, and they complete a + cycle of the theme. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <p> + <b>CONTENTS</b> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> EARTH SHIELD AND EARTH FESTIVAL </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> I. THE MAN AND THE SECRET </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> II. THE TREE AND THE SUNSET </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> III. THE LIGHTING OF THE CANDLES </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> IV. THE WANDERING TALE </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> V. THE ROOM OF THE SILENCES </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VI. THE WHITE DAWN </a> + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + EARTH SHIELD AND EARTH FESTIVAL + </h2> + <p> + A mighty table-land lies southward in a hardy region of our country. It + has the form of a colossal Shield, lacking and broken in some of its + outlines and rough and rude of make. Nature forged it for some crisis in + her long warfare of time and change, made use of it, and so left it lying + as one of her ancient battle-pieces—Kentucky. + </p> + <p> + The great Shield is raised high out of the earth at one end and sunk deep + into it at the other. It is tilted away from the dawn toward the sunset. + Where the western dip of it reposes on the planet, Nature, cunning + artificer, set the stream of ocean flowing past with restless foam—the + Father of Waters. Along the edge for a space she bound a bright river to + the rim of silver. And where the eastern part rises loftiest on the + horizon, turned away from the reddening daybreak, she piled shaggy + mountains wooded with trees that loose their leaves ere snowflakes fly and + with steadfast evergreens which hold to theirs through the gladdening and + the saddening year. Then crosswise over the middle of the Shield, + northward and southward upon the breadth of it, covering the life-born + rock of many thicknesses, she drew a tough skin of verdure—a broad + strip of hide of the ever growing grass. She embossed noble forests on + this greensward and under the forests drew clear waters. + </p> + <p> + This she did in a time of which we know nothing—uncharted ages + before man had emerged from the deeps of ocean with eyes to wonder, + thoughts to wander, heart to love, and spirit to pray. Many a scene the + same power has wrought out upon the surface of the Shield since she + brought him forth and set him there: many an old one, many a new. She has + made it sometimes a Shield of war, sometimes a Shield of peace. Nor has + she yet finished with its destinies as she has not yet finished with + anything in the universe. While therefore she continues her will and + pleasure elsewhere throughout creation, she does not forget the Shield. + </p> + <p> + She likes sometimes to set upon it scenes which admonish man how little + his lot has changed since Hephaistos wrought like scenes upon the shield + of Achilles, and Thetis of the silver feet sprang like a falcon from snowy + Olympus bearing the glittering piece of armor to her angered son. + </p> + <p> + These are some of the scenes that were wrought on the shield of Achilles + and that to-day are spread over the Earth Shield Kentucky: + </p> + <p> + Espousals and marriage feasts and the blaze of lights as they lead the + bride from her chamber, flutes and violins sounding merrily. An + assembly-place where the people are gathered, a strife having arisen about + the blood-price of a man slain; the old lawyers stand up one after another + and make their tangled arguments in turn. Soft, freshly ploughed fields + where ploughmen drive their teams to and fro, the earth growing dark + behind the share. The estate of a landowner where laborers are reaping; + some armfuls the binders are binding with twisted bands of straw: among + them the farmer is standing in silence, leaning on his staff, rejoicing in + his heart. Vineyards with purpling clusters and happy folk gathering these + in plaited baskets on sunny afternoons. A herd of cattle with incurved + horns hurrying from the stable to the woods where there is running water + and where purple-topped weeds bend above the sleek grass. A fair glen with + white sheep. A dancing-place under the trees; girls and young men dancing, + their fingers on one another’s wrists: a great company stands watching the + lovely dance of joy. + </p> + <p> + Such pageants appeared on the shield of Achilles as art; as pageants of + life they appear on the Earth Shield Kentucky. The metal-worker of old + wrought them upon the armor of the Greek warrior in tin and silver, bronze + and gold. The world-designer sets them to-day on the throbbing land in + nerve and blood, toil and delight and passion. But there with the old + things she mingles new things, with the never changing the ever changing; + for the old that remains always the new and the new that perpetually + becomes old—these Nature allots to man as his two portions wherewith + he must abide steadfast in what he is and go upward or go downward through + all that he is to become. + </p> + <p> + But of the many scenes which she in our time sets forth upon the stately + grassy Shield there is a single spectacle that she spreads over the length + and breadth of it once every year now as best liked by the entire people; + and this is both old and new. + </p> + <p> + It is old because it contains man’s faith in his immortality, which was + venerable with age before the shield of Achilles ever grew effulgent + before the sightless orbs of Homer. It is new because it contains those + latest hopes and reasons for this faith, which briefly blossom out upon + the primitive stock with the altering years and soon are blown away upon + the winds of change. Since this spectacle, this festival, is thus old and + is thus new and thus enwraps the deepest thing in the human spirit, it is + never forgotten. + </p> + <p> + When in vernal days any one turns a furrow or sows in the teeth of the + wind and glances at the fickle sky; when under the summer shade of a + flowering tree any one looks out upon his fatted herds and fattening + grain; whether there is autumnal plenty in his barn or autumnal emptiness, + autumnal peace in his breast or autumnal strife,—all days of the + year, in the assembly-place, in the dancing-place, whatsoever of good or + ill befall in mind or hand, never does one forget. + </p> + <p> + When nights are darkest and days most dark; when the sun seems farthest + from the planet and cheers it with lowest heat; when the fields lie shorn + between harvest-time and seed-time and man turns wistful eyes back and + forth between the mystery of his origin and the mystery of his end,—then + comes the great pageant of the winter solstice, then comes Christmas. + </p> + <p> + So what is Christmas? And what for centuries has it been to differing but + always identical mortals? + </p> + <p> + It was once the old pagan festival of dead Nature. It was once the old + pagan festival of the reappearing sun. It was the pagan festival when the + hands of labor took their rest and hunger took its fill. It was the pagan + festival to honor the descent of the fabled inhabitants of an upper world + upon the earth, their commerce with common flesh, and the production of a + race of divine-and-human half-breeds. It is now the festival of the + Immortal Child appearing in the midst of mortal children. It is now the + new festival of man’s remembrance of his errors and his charity toward + erring neighbors. It has latterly become the widening festival of + universal brotherhood with succor for all need and nighness to all + suffering; of good will warring against ill will and of peace warring upon + war. + </p> + <p> + And thus for all who have anywhere come to know it, Christmas is the + festival of the better worldly self. But better than worldliness, it is on + the Shield to-day what it essentially has been through many an age to many + people—the symbolic Earth Festival of the Evergreen; setting forth + man’s pathetic love of youth—of his own youth that will not stay + with him; and renewing his faith in a destiny that winds its ancient way + upward out of dark and damp toward Eternal Light. + </p> + <p> + This is a story of the Earth Festival on the Earth Shield. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + I. THE MAN AND THE SECRET + </h2> + <p> + A man sat writing near a window of an old house out in the country a few + years ago; it was afternoon of the twenty-third of December. + </p> + <p> + One of the volumes of a work on American Forestry lay open on the desk + near his right hand; and as he sometimes stopped in his writing and turned + the leaves, the illustrations showed that the long road of his mental + travels—for such he followed—was now passing through the + evergreens. + </p> + <p> + Many notes were printed at the bottoms of the pages. They burned there + like short tapers in dim places, often lighting up obscure faiths and + customs of our puzzled human race. His eyes roved from taper to taper, as + gathering knowledge ray by ray. A small book lay near the large one. It + dealt with primitive nature-worship; and it belonged in the class of those + that are kept under lock and key by the libraries which possess them as + unsafe reading for unsafe minds. + </p> + <p> + Sheets of paper covered with the man’s clear, deliberate handwriting lay + thickly on the desk. A table in the centre of the room was strewn with + volumes, some of a secret character, opened for reference. On the tops of + two bookcases and on the mantelpiece were prints representing scenes from + the oldest known art of the East. These and other prints hanging about the + walls, however remote from each other in the times and places where they + had been gathered, brought together in this room of a quiet Kentucky + farmhouse evidence bearing upon the same object: the subject related in + general to trees and in especial evergreens. + </p> + <p> + While the man was immersed in his work, he appeared not to be submerged. + His left hand was always going out to one or the other of three + picture-frames on the desk and his fingers bent caressingly. + </p> + <p> + Two of these frames held photographs of four young children—a boy + and a girl comprising each group. The children had the air of being well + enough bred to be well behaved before the camera, but of being unruly and + disorderly out of sheer health and a wild naturalness. All of them looked + straight at you; all had eyes wide open with American frankness and good + humor; all had mouths shut tight with American energy and determination. + Apparently they already believed that the New World was behind them, that + the nation backed them up. In a way you believed it. You accepted them on + the spot as embodying that marvellous precocity in American children, + through which they early in life become conscious of the country and claim + it their country and believe that it claims them. Thus they took on the + distinction of being a squad detached only photographically from the rank + and file of the white armies of the young in the New World, millions and + millions strong, as they march, clear-eyed, clear-headed, joyous, + magnificent, toward new times and new destinies for the nation and for + humanity—a kinder knowledge of man and a kinder ignorance of God. + </p> + <p> + The third frame held the picture of a woman probably thirty years of age. + Her features were without noticeable American characteristics. What human + traits you saw depended upon what human traits you saw with. + </p> + <p> + The hair was dark and abundant, the brows dark and strong. And the lashes + were dark and strong; and the eyes themselves, so thornily hedged about, + somehow brought up before you a picture of autumn thistles—thistles + that look out from the shadow of a rock. They had a veritable thistle + quality and suggestiveness: gray and of the fields, sure of their + experience in nature, freighted with silence. + </p> + <p> + Despite grayness and thorniness, however, you saw that they were in the + summer of their life-bloom; and singularly above even their beauty of + blooming they held what is rare in the eyes of either men or women—they + held a look of being just. + </p> + <p> + The whole face was an oval, long, regular, high-bred. If the lower part + had been hidden behind a white veil of the Orient (by that little bank of + snow which is guardedly built in front of the overflowing desires of the + mouth), the upper part would have given the impression of reserve, + coldness, possibly of severity; yet ruled by that one look—the + garnered wisdom, the tempering justice, of the eyes. The whole face being + seen, the lower features altered the impression made by the upper ones; + reserve became bettered into strength, coldness bettered into dignity, + severity of intellect transfused into glowing nobleness of character. The + look of virgin justice in her was perhaps what had survived from that + white light of life which falls upon young children as from a receding sun + and touches lingeringly their smiles and glances; but her mouth had + gathered its shadowy tenderness as she walked the furrows of the years, + watching their changeful harvests, eating their passing bread. + </p> + <p> + A handful of some of the green things of winter lay before her picture: + holly boughs with their bold, upright red berries; a spray of the cedar of + the Kentucky yards with its rosary of piteous blue. When he had come in + from out of doors to go on with his work, he had put them there—perhaps + as some tribute. After all his years with her, many and strong, he must + have acquired various tributes and interpretations; but to-day, during his + walk in the woods, it had befallen him to think of her as holly which + ripens amid snows and retains its brave freshness on a landscape of + departed things. As cedar also which everywhere on the Shield is the best + loved of forest-growths to be the companion of household walls; so that + even the poorest of the people, if it does not grow near the spot they + build in, hunt for it and bring it home: everywhere wife and cedar, wife + and cedar, wife and cedar. + </p> + <p> + The photographs of the children grouped on each side of hers with heads a + little lower down called up memories of Old World pictures in which + cherubs smile about the cloud-borne feet of the heavenly Hebrew maid. + Glowing young American mother with four healthy children as her gifts to + the nation—this was the practical thought of her that riveted and + held. + </p> + <p> + As has been said, they were in two groups, the children; a boy and girl in + each. The four were of nearly the same age; but the faces of two were on a + dimmer card in an older frame. You glanced at her again and persuaded + yourself that the expression of motherhood which characterized her + separated into two expressions (as behind a thin white cloud it is + possible to watch another cloud of darker hue). Nearer in time was the + countenance of a mother happy with happy offspring; further away the same + countenance withdrawn a little into shadow—the face of the mother + bereaved—mute and changeless. + </p> + <p> + The man, the worker, whom this little flock of wife and two surviving + children now followed through the world as their leader, sat with his face + toward his desk In a corner of the room; solidly squared before his + undertaking, liking it, mastering it; seldom changing his position as the + minutes passed, never nervously; with a quietude in him that was oftener + in Southern gentlemen in quieter, more gentlemanly times. A low powerful + figure with a pair of thick shoulders and tremendous limbs; filling the + room with his vitality as a heavy passionate animal lying in a corner of a + cage fills the space of the cage, so that you wait for it to roll over or + get up on its feet and walk about that you may study its markings and get + an inkling of its conquering nature. + </p> + <p> + Meantime there were hints of him. When he had come in, he had thrown his + overcoat on a chair that stood near the table in the centre of the room + and had dropped his hat upon his coat. It had slipped to the floor and now + lay there—a low, soft black hat of a kind formerly much worn by + young Southerners of the countryside,—especially on occasions when + there was a spur of heat in their mood and going,—much the same kind + that one sees on the heads of students in Rome in winter; light, warm, + shaping itself readily to breezes from any quarter, to be doffed or donned + as comfortable and negligible. It suggested that he had been a country boy + in the land, still belonged to the land, and as a man kept to its + out-of-door habits and fashions. His shoes, one of which you saw at each + side of his chair, were especially well made for rough-going feet to tramp + in during all weathers. + </p> + <p> + A sack suit of dark blue serge somehow helped to withdraw your + interpretation of him from farm life to the arts or the professions. The + scrupulous air of his shirt collar, showing against the clear-hued flesh + at the back of his neck, and the Van Dyck-like edge of the shirt cuff, + defining his powerful wrist and hand, strengthened the notion that he + belonged to the arts or to the professions. He might have been sitting + before a canvas instead of a desk and holding a brush instead of a pen: + the picture would have been true to life. Or truer yet, he might have + taken his place with the grave group of students in the Lesson in Anatomy + left by Rembrandt. + </p> + <p> + Once he put down his pen, wheeled his chair about, and began to read the + page he had just finished: then you saw him. He had a big, masculine, + solid-cut, self-respecting, normal-looking, executive head—covered + with thick yellowish hair clipped short; so that while everything else in + his appearance indicated that he was in the prime of manhood, the clipped + hair caused him to appear still more youthful; and it invested him with a + rustic atmosphere which went along very naturally with the sentimental + country hat and the all-weather shoes. He seemed at first impression a + magnificent animal frankly loved of the sun—perhaps too warmly. The + sun itself seemed to have colored for him his beard and mustache—a + characteristic hue of men’s hair and beard in this land peopled from Old + English stock. The beard, like the hair, was cut short, as though his idea + might have been to get both hair and beard out of life’s daily way; but + his mustache curled thickly down over his mouth, hiding it. In the whole + effect there was a suggestion of the Continent, perhaps of a former + student career in Germany, memories of which may still have lasted with + him and the marks of which may have purposely been kept up in his + appearance. + </p> + <p> + But such a fashion of beard, while covering a man’s face, does much to + uncover the man. As he sat amid his papers and books, your thought surely + led again to old pictures where earnest heads bend together over some + point on the human road, at which knowledge widens and suffering begins to + be made more bearable and death more kind. Perforce now you interpreted + him and fixed his general working category: that he was absorbed in work + meant to be serviceable to humanity. His house, the members of his family, + the people of his neighborhood, were meantime forgotten: he was not a mere + dweller on his farm; he was a discoverer on the wide commons where the + race forever camps at large with its problems, joys, and sorrows. + </p> + <p> + He read his page, his hand dropped to his knee, his mind dropped its + responsibility; one of those intervals followed when the brain rests. The + look of the student left his face; over it began to play the soft lights + of the domestic affections. He had forgotten the world for his own place + in the world; the student had become the husband and house-father. A few + moments only; then he wheeled gravely to his work again, his right hand + took up the pen, his left hand went back to the pictures. + </p> + <p> + The silence of the room seemed a guarded silence, as though he were being + watched over by a love which would not let him be disturbed. (He had the + reposeful self-assurance of a man who is conscious that he is idolized.) + </p> + <p> + Matching the silence within was the stillness out of doors. An immense oak + tree stood just outside the windows. It was a perpetual reminder of + vanished woods; and when a windstorm tossed and twisted it, the straining + and grinding of the fibres were like struggles and outcries for the wild + life of old. This afternoon it brooded motionless, an image of forest + reflection. Once a small black-and-white sapsucker, circling the trunk and + peering into the crevices of the bark on a level with the windows, uttered + minute notes which penetrated into the room like steel darts of sound. A + snowbird alighted on the window-sill, glanced familiarly in at the man, + and shot up its crest; but disappointed perhaps that it was not noticed, + quoted its resigned gray phrase—a phrase it had made for itself to + accompany the score of gray whiter—and flitted on billowy wings to a + juniper at the corner of the house, its turret against the long javelins + of the North. + </p> + <p> + Amid the stillness of Nature outside and the house-silence of a love + guarding him within, the man worked on. + </p> + <p> + A little clock ticked independently on the old-fashioned Parian marble + mantelpiece. Prints were propped against its sides and face, illustrating + the use of trees about ancient tombs and temples. Out of this photographic + grove of dead things the uncaring clock threw out upon the air a living + three—the fateful three that had been measured for each tomb and + temple in its own land and time. + </p> + <p> + A knock, regretful but positive, was heard, and the door opening into the + hall was quietly pushed open. A glow lit up the student’s face though he + did not stop writing; and his voice, while it gave a welcome, + unconsciously expressed regret at being disturbed: + </p> + <p> + “Come in.” + </p> + <p> + “I am in!” + </p> + <p> + He lifted his heavy figure with instant courtesy—rather obsolete now—and + bowing to one side, sat down again. + </p> + <p> + “So I see,” he said, dipping his pen into his ink. + </p> + <p> + “Since you did not turn around, you would better have said ‘So I hear.’ It + is three o’clock.” + </p> + <p> + “So I hear.” + </p> + <p> + “You said you would be ready.” + </p> + <p> + “I am ready.” + </p> + <p> + “You said you would be done.” + </p> + <p> + “I am done—nearly done.” + </p> + <p> + “How nearly?” + </p> + <p> + “By to-morrow—to-morrow afternoon before dark. I have reached the + end, but now it is hard to stop, hard to let go.” + </p> + <p> + His tone gave first place, primary consideration, to his work. The silence + in the room suddenly became charged. When the voice was heard again, there + was constraint in it: + </p> + <p> + “There is something to be done this afternoon before dark, something I + have a share in. Having a share, I am interested. Being interested, I am + prompt. Being prompt, I am here.” + </p> + <p> + He waved his hand over the written sheets before him—those cold Alps + of learning; and asked reproachfully: + </p> + <p> + “Are you not interested in all this, O you of little faith?” + </p> + <p> + “How can I say, O me of little knowledge!” + </p> + <p> + As the words impulsively escaped, he heard a quick movement behind him. He + widened out his heavy arms upon his manuscript and looked back over his + shoulder at her and laughed. And still smiling and holding his pen between + his fingers, he turned and faced her. She had advanced into the middle of + the room and had stopped at the chair on which he had thrown his overcoat + and hat. She had picked up the hat and stood turning it and pushing its + soft material back into shape for his head—without looking at him. + </p> + <p> + The northern light of the winter afternoon, entering through the looped + crimson-damask curtains, fell sidewise upon the woman of the picture. + </p> + <p> + Years had passed since the picture had been made. There were changes in + her; she looked younger. She had effaced the ravages of a sadder period of + her life as human voyagers upon reaching quiet port repair the damages of + wandering and storm. Even the look of motherhood, of the two motherhoods, + which so characterized her in the photograph, had disappeared for the + present. Seeing her now for the first time, one would have said that her + whole mood and bearing made a single declaration: she was neither wife nor + mother; she was a woman in love with life’s youth—with youth—youth; + in love with the things that youth alone could ever secure to her. + </p> + <p> + The carriage of her beautiful head, brave and buoyant, brought before you + a vision of growing things in nature as they move towards their summer yet + far away. There still was youth in the round white throat above the collar + of green velvet—woodland green—darker than the green of the + cloth she wore. You were glad she had chosen that color because she was + going for a walk with him; and green would enchain the eye out on the sere + ground and under the stripped trees. The flecklessness of her long gloves + drew your thoughts to winter rather—to its one beauteous gift + dropped from soiled clouds. A slender toque brought out the keenness in + the oval of her face. From it rose one backward-sweeping feather of green + shaded to coral at the tip; and there your fancy may have cared to see + lingering the last radiance of whiter-sunset skies. + </p> + <p> + He kept his seat with his back to the manuscript from which he had + repulsed her; and his eyes swept loyally over her as she waited. Though + she could scarcely trust herself to speak, still less could she endure the + silence. With her face turned toward the windows opening on the lawn, she + stretched out her arm toward him and softly shook his hat at him. + </p> + <p> + “The sun sets—you remember how many minutes after four,” she said, + with no other tone than that of quiet warning. “I marked the minutes in + the almanac for you the other night after the children had gone to bed, so + that you would not forget. You know how short the twilights are even when + the day is clear. It is cloudy to-day and there will not be any twilight. + The children said they would not be at home until after dark, but they may + come sooner; it may be a trick. They have threatened to catch us this year + in one way or another, and you know they must not do that—not this + year! There must be one more Christmas with all its old ways—even if + it must be without its old mysteries.” + </p> + <p> + He did not reply at once and then not relevantly: + </p> + <p> + “I heard you playing.” + </p> + <p> + He had dropped his head forward and was scowling at her from under his + brows with a big Beethoven brooding scowl. She did not see, for she held + her face averted. + </p> + <p> + The silence in the room again seemed charged, and there was greater + constraint in her voice when it was next heard: + </p> + <p> + “I had to play; you need not have listened.” + </p> + <p> + “I had to listen; you played loud—” + </p> + <p> + “I did not know I was playing loud. I may have been trying to drown other + sounds,” she admitted. + </p> + <p> + “What other sounds?” His voice unexpectedly became inquisitorial: it was a + frank thrust into the unknown. + </p> + <p> + “Discords—possibly.” + </p> + <p> + “What discords?” His thrust became deeper. + </p> + <p> + She turned her head quickly and looked at him; a quiver passed across her + lips and in her eyes there was noble anguish. + </p> + <p> + But nothing so arrests our speech when we are tempted to betray hidden + trouble as to find ourselves face to face with a kind of burnished, + radiant happiness. Sensitive eyes not more quickly close before a blaze of + sunlight than the shadowy soul shuts her gates upon the advancing Figure + of Joy. + </p> + <p> + It was the whole familiar picture of him now—triumphantly painted in + the harmonies of life, masterfully toned to subdue its discords—that + drove her back into herself. When she spoke next, she had regained the + self-control which under his unexpected attack she had come near losing; + and her words issued from behind the closed gates—as through a + crevice of the closed gates: + </p> + <p> + “I was reading one of the new books that came the other day, the deep + grave ones you sent for. It is written by a deep grave German, and it is + worked out in the deep grave German way. The whole purpose of it is to + show that any woman in the life of any man is merely—an Incident. + She may be this to him, she may be that to him; for a briefer time, for a + greater time; but all along and in the end, at bottom, she is to him—an + Incident.” + </p> + <p> + He did not take his eyes from hers and his smile slowly broadened. + </p> + <p> + “Were those the discords?” he asked gently. + </p> + <p> + She did not reply. + </p> + <p> + He turned in his chair and looking over his shoulder at her, he raised his + arm and drew the point of his pen across the backs of a stack of magazines + on top of his desk. + </p> + <p> + “Here is a work,” he said, “not written by a German or by any other man, + but by a woman whose race I do not know: here is a work the sole purpose + of which is to prove that any man is merely an Incident in the life of any + woman. He may be this to her, he may be that to her; for a briefer time, + for a greater time; but all along and in the end, beneath everything else, + he is to her—an Incident.” + </p> + <p> + He turned and confronted her, not without a gleam of humor in his eyes. + </p> + <p> + “That did not trouble me,” he said tenderly. “Those were not discords to + me.” + </p> + <p> + Her eyes rested on his face with inscrutable searching. She made no + comment. + </p> + <p> + His own face grew grave. After a moment of debate with himself as to + whether he should be forced to do a thing he would rather not do, he + turned in his chair and laid down his pen as though separating himself + from his work. Then he said, in a tone that ended playfulness: + </p> + <p> + “Do I not understand? Have I not understood all the time? For a year now I + have been shutting myself up at spare hours in this room and at this work—without + any explanation to you. Such a thing never occurred before in our lives. + You have shared everything. I have relied upon you and I have needed you, + and you have never failed me. And this apparently has been your reward—to + be rudely shut out at last. Now you come in and I tell you that the work + is done—quite finished—without a word to you about it. Do I + not understand?” he repeated. “Have I not understood all along? It is + true; outwardly as regards this work you have been—the Incident.” + </p> + <p> + As he paused, she made a slight gesture with one hand as though she did + not care for what he was saying and brushed away the fragile web of his + words from before her eyes—eyes fixed on larger things lying clear + before her in life’s distance. + </p> + <p> + He went quickly on with deepening emphasis: + </p> + <p> + “But, comrade of all these years, battler with me for life’s victories, + did you think you were never to know? Did you believe I was never to + explain? You had only one more day to wait! If patience, if faith, could + only have lasted another twenty-four hours—until Christmas Eve!” + </p> + <p> + It was the first time for nearly a year that the sound of those words had + been heard in that house. He bent earnestly over toward her; he leaned + heavily forward with his hands on his knees and searched her features with + loyal chiding. + </p> + <p> + “Has not Christmas Eve its mysteries?” he asked, “its secrets for you and + me? Think of Christmas Eve for you and me! Remember!” + </p> + <p> + Slowly as in a windless woods on a winter day a smoke from a woodchopper’s + smouldering fire will wander off and wind itself about the hidden + life-buds of a young tree, muffling it while the atmosphere near by is + clear, there now floated into the room to her the tender haze of old + pledges and vows and of things unutterably sacred. + </p> + <p> + He noted the effect of his words and did not wait. He turned to his desk + and, gathering up the sprigs of holly and cedar, began softly to cover her + picture with them. + </p> + <p> + “Stay blinded and bewildered there,” he said, “until the hour comes when + holly and cedar will speak: on Christmas Eve you will understand; you will + then see whether in this work you have been—the Incident.” + </p> + <p> + Even while they had been talking the light of the short winter afternoon + had perceptibly waned in the room. + </p> + <p> + She glanced through the windows at the darkening lawn; her eyes were + tear-dimmed; to her it looked darker than it was. She held his hat up + between her arms, making an arch for him to come and stand under. + </p> + <p> + “It is getting late,” she said in nearly the same tone of quiet warning + with which she had spoken before. “There is no time to lose.” + </p> + <p> + He sprang up, without glancing behind him at his desk with its interrupted + work, and came over and placed himself under the arch of her arms, looking + at her reverently. + </p> + <p> + But his hands did not take hold, his arms hung down at his sides—the + hands that were life, the arms that were love. + </p> + <p> + She let her eyes wander over his clipped tawny hair and pass downward over + his features to the well-remembered mouth under its mustache. Then, + closing her quivering lips quickly, she dropped the hat softly on his head + and walked toward the door. When she reached it, she put out one of her + hands delicately against a panel and turned her profile over her shoulder + to him: + </p> + <p> + “Do you know what is the trouble with both of those books?” she asked, + with a struggling sweetness in her voice. + </p> + <p> + He had caught up his overcoat and as he put one arm through the sleeve + with a vigorous thrust, he laughed out with his mouth behind the collar: + </p> + <p> + “I think I know what is the trouble with the authors of the books.” + </p> + <p> + “The trouble is,” she replied, “the trouble is that the authors are right + and the books are right: men and women <i>are</i> only Incidents to each + other in life,” and she passed out into the hall. + </p> + <p> + “Human life itself for that matter is only an incident in the universe,” + he replied, “if we cared to look at it in that way; but we’d better not!” + </p> + <p> + He was standing near the table in the middle of the room; he suddenly + stopped buttoning his overcoat. His eyes began to wander over the books, + the prints, the pictures, embracing in a final survey everything that he + had brought together from such distances of place and time. His work was + in effect done. A sense of regret, a rush of loneliness, came over him as + it comes upon all of us who reach the happy ending of toil that we have + put our heart and strength in. + </p> + <p> + “Are you coming?” she called faintly from the hall. + </p> + <p> + “I am coming,” he replied, and moved toward the door; but there he stopped + again and looked back. + </p> + <p> + Once more there came into his face the devotion of the student; he was on + the commons where the race encamps; he was brother to all brothers who + join work to work for common good. He was feeling for the moment that + through his hands ran the long rope of the world at which men—like a + crew of sailors—tug at the Ship of Life, trying to tow her into some + divine haven. + </p> + <p> + His task was ended. Would it be of service? Would it carry any message? + Would it kindle in American homes some new light of truth, with the eyes + of mothers and fathers fixed upon it, and innumerable children of the + future the better for its shining? + </p> + <p> + “Are you coming?” she called more quiveringly. + </p> + <p> + “I am coming,” he called back, breaking away from his revery, and raising + his voice so it would surely reach her. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + II. THE TREE AND THE SUNSET + </h2> + <p> + She had quitted the house and, having taken a few steps across the short + frozen grass of the yard as one walks lingeringly when expecting to be + joined by a companion, she turned and stood with her eyes fixed on the + doorway for his emerging figure. + </p> + <p> + “To-morrow night,” he had said, smiling at her with one meaning in his + words, “to-morrow night you will understand.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes,” she now said to herself, with another meaning in hers, “to-morrow + night I must understand. Until to-morrow night, then, blinded and + bewildered with holly and cedar let me be! Kind ignorance, enfold me and + spare me! All happiness that I can control or conjecture, come to me and + console me!” + </p> + <p> + And over herself she dropped a vesture of joy to greet him when he should + step forth. + </p> + <p> + It was a pleasant afternoon to be out of doors and to go about what they + had planned; the ground was scarcely frozen, there was no wind, and the + whole sky was overcast with thin gray cloud that betrayed no movement. + Under this still dome of silvery-violet light stretched the winter land; + it seemed ready and waiting for its great festival. + </p> + <p> + The lawn sloped away from the house to a brook at the bottom, and beyond + the brook the ground rose to a woodland hilltop. Across the distance you + distinguished there the familiar trees of blue-grass pastures: white ash + and black ash; white oak and red oak; white walnut and black walnut; and + the scaly-bark hickory in his roughness and the sycamore with her soft + leoparded limbs. The black walnut and the hickory brought to mind autumn + days when children were abroad, ploughing the myriad leaves with booted + feet and gathering their harvest of nuts—primitive food-storing + instinct of the human animal still rampant in modern childhood: these nuts + to be put away in garret and cellar and but scantily eaten until Christmas + came. + </p> + <p> + Out of this woods on the afternoon air sounded the muffled strokes of an + axe cutting down a black walnut partly dead; and when this fell, it would + bring down with it bunches of mistletoe, those white pearls of the forest + mounted on branching jade. To-morrow eager fingers would be gathering the + mistletoe to decorate the house. Near by was a thicket of bramble and cane + where, out of reach of cattle, bushes of holly thrived: the same fingers + would be gathering that. + </p> + <p> + Bordering this woods on one side lay a cornfield. The corn had just been + shucked, and beside each shock of fodder lay its heap of ears ready for + the gathering wagon. The sight of the corn brought freshly to remembrance + the red-ambered home-brew of the land which runs in a genial torrent + through all days and nights of the year—many a full-throated rill—but + never with so inundating a movement as at this season. And the same grain + suggested also the smokehouses of all farms, in which larded porkers, + fattened by it, had taken on posthumous honors as home-cured hams; and in + which up under the black rafters home-made sausages were being smoked to + their needed flavor over well-chosen chips. + </p> + <p> + Around one heap of ears a flock of home-grown turkeys, red-mottled, + rainbow-necked, were feeding for their fate. + </p> + <p> + On the other side of the woods stretched a wheat-field, in the stubble of + which coveys of bob-whites were giving themselves final plumpness for the + table by picking up grains of wheat which had dropped into the drills at + harvest time or other seeds which had ripened in the autumn aftermath. + </p> + <p> + Farther away on the landscape there was a hemp-field where hemp-breakers + were making a rattling reedy music; during these weeks wagons loaded with + the gold-bearing fibre begin to move creaking to the towns, helping to + fill the farmer’s pockets with holiday largess. + </p> + <p> + Thus everything needed for Christmas was there in sight: the mistletoe—the + holly—the liquor of the land for the cups of hearty men—the + hams and the sausages of fastidious housewives—the turkey and the + quail—and crops transmutable into coin. They were in sight there—the + fair maturings of the sun now ready to be turned into offerings to the + dark solstice, the low activities of the soil uplifted to human joyance. + </p> + <p> + One last thing completed the picture of the scene. + </p> + <p> + The brook that wound across the lawn at its bottom was frozen to-day and + lay like a band of jewelled samite trailed through the olive verdure. + Along its margin evergreens grew. No pine nor spruce nor larch nor fir is + native to these portions of the Shield; only the wild cedar, the shapeless + and the shapely, belongs there. This assemblage of evergreens was not, + then, one of the bounties of Nature; they had been planted. + </p> + <p> + It was the slender tapering spires of these evergreens with their note of + deathless spring that mainly caught the eye on the whole landscape this + dead winter day. Under the silvery-violet light of the sky they waited in + beauty and in peace: the pale green of larch and spruce which seems always + to go with the freshness of dripping Aprils; the dim blue-gray of pines + which rather belongs to far-vaulted summer skies; and the dark green of + firs—true comfortable winter coat when snows sift mournfully and + icicles are spearing earthward. + </p> + <p> + These evergreens likewise had their Christmas meaning and finished the + picture of the giving earth. Unlike the other things, they satisfied no + appetite, they were ministers to no passions; but with them the Christmas + of the intellect began: the human heart was to drape their boughs with its + gentle poetry; and from their ever living spires the spiritual hope of + humanity would take its flight toward the eternal. + </p> + <p> + Thus then the winter land waited for the oncoming of that strange + travelling festival of the world which has roved into it and encamped + gypsy-like from old lost countries: the festival that takes toll of field + and wood, of hoof and wing, of cup and loaf; but that, best of all, wrings + from the nature of man its reluctant tenderness for his fellows and builds + out of his lonely doubts regarding this life his faith in a better one. + </p> + <p> + And central on this whole silent scene—the highest element in it—its + one winter-red passion flower—the motionless woman waiting outside + the house. + </p> + <p> + At last he came out upon the step. + </p> + <p> + He cast a quick glance toward the sky as though his first thought were of + what the weather was going to be. Then as he buttoned the top button of + his overcoat and pressed his bearded chin down over it to make it more + comfortable under his short neck, with his other hand he gave a little + pull at his hat—the romantic country hat; and he peeped out from + under the rustic brim at her, smiling with old gayeties and old + fondnesses. He bulked so rotund inside his overcoat and looked so short + under the flat headgear that her first thought was how slight a disguise + every year turned him into a good family Santa Claus; and she smiled back + at him with the same gayeties and fondnesses of days gone by. But such a + deeper pang pierced her that she turned away and walked hurriedly down the + hill toward the evergreens. + </p> + <p> + He was quickly at her side. She could feel how animal youth in him + released itself the moment he had come into the open air. There was brutal + vitality in the way his shoes crushed the frozen ground; and as his + overcoat sleeve rubbed against her arm, there was the same leaping out of + life, like the rubbing of tinder against tinder. Halfway down the lawn he + halted and laid his hand heavily on her wrist. + </p> + <p> + “Listen to that!” he said. His voice was eager, excited, like a boy’s. + </p> + <p> + On the opposite side of the house, several hundred yards away, the country + turnpike ran; and from this there now reached them the rumbling of many + vehicles, hurrying in close procession out of the nearest town and moving + toward smaller villages scattered over the country; to its hamlets and + cross-roads and hundreds of homes richer or poorer—every vehicle + Christmas-laden: sign and foretoken of the Southern Yule-tide. There were + matters and usages in those American carriages and buggies and wagons and + carts the history of which went back to the England of the Georges and the + Stuarts and the Henrys; to the England of Elizabeth, to the England of + Chaucer; back through robuster Saxon times to the gaunt England of Alfred, + and on beyond this till they were lost under the forest glooms of + Druidical Britain. + </p> + <p> + They stood looking into each other’s eyes and gathering into their ears + the festal uproar of the turnpike. How well they knew what it all meant—this + far-flowing tide of bounteousness! How perfectly they saw the whole + picture of the town out of which the vehicles had come: the atmosphere of + it already darkened by the smoke of soft coal pouring from its chimneys, + so that twilight in it had already begun to fall ahead of twilight out in + the country, and lamp-posts to glimmer along the little streets, and shops + to be illuminated to the delight of window-gazing, mystery-loving children—wild + with their holiday excitements and secrecies. Somewhere in the throng + their own two children were busy unless they had already started home. + </p> + <p> + For years he had held a professorship in the college in this town, driving + in and out from his home; but with the close of this academic year he was + to join the slender file of Southern men who have been called to Northern + universities: this change would mean the end of life here. Both thought of + this now—of the last Christmas in the house; and with the same + impulse they turned their gaze back to it. + </p> + <p> + More than half a century ago the one starved genius of the Shield, a + writer of songs, looked out upon the summer picture of this land, its + meadows and ripening corn tops; and as one presses out the spirit of an + entire vineyard when he bursts a solitary grape upon his tongue, he, the + song writer, drained drop by drop the wine of that scene into the notes of + a single melody. The nation now knows his song, the world knows it—the + only music that has ever captured the joy and peace of American home life—embodying + the very soul of it in the clear amber of sound. + </p> + <p> + This house was one of such homesteads as the genius sang of: a low, + old-fashioned, brown-walled, gray-shingled house; with chimneys generous, + with green window-shutters less than green and white window-sills less + than white; with feudal vines giving to its walls their summery + allegiance; not young, not old, but standing in the middle years of its + strength and its honors; not needy, not wealthy, but answering Agar’s + prayer for neither poverty nor riches. + </p> + <p> + The two stood on the darkening lawn, looking back at it. + </p> + <p> + It had been the house of his fathers. He had brought her to it as his own + on the afternoon of their wedding several miles away across the country. + They had arrived at dark; and as she had sat beside him in the carriage, + one of his arms around her and his other hand enfolding both of hers, she + had first caught sight of it through the forest trees—waiting for + her with its lights just lit, its warmth, its privacies: and that had been + Christmas Eve! + </p> + <p> + For her wedding day had been Christmas Eve. When she had announced her + choice of a day, they had chidden her. But with girlish wilfulness she had + clung to it the more positively. + </p> + <p> + “It is the most beautiful night of the year!” she had replied, brushing + their objection aside with that reason alone. “And it is the happiest! I + will be married on that night, when I am happiest!” + </p> + <p> + Alone and thinking it over, she had uttered other words to herself—yet + scarce uttered them, rather felt them: + </p> + <p> + “Of old it was written how on Christmas Night the Love that cannot fail us + became human. My love for him, which is the divine thing in my life and + which is never to fail him, shall become human to him on that night.” + </p> + <p> + When the carriage had stopped at the front porch, he had led her into the + house between the proud smiling servants of his establishment ranged at a + respectful distance on each side; and without surrendering her even to her + maid—a new spirit of silence on him—he had led her to her + bedroom, to a place on the carpet under the chandelier. + </p> + <p> + Leaving her there, he had stepped backward and surveyed her waiting in her + youth and loveliness—<i>for him;</i> come into his house, into his + arms—<i>his</i>; no other’s—never while life lasted to be + another’s even in thought or in desire. + </p> + <p> + Then as if the marriage ceremony of the afternoon in the presence of many + had meant nothing and this were the first moment when he could gather her + home to him, he had come forward and taken her in his arms and set upon + her the kiss of his house and his ardor and his duty. As his warm breath + broke close against her face, his lips under their mustache, almost boyish + then, had thoughtlessly formed one little phrase—one little but most + lasting and fateful phrase: + </p> + <p> + “<i>Bride of the Mistletoe</i>!” + </p> + <p> + Looking up with a smile, she saw that she stood under a bunch of mistletoe + swung from the chandelier. + </p> + <p> + Straightway he had forgotten his own words, nor did he ever afterwards + know that he had used them. But she, out of their very sacredness as the + first words he had spoken to her in his home, had remembered them most + clingingly. More than remembered them: she had set them to grow down into + the fibres of her heart as the mistletoe roots itself upon the life-sap of + the tree. And in all the later years they had been the green spot of + verdure under life’s dark skies—the undying bough into which the + spirit of the whole tree retreats from the ice of the world: + </p> + <p> + “<i>Bride of the Mistletoe!</i>” + </p> + <p> + Through the first problem of learning to weld her nature to his wisely; + through the perils of bearing children and the agony of seeing some of + them pass away; through the ambition of having him rise in his profession + and through the ideal of making his home an earthly paradise; through + loneliness when he was away and joy whenever he came back,—upon her + whole life had rested the wintry benediction of that mystical phrase: + </p> + <p> + “<i>Bride of the Mistletoe!</i>” + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <p> + She turned away now, starting once more downward toward the evergreens. He + was quickly at her side. + </p> + <p> + “What do you suppose Harold and Elizabeth are up to about this time?” he + asked, with a good-humored jerk of his head toward the distant town. + </p> + <p> + “At least to something mischievous, whatever it is,” she replied. “They + begged to be allowed to stay until the shop windows were lighted; they + have seen the shop windows two or three times already this week: there is + no great marvel for them now in shop windows. Permission to stay late may + be a blind to come home early. They are determined, from what I have + overheard, to put an end this year to the parental house mysteries of + Christmas. They are crossing the boundary between the first childhood and + the second. But if it be possible, I wish everything to be kept once more + just as it has always been; let it be so for my sake!” + </p> + <p> + “And I wish it for your sake,” he replied heartily; “and for my purposes.” + </p> + <p> + After a moment of silence he asked: “How large a Tree must it be this + year?” + </p> + <p> + “It will have to be large,” she replied; and she began to count those for + whom the Tree this year was meant. + </p> + <p> + First she called the names of the two children they had lost. Gifts for + these were every year hung on the boughs. She mentioned their names now, + and then she continued counting: + </p> + <p> + “Harold and Elizabeth are four. You and I make six. After the family come + Herbert and Elsie, your best friend the doctor’s children. Then the + servants—long strong bottom branches for the servants! Allow for the + other children who are to make up the Christmas party: ten children have + been invited, ten children have accepted, ten children will arrive. The + ten will bring with them some unimportant parents; you can judge.” + </p> + <p> + “That will do for size,” he said, laughing. “Now the kind: spruce—larch—hemlock—pine—which + shall it be?” + </p> + <p> + “It shall be none of them!” she answered, after a little waiting. “It + shall be the Christmas Tree of the uttermost North where the reindeer are + harnessed and the Great White Sleigh starts—fir. The old Christmas + stories like fir best. Old faiths seem to lodge in it longest. And deepest + mystery darkens the heart of it,” she added. + </p> + <p> + “Fir it shall be!” he said. “Choose the tree.” + </p> + <p> + “I have chosen.” + </p> + <p> + She stopped and delicately touched his wrist with the finger tips of one + white-gloved hand, bidding him stand beside her. + </p> + <p> + “That one,” she said, pointing down. + </p> + <p> + The brook, watering the roots of the evergreens in summer gratefully, but + now lying like a band of samite, jewel-crusted, made a loop near the + middle point of the lawn, creating a tiny island; and on this island, + aloof from its fellows and with space for the growth of its boughs, stood + a perfect fir tree: strong-based, thick-set, tapering faultlessly, + star-pointed, gathering more youth as it gathered more years—a tame + dweller on the lawn but descended from forests blurred with wildness and + lapped by low washings of the planet’s primeval ocean. + </p> + <p> + At each Christmas for several years they had been tempted to cut this + tree, but had spared it for its conspicuous beauty at the edge of the + thicket. + </p> + <p> + “That one,” she now said, pointing down. “This is the last time. Let us + have the best of things while we may! Is it not always the perfect that is + demanded for sacrifice?” + </p> + <p> + His glance had already gone forward eagerly to the tree, and he started + toward it. + </p> + <p> + Descending, they stepped across the brook to the island and went up close + to the fir. With a movement not unobserved by her he held out his hand and + clasped three green fingers of a low bough which the fir seemed to stretch + out to him recognizingly. (She had always realized the existence of some + intimate bond between him and the forest.) His face now filled with + meanings she did not share; the spell of the secret work had followed him + out of the house down to the trees; incommunicable silence shut him in. A + moment later his fingers parted with the green fingers of the fir and he + moved away from her side, starting around the tree and studying it as + though in delight of fresh knowledge. So she watched him pass around to + the other side. + </p> + <p> + When he came back where he had started, she was not there. He looked + around searchingly; her figure was nowhere in sight. + </p> + <p> + He stood—waiting. + </p> + <p> + The valley had memories, what memories! The years came close together + here; they clustered as thickly as the trees themselves. Vacant spots + among them marked where the Christmas Trees of former years had been cut + down. Some of the Trees had been for the two children they had lost. This + wandering trail led hither and thither back to the first Tree for the + first child: he had stooped down and cut that close to the ground with his + mere penknife. When it had been lighted, it had held only two or three + candles; and the candle on the top of it had flared level into the + infant’s hand-shaded eyes. + </p> + <p> + He knew that she was making through the evergreens a Pilgrimage of the + Years, walking there softly and alone with the feet of life’s Pities and a + mother’s Constancies. + </p> + <p> + He waited for her—motionless. + </p> + <p> + The stillness of the twilight rested on the valley now. Only from the + trees came the plaintive twittering of birds which had come in from frozen + weeds and fence-rows and at the thresholds of the boughs were calling to + one another. It was not their song, but their speech; there was no love in + it, but there was what for them perhaps corresponds to our sense of ties. + It most resembled in human life the brief things that two people, having + long lived together, utter to each other when together in a room they + prepare for the night: there is no anticipation; it is a confession of the + unconfessed. About him now sounded this low winter music from the far + boundary of other lives. + </p> + <p> + He did not hear it. + </p> + <p> + The light on the landscape had changed. The sun was setting and a splendor + began to spread along the sky and across the land. It laid a glory on the + roof of the house on the hill; it smote the edge of the woodland pasture, + burnishing with copper the gray domes; it shone faintly on distant corn + shocks, on the weather-dark tents of the hemp at bivouac soldierly and + grim. At his feet it sparkled in rose gleams on the samite of the brook + and threw burning shafts into the gloom of the fir beside him. + </p> + <p> + He did not see it. + </p> + <p> + He did not hear the calling of the birds about his ears, he did not see + the sunset before his eyes, he did not feel the fir tree the boughs of + which stuck against his side. + </p> + <p> + He stood there as still as a rock—with his secret. Not the secret of + the year’s work, which was to be divulged to his wife and through her to + the world; but the secret which for some years had been growing in his + life and which would, he hoped, never grow into the open—to be seen + of her and of all men. + </p> + <p> + The sentimental country hat now looked as though it might have been worn + purposely to help out a disguise, as the more troubled man behind the + scenes makes up to be the happier clown. It became an absurdity, a + mockery, above his face grave, stern, set of jaw and eye. He was no longer + the student buried among his books nor human brother to toiling brothers. + He had not the slightest thought of service to mankind left in him, he was + but a man himself with enough to think of in the battle between his own + will and blood. + </p> + <p> + And behind him among the dark evergreens went on that Pilgrimage of the + Years—with the feet of the Pities and the Constancies. + </p> + <p> + Moments passed; he did not stir. Then there was a slight noise on the + other side of the tree, and his nature instantly stepped back into his + outward place. He looked through the boughs. She had returned and was + standing with her face also turned toward the sunset; it was very pale, + very still. + </p> + <p> + Such darkness had settled on the valley now that the green she wore blent + with the green of the fir. He saw only her white face and her white hands + so close to the branches that they appeared to rest upon them, to grow out + of them: he sadly thought of one of his prints of Egypt of old and of the + Lady of the Sacred Tree. Her long backward-sweeping plume of green also + blent with the green of the fir—shade to shade—and only the + coral tip of it remained strongly visible. This matched the last coral in + the sunset; and it seemed to rest ominously above her head as a + finger-point of the fading light of Nature. + </p> + <p> + He went quickly around to her. He locked his arms around her and drew her + close and held her close; and thus for a while the two stood, watching the + flame on the altar of the world as it sank lower, leaving emptiness and + ashes. + </p> + <p> + Once she put out a hand and with a gesture full of majesty and nobleness + waved farewell to the dying fire. + </p> + <p> + Still without a word he took his arms from around her and turned + energetically to the tree. + </p> + <p> + He pressed the lowest boughs aside and made his way in close to the trunk + and struck it with a keen stroke. + </p> + <p> + The fir as he drew the axe out made at its gashed throat a sound like that + of a butchered, blood-strangled creature trying to cry out too late + against a treachery. A horror ran through the boughs; the thousands of + leaves were jarred by the death-strokes; and the top of it rocked like a + splendid plume too rudely treated in a storm. Then it fell over on its + side, bridging blackly the white ice of the brook. + </p> + <p> + Stooping, he lifted it triumphantly. He set the butt-end on one of his + shoulders and, stretching his arms up, grasped the trunk and held the tree + straight in the air, so that it seemed to be growing out of his big + shoulder as out of a ledge of rock. Then he turned to her and laughed out + in his strength and youth. She laughed joyously back at him, glorying as + he did. + </p> + <p> + With a robust re-shouldering of the tree to make it more comfortable to + carry, he turned and started up the hill toward the house. As she followed + behind, the old mystery of the woods seemed at last to have taken bodily + possession of him. The fir was riding on his shoulder, its arms met fondly + around his neck, its fingers were caressing his hair. And it whispered + back jeeringly to her through the twilight: + </p> + <p> + “Say farewell to him! He was once yours; he is yours no longer. He dandles + the child of the forest on his shoulder instead of his children by you in + the house. He belongs to Nature; and as Nature calls, he will always + follow—though it should lead over the precipice or into the flood. + Once Nature called him to you: remember how he broke down barriers until + he won you. Now he is yours no longer—say good-by to him!” + </p> + <p> + With an imbued terror and desolation, she caught up with him. By a + movement so soft that he should not be aware, she plucked him by the coat + sleeve on the other side from the fir and held on to him as he strode on + in careless joy. + </p> + <p> + Halfway up the hill lights began to flash from the windows of the house: a + servant was bringing in the lamps. It was at this hour, in just this way, + that she had first caught sight of them on that Christmas Eve when he had + brought her home after the wedding. + </p> + <p> + She hurried around in front of him, wishing to read the expression of his + eyes by the distant gleams from the windows. Would they have nothing to + say to her about those winter twilight lamps? Did he, too, not remember? + </p> + <p> + His head and face were hidden; a thousand small spears of Nature bristled + between him and her; but he laughed out to her from behind the rampart of + the green spears. + </p> + <p> + At that moment a low sound in the distance drew her attention, and + instantly alert she paused to listen. Then, forgetting everything else, + she called to him with a rush of laughter like that of her mischief-loving + girlhood: + </p> + <p> + “Quick! There they are! I heard the gate shut at the turnpike! They must + not catch us! Quick! Quick!” + </p> + <p> + “Hurry, then!” he cried, as he ran forward, joining his laughter to hers. + “Open the door for me!” + </p> + <p> + After this the night fell fast. The only sounds to be heard in the valley + were the minute readjustments of the ice of the brook as it froze tighter + and the distressed cries of the birds that had roosted in the fir. + </p> + <p> + So the Tree entered the house. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + III. THE LIGHTING OF THE CANDLES + </h2> + <p> + During the night it turned bitter cold. When morning came the sky was a + turquoise and the wind a gale. The sun seemed to give out light but not + heat—to lavish its splendor but withhold its charity. Moist flesh if + it chanced to touch iron froze to it momentarily. So in whiter land the + tongue of the ermine freezes to the piece of greased metal used as a trap + and is caught and held there until the trapper returns or until it starves—starves + with food on its tongue. + </p> + <p> + The ground, wherever the stiff boots of a farmhand struck it, resisted as + rock. In the fetlocks of farm horses, as they moved shivering, balls of + ice rattled like shaken tacks. The little roughnesses of woodland paths + snapped off beneath the slow-searching hoofs of fodder-seeking cattle like + points of glass. + </p> + <p> + Within their wool the sheep were comforted. + </p> + <p> + On higher fields which had given back their moisture to the atmosphere and + now were dry, the swooping wind lifted the dust at intervals and dragged + it away in flaunting yellow veils. The picture it made, being so + ill-seasoned, led you to think of August drought when the grasshopper + stills itself in the weeds and the smell of grass is hot in the nostrils + and every bird holds its beak open and its wings lifted like cooling + lattices alongside its breast. In these veils of dust swarms of frost + crystals sported—dead midgets of the dead North. Except crystal and + dust and wind, naught moved out there; no field mouse, no hare nor lark + nor little shielded dove. In the naked trees of the pasture the crow kept + his beak as unseen as the owl’s; about the cedars of the yard no scarlet + feather warmed the day. + </p> + <p> + The house on the hill—one of the houses whose spirit had been blown + into the amber of the poet’s song—sent festal smoke out of its + chimneys all day long. At intervals the radiant faces of children appeared + at the windows, hanging wreaths of evergreens; or their figures flitted to + and fro within as they wove garlands on the walls for the Christmas party. + At intervals some servant with head and shoulders muffled in a + bright-colored shawl darted trippingly from the house to the cabins in the + yard and from the cabins back to the house—the tropical African’s + polar dance between fire and fire. By every sign it gave the house showed + that it was marshalling its whole happiness. + </p> + <p> + One thing only seemed to make a signal of distress from afar. The oak tree + beside the house, whose roots coiled warmly under the hearth-stones and + whose boughs were outstretched across the roof, seemed to writhe and rock + in its winter sleep with murmurings and tossings like a human dreamer + trying to get rid of an unhappy dream. Imagination might have said that + some darkest tragedy of forests long since gone still lived in this lone + survivor—that it struggled to give up the grief and guilt of an + ancient forest shame. + </p> + <p> + The weather moderated in the afternoon. A warm current swept across the + upper atmosphere, developing everywhere behind it a cloud; and toward + sundown out of this cloud down upon the Shield snow began to fall. Not the + large wet flakes which sometimes descend too late in spring upon the buds + of apple orchards; nor those mournfuller ones which drop too soon on dim + wild violets in November woods, but winter snow, stern sculptor of Arctic + solitudes. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <p> + It was Christmas Eve. It was snowing all over the Shield. + </p> + <p> + Softly the snow fell upon the year’s footprints and pathways of children + and upon schoolhouses now closed and riotously deserted. More softly upon + too crowded asylums for them: houses of noonday darkness where eyes + eagerly look out at the windows but do not see; houses of soundlessness + where ears listen and do not hear any noise; houses of silence where lips + try to speak but utter no word. + </p> + <p> + The snow of Christmas Eve was falling softly on the old: whose eyes are + always seeing vanished faces, whose ears hear voices gentler than any the + earth now knows, whose hands forever try to reach other hands vainly held + out to them. Sad, sad to those who remember loved ones gone with their + kindnesses the snow of Christmas Eve! + </p> + <p> + But sadder yet for those who live on together after kindnesses have + ceased, or whose love went like a summer wind. Sad is Christmas Eve to + them! Dark its snow and blinding! + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <p> + It was late that night. + </p> + <p> + She came into the parlor, clasping the bowl of a shaded lamp—the + only light in the room. Her face, always calm in life’s wisdom, but + agitated now by the tide of deep things coming swiftly in toward her, + rested clear-cut upon the darkness. + </p> + <p> + She placed the lamp on a table near the door and seated herself beside it. + But she pushed the lamp away unconsciously as though the light of the + house were no longer her light; and she sat in the chair as though it were + no longer her chair; and she looked about the room as though it were no + longer hers nor the house itself nor anything else that she cared for + most. + </p> + <p> + Earlier in the evening they had finished hanging the presents on the Tree; + but then an interruption had followed: the children had broken profanely + in upon them, rending the veil of the house mysteries; and for more than + an hour the night had been given up to them. Now the children were asleep + upstairs, already dreaming of Christmas Morn and the rush for the + stockings. The servants had finished their work and were gone to their + quarters out in the yard. The doors of the house were locked. There would + be no more intrusion now, no possible interruption; all the years were to + meet him and her—alone. For Life is the master dramatist: when its + hidden tragedies are ready to utter themselves, everything superfluous + quits the stage; it is the essential two who fill it! And how little the + rest of the world ever hears of what takes place between the two! + </p> + <p> + A little while before he had left the room with the step-ladder; when he + came back, he was to bring with him the manuscript—the silent + snowfall of knowledge which had been deepening about him for a year. The + time had already passed for him to return, but he did not come. Was there + anything in the forecast of the night that made him falter? Was he + shrinking—<i>him</i> shrink? She put away the thought as a strange + outbreak of injustice. + </p> + <p> + How still it was outside the house with the snow falling! How still + within! She began to hear the ticking of the tranquil old clock under the + stairway out in the hall—always tranquil, always tranquil. And then + she began to listen to the disordered strokes of her own heart—that + red Clock in the body’s Tower whose beats are sent outward along the + streets and alleys of the blood; whose law it is to be alternately wound + too fast by the fingers of Joy, too slow by the fingers of Sorrow; and + whose fate, if it once run down, never afterwards either by Joy or Sorrow + to be made to run again. + </p> + <p> + At last she could hear the distant door of his study open and close and + his steps advance along the hall. With what a splendid swing and tramp he + brought himself toward her!—with what self-unconsciousness and + virile strength in his feet! His steps entered and crossed his bedroom, + entered and crossed her bedroom; and then he stood there before her in the + parlor doorway, a few yards off—stopped and regarded her intently, + smiling. + </p> + <p> + In a moment she realized what had delayed him. When he had gone away with + the step-ladder, he had on a well-worn suit in which, behind locked doors, + he had been working all the afternoon at the decorations of the Tree. Now + he came back ceremoniously dressed; the rest of the night was to be in her + honor. + </p> + <p> + It had always been so on this anniversary of their bridal night. They had + always dressed for it; the children now in their graves had been dressed + for it; the children in bed upstairs were regularly dressed for it; the + house was dressed for it; the servants were dressed for it; the whole life + of that establishment had always been made to feel by honors and + tendernesses and gayeties that this was the night on which he had married + her and brought her home. + </p> + <p> + As her eyes swept over him she noted quite as never before how these + anniversaries had not taken his youth away, but had added youth to him; he + had grown like the evergreen in the middle of the room—with increase + of trunk and limbs and with larger tides of strength surging through him + toward the master sun. There were no ravages of married life in him. Time + had merely made the tree more of a tree and made his youth more youth. + </p> + <p> + She took in momentary details of his appearance: a moisture like summer + heat along the edge of his yellow hair, started by the bath into which he + had plunged; the freshness of the enormous hands holding the manuscript; + the muscle of the forearm bulging within the dress-coat sleeve. Many a + time she had wondered how so perfect an animal as he had ever climbed to + such an elevation of work; and then had wondered again whether any but + such an animal ever in life does so climb—shouldering along with him + the poise and breadth of health and causing the hot sun of the valley to + shine on the mountain tops. + </p> + <p> + Finally she looked to see whether he, thus dressed in her honor, thus but + the larger youth after all their years together, would return her greeting + with a light in his eyes that had always made them so beautiful to her—a + light burning as at a portal opening inward for her only. + </p> + <p> + His eyes rested on his manuscript. + </p> + <p> + He brought it wrapped and tied in the true holiday spirit—sprigs of + cedar and holly caught in the ribands; and he now lifted and held it out + to her as a jeweller might elevate a casket of gems. Then he stepped + forward and put it on the table at her elbow. + </p> + <p> + “For you!” he said reverently, stepping back. + </p> + <p> + There had been years when, returning from a tramp across the country, he + would bring her perhaps nothing but a marvellous thistle, or a brilliant + autumn leaf for her throat. + </p> + <p> + “For you!” he would say; and then, before he could give it to her, he + would throw it away and take her in his arms. Afterwards she would pick up + the trifle and treasure it. + </p> + <p> + “For you!” he now said, offering her the treasure of his year’s toil and + stepping back. + </p> + <p> + So the weight of the gift fell on her heart like a stone. She did not look + at it or touch it but glanced up at him. He raised his finger, signalling + for silence; and going to the chimney corner, brought back a long taper + and held it over the lamp until it ignited. Then with a look which invited + her to follow, he walked to the Tree and began to light the candles. + </p> + <p> + He began at the lowest boughs and, passing around, touched them one by + one. Around and around he went, and higher and higher twinkled the lights + as they mounted the tapering sides of the fir. At the top he kindled one + highest red star, shining down on everything below. Then he blew out the + taper, turned out the lamp; and returning to the tree, set the heavy end + of the taper on the floor and grasped it midway, as one might lightly hold + a stout staff. + </p> + <p> + The room, lighted now by the common glow of the candles, revealed itself + to be the parlor of the house elaborately decorated for the winter + festival. Holly wreaths hung in the windows; the walls were garlanded; + evergreen boughs were massed above the window cornices; on the white lace + of window curtains many-colored autumn leaves, pressed and kept for this + night, looked as though they had been blown there scatteringly by October + winds. The air of the room was heavy with odors; there was summer warmth + in it. + </p> + <p> + In the middle of the room stood the fir tree itself, with its top close to + the ceiling and its boughs stretched toward the four walls of the room + impartially—as symbolically to the four corners of the earth. It + would be the only witness of all that was to take place between them: what + better could there be than this messenger of silence and wild secrecy? + From the mountains and valleys of the planet its race had looked out upon + a million generations of men and women; and the calmness of its lot + stretched across the turbulence of human passion as an ancient bridge + spans a modern river. + </p> + <p> + At the apex of the Tree a star shone. Just beneath at the first forking of + the boughs a candle burned. A little lower down a cross gleamed. Under the + cross a white dove hung poised, its pinions outstretched as though + descending out of the infinite upon some earthly object below. From many + of the branches tiny bells swung. There were little horns and little + trumpets. Other boughs sagged under the weight of silvery cornucopias. + Native and tropical fruits were tied on here and there; and dolls were + tied on also with cords around their necks, their feet dangling. There + were smiling masks, like men beheaded and smiling in their death. Near the + base of the Tree there was a drum. And all over the Tree from pinnacle to + base glittered a tinsel like golden fleece—looking as the moss of + old Southern trees seen at yellow sunset. + </p> + <p> + He stood for a while absorbed in contemplation of it. This year at his own + request the decorations had been left wholly to him; now he seemed + satisfied. + </p> + <p> + He turned to her eagerly. + </p> + <p> + “Do you remember what took place on Christmas Eve last year?” he asked, + with a reminiscent smile. “You sat where you are sitting and I stood where + I am standing. After I had finished lighting the Tree, do you remember + what you said?” + </p> + <p> + After a moment she stirred and passed her fingers across her brows. + </p> + <p> + “Recall it to me,” she answered. “I must have said many things. I did not + know that I had said anything that would be remembered a year. Recall it + to me.” + </p> + <p> + “You looked at the Tree and said what a mystery it is. When and where did + it begin, how and why?—this Tree that is now nourished in the + affections of the human family round the world.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes; I remember that.” + </p> + <p> + “I resolved to find out for you. I determined to prepare during what hours + I could spare from my regular college work the gratification of your wish + for you as a gift from me. If I could myself find the way back through the + labyrinth of ages, then I would return for you and lead you back through + the story of the Christmas Tree as that story has never been seen by any + one else. All this year’s work, then, has been the threading of the + labyrinth. Now Christmas Eve has come again, my work is finished, my gift + to you is ready.” + </p> + <p> + He made this announcement and stopped, leaving it to clear the air of + mystery—the mystery of the secret work. + </p> + <p> + Then he resumed: “Have you, then, been the Incident in this toil as + yesterday you intimated that you were? Do you now see that you have been + the whole reason of it? You were excluded from any share in the work only + because you could not help to prepare your own gift! That is all. What has + looked like a secret in this house has been no secret. You are blinded and + bewildered no longer; the hour has come when holly and cedar can speak for + themselves.” + </p> + <p> + Sunlight broke out all over his face. + </p> + <p> + She made no reply but said within herself: + </p> + <p> + “Ah, no! That is not the trouble. That has nothing to do with the trouble. + The secret of the house is not a misunderstanding; it is life. It is not + the doing of a year; it is the undoing of the years. It is not a gift to + enrich me with new happiness; it is a lesson that leaves me poorer.” + </p> + <p> + He went on without pausing: + </p> + <p> + “It is already late. The children interrupted us and took up part of your + evening. But it is not too late for me to present to you some little part + of your gift. I am going to arrange for you a short story out of the long + one. The whole long story is there,” he added, directing his eyes toward + the manuscript at her elbow; and his voice showed how he felt a scholar’s + pride in it. “From you it can pass out to the world that celebrates + Christmas and that often perhaps asks the same question: What is the + history of the Christmas Tree? But now my story for you!” + </p> + <p> + “Wait a moment,” she said, rising. She left the package where it was; and + with feet that trembled against the soft carpet crossed the room and + seated herself at one end of a deep sofa. + </p> + <p> + Gathering her dignity about her, she took there the posture of a listener—listening + at her ease. + </p> + <p> + The sofa was of richly carved mahogany. Each end curved into a scroll like + a landward wave of the sea. One of her foam-white arms rested on one of + the scrolls. Her elbow, reaching beyond, touched a small table on which + stood a vase of white frosted glass; over the rim of it profuse crimson + carnations hung their heads. They were one of her favorite winter flowers, + and he had had these sent out to her this afternoon from a hothouse of the + distant town by a half-frozen messenger. Near her head curtains of crimson + brocade swept down the wall to the floor from the golden-lustred window + cornices. At her back were cushions of crimson silk. At the other end of + the sofa her piano stood and on it lay the music she played of evenings to + him, or played with thoughts of him when she was alone. And other music + also which she many a time read; as Beethoven’s Great Nine. + </p> + <p> + Now, along this wall of the parlor from window curtain to window curtain + there stretched a festoon of evergreens and ribands put there by the + children for their Christmas-Night party; and into this festoon they had + fastened bunches of mistletoe, plucked from the walnut tree felled the day + before—they knowing nothing, happy children! + </p> + <p> + There she reclined. + </p> + <p> + The lower outlines of her figure were lost in a rich blackness over which + points of jet flashed like swarms of silvery fireflies in some too warm a + night of the warm South. The blackness of her hair and the blackness of + her brows contrasted with the whiteness of her bare arms and shoulders and + faultless neck and faultless throat bared also. Not far away was hid the + warm foam-white thigh, curved like Venus’s of old out of the sea’s + inaccessible purity. About her wrists garlands of old family corals were + clasped—the ocean’s roses; and on her breast, between the night of + her gown and the dawn of the flesh, coral buds flowered in beauty that + could never be opened, never be rifled. + </p> + <p> + When she had crossed the room to the sofa, two aged house-dogs—setters + with gentle eyes and gentle ears and gentle breeding—had followed + her and lain down at her feet; and one with a thrust of his nose pushed + her skirts back from the toe of her slipper and rested his chin on it. + </p> + <p> + “I will listen,” she said, shrinking as yet from other speech. “I wish + simply to listen. There will be time enough afterwards for what I have to + say.” + </p> + <p> + “Then I shall go straight through,” he replied. “One minute now while I + put together the story for you: it is hard to make a good short story out + of so vast a one.” + </p> + <p> + During these moments of waiting she saw a new picture of him. Under stress + of suffering and excitement discoveries denied to calmer hours often + arrive. It is as though consciousness receives a shock that causes it to + yawn and open its abysses: at the bottom we see new things: sometimes + creating new happiness; sometimes old happiness is taken away. + </p> + <p> + As he stood there—the man beside the Tree—into the picture + entered three other men, looking down upon him from their portraits on the + walls. + </p> + <p> + One portrait represented the first man of his family to scale the + mountains of the Shield where its eastern rim is turned away from the + reddening daybreak. Thence he had forced his way to its central portions + where the skin of ever living verdure is drawn over the rocks: + Anglo-Saxon, backwoodsman, borderer, great forest chief, hewing and + fighting a path toward the sunset for Anglo-Saxon women and children. With + his passion for the wilderness—its game, enemies, campfire and + cabin, deep-lunged freedom. This ancestor had a lonely, stern, gaunt face, + no modern expression in it whatsoever—the timeless face of the + woods. + </p> + <p> + Near his portrait hung that of a second representative of the family. This + man had looked out upon his vast parklike estates hi the central counties; + and wherever his power had reached, he had used it on a great scale for + the destruction of his forests. Woods-slayer, field-maker; working to + bring in the period on the Shield when the hand of a man began to grasp + the plough instead of the rifle, when the stallion had replaced the stag, + and bellowing cattle wound fatly down into the pastures of the bison. This + man had the face of his caste—the countenance of the Southern + slave-holding feudal lord. Not the American face, but the Southern face of + a definite era—less than national, less than modern; a face not + looking far in any direction but at things close around. + </p> + <p> + From a third portrait the latest ancestor looked down. He with his + contemporaries had finished the thinning of the central forest of the + Shield, leaving the land as it is to-day, a rolling prairie with remnants + of woodland like that crowning the hilltop near this house. This immediate + forefather bore the countenance that began to develop in the Northerner + and in the Southerner after the Civil War: not the Northern look nor the + Southern look, but the American look—a new thing in the American + face, indefinable but unmistakable. + </p> + <p> + These three men now focussed their attention upon him, the fourth of the + line, standing beside the tree brought into the house. Each of them in his + own way had wrought out a work for civilization, using the woods as an + implement. In his own case, the woods around him having disappeared, the + ancestral passion had made him a student of forestry. + </p> + <p> + The thesis upon which he took his degree was the relation of modern + forestry to modern life. A few years later in an adjunct professorship his + original researches in this field began to attract attention. These had to + do with the South Appalachian forest in its relation to South Appalachian + civilization and thus to that of the continent. + </p> + <p> + This work had brought its reward; he was now to be drawn away from his own + college and country to a Northern university. + </p> + <p> + Curiously in him there had gone on a corresponding development of an + ancestral face. As the look of the wilderness hunter had changed into that + of the Southern slave-holding baron, as this had changed into the modern + American face unlike any other; now finally in him the national American + look had broadened into something more modern still—the look of mere + humanity: he did not look like an American—he looked like a man in + the service of mankind. + </p> + <p> + This, which it takes thus long to recapitulate, presented itself to her as + one wide vision of the truth. It left a realization of how the past had + swept him along with its current; and of how the future now caught him up + and bore him on, part in its problems. The old passion living on in him—forest + life; a new passion born in him—human life. And by inexorable logic + these two now blending themselves to-night in a story of the Christmas + Tree. + </p> + <p> + But womanlike she sought to pluck out of these forces something intensely + personal to which she could cling; and she did it in this wise. + </p> + <p> + In the Spring following their marriage, often after supper they would go + out on the lawn in the twilight, strolling among her flowers; she leading + him this way and that way and laying upon him beautiful exactions and + tyrannies: how he must do this and do that; and not do this and not do + that; he receiving his orders like a grateful slave. + </p> + <p> + Then sometimes he would silently imprison her hand and lead her down the + lawn and up the opposite hill to the edge of the early summer evening + woods; and there on the roots of some old tree—the shadows of the + forest behind them and the light of the western sky in their faces—they + would stay until darkness fell, hiding their eyes from each other. + </p> + <p> + The burning horizon became a cathedral interior—the meeting of + love’s holiness and the Most High; the crescent dropped a silver veil upon + the low green hills; wild violets were at their feet; the mosses and turf + of the Shield under them. The warmth of his body was as the day’s sunlight + stored in the trunk of the tree; his hair was to her like its tawny bloom, + native to the sun. + </p> + <p> + Life with him was enchanted madness. + </p> + <p> + He had begun. He stretched out his arm and slowly began to write on the + air of the room. Sometimes in earlier years she had sat in his classroom + when he was beginning a lecture; and it was thus, standing at the + blackboard, that he sometimes put down the subject of his lecture for the + students. Slowly now he shaped each letter and as he finished each word, + he read it aloud to her: + </p> + <h3> + “A STORY OF THE CHRISTMAS TREE, FOR JOSEPHINE, WIFE OF FREDERICK” + </h3> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + IV. THE WANDERING TALE + </h2> + <p> + “Josephine!” + </p> + <p> + He uttered her name with beautiful reverence, letting the sound of it + float over the Christmas Tree and die away on the garlanded walls of the + room: it was his last tribute to her, a dedication. + </p> + <p> + Then he began: + </p> + <p> + “Josephine, sometimes while looking out of the study window a spring + morning, I have watched you strolling among the flowers of the lawn. I + have seen you linger near a honeysuckle in full bloom and question the + blossoms in your questioning way—you who are always wishing to probe + the heart of things, to drain out of them the red drop of their + significance. But, gray-eyed querist of actuality, those fragrant trumpets + could blow to your ear no message about their origin. It was where the + filaments of the roots drank deepest from the mould of a dead past that + you would have had to seek the true mouthpieces of their philosophy. + </p> + <p> + “So the instincts which blossom out thickly over the nature of modern man + to themselves are mute. The flower exhibits itself at the tip of the vine; + the instinct develops itself at the farthest outreach of life; and the + point where it clamors for satisfaction is at the greatest possible + distance from its birthplace. For all these instincts send their roots + down through the mould of the uncivilized, down through the mould of the + primitive, down into the mould of the underhuman—that ancient + playhouse dedicated to low tragedies. + </p> + <p> + “While this may seem to you to be going far for a commencement of the + story, it is coming near to us. The kind of man and woman we are to + ourselves; the kind of husband and wife we are to each other; the kind of + father and mother we are to our children; the kind of human beings we are + to our fellow beings—the passions which swell as with sap the buds + of those relations until they burst into their final shapes of conduct are + fed from the bottom of the world’s mould. You and I to-night are building + the structures of our moral characters upon life-piles that sink into + fathomless ooze. All we human beings dip our drinking cups into a vast + delta sweeping majestically towards the sea and catch drops trickling from + the springs of creation. + </p> + <p> + “It is in a vast ancestral country, a Fatherland of Old Desire, that my + story lies for you and for me: drawn from the forest and from human nature + as the two have worked in the destiny of the earth. I have wrested it from + this Tree come out of the ancient woods into the house on this Night of + the Nativity.” + </p> + <p> + He made the scholar’s pause and resumed, falling into the tone of easy + narrative. It had already become evident that this method of telling the + story would be to find what Alpine flowers he could for her amid Alpine + snows. + </p> + <p> + He told her then that the oldest traceable influence in the life of the + human race is the sea. It is true that man in some ancestral form was + rocked in the cradle of the deep; he rose from the waves as the islanded + Greeks said of near Venus. Traces of this origin he still bears both in + his body and his emotions; and together they make up his first set of + memories—Sea Memories. + </p> + <p> + He deliberated a moment and then put the truth before her in a single + picturesque phrase: + </p> + <p> + “Man himself is a closed living sea-shell in the chambers of which the + hues of the first ocean are still fresh and its tempests still are + sounding.” + </p> + <p> + Next he told her how man’s last marine ancestor quit one day the sea never + again to return to the deep, crossed the sands of the beach and entered + the forest; and how upon him, this living sea-shell, soft to impressions, + the Spirit of the Forest fell to work, beginning to shape it over from sea + uses to forest uses. + </p> + <p> + A thousand thousand ages the Spirit of the Forest worked at the sea-shell. + </p> + <p> + It remodelled the shell as so much clay; stood it up and twisted and + branched it as young pliant oak; hammered it as forge-glowing iron; + tempered it as steel; cast it as bronze; chiselled it as marble; painted + it as a cloud; strung and tuned it as an instrument; lit it up as a life + tower—the world’s one beacon: steadily sending it onward through one + trial form after another until at last had been perfected for it that + angelic shape in which as man it was ever afterwards to sob and to smile. + </p> + <p> + And thus as one day a wandering sea-shell had quit the sea and entered the + forest, now on another day of that infinite time there reappeared at the + edge of the forest the creature it had made. On every wall of its being + internal and external forest-written; and completely forest-minded: having + nothing but forest knowledge, forest feeling, forest dreams, forest + fancies, forest faith; so that in all it could do or know or feel or dream + or imagine or believe it was forest-tethered. + </p> + <p> + At the edge of the forest then this creature uncontrollably impelled to + emerge from the waving green sea of leaves as of old it had been driven to + quit the rolling blue ocean of waters: Man at the dawn of our history of + him. + </p> + <p> + And if the first set of race memories—Sea Memories—still + endure within him, how much more powerful are the second set—the + Forest Memories! + </p> + <p> + So powerful that since the dawn of history millions have perished as + forest creatures only; so powerful that there are still remnant races on + the globe which have never yet snapped the primitive tether and will + become extinct as mere forest creatures to the last; so powerful that + those highest races which have been longest out in the open—as our + own Aryan race—have never ceased to be reached by the influence of + the woods behind them; by the shadows of those tall morning trees falling + across the mortal clearings toward the sunset. + </p> + <p> + These Master Memories, he said, filtering through the sandlike generations + of our race, survive to-day as those pale attenuated affections which we + call in ourselves the Love of Nature; these affections are inherited: new + feelings for nature we have none. The writers of our day who speak of + civilized man’s love of nature as a developing sense err wholly. They are + like explorers who should mistake a boundary for the interior of a + continent. Man’s knowledge of nature is modern, but it no more endows him + with new feeling than modern knowledge of anatomy supplies him with a new + bone or his latest knowledge about his blood furnishes him with an + additional artery. + </p> + <p> + Old are our instincts and passions about Nature: all are Forest Memories. + </p> + <p> + But among the many-twisted mass of them there is one, he said, that + contains the separate buried root of the story: Man’s Forest Faith. + </p> + <p> + When the Spirit of the Forest had finished with the sea-shell, it had + planted in him—there to grow forever—the root of faith that he + was a forest child. His origin in the sea he had not yet discovered; the + science of ages far distant in the future was to give him that. To himself + forest-tethered he was also forest-born: he believed it to be his + immediate ancestor, the creative father of mankind. Thus the Greeks in + their oldest faith were tethered to the idea that they were descended from + the plane tree; in the Sagas and Eddas the human race is tethered to the + world-ash. Among every people of antiquity this forest faith sprang up and + flourished: every race was tethered to some ancestral tree. In the Orient + each succeeding Buddha of Indian mythology was tethered to a different + tree; each god of the later classical Pantheon was similarly tethered: + Jupiter to the oak, Apollo to the laurel, Bacchus to the vine, Minerva to + the olive, Juno to the apple, on and on. Forest worship was universal—the + most impressive and bewildering to modern science that the human spirit + has ever built up. At the dawn of history began The Adoration of the + Trees. + </p> + <p> + Then as man, the wanderer, walked away from his dawn across the ages + toward the sunset bearing within him this root of faith, it grew with his + growth. The successive growths were cut down by the successive scythes of + time; but always new sprouts were put forth. + </p> + <p> + Thus to man during the earliest ages the divine dwelt as a bodily presence + within the forest; but one final day the forest lost the Immortal as its + indwelling creator. + </p> + <p> + Next the old forest worshipper peopled the trees with an intermediate race + of sylvan deities less than divine, more than human; and long he beguiled + himself with the exquisite reign and proximity of these; but the lesser + could not maintain themselves in temples from which the greater had + already been expelled, and they too passed out of sight down the roadway + of the world. + </p> + <p> + Still the old forest faith would not let the wanderer rest; and during yet + later ages he sent into the trees his own nature so that the woods became + freshly endeared to him by many a story of how individuals of his own race + had succeeded as tenants to the erstwhile habitations of the gods. Then + this last panorama of illusion faded also, and civilized man stood face to + face with the modern woods—inhabitated only by its sap and cells. + The trees had drawn their bark close around them, wearing an inviolate + tapestry across those portals through which so many a stranger to them had + passed in and passed out; and henceforth the dubious oracle of the forest—its + one reply to all man’s questionings—became the Voice of its own + Mystery. + </p> + <p> + After this the forest worshipper could worship the woods no more. But we + must not forget that civilization as compared with the duration of human + life on the planet began but yesterday: even our own Indo-European race + dwells as it were on the forest edge. And the forest still reaches out and + twines itself around our deepest spiritual truths: home—birth—love—prayer—death: + it tries to overrun them all, to reclaim them. Thus when we build our + houses, instinctively we attempt by some clump of trees to hide them and + to shelter ourselves once more inside the forest; in some countries + whenever a child is born, a tree is planted as its guardian in nature; in + our marriage customs the forest still riots as master of ceremonies with + garlands and fruits; our prayers strike against the forest shaped hi + cathedral stone—memory of the grove, God’s first temple; and when we + die, it is the tree that is planted beside us as the sentinel of our rest. + Even to this day the sight of a treeless grave arouses some obscure + instinct in us that it is God-forsaken. + </p> + <p> + Yes, he said, whatsoever modern temple man has anywhere reared for his + spirit, over the walls of it have been found growing the same leaf and + tendril: he has introduced the tree into the ritual of every later + world-worship; and thus he has introduced the evergreen into the ritual of + Christianity. + </p> + <p> + This then is the meaning of the Christmas Tree and of its presence at the + Nativity. At the dawn of history we behold man worshipping the tree as the + Creator literally present on the earth; in our time we see him using that + tree in the worship of the creative Father’s Son come to earth in the + Father’s stead. + </p> + <p> + “On this evergreen in the room falls the radiance of these brief tapers of + the night; but on it rests also the long light of that spiritual dawn when + man began his Adoration of the Trees. It is the forest taking its place + once more beside the long-lost Immortal.” + </p> + <p> + Here he finished the first part of his story. That he should address her + thus and that she thus should listen had in it nothing unusual for them. + For years it had been his wont to traverse with her the ground of his + lectures, and she shared his thought before it reached others. It was + their high and equal comradeship. Wherever his mind could go hers went—a + brilliant torch, a warming sympathy. + </p> + <p> + But to-night his words had fallen on her as withered leaves on a + motionless figure of stone. If he was sensible of this change in her, he + gave no sign. And after a moment he passed to the remaining part of the + story. + </p> + <p> + “Thus far I have been speaking to you of the bare tree in wild nature: + here it is loaded with decorations; and now I want to show you that they + too are Forest Memories—that since the evergreen moved over into the + service of Christianity, one by one like a flock of birds these Forest + Memories have followed it and have alighted amid its branches. Everything + here has its story. I am going to tell you in each case what that story + is; I am going to interpret everything on the Christmas Tree and the other + Christmas decorations in the room.” + </p> + <p> + It was at this point that her keen attention became fixed on him and never + afterwards wavered. If everything had its story, the mistletoe would have + its; he must interpret that: and thus he himself unexpectedly had brought + about the situation she wished. She would meet him at that symbolic bough: + there be rendered the Judgment of the Years! And now as one sits down at + some point of a road where a traveller must arrive, she waited for him + there. + </p> + <p> + He turned to the Tree and explained briefly that as soon as the forest + worshipper began the worship of the tree, he began to bring to it his + offerings and to hang these on the boughs; for religion consists in + offering something: to worship is to give. In after ages when man had + learned to build shrines and temples, he still kept up his primitive + custom of bringing to the altar his gifts and sacrifices; but during that + immeasurable time before he had learned to carve wood or to set one stone + on another, he was bringing his offerings to the grove—the only + cathedral he had. And this to him was not decoration; it was prayer. So + that in our age of the world when we playfully decorate the Christmas Tree + it is a survival of grave rites in the worship of primitive man and is as + ancient as forest worship itself. + </p> + <p> + And now he began. + </p> + <p> + With the pointer in his hand he touched the star at the apex of the fir. + This, he said, was commonly understood to represent the Star of Bethlehem + which guided the wise men of the East to the manger on the Night of the + Nativity—the Star of the New Born. But modern discoveries show that + the records of ancient Chaldea go back four or five thousand years before + the Christian era; and as far back as they have been traced, we find the + wise men of the East worshipping this same star and being guided by it in + their spiritual wanderings as they searched for the incarnation of the + Divine. They worshipped it as the star of peace and goodness and purity. + Many a pious Wolfram in those dim centuries no doubt sang his evening hymn + to the same star, for love of some Chaldean Elizabeth—both he and + she blown about the desert how many centuries now as dust. Moreover on + these records the star and the Tree are brought together as here side by + side. And the story of the star leads backward to one of the first things + that man ever worshipped as he looked beyond the forest: the light of the + heavens floating in the depth of space—light that he wanted but + could not grasp. + </p> + <p> + He touched the next object on the Tree—the candle under the star—and + went on: + </p> + <p> + Imagine, he said, the forest worshipper as at the end of ages having + caught this light—having brought it down in the language of his myth + from heaven to earth: that is, imagine the star in space as having become + a star in his hand—the candle: the star worshipper had now become + also the fire worshipper. Thus the candle leads us back to the fire + worshippers of ancient Persia—those highlands of the spirit seeking + light. We think of the Christmas candle on the Tree as merely borrowed + from the candle of the altar for the purpose of illumination; but the use + of it goes back to a time when the forest worshipper, now also the fire + worshipper, hung his lights on the trees, having no other altar. Far down + toward modern times the temples of the old Prussians, for example, were + oak groves, and among them a hierarchy of priests was ordained to keep the + sacred fire perpetually burning at the root of the sacred oak. + </p> + <p> + He touched the third object on the tree—the cross under the candle—and + went on: + </p> + <p> + “To the Christian believer the cross signifies one supreme event: Calvary + and the tragedy of the Crucifixion. It was what the Marys saw and the + apostles that morning in Gethsemane. But no one in that age thought of the + cross as a Christian symbol. John and Peter and Paul and the rest went + down into their graves without so regarding it. The Magdalene never clung + to it with life-tired arms, nor poured out at the foot of it the benizon + of her tears. Not until the third century after Christ did the Bishops + assembled at Nice announce it a Christian symbol. But it was a sacred + emblem in the dateless antiquity of Egypt. To primitive man it stood for + that sacred light and fire of life which was himself. For he himself is a + cross—the first cross he has ever known. The faithful may truly + think of the Son of Man as crucified as the image of humanity. And thus + ages before Christ, cross worship and forest worship were brought + together: for instance, among the Druids who hunted for an oak, two boughs + of which made with the trunk of the tree the figure of the cross; and on + these three they cut the names of three of their gods and this was + holy-cross wood.” + </p> + <p> + He moved the pointer down until he touched the fourth object on the tree—the + dove under the cross, and went on: + </p> + <p> + “In the mind of the Christian believer this represents the white dove of + the New Testament which descended on the Son of Man when the heavens were + opened. So in Parsifal the white dove descends, overshadowing the Grail. + But ages before Christ the prolific white dove of Syria was worshipped + throughout the Orient as the symbol of reproductive Nature: and to this + day the Almighty is there believed to manifest himself under this form. In + ancient Mesopotamia the divine mother of nature is often represented with + this dove as having actually alighted on her shoulder or in her open hand. + And here again forest worship early became associated with the worship of + the dove; for, sixteen hundred years before Christ, we find the dove + nurtured in the oak grove at Dodona where its presence was an augury and + its wings an omen.” + </p> + <p> + On he went, touching one thing after another, tracing the story of each + backward till it was lost in antiquity and showing how each was entwined + with forest worship. + </p> + <p> + He touched the musical instruments; the bell, the drum. The bell, he said, + was used in Greece by the Priests of Bacchus in the worship of the vine. + And vine worship was forest worship. Moreover, in the same oak grove at + Dodona bells were tied to the oak boughs and their tinklings also were + sacred auguries. The drum, which the modern boy beats on Christmas Day, + was beaten ages before Christ in the worship of Confucius: the story of it + dies away toward what was man’s first written music in forgotten China. In + the first century of the Christian era, on one of the most splendid of the + old Buddhist sculptures, boys are represented as beating the drum in the + worship of the sacred tree—once more showing how music passed into + the service of forest faith. + </p> + <p> + He touched the cornucopia; and he traced its story back to the ram’s horn—the + primitive cup of libation, used for a drinking cup and used also to pour + out the last product of the vine in honor of the vine itself—the + forest’s first goblet. + </p> + <p> + He touched the fruits and the flowers on the Tree: these were oldest of + all, perhaps, he said; for before the forest worshipper had learned to + shape or fabricate any offerings of his own skill, he could at least bring + to the divine tree and hang on it the flower of spring, the wild fruit of + autumn. + </p> + <p> + He kept on until only three things on the Tree were left uninterpreted; + the tinsel, the masks, and the dolls. He told her that he had left these + to the last for a reason: seemingly they were the most trivial but really + the most grave; for by means of them most clearly could be traced the + presence of great law running through the progress of humanity. + </p> + <p> + He drew her attention to the tinsel that covered the tree, draping it like + a yellow moss. It was of no value, he said, but in the course of ages it + had taken the place of the offering of actual gold in forest worship: a + once universal custom of adorning the tree with everything most precious + to the giver in token of his sacrifice and self-sacrifice. Even in + Jeremiah is an account of the lading of the sacred tree with gold and + ornaments. Herodotus relates that when Xerxes was invading Lydia, on the + march he saw a divine tree and had it honored with golden robes and gifts. + Livy narrates that when Romulus slew his enemy on the site of the Eternal + City, he hung rich spoils on the oak of the Capitoline Hill. And this + custom of decorating the tree with actual gold goes back in history until + we can meet it coming down to us in the story of Jason and the Golden + Fleece and in that of the Golden Apples of the Hesperides. Now the custom + has dwindled to this tinsel flung over the Christmas Tree—the mock + sacrifice for the real. + </p> + <p> + He touched the masks and unfolded the grim story that lay behind their + mockery. It led back to the common custom in antiquity of sacrificing + prisoners of war or condemned criminals or innocent victims in forest + worship and of hanging their heads on the branches: we know this to have + been the practice among Gallic and Teuton tribes. In the course of time, + when such barbarity could be tolerated no longer, the mock countenance + replaced the real. + </p> + <p> + He touched the dolls and revealed their sad story. Like the others, its + long path led to antiquity and to the custom of sacrificing children in + forest worship. How common this custom was the early literature of the + human race too abundantly testifies. We encounter the trace of it in + Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac—arrested by the command of Jehovah. But + Abraham would never have thought of slaying his son to propitiate his God, + had not the custom been well established. In the case of Jephthah’s + daughter the sacrifice was actually allowed. We come upon the same custom + in the fate of Iphigenia—at a critical turning point in the world’s + mercy; in her stead the life of a lesser animal, as in Isaac’s case, was + accepted. When the protective charity of mankind turned against the + inhumanity of the old faiths, then the substitution of the mock for the + real sacrifice became complete. And now on the boughs of the Christmas + Tree where richly we come upon vestiges of primitive rites only these + playful toys are left to suggest the massacre of the innocent. + </p> + <p> + He had covered the ground; everything had yielded its story. All the + little stories, like pathways running backward into the distance and ever + converging, met somewhere in lost ages; they met in forest worship and + they met in some sacrifice by the human heart. + </p> + <p> + And thus he drew his conclusion as the lesson of the night: + </p> + <p> + “Thus, Josephine, my story ends for you and for me. The Christmas Tree is + all that is left of a forest memory. The forest worshipper could not + worship without giving, because to worship is to give: therefore he + brought his gifts to the forest—his first altar. These gifts, + remember, were never, as with us, decorations. They were his sacrifices + and self-sacrifices. In all the religions he has had since, the same law + lives. In his lower religions he has sacrificed the better to the worse; + in the higher ones he has sacrificed the worst to the best. If the race + should ever outgrow all religion whatsoever, it would still have to + worship what is highest in human nature and so worshipping, it would still + be ruled by the ancient law of sacrifice become the law of self-sacrifice: + it would still be necessary to offer up what is low in us to what is + higher. Only one portion of mankind has ever believed in Jerusalem; but + every religion has known its own Calvary.” + </p> + <p> + He turned away from the Tree toward her and awaited her appreciation. She + had sat watching him without a movement and without a word. But when at + last she asked him a question, she spoke as a listener who wakens from a + long revery. + </p> + <p> + “Have you finished the story for me?” she inquired. + </p> + <p> + “I have finished the story for you,” he replied without betraying + disappointment at her icy reception of it. + </p> + <p> + Keeping her posture, she raised one of her white arms above her head, + turning her face up also until the swanlike curve of the white throat + showed; and with quivering finger tips she touched some sprays of + mistletoe pendent from the garland on the wall: + </p> + <p> + “You have not interpreted this,” she said, her mind fixed on that sole + omission. + </p> + <p> + “I have not explained that,” he admitted. + </p> + <p> + She sat up, and for the first time looked with intense interest toward the + manuscript on the table across the room. + </p> + <p> + “Have you explained it there?” + </p> + <p> + “I have not explained it there.” + </p> + <p> + “But why?” she said with disappointment. + </p> + <p> + “I did not wish you to read that story, Josephine.” + </p> + <p> + “But why, Frederick?” she inquired, startled into wonderment. + </p> + <p> + He smiled: “If I told you why, I might as well tell you the story.” + </p> + <p> + “But why do you not wish to tell me the story?” + </p> + <p> + He answered with warning frankness: “If you once saw it as a picture, the + picture would be coming back to you at times the rest of your life + darkly.” + </p> + <p> + She protested: “If it is dark to you, why should I not share the darkness + of it? Have we not always looked at life’s shadows together? And thus + seeing life, have not bright things been doubly bright to us and dark + things but half as dark?” + </p> + <p> + He merely repeated his warning: “It is a story of a crueler age than ours. + It goes back to the forest worship of the Druids.” + </p> + <p> + She answered: “So long as our own age is cruel, what room is left to take + seriously the mere stories of crueler ones? Am I to shrink from the forest + worship of the Druids? Is there any story of theirs not printed in books? + Are not the books in libraries? Are they not put in libraries to be read? + If others read them, may not I? And since when must I begin to dread + anything in books? Or anything in life? And since when did we begin to + look at life apart, we who have always looked at it with four eyes?” + </p> + <p> + “I have always told you there are things to see with four eyes, things to + see with two, and things to see with none.” + </p> + <p> + With sudden intensity her white arm went up again and touched the + mistletoe. + </p> + <p> + “Tell me the story of this!” she pleaded as though she demanded a right. + As she spoke, her thumb and forefinger meeting on a spray, they closed and + went through it like a pair of shears; and a bunch of the white pearls of + the forest dropped on the ridge of her shoulder and were broken apart and + rolled across her breast into her lap. + </p> + <p> + He looked grave; silence or speech—which were better for her? + Either, he now saw, would give her pain. + </p> + <p> + “Happily the story is far away from us,” he said, as though he were half + inclined to grant her request. + </p> + <p> + “If it is far away, bring it near! Bring it into the room as you brought + the stories of the star and the candle and the cross and the dove and the + others! Make it live before my eyes! Enact it before me! Steep me in it as + you have steeped yourself!” + </p> + <p> + He held back a long time: “You who are so safe in good, why know evil?” + </p> + <p> + “Frederick,” she cried, “I shall have to insist upon your telling me this + story. And if you should keep any part of it back, I would know. Then tell + it all: if it is dark, let each shadow have its shade; give each heavy + part its heaviness; let cruelty be cruelty—and truth be truth!” + </p> + <p> + He stood gazing across the centuries, and when he began, there was a + change in him; something personal was beginning to intrude itself into the + narrative of the historian: + </p> + <p> + “Imagine the world of our human nature in the last centuries before + Palestine became Holy Land. Athens stood with her marbles glistening by + the blue Ægean, and Greek girls with fillets and sandals—the living + images of those pale sculptured shapes that are the mournful eternity of + Art—Greek girls were being chosen for the secret rites in the temple + at Ephesus. The sun of Italy had not yet browned the little children who + were to become the brown fathers and mothers of the brown soldiers of + Cæsar’s legions; and twenty miles south of Rome, in the sacred grove of + Dodona,—where the motions of oak boughs were auguries, and the + flappings of the wings of white doves were divine messages, and the + tinkling of bells in the foliage had divine meanings,—in this grove + the virgins of Latium, as the Greek girls of Ephesus, were once a year + appointed to undergo similar rites. To the south Pompeii, with its night + laughter and song sounding far out toward the softly lapping Mediterranean + and up the slopes of its dread volcano, drained its goblet and did not + care, emptied it as often as filled and asked for nothing more. A little + distance off Herculaneum, with its tender dreams of Greece but with its + arms around the breathing image of Italy, slept—uncovered. + </p> + <p> + “Beyond Italy to the north, on the other side of the eternal snowcaps, lay + unknown Gaul, not yet dreaming of the Cæsar who was to conquer it; and + across the wild sea opposite Gaul lay the wooded isle of Britain. All over + that island one forest; in that forest one worship; in that worship one + tree—the oak of England; and on that oak one bough—the + mistletoe.” + </p> + <p> + He spoke to her awhile about the oak, describing the place it had in the + early civilizations of the human race. In the Old Testament it was the + tree of the Hebrew idols and of Jehovah. In Greece it was the tree of + Zeus, the most august and the most human of the gods. In Italy it was the + tree of Jove, great father of immortals and of mankind. After the gods + passed, it became the tree of the imperial Cæsars. After the Cæsars had + passed, it was the oak that Michael Angelo in the Middle Ages scattered + over the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel near the creation of man and his + expulsion from Paradise—there as always the chosen tree of human + desire. In Britain it was the sacred tree of Druidism: there the Arch + Druid and his fellow-priests performed none of their rites without using + its leaves and branches: never anywhere in the world was the oak + worshipped with such ceremonies and sacrifices as there. + </p> + <p> + Imagine then a scene—the chief Nature Festival of that forest + worship: the New Year’s day of the Druids. + </p> + <p> + A vast concourse of people, men and women and children, are on their way + to the forest; they are moving toward an oak tree that has been found with + mistletoe growing on it—growing there so seldom. As the excited + throng come in sight of it, they hail it with loud cries of reverence and + delight. Under it they gather; there a banquet is spread. In the midst of + the assemblage one figure towers—the Arch Druid. Every eye is fixed + fearfully on him, for on whomsoever his own eye may fall with wrath, he + may be doomed to become one of the victims annually sacrificed to the oak. + </p> + <p> + A gold chain is around his neck; gold bands are around his arms. He is + clad in robes of spotless white. He ascends the tree to a low bough, and + making a hollow in the folds of his robes, he crops with a golden pruning + hook the mistletoe and so catches it as it falls. Then it is blessed and + scattered among the throng, and the priest prays that each one so + receiving it may receive also the divine favor and blessing of which it is + Nature’s emblem. Two white bulls, the horns of which have never hitherto + been touched, are now adorned with fillets and are slaughtered in + sacrifice. + </p> + <p> + Then at last it is over, the people are gone, the forest is left to + itself, and the New Year’s ceremony of cutting the mistletoe from the oak + is at an end. + </p> + <p> + Here he ended the story. + </p> + <p> + She had sat leaning far forward, her fingers interlocked and her brows + knitted. When he stopped, she sat up and studied him a moment in + bewilderment: + </p> + <p> + “But why did you call that a dark story?” she asked. “Where is the + cruelty? It is beautiful, and I shall never forget it and it will never + throw a dark image on my mind: New Year’s day—the winter woods—the + journeying throng—the oak—the bough—the banquet beneath—the + white bulls with fillets on their horns—the white-robed priest—the + golden sickle in his hand—the stroke that severs the mistletoe—the + prayer that each soul receiving any smallest piece will be blessed in + life’s sorrows! If I were a great painter, I should like to paint that + scene. In the centre should be some young girl, pressing to her heart what + she believed to be heaven’s covenant with her under the guise of a + blossom. How could you have wished to withhold such a story from me?” + </p> + <p> + He smiled at her a little sadly. + </p> + <p> + “I have not yet told you all,” he said, “but I have told you enough.” + </p> + <p> + Instantly she bent far over toward him with intuitive scrutiny. Under her + breath one word escaped: + </p> + <p> + “Ah!” + </p> + <p> + It was the breath of a discovery—a discovery of something unknown to + her. + </p> + <p> + “I am sparing you, Josephine!” + </p> + <p> + She stretched each arm along the back of the sofa and pinioned the wood in + her clutch. + </p> + <p> + “Are you sparing me?” she asked in a tone of torture. “Or are you sparing + yourself?” + </p> + <p> + The heavy staff on which he stood leaning dropped from his relaxed grasp + to the floor. He looked down at it a moment and then calmly picked it up. + </p> + <p> + “I am going to tell you the story,” he said with a new quietness. + </p> + <p> + She was aroused by some change in him. + </p> + <p> + “I will not listen! I do not wish to hear it!” + </p> + <p> + “You will have to listen,” he said. “It is better for you to know. Better + for any human being to know any truth than suffer the bane of wrong + thinking. When you are free to judge, it will be impossible for you to + misjudge.” + </p> + <p> + “I have not misjudged you! I have not judged you! In some way that I do + not understand you are judging yourself!” + </p> + <p> + He stepped back a pace—farther away from her—and he drew + himself up. In the movement there was instinctive resentment. And the + right not to be pried into—not even by the nearest. + </p> + <p> + The step which had removed him farther from her had brought him nearer to + the Christmas Tree at his back. A long, three-fingered bough being thus + pressed against was forced upward and reappeared on one of his shoulders. + The movement seemed human: it was like the conscious hand of the tree. The + fir, standing there decked out in the artificial tawdriness of a + double-dealing race, laid its wild sincere touch on him—as sincere + as the touch of dying human fingers—and let its passing youth flow + into him. It attracted his attention, and he turned his head toward it as + with recognition. Other boughs near the floor likewise thrust themselves + forward, hiding his feet so that he stood ankle-deep in forestry. + </p> + <p> + This reunion did not escape her. Her overwrought imagination made of it a + sinister omen: the bough on his shoulder rested there as the old forest + claim; the boughs about his feet were the ancestral forest tether. As he + had stepped backward from her, Nature had asserted the earlier right to + him. In strange sickness and desolation of heart she waited. + </p> + <p> + He stood facing her but looking past her at centuries long gone; the first + sound of his voice registered upon her ear some message of doom: + </p> + <p> + “Listen, Josephine!” + </p> + <p> + She buried her face in her hands. + </p> + <p> + “I cannot! I will not!” + </p> + <p> + “You will have to listen. You know that for some years, apart from my + other work, I have been gathering together the woodland customs of our + people and trying to trace them back to their origin and first meaning. In + our age of the world we come upon many playful forest survivals of what + were once grave things. Often in our play and pastimes and lingering + superstitions about the forest we cross faint traces of what were once + vital realities. + </p> + <p> + “Among these there has always been one that until recently I have never + understood. Among country people oftenest, but heard of everywhere, is the + saying that if a girl is caught standing under the mistletoe, she may be + kissed by the man who thus finds her. I have always thought that this + ceremony and playful sacrifice led back to some ancient rite—I could + not discover what. Now I know.” + </p> + <p> + In a voice full of a new delicacy and scarcely audible, he told her. + </p> + <p> + It is another scene in the forest of Britain. This time it is not the + first day of the year—the New Year’s day of the Druids when they + celebrated the national festival of the oak. But it is early summer, + perhaps the middle of May—May in England—with the young beauty + of the woods. It is some hushed evening at twilight. The new moon is just + silvering the tender leaves and creating a faint shadow under the trees. + The hawthorn is in bloom—red and white—and not far from the + spot, hidden in some fragrant tuft of this, a nightingale is singing, + singing, singing. + </p> + <p> + Lifting itself above the smaller growths stands the young manhood of the + woods—a splendid oak past its thirtieth year, representing its youth + and its prime conjoined. In its trunk is the summer heat of the all-day + sun. Around its roots is velvet turf, and there are wild violet beds. Its + huge arms are stretched toward the ground as though reaching for some + object they would clasp; and on one of these arms as its badge of divine + authority, worn there as a knight might wear the colors of his Sovereign, + grows the mistletoe. There he stands—the Forest Lover. + </p> + <p> + The woods wait, the shadows deepen, the hush is more intense, the moon’s + rays begin to be golden, the song of the nightingale grows more + passionate, the beds of moss and violets wait. + </p> + <p> + Then the shrubbery is tremblingly parted at some place and upon the scene + a young girl enters—her hair hanging down—her limbs most + lightly clad—the flush of red hawthorn on the white hawthorn of her + skin—in her eyes love’s great need and mystery. Step by step she + comes forward, her fingers trailing against whatsoever budding wayside + thing may stay her strength. She draws nearer to the oak, searching amid + its boughs for that emblem which she so dreads to find and yet more dreads + not to find: the emblem of a woman’s fruitfulness which the young oak—the + Forest Lover—reaches down toward her. Finding it, beneath it with + one deep breath of surrender she takes her place—the virgin’s tryst + with the tree—there to be tested. + </p> + <p> + Such is the command of the Arch Druid: it is obedience—submission to + that test—or death for her as a sacrifice to the oak which she has + rejected. + </p> + <p> + Again the shrubbery is parted, rudely pushed aside, and a man enters—a + tried and seasoned man—a human oak—counterpart of the Forest + Lover—to officiate at the test. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <p> + He was standing there in the parlor of his house and in the presence of + his wife. But in fealty he was gone: he was in the summer woods of + ancestral wandering, the fatherland of Old Desire. + </p> + <p> + <i>He</i> was the man treading down the shrubbery; it was <i>his</i> feet + that started toward the oak; <i>his</i> eye that searched for the figure + half fainting under the bough; for <i>him</i> the bed of moss and violets—the + hair falling over the eyes—the loosened girdle—the breasts of + hawthorn white and pink—the listening song of the nightingale—the + silence of the summer woods—the seclusion—the full surrender + of the two under that bough of the divine command, to escape the penalty + of their own death. + </p> + <p> + The blaze of uncontrollable desire was all over him; the fire of his own + story had treacherously licked him like a wind-bent flame. The light that + she had not seen in his eyes for so long rose in them—the old, + unfathomable, infolding tenderness. A quiver ran around his tense + nostrils. + </p> + <p> + And now one little phrase which he had uttered so sacredly years before + and had long since forgotten rose a second time to his lips—tossed + there by a second tide of feeling. On the silence of the room fell his + words: + </p> + <p> + “<i>Bride of the Mistletoe!</i>” + </p> + <p> + The storm that had broken over him died away. He shut his eyes on the + vanishing scene: he opened them upon her. + </p> + <p> + He had told her the truth about the story; he may have been aware or he + may not have been aware that he had revealed to her the truth about + himself. + </p> + <p> + “This is what I would have kept from you, Josephine,” he said quietly. + </p> + <p> + She was sitting there before him—the mother of his children, of the + sleeping ones, of the buried ones—the butterfly broken on the wheel + of years: lustreless and useless now in its summer. + </p> + <p> + She sat there with the whiteness of death. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + V. THE ROOM OF THE SILENCES + </h2> + <p> + The Christmas candles looked at her flickeringly; the little white candles + of purity, the little red candles of love. The holly in the room concealed + its bold gay berries behind its thorns, and the cedar from the faithful + tree beside the house wall had need now of its bitter rosary. + </p> + <p> + Her first act was to pay what is the first debt of a fine spirit—the + debt of courtesy and gratitude. + </p> + <p> + “It is a wonderful story, Frederick,” she said in a manner which showed + him that she referred to the beginning of his story and not to the end. + </p> + <p> + “As usual you have gone your own way about it, opening your own path into + the unknown, seeing what no one else has seen, and bringing back what no + one else ever brought. It is a great revelation of things that I never + dreamed of and could never have imagined. I appreciate your having done + this for me; it has taken time and work, but it is too much for me + to-night. It is too new and too vast. I must hereafter try to understand + it. And there will be leisure enough. Nor can it lose by waiting. But now + there is something that cannot wait, and I wish to speak to you about + that; Frederick, I am going to ask you some questions about the last part + of the story. I have been wanting to ask you a long time: the story gives + me the chance and—the right.” + </p> + <p> + He advanced a step toward her, disengaging himself from the evergreen. + </p> + <p> + “I will answer them,” he said. “If they can be answered.” + </p> + <p> + And thus she sat and thus he stood as the questions and answers passed to + and fro. They were solemn questions and solemn replies, drawn out of the + deeps of life and sinking back into them. + </p> + <p> + “Frederick,” she said, “for many years we have been happy together, so + happy! Every tragedy of nature has stood at a distance from us except the + loss of our children. We have lived on a sunny pinnacle of our years, + lifted above life’s storms. But of course I have realized that sooner or + later our lot must become the common one: if we did not go down to Sorrow, + Sorrow would climb to us; and I knew that on the heights it dwells best. + That is why I wish to say to you to-night what I shall: I think fate’s + hour has struck for me; I am ready to hear it. Its arrow has already left + the bow and is on its way; I open my heart to receive it. This is as I + have always wished; I have said that if life had any greatest tragedy, for + me, I hoped it would come when I was happiest; thus I should confront it + all. I have never drunk half of my cup of happiness, as you know, and let + the other half waste; I must go equally to the depth of any suffering. + Worse than the suffering, I think, would be the feeling that I had shirked + some of it, had stepped aside, or shut my eyes, or in any manner shown + myself a cowardly soul.” + </p> + <p> + After a pause she went over this subject as though she were not satisfied + that she had made it clear. + </p> + <p> + “I have always said that the real pathos of things is the grief that comes + to us in life when life is at its best—when no one is to blame—when + no one has committed a fault—when suffering is meted out to us as + the reward of our perfect obedience to the laws of nature. In earlier + years when we used to read Keats together, who most of all of the world’s + poets felt the things that pass, even then I was wondering at the way in + which he brings this out: that to understand Sorrow it must be separated + from sorrows: they would be like shadows darkening the bright disk of + life’s clear tragedy, thus rendering it less bravely seen. + </p> + <p> + “And so he is always telling us not to summon sad pictures nor play with + mournful emblems; not to feign ourselves as standing on the banks of + Lethe, gloomiest of rivers; nor to gather wolf’s bane and twist the poison + out of its tight roots; nor set before us the cup of hemlock; nor bind + about our temples the ruby grape of nightshade; nor count over the berries + of the yew tree which guards sad places; nor think of the beetle ticking + in the bed post, nor watch the wings of the death moth, nor listen to the + elegy of the owl—the voice of ruins. Not these! they are the emblems + of our sorrows. But the emblems of Sorrow are beautiful things at their + perfect moment; a red peony just opening, a rainbow seen for an instant on + the white foam, youth not yet faded but already fading, joy with its + finger on his lips, bidding adieu. + </p> + <p> + “And so with all my happiness about me, I wish to know life’s tragedy. And + to know it, Frederick, not to infer it: <i>I want to be told</i>.” + </p> + <p> + “If you can be told, you shall be told,” he said. + </p> + <p> + She changed her position as though seeking physical relief and composure. + Then she began: + </p> + <p> + “Years ago when you were a student in Germany, you had a college friend. + You went home with him two or three years at Christmas and celebrated the + German Christmas. It was in this way that we came to have the Christmas + Tree in our house—through memory of him and of those years. You have + often described to me how you and he in summer went Alpine climbing, and + far up in some green valley girdled with glaciers lay of afternoons under + some fir tree, reading and drowsing in the crystalline air. You told me of + your nights of wandering down the Rhine together when the heart turns so + intimately to the heart beside it. He was German youth and song and dream + and happiness to you. Tell me this: before you lost him that last summer + over the crevasse, had you begun to tire of him? Was there anything in you + that began to draw back from anything in him? As you now look back at the + friendship of your youth, have the years lessened your regret for him?” + </p> + <p> + He answered out of the ideals of his youth: + </p> + <p> + “The longer I knew him, the more I loved him. I never tired of being with + him. Nothing in me ever drew back from anything in him. When he was lost, + the whole world lost some of its strength and nobility. After all the + years, if he could come back, he would find me unchanged—that friend + of my youth!” + </p> + <p> + With a peculiar change of voice she asked next: + </p> + <p> + “The doctor, Herbert and Elsie’s father, our nearest neighbor, your + closest friend now in middle life. You see a great deal of the doctor; he + is often here, and you and he often sit up late at night, talking with one + another about many things: do you ever tire of the doctor and wish him + away? Have you any feeling toward him that you try to keep secret from me? + Can you be a perfectly frank man with this friend of your middle life?” + </p> + <p> + “The longer I know him the more I like him, honor him, trust him. I never + tire of his companionship or his conversation; I have no disguises with + him and need none.” + </p> + <p> + “The children! As the children grow older do you care less for them? Do + they begin to wear on you? Are they a clog, an interference? Have Harold + and Elizabeth ceased forming new growths of affection in you? Do you ever + unconsciously seek pretexts for avoiding them?” + </p> + <p> + “The older they grow, the more I love them. The more they interest me and + tempt away from work and duties. I am more drawn to be with them and I + live more and more in the thought of what they are becoming.” + </p> + <p> + “Your work! Does your work attract you less than formerly? Does it develop + in you the purpose to be something more or stifle in you the regret to be + something less? Is it a snare to idleness or a goad to toil?” + </p> + <p> + “As the mariner steers for the lighthouse, as the hound runs down the + stag, as the soldier wakes to the bugle, as the miner digs for fortune, as + the drunkard drains the cup, as the saint watches the cross, I follow my + work, I follow my work.” + </p> + <p> + “Life, life itself, does it increase in value or lessen? Is the world + still morning to you with your work ahead or afternoon when you begin to + tire and to think of rest?” + </p> + <p> + “The world to me is as early morning to a man going forth to his work. + Where the human race is from and whither it is hurrying and why it exists + at all; why a human being loves what it loves and hates what it hates; why + it is faithful when it could be unfaithful and faithless when it should be + true; how civilized man can fight single handed against the ages that were + his lower past—how he can develop self-renunciation out of + selfishness and his own wisdom out of surrounding folly,—all these + are questions that mean more and more. My work is but beginning and the + world is morning.” + </p> + <p> + “This house! Are you tired of it now that it is older? Would you rather + move into a new one?” + </p> + <p> + “I love this house more and more. No other dwelling could take its place. + Any other could be but a shelter; this is home. And I care more for it now + that the signs of age begin to settle on it. If it were a ruin, I should + love it best!” + </p> + <p> + She leaned over and looked down at the two setters lying at her feet. + </p> + <p> + “Do you care less for the dogs of the house as they grow older?” + </p> + <p> + “I think more of them and take better care of them now that their hunting + days are over.” + </p> + <p> + “The friend of your youth—the friend of your middle age—the + children—your profession—the world of human life—this + house—the dogs of the house—you care more for them all as time + passes?” + </p> + <p> + “I care more for them all as time passes.” + </p> + <p> + Then there came a great stillness in the room—the stillness of all + listening years. + </p> + <p> + “Am I the only thing that you care less for as time passes?” + </p> + <p> + There was no reply. + </p> + <p> + “Am I in the way?” + </p> + <p> + There was no reply. + </p> + <p> + “Would you like to go over it all again with another?” + </p> + <p> + There was no reply. + </p> + <p> + She had hidden her face in her hands and pressed her head against the end + of the sofa. Her whole figure shrank lower, as though to escape being + touched by him—to escape the blow of his words. No words came. There + was no touch. + </p> + <p> + A moment later she felt that he must be standing over her, looking down at + her. She would respond to his hand on the back of her neck. He must be + kneeling beside her; his arms would infold her. Then with a kind of + incredible terror she realized that he was not there. At first she could + so little believe it, that with her face still buried in one hand she + searched the air for him with the other, expecting to touch him. + </p> + <p> + Then she cried out to him: + </p> + <p> + “Isn’t there anything you can say to me?” + </p> + <p> + Silence lasted. + </p> + <p> + “<i>Oh, Fred! Fred! Fred! Fred</i>!” + </p> + <p> + In the stillness she began to hear something—the sound of his + footsteps moving on the carpet. She sat up. + </p> + <p> + The room was getting darker; he was putting out the candles. It was too + dark already to see his face. With fascination she began to watch his + hand. How steady it was as it moved among the boughs, extinguishing the + lights. Out they went one by one and back into their darkness returned the + emblems of darker ages—the Forest Memories. + </p> + <p> + A solitary taper was left burning at the pinnacle of the Tree under the + cross: that highest torch of love shining on everything that had + disappeared. + </p> + <p> + He quietly put it out. + </p> + <p> + Yet the light seemed not put out, but instantly to have travelled through + the open parlor door into the adjoining room, her bedroom; for out of that + there now streamed a suffused red light; it came from the lamp near the + great bed in the shadowy corner. + </p> + <p> + This lamp poured its light through a lampshade having the semblance of a + bursting crimson peony as some morning in June the flower with the weight + of its own splendor falls face downward on the grass. And in that room + this soft lamp-light fell here and there on crimson winter draperies. He + had been living alone as a bachelor before he married her. After they + became engaged he, having watched for some favorite color of hers, had had + this room redecorated in that shade. Every winter since she had renewed in + this way or that way these hangings, and now the bridal draperies remained + unchanged—after the changing years. + </p> + <p> + He replaced the taper against the wall and came over and stood before her, + holding out his hands to help her rise. + </p> + <p> + She arose without his aid and passed around him, moving toward her + bedroom. With arms outstretched guarding her but not touching her, he + followed close, for she was unsteady. She entered her bedroom and crossed + to the door of his bedroom; she pushed this open, and keeping her face + bent aside waited for him to go in. He went in and she closed the door on + him and turned the key. Then with a low note, with which the soul tears + out of itself something that has been its life, she made a circlet of her + white arms against the door and laid her profile within this circlet and + stood—the figure of Memory. + </p> + <p> + Thus sometimes a stranger sees a marble figure standing outside a tomb + where some story of love and youth ended: some stranger in a far land,—walking + some afternoon in those quieter grounds where all human stories end; an + autumn bird in the bare branches fluting of its mortality and his heart + singing with the bird of one lost to him—lost to him in his own + country. + </p> + <p> + On the other side of the door the silence was that of a tomb. She had felt + confident—so far as she had expected anything—that he would + speak to her through the door, try to open it, plead with her to open it. + Nothing of the kind occurred. + </p> + <p> + Why did he not come back? What bolt could have separated her from him? + </p> + <p> + The silence began to weigh upon her. + </p> + <p> + Then in the tense stillness she heard him moving quietly about, getting + ready for bed. There were the same movements, familiar to her for years. + She would not open the door, she could not leave it, she could not stand, + no support was near, and she sank to the floor and sat there, leaning her + brow against the lintel. + </p> + <p> + On the other side the quiet preparations went on. + </p> + <p> + She heard him take off his coat and vest and hang them on the back of a + chair. The buttons made a little scraping sound against the wood. Then he + went to his dresser and took off his collar and tie, and he opened a + drawer and laid out a night-shirt. She heard the creaking of a chair under + him as he threw one foot and then the other up across his knee and took + off his shoes and socks. Then there reached her the soft movements of his + bare feet on the carpet (despite her agony the old impulse started in her + to caution him about his slippers). Then followed the brushing of his + teeth and the deliberate bathing of his hands. Then was audible the puff + of breath with which he blew out his lamp after he had turned it low; and + then,—on the other side of the door,—just above her ear his + knock sounded. + </p> + <p> + The same knock waited for and responded to throughout the years; so often + with his little variations of playfulness. Many a time in early summer + when out-of-doors she would be reminded of it by hearing some bird + sounding its love signal on a piece of dry wood—that tap of + heart-beat. Now it crashed close to her ear. + </p> + <p> + Such strength came back to her that she rose as lightly as though her + flesh were but will and spirit. When he knocked again, she was across the + room, sitting on the edge of her bed with her palms pressed together and + thrust between her knees: the instinctive act of a human animal suddenly + chilled to the bone. + </p> + <p> + The knocking sounded again. + </p> + <p> + “Was there anything you needed?” she asked fearfully. + </p> + <p> + There was no response but another knock. + </p> + <p> + She hurriedly raised her voice to make sure that it would reach him. + </p> + <p> + “Was there anything you wanted?” + </p> + <p> + As no response came, the protective maternal instinct took greater alarm, + and she crossed to the door of his room and she repeated her one question: + </p> + <p> + “Did you forget anything?” + </p> + <p> + Her mind refused to release itself from the iteration of that idea: it was + some <i>thing</i>—not herself—that he wanted. + </p> + <p> + He knocked. + </p> + <p> + Her imagination, long oppressed by his silence, now made of his knock some + signal of distress. It took on the authority of an appeal not to be + denied. She unlocked the door and opened it a little way, and once more + she asked her one poor question. + </p> + <p> + His answer to it came in the form of a gentle pressure against the door, + breaking down her resistance. As she applied more strength, this was as + gently overcome; and when the opening was sufficient, he walked past her + into the room. + </p> + <p> + How hushed the house! How still the world outside as the cloud wove in + darkness its mantle of light! + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + VI. THE WHITE DAWN + </h2> + <p> + Day was breaking. + </p> + <p> + The crimson curtains of the bedroom were drawn close, but from behind + their outer edges faint flanges of light began to advance along the wall. + It was a clear light reflected from snow which had sifted in against the + window-panes, was banked on the sills outside, ridged the yard fence, + peaked the little gate-posts, and buried the shrubbery. There was no need + to look out in order to know that it had stopped snowing, that the air was + windless, and that the stars were flashing silver-pale except one—great + golden-croziered shepherd of the thick, soft-footed, moving host. + </p> + <p> + It was Christmas morning on the effulgent Shield. + </p> + <p> + Already there was sufficient light in the room to reveal—less as + actual things than as brown shadows of the memory—a gay company of + socks and stockings hanging from the mantelpiece; sufficient to give + outline to the bulk of a man asleep on the edge of the bed; and it exposed + to view in a corner of the room farthest from the rays a woman sitting in + a straight-backed chair, a shawl thrown about her shoulders over her + night-dress. + </p> + <p> + He always slept till he was awakened; the children, having stayed up past + their usual bedtime, would sleep late also; she had the white dawn to + herself in quietness. + </p> + <p> + She needed it. + </p> + <p> + Sleep could not have come to her had she wished. She had not slept and she + had not lain down, and the sole endeavor during those shattered hours had + been to prepare herself for his awakening. She was not yet ready—she + felt that during the rest of her life she should never be quite ready to + meet him again. Scant time remained now. + </p> + <p> + Soon all over the Shield indoor merriment and outdoor noises would begin. + Wherever in the lowlands any many-chimneyed city, proud of its size, rose + by the sweep of watercourses, or any little inland town was proud of its + smallness and of streets that terminated in the fields; whereever any + hamlet marked the point at which two country roads this morning made the + sign of the white cross, or homesteads stood proudly castled on woody + hilltops, or warmed the heart of the beholder from amid their olive-dark + winter pastures; or far away on the shaggy uplift of the Shield wherever + any cabin clung like a swallow’s nest against the gray Appalachian wall—everywhere + soon would begin the healthy outbreak of joy among men and women and + children—glad about themselves, glad in one another, glad of human + life in a happy world. The many-voiced roar and din of this warm carnival + lay not far away from her across the cold bar of silence. + </p> + <p> + Soon within the house likewise the rush of the children’s feet would + startle her ear; they would be tugging at the door, tugging at her heart. + And as she thought of this, the recollection of old simple things came + pealing back to her from behind life’s hills. The years parted like naked + frozen reeds, and she, sorely stricken in her womanhood, fled backward + till she herself was a child again—safe in her father’s and mother’s + protection. It was Christmas morning, and she in bare feet was tipping + over the cold floors toward their bedroom—toward her stockings. + </p> + <p> + Her father and mother! How she needed them at this moment: they had been + sweethearts all their lives. One picture of them rose with distinctness + before her—for the wounding picture always comes to the wounded + moment. She saw them sitting in their pew far down toward the chancel. + Through a stained glass window (where there was a ladder of angels) the + light fell softly on them—both silver-haired; and as with the voices + of children they were singing out of one book. She remembered how as she + sat between them she had observed her father slip his hand into her + mother’s lap and clasp hers with a steadfastness that wedded her for + eternity; and thus over their linked hands, with the love of their youth + within them and the snows of the years upon them, they sang together: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “Gently, Lord, O gently lead us + * * * * * * + “Through the changes Thou’st decreed us.” + </pre> + <p> + Her father and mother had not been led gently. They had known more than + common share of life’s shocks and violence, its wrongs and meannesses and + ills and griefs. But their faith had never wavered that they were being + led gently; so long as they were led together, to them it was gentle + leading: the richer each in each for aught whereby nature or man could + leave them poorer; the calmer for the shocks; the sweeter for the sour; + the finer with one another because of life’s rudenesses. In after years + she often thought of them as faithful in their dust; and the flowers she + planted over them and watered many a bright day with happy tears brought + up to her in another form the freshness of their unwearied union. + </p> + <p> + That was what she had not doubted her own life would be—with him—when + she had married him. + </p> + <p> + From the moment of the night before when he had forced the door open and + entered her room, they had not exchanged any words nor a glance. He had + lain down and soon fallen asleep; apparently he had offered that to her as + for the moment at least his solution of the matter—that he should + leave her to herself and absent himself in slumber. + </p> + <p> + The instant she knew him to be asleep she set about her preparations. + </p> + <p> + Before he awoke she must be gone—out of the house—anywhere—to + save herself from living any longer with him. His indifference in the + presence of her suffering; his pitiless withdrawal from her of touch and + glance and speech as she had gone down into that darkest of life’s + valleys; his will of iron that since she had insisted upon knowing the + whole truth, know it she should: all this left her wounded and stunned as + by an incredible blow, and she was acting first from the instinct of + removing herself beyond the reach of further humiliation and brutality. + </p> + <p> + Instinctively she took off her wedding ring and laid it on his dresser + beside his watch: he would find it there in the morning and he could + dispose of it. Then she changed her dress for the plainest heavy one and + put on heavy walking shoes. She packed into a handbag a few necessary + things with some heirlooms of her own. Among the latter was a case of + family jewels; and as she opened it, her eyes fell upon her mother’s thin + wedding ring and with quick reverence she slipped that on and kissed it + bitterly. She lifted out also her mother’s locket containing a miniature + daguerreotype of her father and dutifully fed her eyes on that. Her father + was not silver-haired then, but raven-locked; with eyes that men feared at + times but no woman ever. + </p> + <p> + His eyes were on her now as so often in girlhood when he had curbed her + exuberance and guided her waywardness. He was watching as she, coarsely + wrapped and carrying some bundle of things of her own, opened her front + door, left her footprints in the snow on the porch, and passed out—wading + away. Those eyes of his saw what took place the next day: the happiness of + Christmas morning turned into horror; the children wild with distress and + crying—the servants dumb—the inquiry at neighbors’ houses—the + news spreading to the town—the papers—the black ruin. And from + him two restraining words issued for her ear: + </p> + <p> + “My daughter!” + </p> + <p> + Passionately she bore the picture to her lips and her pride answered him. + And so answering, it applied a torch to her blood and her blood took fire + and a flame of rage spread through and swept her. She stopped her + preparations: she had begun to think as well as to feel. + </p> + <p> + She unpacked her travelling bag, putting each article back into its place + with exaggerated pains. Having done this, she stood in the middle of the + floor, looking about her irresolute: then responding to that power of low + suggestion which is one of anger’s weapons, she began to devise malice. + She went to a wardrobe and stooping down took from a bottom drawer—where + long ago it had been stored away under everything else—a shawl that + had been her grandmother’s; a brindled crewel shawl,—sometimes worn + by superannuated women of a former generation; a garment of hideousness. + Once, when a little girl, she had loyally jerked it off her grandmother + because it added to her ugliness and decrepitude. + </p> + <p> + She shook this out with mocking eyes and threw it decoratively around her + shoulders. She strode to the gorgeous peony lampshade and lifting it off, + gibbeted it and scattered the fragments on the floor. She turned the lamp + up as high as it would safely burn so that the huge lidless eye of it + would throw its full glare on him and her. She drew a rocking chair to the + foot of the bed and seating herself put her forefinger up to each temple + and drew out from their hiding places under the mass of her black hair two + long gray locks and let these hang down haglike across her bosom. She + banished the carefully nourished look of youth from her face—dropped + the will to look young—and allowed the forced-back years to rush + into it—into the wastage, the wreckage, which he and Nature, + assisting each other so ably, had wrought in her. + </p> + <p> + She sat there half-crazed, rocking noisily; waiting for the glare of the + lamp to cause him to open his eyes; and she smiled upon him in exultation + of vengeance that she was to live on there in his house—<i>his</i> + house. + </p> + <p> + After a while a darker mood came over her. + </p> + <p> + With noiseless steps lest she awake him, she began to move about the room. + She put out the lamp and lighted her candle and set it where it would be + screened from his face; and where the shadow of the chamber was heaviest, + into that shadow she retired and in it she sat—with furtive look to + see whether he observed her. + </p> + <p> + A pall-like stillness deepened about the bed where he lay. + </p> + <p> + Running in her veins a wellnigh pure stream across the generations was + Anglo-Saxon blood of the world’s fiercest; floating in the tide of it + passions of old family life which had dyed history for all time in + tragedies of false friendship, false love, and false battle; but fiercest + ever about the marriage bed and the betrayal of its vow. A thousand years + from this night some wronged mother of hers, sitting beside some sleeping + father of hers in their forest-beleaguered castle—the moonlight + streaming in upon him through the javelined casement and putting before + her the manly beauty of him—the blond hair matted thick on his + forehead as his helmet had left it, his mouth reddening in his slumber + under its curling gold—some mother of hers whom he had carried off + from other men by might of his sword, thus sitting beside him and knowing + him to be colder to her now than the moon’s dead rays, might have watched + those rays as they travelled away from his figure and put a gleam on his + sword hanging near: a thousand years ago: some mother of hers. + </p> + <p> + It is when the best fails our human nature that the worst volunteers so + often to take its place. The best and the worst—these are the sole + alternatives which many a soul seems to be capable of making: hence life’s + spectacle of swift overthrow, of amazing collapse, ever present about us. + Only the heroic among both men and women, losing the best as their first + choice, fight their way through defeat to the standard of the second best + and fight on there. And whatever one may think of the legend otherwise, + abundant experience justifies the story that it was the Archangel who fell + to the pit. The low never fall far: how can they? They already dwell on + the bottom of things, and many a time they are to be seen there with + vanity that they should inhabit such a privileged highland. + </p> + <p> + During the first of these hours which stretched for her into the tragic + duration of a lifetime, it was a successive falling from a height of moral + splendor; her nature went down through swift stages to the lowest she + harbored either in the long channel of inheritance or as the stirred + sediment of her own imperfections. And as is unfortunately true, this + descent into moral darkness possessed the grateful illusion that it was an + ascent into new light. All evil prompting became good suggestion; every + injustice made its claim to be justification. She enjoyed the elation of + feeling that she was dragging herself out of life’s quicksands upward to + some rock, where there might be loneliness for her, but where there would + be cleanness. The love which consumed her for him raged in her as hatred; + and hatred is born into perfect mastery of its weapons. However young, it + needs not to wait for training in order to know how to destroy. + </p> + <p> + He presented himself to her as a character at last revealed in its + faithlessness and low carnal propensities. What rankled most poignantly in + this spectacle of his final self-exposure was the fact that the cloven + hoof should have been found on noble mountain tops—that he should + have attempted to better his disguise by dwelling near regions of + sublimity. Of all hypocrisy the kind most detestable to her was that which + dares live within spiritual fortresses; and now his whole story of the + Christmas Tree, the solemn marshalling of words about the growth of the + world’s spirit—about the sacrifice of the lower in ourselves to the + higher—this cant now became to her the invocation and homage of the + practised impostor: he had indeed carried the Christmas Tree on his + shoulder into the manger. Not the Manger of Immortal Purity for mankind + but the manger of his own bestiality. + </p> + <p> + Thus scorn and satire became her speech; she soared above him with + spurning; a frenzy of poisoned joy racked her that at the moment when he + had let her know that he wanted to be free—at that moment she might + tell him he had won his freedom at the cheap price of his unworthiness. + </p> + <p> + And thus as she descended, she enjoyed the triumph of rising; so the devil + in us never lacks argument that he is the celestial guide. + </p> + <p> + Moreover, hatred never dwells solitary; it readily finds boon companions. + And at one period of the night she began to look back upon her experience + with a curious sense of prior familiarity—to see it as a story + already known to her at second hand. She viewed it as the first stage of + one of those tragedies that later find their way into the care of family + physicians, into the briefs of lawyers, into the confidence of clergymen, + into the papers and divorce courts, and that receive their final flaying + or canonization on the stage and in novels of the time. Sitting at a + distance, she had within recent years studied in a kind of altruistic + absorption how the nation’s press, the nation’s science of medicine, the + nation’s science of law, the nation’s practice of religion, and the + nation’s imaginative literature were all at work with the same national + omen—the decay of the American family and the downfall of the home. + </p> + <p> + Now this new pestilence raging in other regions of the country had + incredibly reached her, she thought, on the sheltered lowlands where the + older traditions of American home life still lay like foundation rock. The + corruption of it had attacked him; the ruin of it awaited her; and thus + to-night she took her place among those women whom the world first hears + of as in hospitals and sanitariums and places of refuge and in their + graves—and more sadly elsewhere; whose misfortunes interested the + press and whose types attracted the novelists. + </p> + <p> + She was one of them. + </p> + <p> + They swarmed about her; one by one she recognized them: the woman who + unable to bear up under her tragedy soon sinks into eternity—or + walks into it; the woman who disappears from the scene and somewhere under + another name or with another lot lives on—devoting herself to memory + or to forgetfulness; the woman who stays on in the house, giving to the + world no sign for the sake of everything else that still remains to her + but living apart—on the other side of the locked door; the woman who + stays on without locking the door, half-hating, half-loving—the + accepted and rejected compromise; the woman who welcomes the end of the + love-drama as the beginning of peace and the cessation of annoyances; the + woman who begins to act her tragedy to servants and children and + acquaintances—reaping sympathy for herself and sowing ruin and + torture—for him; the woman who drops the care of house, ends his + comforts, thus forcing the sharp reminder of her value as at least an + investment toward his general well-being; the woman who endeavors to + rekindle dying coals by fanning them with fresh fascinations; the woman + who plays upon jealousy and touches the male instinct to keep one’s own + though little prized lest another acquire it and prize it more; the woman + who sets a watch to discover the other woman: they swarmed about her, she + identified each. + </p> + <p> + And she dismissed them. They brought her no aid; she shrank from their + companionship; a strange dread moved her lest <i>they</i> should discover + <i>her</i>. One only she detached from the throng and for a while withdrew + with her into a kind of dual solitude: the woman who when so rejected + turns to another man—the man who is waiting somewhere near. + </p> + <p> + The man <i>she</i> turned to, who for years had hovered near, was the + country doctor, her husband’s tried and closest friend, whose children + were asleep upstairs with her children. During all these years <i>her</i> + secret had been—the doctor. When she had come as a bride into that + neighborhood, he, her husband’s senior by several years, was already well + established in his practice. He had attended her at the birth of her first + child; never afterwards. As time passed, she had discovered that he loved + her; she could never have him again. This had dealt his professional + reputation a wound, but he understood, and he welcomed the wound. + </p> + <p> + Many a night, lying awake near her window, through which noises from the + turnpike plainly reached her, all earthly happiness asleep alongside her, + she could hear the doctor’s buggy passing on its way to some patient, or + on its return from the town where he had patients also. Many a time she + had heard it stop at the front gate: the road of his life there turned in + to her. There were nights of pitch darkness and beating rain; and + sometimes on these she had to know that he was out there. + </p> + <p> + Long she sat in the shadow of her room, looking towards the bed where her + husband slept, but sending the dallying vision toward the doctor. He would + be at the Christmas party; she would be dancing with him. + </p> + <p> + Clouds and darkness descended upon the plain of life and enveloped it. She + groped her way, torn and wounded, downward along the old lost human paths. + </p> + <p> + The endless night scarcely moved on. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <p> + She was wearied out, she was exhausted. There is anger of such intensity + that it scorches and shrivels away the very temptations that are its fuel; + nothing can long survive the blast of that white flame, and being unfed, + it dies out. Moreover, it is the destiny of a portion of mankind that they + are enjoined by their very nobility from winning low battles; these always + go against them: the only victories for them are won when they are leading + the higher forces of human nature in life’s upward conflicts. + </p> + <p> + She was weary, she was exhausted; there was in her for a while neither + moral light nor moral darkness. Her consciousness lay like a boundless + plain on which nothing is visible. She had passed into a great calm; and + slowly there was borne across her spirit a clearness that is like the + radiance of the storm-winged sky. + </p> + <p> + And now in this calm, in this clearness, two small white figures appeared—her + children. Hitherto the energies of her mind had grappled with the problem + of her future; now memories began—memories that decide more perhaps + than anything else for us. And memories began with her children. + </p> + <p> + She arose without making any noise, took her candle, and screening it with + the palm of her hand, started upstairs. + </p> + <p> + There were two ways by either of which she could go; a narrow rear + stairway leading from the parlor straight to their bedrooms, and the broad + stairway in the front hall. From the old maternal night-habit she started + to take the shorter way but thought of the parlor and drew back. This room + had become too truly the Judgment Seat of the Years. She shrank from it as + one who has been arraigned may shrink from a tribunal where sentence has + been pronounced which changes the rest of life. Its flowers, its fruits, + its toys, its ribbons, but deepened the derision and the bitterness. And + the evergreen there in the middle of the room—it became to her as + that tree of the knowledge of good and evil which at Creation’s morning + had driven Woman from Paradise. + </p> + <p> + She chose the other way and started toward the main hall of the house, but + paused in the doorway and looked back at the bed; what if he should awake + in the dark, alone, with no knowledge of where she was? Would he call out + to her—with what voice? Would he come to seek her—with what + emotions? (The tide of memories was setting in now—the drift back to + the old mooring.) + </p> + <p> + Hunt for her! How those words fell like iron strokes on the ear of + remembrance. They registered the beginning of the whole trouble. Up to the + last two years his first act upon reaching home had been to seek her. It + had even been her playfulness at times to slip from room to room for the + delight of proving how persistently he would prolong his search. But one + day some two years before this, when she had entered his study about the + usual hour of his return, bringing flowers for his writing desk, she saw + him sitting there, hat on, driving gloves on, making some notes. The sight + had struck the flowers from her hands; she swiftly gathered them up, and + going to her room, shut herself in; she knew it was the beginning of the + end. + </p> + <p> + The Shadow which lurks in every bridal lamp had become the Spectre of the + bedchamber. + </p> + <p> + When they met later that day, he was not even aware of what he had done or + failed to do, the change in him was so natural to himself. Everything else + had followed: the old look dying out of the eyes; the old touch abandoning + the hands; less time for her in the house, more for work; constraint + beginning between them, the awkwardness of reserve; she seeing Nature’s + movement yet refusing to believe it; then at last resolving to know to the + uttermost and choosing her bridal night as the hour of the ordeal. + </p> + <p> + If he awoke, would he come to seek her—with what feelings? + </p> + <p> + She went on upstairs, holding the candle to one side with her right hand + and supporting herself by the banisters with her left. There was a turn in + the stairway at the second floor, and here the candle rays fell on the + face of the tall clock in the hallway. She sat down on a step, putting the + candle beside her; and there she remained, her elbows on her knees, her + face resting on her palms; and into the abyss of the night dropped the + tranquil strokes. More memories! + </p> + <p> + She was by nature not only alive to all life but alive to surrounding + lifeless things. Much alone in the house, she had sent her happiness + overflowing its dumb environs—humanizing these—drawing them + toward her by a gracious responsive symbolism—extending speech over + realms which nature has not yet awakened to it or which she may have + struck into speechlessness long æons past. + </p> + <p> + She had symbolized the clock; it was the wooden God of Hours; she had + often feigned that it might be propitiated; and opening the door of it she + would pin inside the walls little clusters of blossoms as votive + offerings: if it would only move faster and bring him home! The usual hour + of his return from college was three in the afternoon. She had symbolized + that hour; one stroke for him, one for her, one for the children—the + three in one—the trinity of the household. + </p> + <p> + She sat there on the step with the candle burning beside her. + </p> + <p> + The clock struck three! The sound went through the house: down to him, up + to the children, into her. It was like a cry of a night watch: all is + well! + </p> + <p> + It was the first sound that had reached her from any source during this + agony, and now it did not come from humanity, but from outside humanity; + from Time itself which brings us together and holds us together as long as + possible and then separates us and goes on its way—indifferent + whether we are together or apart; Time which welds the sands into the rock + and then wears the rock away to its separate sands and sends the level + tide softly over them. + </p> + <p> + Once for him, once for her, once for the children! She took up the candle + and went upstairs to them. + </p> + <p> + For a while she stood beside the bed in one room where the two little + girls were asleep clasping each other, cheek against cheek; and in another + room at the bedside of the two little boys, their backs turned on one + another and each with a hand doubled into a promising fist outside the + cover. In a few years how differently the four would be divided and + paired; each boy a young husband, each girl a young wife; and out of the + lives of the two of them who were hers she would then drop into some + second place. If to-night she were realizing what befalls a wife when she + becomes the Incident to her husband, she would then realize what befalls a + woman when the mother becomes the Incident to her children: Woman, twice + the Incident in Nature’s impartial economy! Her son would playfully + confide it to his bride that she must bear with his mother’s whims and + ways. Her daughter would caution her husband that he must overlook + peculiarities and weaknesses. The very study of perfection which she + herself had kindled and fanned in them as the illumination of their lives + they would now turn upon her as a searchlight of her failings. + </p> + <p> + He downstairs would never do that! She could not conceive of his + discussing her with any human being. Even though he should some day desert + her, he would never discuss her. + </p> + <p> + She had lived so secure in the sense of him thus standing with her against + the world, that it was the sheer withdrawal of his strength from her + to-night that had dealt her the cruelest blow. But now she began to ask + herself whether his protection <i>had</i> failed her. Could he have + recognized the situation without rendering it worse? Had he put his arms + around her, might she not have—struck at him? Had he laid a + finger-weight of sympathy on her, would it not have left a scar for life? + Any words of his, would they not have rung in her ears unceasingly? To + pass it over was as though it had never been—was not <i>that</i> his + protection? + </p> + <p> + She suddenly felt a desire to go down into the parlor. She kissed her + child in each room and she returned and kissed the doctor’s children—with + memory of their mother; and then she descended by the rear stairway. + </p> + <p> + She set her candle on the table, where earlier in the night she had placed + the lamp—near the manuscript—and she sat down and looked at + that remorsefully: she had ignored it when he placed it there. + </p> + <p> + He had made her the gift of his work—dedicated to her the triumphs + of his toil. It was his deep cry to her to share with him his widening + career and enter with him into the world’s service. She crossed her hands + over it awhile, and then she left it. + </p> + <p> + The low-burnt candle did not penetrate far into the darkness of the + immense parlor. There was an easy chair near her piano and her music. + After playing when alone, she would often sit there and listen to the + echoes of those influences that come into the soul from music only,—the + rhythmic hauntings of some heaven of diviner beauty. She sat there now + quite in darkness and closed her eyes; and upon her ear began faintly to + beat the sad sublime tones of his story. + </p> + <p> + One of her delights in growing things on the farm had been to watch the + youth of the hemp—a field of it, tall and wandlike and tufted. If + the north wind blew upon it, the myriad stalks as by a common impulse + swayed southward; if a zephyr from the south crossed it, all heads were + instantly bowed before the north. West wind sent it east and east wind + sent it west. + </p> + <p> + And so, it had seemed to her, is that ever living world which we sometimes + call the field of human life in its perpetual summer. It is run through by + many different laws; governed by many distinct forces, each of which + strives to control it wholly—but never does. Selfishness blows on it + like a parching sirocco, and all things seem to bow to the might of + selfishness. Generosity moves across the expanse, and all things are seen + responsive to what is generous. Place yourself where life is lowest and + everything like an avalanche is rushing to the bottom. Place yourself + where character is highest, and lo! the whole world is but one struggle + upward to what is high. You see what you care to see, and find what you + wish to find. + </p> + <p> + In his story of the Forest and the Heart he had wanted to trace but one + law, and he had traced it; he had drawn all things together and bent them + before its majesty: the ancient law of Sacrifice. Of old the high + sacrificed to the low; afterwards the low to the high: once the sacrifice + of others; now the sacrifice of ourselves; but always in ourselves of the + lower to the higher in order that, dying, we may live. + </p> + <p> + With this law he had made his story a story of the world. + </p> + <p> + The star on the Tree bore it back to Chaldæa; the candle bore it to + ancient Persia; the cross bore it to the Nile and Isis and Osiris; the + dove bore it to Syria; the bell bore it to Confucius; the drum bore it to + Buddha; the drinking horn to Greece; the tinsel to Romulus and Rome; the + doll to Abraham and Isaac; the masks to Gaul; the mistletoe to Britain,—and + all brought it to Christ,—Christ the latest world-ideal of sacrifice + that is self-sacrifice and of the giving of all for all. + </p> + <p> + The story was for herself, he had said, and for himself. + </p> + <p> + Himself! Here at last all her pain and wandering of this night ended: at + the bottom of her wound where rankled <i>his problem</i>. + </p> + <p> + From this problem she had most shrunk and into this she now entered: She + sacrificed herself in him! She laid upon herself his temptation and his + struggle. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <p> + Taking her candle, she passed back into her bedroom and screened it where + she had screened it before; then went into his bedroom. + </p> + <p> + She put her wedding ring on again with blanched lips. She went to his + bedside, and drawing to the pillow the chair on which his clothes were + piled, sat down and laid her face over on it; and there in that shrine of + feeling where speech is formed, but whence it never issues, she made her + last communion with him: + </p> + <p> + <i>“You, to whom I gave my youth and all that youth could mean to me; + whose children I have borne and nurtured at my breast—all of whose + eyes I have seen open and the eyes of some of whom I have closed; husband + of my girlhood, loved as no woman ever loved the man who took her home; + strength and laughter of his house; helper of what is best in me; my + defender against things in myself that I cannot govern; pathfinder of my + future; rock of the ebbing years! Though my hair turn white as driven snow + and flesh wither to the bone, I shall never cease to be the flame that you + yourself have kindled. </i> + </p> + <p> + “But never again to you! Let the stillness of nature fall where there must + be stillness! Peace come with its peace! And the room which heard our + whisperings of the night, let it be the Room of the Silences—the + Long Silences! Adieu, cross of living fire that I have so clung to!—Adieu!—Adieu!—Adieu!—Adieu!” + </p> + <p> + She remained as motionless as though she had fallen asleep or would not + lift her head until there had ebbed out of her life upon his pillow the + last drop of things that must go. + </p> + <p> + She there—her whitening head buried on his pillow: it was Life’s + Calvary of the Snows. + </p> + <p> + The dawn found her sitting in the darkest corner of the room, and there it + brightened about her desolately. The moment drew near when she must awaken + him; the ordeal of their meeting must be over before the children rushed + downstairs or the servants knocked. + </p> + <p> + She had plaited her hair in two heavy braids, and down each braid the gray + told its story through the black. And she had brushed it frankly away from + brow and temples so that the contour of her head—one of nature’s + noblest—was seen in its simplicity. It is thus that the women of her + land sometimes prepare themselves at the ceremony of their baptism into a + new life. + </p> + <p> + She had put on a plain night-dress, and her face and shoulders rising out + of this had the austerity of marble—exempt not from ruin, but exempt + from lesser mutation. She looked down at her wrists once and made a little + instinctive movement with her fingers as if to hide them under the + sleeves. + </p> + <p> + Then she approached the bed. As she did so, she turned back midway and + quickly stretched her arms toward the wall as though to flee to it. Then + she drew nearer, a new pitiful fear of him in her eyes—the look of + the rejected. + </p> + <p> + So she stood an instant and then she reclined on the edge of the bed, + resting on one elbow and looking down at him. + </p> + <p> + For years her first words to him on this day had been the world’s best + greeting: + </p> + <p> + “A Merry Christmas!” + </p> + <p> + She tried to summon the words to her lips and have them ready. + </p> + <p> + At the pressure of her body on the bed he opened his eyes and instantly + looked to see what the whole truth was: how she had come out of it all, + what their life was to be henceforth, what their future would be worth. + But at the sight of her so changed—something so gone out of her + forever—with a quick cry he reached his arms for her. She struggled + to get away from him; but he, winding his arms shelteringly about the + youth-shorn head, drew her face close down against his face. She caught at + one of the braids of her hair and threw it across her eyes, and then + silent convulsive sobs rent and tore her, tore her. The torrent of her + tears raining down into his tears. + </p> + <p> + Tears not for Life’s faults but for Life when there are no faults. They + locked in each other’s arms—trying to save each other on Nature’s + vast lonely, tossing, uncaring sea. + </p> + <p> + The rush of children’s feet was heard in the hall and there was smothered + laughter at the door and the soft turning of the knob. + </p> + <p> + It was Christmas Morning. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <p> + The sun rose golden and gathering up its gold threw it forward over the + gladness of the Shield. The farmhouse—such as the poet had sung of + when he could not help singing of American home life—looked out from + under its winter roof with the cheeriness of a human traveller who laughs + at the snow on his hat and shoulders. Smoke poured out of its chimneys, + bespeaking brisk fires for festive purposes. The oak tree beside it stood + quieted of its moaning and tossing. Soon after sunrise a soul of passion + on scarlet wings, rising out of the snow-bowed shrubbery, flew up to a + topmost twig of the oak; and sitting there with its breast to the gorgeous + sun scanned for a little while that landscape of ice. It was beyond its + intelligence to understand how nature could create it for Summer and then + take Summer away. Its wisdom could only have ended in wonderment that a + sun so true could shine on a world so false. + </p> + <p> + Frolicking servants fell to work, sweeping porches and shovelling paths. + After breakfast a heavy-set, middle-aged man, his face red with fireside + warmth and laughter, without hat or gloves or overcoat, rushed out of the + front door pursued by a little soldier sternly booted and capped and + gloved; and the two snowballed each other, going at it furiously. Watching + them through a window a little girl, dancing a dreamy measure of her own, + ever turned inward and beckoned to some one to come and look—beckoned + in vain. + </p> + <p> + All day the little boy beat the drum of Confucius; all day the little girl + played with the doll—hugged to her breast the symbol of ancient + sacrifice, the emblem of the world’s new mercy. Along the turnpike + sleigh-bells were borne hither and thither by rushing horses; and the + shouts of young men on fire to their marrow went echoing across the + shining valleys. + </p> + <p> + Christmas Day! Christmas Day! Christmas Day! + </p> + <p> + One thing about the house stood in tragic aloofness from its surroundings; + just outside the bedroom window grew a cedar, low, thick, covered with + snow except where a bough had been broken off for decorating the house; + here owing to the steepness the snow slid off. The spot looked like a + wound in the side of the Divine purity, and across this open wound the + tree had hung its rosary-beads never to be told by Sorrow’s fingers. + </p> + <p> + The sunset golden and gathering up its last gold threw it backward across + the sadness of the Shield. One by one the stars came back to their + faithful places above the silence and the whiteness. A swinging lamp was + lighted on the front porch and its rays fell on little round mats of snow + stamped off by entering boot heels. On each gatepost a low Christmas star + was set to guide and welcome good neighbors; and between those beacons + soon they came hurrying, fathers and mothers and children assembling for + the party. + </p> + <p> + Late into the night the party lasted. + </p> + <p> + The logs blazed in deep fireplaces and their Forest Memories went to + ashes. Bodily comfort there was and good-will and good wishes and the + robust sensible making the best of what is best on the surface of our + life. And hale eating and drinking as old England itself once ate and + drank at Yuletide. And fast music and dancing that ever wanted to go + faster than the music. + </p> + <p> + The chief feature of the revelry was the distribution of gifts on the + Christmas Tree—the handing over to this person and to that person of + those unread lessons of the ages—little mummied packages of the lord + of time. One thing no one noted. Fresh candles had replaced those burnt + out on the Tree the night before: all the candles were white now. + </p> + <p> + Revellers! Revellers! A crowded canvas! A brilliantly painted scene! + Controlling everything, controlling herself, the lady of the house: + hunting out her guests with some grace that befitted each; laughing and + talking with the doctor; secretly giving most attention to the doctor’s + wife—faded little sufferer; with strength in her to be the American + wife and mother in the home of the poet’s dream: the spiritual majesty of + her bridal veil still about her amid life’s snow as it never lifts itself + from the face of the <i>Jungfrau</i> amid the sad most lovely mountains: + the American wife and mother!—herself the <i>Jungfrau</i> among the + world’s women! + </p> + <p> + The last thing before the company broke up took place what often takes + place there in happy gatherings: the singing of the song of the State + which is also a song of the Nation—its melody of the unfallen home: + with sadness enough in it, God knows, but with sanctity: she seated at the + piano—the others upholding her like a living bulwark. + </p> + <p> + There was another company thronging the rooms that no one wot of: those + Bodiless Ones that often are much more real than the embodied—the + Guests of the Imagination. + </p> + <p> + The Memories were there, strolling back and forth through the chambers arm + and arm with the Years: bestowing no cognizance upon that present scene + nor aware that they were not alone. About the Christmas Tree the Wraiths + of earlier children returned to gambol; and these knew naught of those + later ones who had strangely come out of the unknown to fill their places. + Around the walls stood other majestical Veiled Shapes that bent undivided + attention upon the actual pageant: these were Life’s Pities. Ever and anon + they would lift their noble veils and look out upon that brief flicker of + our mortal joy, and drop them and relapse into their compassionate vigil. + </p> + <p> + But of the Bodiless Ones there gathered a solitary young Shape filled the + entire house with her presence. As the Memories walked through the rooms + with the Years, they paused ever before her and mutely beckoned her to a + place in their Sisterhood. The children who had wandered back peeped shyly + at her but then with some sure instinct of recognition ran to her and + threw down their gifts, to put their arms around her. And the Pities + before they left the house that night walked past her one by one and each + lifted its veil and dropped it more softly. + </p> + <p> + This was the Shape: + </p> + <p> + In the great bedroom on a spot of the carpet under the chandelier—which + had no decoration whatsoever—stood an exquisite Spirit of Youth, + more insubstantial than Spring morning mist, yet most alive; her lips + scarce parted—her skin like white hawthorn shadowed by pink—in + her eyes the modesty of withdrawal from Love—in her heart the + surrender to it. During those distracting hours never did she move nor did + her look once change: she waiting there—waiting for some one to come—waiting. + </p> + <p> + Waiting. + </p> + <div style="height: 6em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg’s Bride of the Mistletoe, by James Lane Allen + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRIDE OF THE MISTLETOE *** + +***** This file should be named 9179-h.htm or 9179-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/9/1/7/9179/ + + +Text file produced by Kevin Handy, Dave Maddock, and Distributed Proofreaders + +HTML file produced by David Widger + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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