The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 53, March, 1862. Various
It was there when the night was over and morning began to dawn. Christmas morning! he remembered,—it was something to him now! Never again a homeless, solitary man! You would think the man weak, if I were to tell you how this word “home” had taken possession of him,—how he had planned out work through the long night: success to come, but with his wife nearest his heart, and the homely farm-house and the old schoolmaster in the centre of the picture. Such an humble castle in the air! Christmas morning was surely something to him. Yet, as the night passed, he went back to the years that had been wasted, with an unavailing bitterness. He would not turn from the truth, that, with his strength of body and brain to command happiness and growth, his life had been a failure. I think it was first on that night that the story of the despised Nazarene came to him with a new meaning,—One who came to gather up these broken fragments of lives and save them with His own. But vaguely, though: Christmas-day as yet was to him the day when love came into the world. He knew the meaning of that. So he watched with an eagerness new to him the day breaking. He could see Margaret’s window, and a dim light in it: she would be awake, praying for him, no doubt. He pondered on that. Would you think Holmes weak, if he forsook the faith of Fichte, sometime, led by a woman’s hand? Think of the apostle of the positive philosophers, and say no more. He could see a flickering light at dawn crossing the hall: he remembered the old schoolmaster’s habit well,—calling “Happy Christmas” at every door: he meant to go down there for breakfast, as he used to do, imagining how the old man would wring his hands, with a “Holla! you’re welcome home, Stephen, boy!” and Mrs. Howth would bring out the jars of pine-apple preserve which her sister sent her every year from the West Indies. And then–Never mind what then. Stephen Holmes was very much in love, and this Christmas-day had much to bring him. Yet it was with a solemn shadow on his face that he watched the dawn, showing that he grasped the awful meaning of this day that “brought love into the world.” Through the clear, frosty night he could hear a low chime of distant bells shiver the air, hurrying faint and far to tell the glad tidings. He fancied that the dawn flushed warm to hear the story,—that the very earth should rejoice in its frozen depths, if it were true. If it were true!—if this passion in his heart were but a part of an all-embracing power, in whose clear depths the world struggled vainly!—if it were true that this Christ did come to make that love clear to us! There would be some meaning then in the old schoolmaster’s joy, in the bells wakening the city yonder, in even poor Lois’s thorough content in this day,—for it would be, he knew, a thrice-happy day to her. A strange story that of the Child coming into the world,—simple! He thought of it, watching, through his cold, gray eyes, how all the fresh morning told it,—it was in the very air; thinking how its echo stole through the whole world,—how innumerable children’s voices told it in eager laughter,—how even the lowest slave half-smiled, on waking, to think it was Christmas-day, the day that Christ was born. He could hear from the church on the hill that they were singing again the old song of the angels. Did this matter to him? Did he care, with the new throb in his heart, who was born this day? There is no smile on his face as he listens to the words, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men”; it bends lower,—lower only. But in the selfish eyes there are warm tears, and on his worn face a sad and solemn joy.
I am going to end my story now, There are phases more vivid in the commonplace lives of these men and women, I do not doubt: love as poignant as pain in its joy; crime, weak and foul and foolish, like all crime; silent self-sacrifices: but I leave them for you to paint; you will find colors enough in your own house and heart.
As for Christmas-day, neither you nor I need try to do justice to that theme: how the old schoolmaster went about, bustling, his thin face quite hot with enthusiasm, and muttering, “God bless my soul!”—hardly recovered from the sudden delight of finding his old pupil waiting for him when he went down in the morning; how he insisted on being led by him, and nobody else, all day, and before half an hour had confided, under solemn pledges of secrecy, the great project of the book about Bertrand de Born; how even easy Mrs. Howth found her hospitable Virginian blood in a glow at the unexpected breakfast-guest,—settling into more confident pleasure as dinner came on, for which success was surer; how cold it was, outside; how Joel piled on great fires, and went off on some mysterious errand, having “other chores to do than idling and duddering”; how the day rose into a climax of perfection at dinner-time, to Mrs. Howth’s mind,—the turkey being done to a delicious brown, the plum-pudding quivering like luscious jelly (a Christian dinner to-day, if we starve the rest of the year!). Even Dr. Knowles, who brought a great bouquet out for the schoolmaster, was in an unwonted good-humor; and Mr. Holmes, of whom she stood a little in dread, enjoyed it all with such zest, and was so attentive to them all, but Margaret. They hardly spoke to each other all day; it quite fretted the old lady; indeed, she gave the girl a good scolding about it out in the pantry, until she was ready to cry. She had looked that way all day, however.
Knowles was hurt deep enough when he saw Holmes, and suspected the worst, under all his good-humor. It was a bitter disappointment to give up the girl; for, beside the great work, he loved her in an uncouth fashion, and hated Holmes. He met her alone in the morning; but when he saw how pale she grew, expecting his outbreak, and how she glanced timidly in at the room where Stephen was, he relented. Something in the wet brown eye perhaps recalled a forgotten dream of his boyhood; for he sighed sharply, and did not swear as he meant to. All he said was, that “women will be women, and that she had a worse job on her hands than the House of Refuge,”—which she put down to the account of his ill-temper, and only laughed, and made him shake hands.
Lois and her father came out in the old cart in high state across the bleak, snowy hills, quite aglow with all they had seen at the farm-houses on the road. Margaret had arranged a settle for the sick girl by the kitchen-fire, but they all came out to speak to her.
As for the dinner, it was the essence of all Christmas dinners: Dickens himself, the priest of the genial day, would have been contented. The old schoolmaster and his wife had hearts big and warm enough to do the perpetual honors of a baronial castle; so you may know how the little room and the faces about the homely table glowed and brightened. Even Knowles began to think that Holmes might not be so bad, after all, recalling the chicken in the mill, and,—
“Well, it was better to think well of all men, poor devils!”
I am sorry to say there was a short thunder-storm in the very midst of the dinner. Knowles and Mr. Howth, in their anxiety to keep off from ancient subjects of dispute, came, for a wonder, on modern politics, and of course there was a terrible collision, which made Mrs. Howth quite breathless: it was over in a minute, however, and it was hard to tell which was the most repentant. Knowles, as you know, was a disciple of Garrison, and the old schoolmaster was (will the “Atlantic” bear it?) a States’-rights man, as you might expect from his antecedents,—suspected, indeed, of being a contributor to “De Bow’s Review.” I may as well come out with the whole truth, and acknowledge that at the present writing the old gentleman is the very hottest Secessionist I know. If it hurts the type, write it down a vice of blood, O printers of New England!—or else, like Uncle Toby’s recording angel, drop a tear upon the word, and blot it out forever.
The dinner, perhaps, was fresher and heartier after that. Then Knowles went back to town; and in the middle of the afternoon, as it grew dusk, Lois started, knowing how many would come into her little shanty in the evening to wish her Happy Christmas, although it was over. They piled up comforts and blankets in the cart, and she lay on them quite snugly, her scarred child’s-face looking out from a great woollen hood Mrs. Howth gave her. Old Yare held Barney, with his hat in his hand, looking as if he deserved hanging, but very proud of the kindness they all showed his girl. Holmes gave him some money for a Christmas gift, and he took it, eagerly enough. For some unexpressed reason, they stood a long time in the snow bidding Lois good-bye; and for the same reason, it may be, she was loath to go, looking at each one earnestly as she laughed and grew red and pale answering them, kissing Mrs. Howth’s hand when she gave it to her. When the cart did drive away, she watched them standing there until she was out of sight, and waved her scrap of a handkerchief; and when the road turned down the hill, lay down and softly cried to herself.
Now that they were alone they gathered close about the fire, while the day without grew gray and colder,—Margaret in her old place by her father’s knee. Some dim instinct had troubled the