Terry. Charles Goff Thomson
for indoors. He donned short coat and thick cap, but as he passed out of the gate a scared little lad, a foreigner, rushed up breathlessly and begged him to come—trouble was brewing on the southside.
His questions elicited meager information. Excited, the lad relapsed so often into his native tongue that Terry could make nothing of his tale.
Hand in hand they hurried through the village, crossed the dark bridge and approached a ramshackle house from which a babble of voices rose in strident argument. The excited chorus abated at Terry's sharp knock and the door was thrown open to disclose the belligerent figure of Tony Ricorro, the leader of the Italian colony. Recognizing the reefered figure that smiled up at him through the falling flakes, Tony's dark scowl faded as he reached out his powerful hands and with a joyous shout fairly lifted Terry into the house.
Terry laughed as the gaudily dressed occupants of the room crowded around him, and greeted most of the score of swarthy men and women by name. Tony masterfully stripped him of his overcoat and cap and placed them in the kitchen from which emanated odors of strange things cooking. The room was stifling with heat and with smells—beer, garlic, tobacco, perfumes, kerosene.
Tony charged in from the kitchen with a bottle of beer but Terry shook his head. Tony was hospitably insistent, "What! No beer?"
"No thanks, Tony."
"What's matt'? Bad stomach?"
"Yes," smiled Terry, "call it that."
He plunged into the business in hand. "Tony, what's the trouble here to-night?"
Tony's first word of explanation was instantly submerged beneath a chorus of voices; the excited crowd surged around Terry, as voluble of gesture as of tongue. Pandemonium descended.
Terry finally silenced the din by standing on his chair and pantomiming his desire to be heard. "Now, listen to me," he began, after quiet was restored, "I'm going to ask you all to keep silent, and to promise me that no one will speak except those I call by name." They all promised—each one not once but in a series of lengthy assurances which he had to raise his hand to cut short.
"Now, Tony, you first. What's the matter?"
Tony's face registered his utter disgust. "What'sa matt'? What'sa matt'? Evra teeng 'sa matt'! Tommor' we christen our bab' and evra' bod' want a name heem!" He glared at the restless circle which ringed them.
The odd wistful twist at the corner of Terry's mouth disappeared for a moment in his slow smile; this was so like these people, who bore big troubles stoically and reacted powerfully to inconsequentials.
He called on several others. All were relatives of Tony or of his wife; sisters, brothers, several "in-laws," Tony's father, two uncles. Each had his or her name for the child, and sound reasons for the choice.
"Tony, where is Felice?" he asked, noting that Tony's wife was not in the crowded dining room.
Tony took him into a dimly lighted room, where his wife lay in bed; the guiltless cause of all this dissension, obviously inured to clamor, was asleep in her arm. She smiled up at Terry as he sat down on the edge of the bed and took her hand.
Tony stood looking down at Felice and their first-born, his heart in his eyes.
"Tony, what does Felice wish to name your son?" Terry asked suddenly.
Receiving no answer, he looked up at Tony and read in the agonized contrition of Tony's dark face that she had not yet been consulted. Tears glistened in the forgiving eyes Felice turned on Tony, and as he flung himself down at the side of the bed and buried his face in her pillow, Terry tiptoed out of the room and softly closed the door.
In a few minutes Tony flung the door open and strode into the room, unashamed of the tears that shone on his rough cheeks.
"You all a go to hell-a with your a-names! Felice, she name-a our boy and to-morrow we go Padre Jenneeng. She a name heem"—he paused with true Latin sense of the value of suspense—"She a name heem—Reechar' Terree—Ricorro!"
A moment of hesitation, of assimilation, and then a hubbub of delighted acceptance and acclaim. Terry stayed but a few minutes, realizing that much as they liked him, there would be more spontaneity at the fiesta if there were none but their own people at the table.
He went in and thanked Felice gravely for the honor she had conferred upon him, wished for them all a merry Christmas, and passed out amid a medley of thanks and benedictions.
The snowfall had ceased. He crossed to the North Side and hastened up Main Street, and though it lacked but an hour of midnight, he found Judd's jewelry store still open. He went in and found young Judd about to close up.
Judd, hollow eyed with the fatigue of the long day, studied his old friend's beaming face: "Hello, Sir Galahad!" he said.
Terry eyed him scornfully: "Hello, Rut!" He drew himself up proudly. "Behold in me a new dignity—I am now a god-father!"
Having in mind the parents' love for the elaborate, he gayly selected an ornate silver cup for the infant.
"I'll engrave it for you after the holidays," Judd offered.
"Good old boy, Judd! The initials will be R—T—R."
He buttoned his coat and went to the door: Judd was musing over the monogram: "Richard—Terry—what's the 'R' stand for, Dick?"
Terry grinned as he called back through the open door.
"Why—Romance, of course!"
He tramped far out the north road through the new fallen snow, his whole being glowing. The stars sparkled through the clear cold air in myriad chorus of the message of hope that one in the East had heralded to a sadder world on another Christmas eve. The snow-flung star beams illuminated the peaceful countryside: there was no moon, no light save the great glow of the heavens, no shadows under gaunt oaks or huddled evergreens.
He was in harmony with the night. He followed the sleigh-rutted highway for several miles, then swung back to town along a woodcutter's trail that edged the lakeshore, winding through the new growths of pine and balsam whose night-black branches were outlined by the white fall.
He loved the open: there was no loneliness here. … Magic-wrought, Deane's phantom figure kept apace, matched step with step along the shore trail through the hushed woods, across the white sheen of open spaces. Ever, when summoned thus, she came to share the hours and the places that he loved best.
Love surged hot through his veins: love of friends, of living, of youth, love of a woman … probably his gift lay at her bedside now, as she slept. …
Unconsciously he slowed his pace and lifted his fine, pale face upward: his low, clear baritone flooded the broken woods, carried far out across the silent frozen lake, unechoed; it was vibrant with the very spirit of yuletide—love of man and woman.
Love, to share again those winged scented days,
Those starry skies:
To see once more your joyous face,
Your tender eyes:
Just to know that years so fair might come again,
Awhile:
Oh! To thrill again to your dear voice—
Your smile!
It was long past midnight when he reached town, his mood chilling indefinably at sight of its dark houses.
"You're a queer old town," he muttered. "You go to bed on this night of nights—yes, and you batten your windows tight against this glorious air—and all of the other glorious things."
Passing the suspicious village constable, he penetrated even his callous heart with the most gladsome Christmas greeting he had heard in many a year.
Home, he stirred the dying logs into flame and sank into a deep cushioned chair drawn up before the glowing embers. The long day had taken no toll of his lithe frame: sleepless, he sat long in