Part 7

In the college town where Cynthia lives there are Mary Christmas days. When one steals over the campus and lures students from their books, Cynthia, too, is lured from Jeremy Taylor and Richard Baxter and other ecclesiastical heroes who, colleges so often decree, shall be studied in the spring. Forgetting them all for a season, Cynthia talks about words--the glory and magic that lie in so many of them: _silent_, _holy_, _high_, _garden_. And as her students listen, perhaps a trifle wonderingly, they see a blue light, the color of harebells in sunshine, creep into her clear gray eyes and linger there. But, although they do not know it, there is one word that she does not name--a word of three letters which years ago unlocked for her the treasure-house of ages.

There are Mary Christmas days in the city where John works, the city of Mr. Longfellow and, during her sojourn, of Mary Christmas herself. Now John has grown into one of those mysterious men who know all about stocks and bonds and reserve banks and the other entanglements of high finance. When he reads that “East Cuba Sugar 7½s were active in 106¼,” he is no more puzzled than you or I when we read that “Mr. and Mrs. Brown left immediately for Kansas City and points west.” Moreover, upon occasion he can talk in such terms. But when a Mary Christmas day brings drifting petals to the old gardens in Portland, and the sun lies warm on St. Stephen’s church, John forgets all matters of high finance. His associates have even known him to become irritated when asked a simple question concerning Missouri Pacific 4s. A restlessness drives him early from the office and sets him walking far into the country, along a coast road where the long shadows of the trees are mirrored in the still water. It is late when he comes back to his rooms, but not too late for him to light his pipe and to sit by his open window in the white moonlight. And more than once on nights like these--though we confess it in the strictest confidence--he has drawn from a faded green-and-gold box in his trunk a silk cap with many colors in orderly rows. This he puts upon his head in a most absurd fashion, for it is much too small for him; and, watching the blue spirals of smoke, he dreams of a certain day long ago when his father came up the street, _wearing his collar and tie_!

Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

Italics are represented thus _italic_.