Part 2

Mary Christmas talked not only with her lips. She talked with her brows, her eyes, her hands, her whole body, in a mighty effort to convey by means of harsh, newly found words the story of her life to these, her new friends. Her country lay far across the ocean, across warm inland seas and great sand-swept deserts. It was a high land of tumbling, rockbound red hills and towering, snow-crowned mountains, of broad valleys with streams, of wide, treeless pastures--the homes of thousands of sheep. It was a land of bitter winters and dry, hot summers, thick with dust, which the wind whirled in great storms from the bordering deserts. Against the cold of those winters the people dug their homes in the sloping hillsides, long narrow houses with space for both men and animals, houses roofed with sods and partitioned with stones; and these dwellings were proof also against the hot, parching winds of summer. It was a land over which people had passed for centuries, people of many races, one succeeding another in the march of years, all journeying from the East to the West--hordes of people, sweeping onward with the mercilessness of locusts or of the country’s own burning wind. It was a land where in the spring snow-fed streams glistened on the high mountain-sides and slipped crystal clear through the valleys, with here and there the sound of tiny silver bells. Above all, it was the oldest land in all the world--older than India, than Egypt, than China with her walled towns, older than Jerusalem with Solomon’s Temple, older than the white, ancient cities of Assyria and Babylonia. Its red hills and snowy mountains and wide pastures and clear rivers had been there when Methuselah rounded his nine-hundredth year, and when Enoch took his solemn walk with God.

Mary Christmas loved this land. Even John understood that. When she talked of its clear waters and of its wandering flocks of sheep, a wistfulness haunted her voice like a melody; when she explained to the puzzled children how great bands of people had again and again laid it waste and desolate, numberless years before they were born, the sadness of long centuries burdened her words; when she spoke of its great age, her tones echoed like those of the organ at church, until in one supreme outburst of reverence she rose from her chair, her face uplifted, her arms spread wide after the manner of the ancient prophet in benediction upon his people.

But even as she stood with outstretched arms and glowing face, a change came over her features. The children saw it coming, and the awe in which they had listened, wide-eyed, to her description of this far-off, ancient land gave way to a kind of enchanting anticipation of what might happen next. The sorrowful lines about her mouth hardened until they became almost cruel; her long nose, with the bend in it so peculiarly unlike any that they had seen, widened at the nostrils with the great breaths which she was drawing; the sad yearning which had softened her eyes faded as a candle burns itself out in a dark room, and into the blackness of their depths there came an ominous red gleam. She was no longer a poet, a patriot, or a prophet. She was one who hates, bitterly, relentlessly.

Now her voice rose like the rising wind on the bare plains of her own land.

“I live there. I play--like him--like her--like you all. I chase birds and catch falling blossoms in my hair. Then I grow up. I go to a great city--to Erzerum.” To the listening children this strange word boomed like the sound of the town drum on Memorial Day. “I marry there--a good man. We have two children--a girl, a boy. My husband, he buy silks, laces, jewels, all beautiful from Persia, and sell them. We are happy. Then a year ago--when the blossoms fall--like this--the Turks come. They run through Erzerum--their horses run! They kill--they kill--they _kill_!”

Her words ended in a high succession of convulsive liquid notes. Her hands, which she had clasped above her head as her story mounted into tragedy, twined and knotted themselves together. For a moment grief dulled the ominous red gleam in her eyes, and the children saw with consternation that they swam with tears. But the tears did not fall, much to Mary Wescott’s relief. The hard lines came back around her mouth. Again her nostrils quivered.

“They kill my husband. They want to kill me and my children--but my husband--he hide us in a cave where he keep the silks and jewels. They do not find us. If they find us--_I_ kill--one--two--three! _I_ kill because they kill my husband!”

The fascinated children stared, half frightened, now at their guest who dared to use a word so tremendous in its import, and who, moreover, they felt sure, was entirely capable of its actual embodiment, now at their parents, between whom they had caught in passing certain questioning glances. Their father and mother, it must be admitted, were experiencing not a few misgivings at this bloodthirsty turn in Mary Christmas’ recital; for although they had not made a scientific study of the child from the embryo to the beginning of adolescence, they understood quite as clearly as modern parents that there are several things of which children may just as well remain in ignorance.

It was John who came to the rescue with quite the most satisfactory thing that ever happened. When the old clock on the mantel had ticked away those few monstrous, weighty seconds during which the Wescott children were about to embark their thoughts on perilous, uncharted seas, during which Mr. Wescott fruitlessly searched for new topics of conversation and Mrs. Wescott feared that her husband, for once in his life, had made a mistake in judgment, during which Mary Christmas sat with her hands knotted above her head and her revengeful words echoing in the still room, John suddenly knew exactly what to do. Nor was this strange if one stops to think about it. John was five years old--only a few short years removed from those light-filled days when he had known Everything. Perhaps some shadowy recollection of those days, some sense of that which was then luminous and orderly, came stealing upon him like the faint fragrance of violets in a fresh spring rain. Perhaps it was the knowledge which he had then--which we all have, but so soon forget--that made him suddenly understand the nothingness of hatred and revenge.

But explanations at best are tiresome things. The important fact now is, not how he knew what to do, but that he did it. He slipped from his chair on the other side of his mother, crossed the room behind his father, and walked straight into Mary Christmas’ lap with its ample folds of black. He must have walked straight into her heart, too, and driven out everything else but himself, for her arms came down and went around him, and her sudden tears made ultramarine spots on his blue gingham blouse. Then Mr. Wescott blew his nose mightily, and Mrs. Wescott fussed with the tea things, and Mary and Cynthia alike felt their throats grow big to bursting, and Roger shook a threatening fist at the surprised head of the baseball captain which had appeared in the window. And it all ended by Mary Christmas’ telling them of Raphael and little Mary, aged respectively five and seven, who were staying with their aunt in Erzerum until their mother could earn enough money to bring them across the ocean to America.

“To Portland,” explained Father Wescott to the children. “That’s where Mary Christmas lives now, when she’s not traveling about.”

The four Wescotts knew Portland. For years, in fact up to this very minute, they had held it in highest esteem. It was the largest city as well as one of the oldest in the State of Maine; it had been the scene of a battle in the Revolutionary War; it was the birthplace of their favorite poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. They had dreamed of going with their father some day to see Portland--its fort, the gray battleships in its wide harbor, the room in which Mr. Longfellow was born. Now all at once it had become a charmless place. Its years were but moments in the light of the centuries which had passed over the land of Mary Christmas; its single combat meaningless and trifling compared with the numberless battles which had succeeded one another upon those hoary plains. Even its Mr. Longfellow, venerable, indeed patriarchal as he looked in the school readers, was simply out of it when lined up for inspection between Methuselah and Enoch! Portland, heretofore a dream city, had, in view of this recent knowledge, become as dull, stale, and familiar as their own village. The one lure that it now possessed was the fact that Mary Christmas had chosen it as her new home.

“And now,” said Mary Christmas, all dark things faded from her face, “now I give gifts. Come!”

III

UNBURIED TREASURE

She rose from the table, still holding John by the hand, and led the way into the library, on the floor of which lay the great black bundle, like a mysterious treasure from a story-book of wonders. The excited children stood at the four points of the compass while with their father’s help she unbound the cords that held it in place. At last the shining black cover opened, disclosing yet other bundles which in their turn must be undone. The few slow seconds which the great clock in the corner ticked away seemed like hours before these smaller bundles disclosed their motley contents upon the library floor.

Here were household necessities of every sort from paring-knives, metal dishcloths, and packages of tacks to needles, thimbles, and spools of thread; articles of clothing--overalls, elastic suspenders, underwear for children, hairpins, dozens of pairs of stockings, collars of celluloid and linen, hair ribbons of entrancing colors, shoe laces, safety pins and pins that were not safe, tape measures, soap, scissors, tooth powder--all the hundred-and-one indispensable things for which families in the outlying districts of New England in those pre-Ford days of the nineties were often at a loss. Here were toys,--rubber dolls, rattles, spinning tops, blocks, bouncing balls, and jumping-ropes with shining, many-colored handles of wood,--toys for the birthdays of some Maine farmer’s children whose father could not get easily to town. And here, too, in a far recess of the smallest inside bundle, just as in the last and most precious box of an Arabian Night’s treasure chest, were certain intriguing parcels wrapped in fantastic, figured papers of blue and green and gold--parcels that sent out into the Wescott library, as on the wings of some invisible bird, a rich, spicy fragrance that made one suddenly oblivious of the stockings and the safety pins.

It was from these fascinating packages that Mary Christmas selected her gifts--that is, for all but Roger, whose longing eyes had never left a certain red-handled jumping-rope even when that strange, heavy fragrance had floated through the room. To Mary Wescott she gave a sewing-case in glossy black wood, inlaid with tiny flowers and birds of mother-of-pearl in delightful confusion. A tiny golden key, which held all the magic of golden keys everywhere, unlocked it with an unmistakable click, and the lifted cover revealed compartments with all manner of colored silks and threads, a pair of shining scissors, and a silver thimble. There must have been magic, indeed, in that golden key, as anyone would have suspected, for as Mary Wescott looked at the inside and tried on the thimble, she wondered how darning her stockings could ever have seemed a task.

For Cynthia there was the most entrancing napkin ring, of that loveliest shade of blue which makes one think of far-away hills in a September haze and of tall spikes of larkspur in the gathering dusk; and it, too, bore flowers whose inlaid petals and tiny, sparkling leaves formed a wreath around the ring. Could she ever again, she wondered as she fingered it, think folding her napkin irksome or needless?

When John’s turn came, Mary Christmas stood still for a moment and looked at him, standing sturdily apart from the others in his blue gingham suit, his chubby hands behind him, his wide, inquiring eyes intent upon her face. Then she laughed, like the sound of the spring streams in her own land, and drew out yet another package from the farthest recess of all. Turning her back, she laughed again, softly, as she undid the paper. Then, suddenly facing them, she took two quick steps toward John, and placed over his curly head and around his soft cheeks a silk cap made of the most bewildering colors in orderly rows and topped by the most piquant of gold tassels. What wonder that everyone applauded then, even to the baseball team that had been surreptitiously watching proceedings for a full hour from various stations about the porch and beneath the windows! For John in blue gingham, his cheeks flushed to a bright pink, his brown eyes shining with excitement and pleasure, some tendrils of golden hair escaping from the silken band of his new cap, which might have graced the dark head of some Eastern prince, was quite too rare a sight to be received in silence!

Mrs. Wescott was so engrossed in her youngest child that she was quite taken off her guard when her present came. She was trying to stifle a wish, which seemed to her vain and extravagant, namely, that some great painter might make a portrait of John in his new cap, when she became suddenly aware of something enfolding her like a white, fragrant mist. And there she was in Mary Christmas’ present, with her children laughing at the surprise on her face and her husband standing in amazed admiration beside her.

It was a shawl, but such a one as no Wescott had ever looked upon. At first its lacy fretwork seemed indistinct and fantastic, like the frost on a January windowpane. But as the children with careful fingers lifted portions of it to look through its tiny squares and to marvel at its fineness, they saw that pictures were woven within it--pictures in delicate traceries of birds, butterflies, and flowers. Then Mary Christmas swept it suddenly from their mother’s shoulders and held it widespread against her black skirt; and lo! across the high centre of it a flock of birds was winging its way as though across great stretches of sky. In the lower centre swarms of butterflies danced and hovered and poised among hundreds of flowers. But the corners, as Mary Christmas showed them each in turn, were the most wonderful of all. In the first, some tired sheep rested under a great tree; in the second, the moon and stars looked down upon a silent hill; a child danced in the third among falling flower-petals; in the last, a branching rosebush clambered over a high wall and sent sprays of swaying blossoms into some hidden garden. And as they looked at it and marveled, that same richly laden fragrance stole from it like an invisible presence and drifted away up the wide-mouthed fireplace, among the musty leaves of their father’s old books, and through the open window into the June sunlight.

“I made it,” said Mary Christmas, throwing it again over Mrs. Wescott’s shoulders; “some in Erzerum, some in Portland last winter--I made it. Now it is yours!”

“I can’t take it,” cried Mrs. Wescott, finding her voice with a great effort. “It’s too lovely for me--and all that work, too! John, tell her I can’t take it.”

But Mr. Wescott, astute in so many things, was really positively stupid about that shawl. He just stood and stared at his wife quite as though he had not seen her nearly every day for thirteen years, and made only the feeblest of protests as a weak echo to her own. Mary Christmas paid not the slightest heed to their remonstrances, except to shake her hands in a peculiarly final gesture. She was wholly concerned now with her gift for Mr. Wescott.

Now Father Wescott afforded a real problem. For him whom Mary Christmas most delighted to honor, what gift among all the articles in her great bundle was in the least suitable? She made a puzzled movement toward the stockings and suspenders, but drew back dissatisfied. She fingered cards of cuff buttons, combs in leather pockets, collars of all sorts, only to drop them almost immediately. The fragrant, figured parcels offered no solution. Obviously they contained nothing for a gentleman.

Then an idea came to Mary Christmas which made her halt in the inspection of her wares and laugh in glad relief. She knew now the very thing for Father Wescott, the thing that would suggest to him always the depths of her gratitude. With another of her quick movements she loosed the red necklace about her throat and threw it impulsively over the head of Mr. Wescott. It lay across his white collar and on the bosom of his white shirt, red as the geraniums in the porch tubs outside or as great drops of blood. And as Mary Christmas saw the stones pulsating there below Mr. Wescott’s surprised, embarrassed face, she did a most peculiar thing. She threw herself face downward on the library floor and kissed the self-polished toe of his shoe!

The four Wescotts were quite at a loss as to how to receive this last event in such a long and overwhelming train. The laugh had died away on Mary Christmas’ lips before she had thrown herself at their father’s feet. Apparently, then, the situation was not to be considered humorous. And yet the expression on their father’s face, to the older ones at least, banished seriousness. He had been sufficiently ill at ease when Mary Christmas had thrown the beads about his neck, but now that she lay prostrate before him, the embarrassment on his face had given place to a kind of empty foolishness which was irresistibly funny. So, in spite of the warning glances of their mother, they laughed--laughs which were echoed and re-echoed by the baseball team, and in which Mary Christmas, raising herself from the floor, joined, perhaps a little tolerantly.

Mr. Wescott then went to the stable, somewhat, it must be admitted, after the manner of one escaping from a situation, to harness the horses preparatory to carrying their guest and her great bundle a few miles on their way; and in his absence, while Mary Christmas tied up her wares in neat packages and placed them for wrapping in the black oilcloth, Mrs. Wescott explained to the children the reason for this singular expression of her gratitude.

Appearing suddenly that morning in the yard of a house on the outskirts of the village, she had startled the inmates, who were quite unused to peddlers of her description, into the fear that, with her dark face, uncertain speech, strange gestures, and outlandish clothing, she must mean evil--thievery, kidnapping, or worse. Suspicious and impulsive by nature, they had not stayed to question her, but, hailing the town sheriff who by ill luck was passing by, had demanded that she be taken before the judge to answer for misdeeds contemplated if, fortunately, not performed. Such had been the source of her anxious tears, the traces of which had so nearly troubled Mary Wescott, and such the occasion which had prompted Mr. Wescott, secure in her innocence, to protect and befriend her.

They drove away a few minutes later, Mr. Wescott holding the reins and Mary Christmas beside him, her great bundle securely tied to the back of the carriage. The children waved them up the hill and out of sight, repeating to themselves her farewell words:--

“Next year when the roads are dry and the petals fall--like this--I come again. You wait--for me?”

That night every Wescott dreamed of Mary Christmas. Mr. Wescott sat quite up in bed, declaiming indignantly his very words of that morning to her stupid accusers, and aroused Mrs. Wescott, who for what seemed hours had been enduring the hardships of a Monday in an Armenian kitchen. Roger killed three monstrous Turks, alone and single-handed, to avenge the death of Mary Christmas’ husband; while John was a shepherd boy, tending his sheep in wide pastures and wearing a many-colored cap, at which all of his silly sheep laughed again and again. As for Mary and Cynthia, they spent the night in a whirl of excitement in which Methuselah and Enoch strove to enlist Mr. Longfellow’s assistance in a headlong rush against hordes of barbarians. The State of Maine bard, however, obstinately declined to be “up and doing”; indeed, he proved himself worse than useless in the heat of the encounter, although he doubtless realized more fully than ever before the earnestness and the reality of life!

IV

A WILD CRAB-APPLE TREE

That winter, which everyone called an “old-fashioned” one because the harbor was frozen for miles toward the open sea and the snow blocked the roads in great, curving drifts, they planned and replanned the journey which Mary Christmas would make in the spring. Often in the evening, when the supper dishes were washed and put away, when Mr. Wescott was lost in the _Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan_ and the boys were popping corn over the glowing embers in the deep fireplace, Mrs. Wescott, Mary, and Cynthia would trace her way in the family atlas, which had been purchased at some sacrifice because it featured the State of Maine.

Leaving Portland, her great pack bulging with her wares, she would doubtless take the road to Brunswick, the seat of Bowdoin College, that venerable institution which had been the Alma Mater alike of Mr. Longfellow and of Father Wescott. From thence she would follow the coast, passing through Wiscasset, which held the oldest deed in America in its courthouse, through the friendly towns of Newcastle and Damariscotta, through Belfast and Searsport, once famous for their sea captains and for their gracious, white-winged clippers. The roads that she would travel would be like those they knew--roads that climbed rocky, fir-clad hills and at their summits gave one far-reaching stretches of sea with surf-swept islands and towering white lighthouses; lonely by-roads that led to scraggly farms and gray farmhouses, where lived people who fought a losing fight against the barren land; elm-shaded village roads bordered by green-shuttered houses and by white gates like their own. She would cross the wide Penobscot where it narrowed enough to encourage a ferry, and, passing through Bucksport with its gray fort and old graveyard, would come by easy stages over dark, tumbling hills, on which great shadows alternately marched and rested, to their own village.

“Only you can never be quite sure,” said Father Wescott, forsaking P. H. Sheridan, “that she won’t come through Castine. With summer visitors there, she ought to sell a lot of that hand-stuff.”

Then Mary Christmas’ route must be retraced just in case she did choose Castine; and they continued to bend over the map until the sharp, warm smell of burned pop-corn arrested their attention.

“Dear me, boys!” cried Mrs. Wescott. “Can’t you manage just one popperful without so many old maids and burned ones?”

Mr. Wescott said nothing, but the face that he again raised from P. H. Sheridan was mildly remonstrant. He was what people called in the nineties “a great hand” for hot buttered pop-corn.

At half-past eight, filled with pop-corn and a drowsy content, they went to bed to dream of Mary Christmas, while the bitterness of the cold made a solitude of the village, and the lighted windows, one by one, faded into the darkness without.