Part 3

“I am always delighted to meet Albert’s friends,” the second smiled. “He tells me you wouldn’t come to see his blocks. I really think you will have to come if only to keep him quiet. For tea tomorrow, perhaps?”

Wallace bowed, as Albert’s mother passed on. The girl turned toward the vestry. “Now to my class,” she said. “I do wish you would take it, instead.” Her eyes met his for a second, half twinkling, half earnest.

He shook his head. “Really, I’m unfit. You don’t know.” He spoke seriously.

Their eyes were together a second longer, unspoken questions passing between them, and then she left him. As he went down the path from the church he heard behind him the shrill piping of the Sunday School, singing the opening hymn, and he smiled at the sound, for it touched forgotten stops in his memory. Gilsey, he reflected, was just about getting up at this moment, after his Sunday morning loaf in bed, and was probably swearing at the hot water tap as he shaved himself. Smith and Stedman, maybe, were finishing breakfast at the club, and solemnly debating the tremendous question of how they would kill the remainder of the day. Mercer was getting ready the Sunday afternoon assignment book in a newspaper office stale with the tobacco smoke of the night before, and doubtless planning to get away early for a bridge game--his Sunday afternoon recreation. How they would all sneer at Wallace if they knew he was coming from church, and listening with wistful delight to the drone of Sunday School behind him!

The following afternoon, when school was out, Wallace dragged his toboggan to the hill, and joined once more in the sport. The slide was still intact. The bully’s fangs had evidently been drawn. Miss Woodford was there, with Albert. For an hour Wallace’s toboggan was packed with shouting small boys, who treated him now like one of them, an unconscious flattery which he found very pleasant. Then, as the sun began to sink through a green sky into the tops of the hemlocks far across the snowy fields, Wallace left his toboggan behind, for Joe to take proud charge of, and walked home with the girl and Albert. The shouts died away behind them. It was almost twilight in the village street. As they came to Miss Woodford’s gate, Wallace saw a red lamp in the window, glowing between the evergreens. He paused abruptly.

“I can’t tell you what a curious sensation that lighted window square gives me, gleaming behind the trees over the snow,” he said. “But in some strange way it takes me back to the days when I was no older than Albert, and Christmas was a reality. Ever since I came to North Topsville I’ve had a curious sensation of familiarity, though I was never here before in my life. Just now, if my mother should be waiting at the door, I’d not be surprised.”

“Your mother is dead?” the girl asked.

“And my father. I left New England many years ago, and I guess I’ve been a man without a country ever since. Now I’m coming back home.”

It may be he spoke wistfully, for the girl did not reply for a moment, and little Albert ran ahead with the toboggan.

“We New Englanders never quite forget, do we?” she finally said. “We are like the Irish in that. I--I trust you will continue to feel at home in North Topsville. We are surely New England here, especially in our ratio of the sexes! I’m one of sixty-seven old maids in this small village.”

Wallace looked at her, with her firm body in its white sweater, her full-colored cheeks, her keen, dancing eyes, and suddenly laughed. “Then that’s proof positive of Mr. Shaw’s ‘Man and Superman’ theory,” he said, “and--well, some of you are merely indifferent.”

The girl darted a look at him. “No woman ever tells what she really thinks of Mr. Shaw’s theory,” she replied, leading the way up the path.

Presently Wallace was trying to drink tea and reproduce the Woolworth Tower in blocks at the same time, in a square, mahogany-furnished room which appeared to have been lived in for a century and yet to be freshly and cheerfully of today. He saw Miss Woodford for the first time without hat or wraps. She had run upstairs and returned with slippers on instead of high boots, and he noticed that her stockings were of heavy wool. Somehow he was pleased at this common-sense concession to the climate. Her hair was copious and rebellious. Inside of the house, she looked riotously healthy, in odd contrast to the women of New York. Her sister, evidently a recent widow, was more subdued, though she, too, had a twinkle in her eyes, a palpable inheritance from the white-haired woman who sat upright and energetic at the tea table and astounded Wallace by saying, “Since my daughter spoke of you I have read one of your stories in a magazine, and I don’t like it very much.”

“Which one was it?” asked Wallace, looking up from the pile of blocks in front of him on the rug. His eyes met the old lady’s, and she seemed pleased at the challenge.

“It was about a man and a woman--all magazine stories are--who have all kinds of emotions at a violin recital. It seemed rather turgid to me. I call that form of affection a sublimated species of Dutch courage.”

Wallace joined in the laugh. “I guess you are right,” he said, “but you must try to excuse me as a New Yorker. You see, we live in such a restricted round of artificial pursuits and pleasures that we have to substitute art for nature as a stimulant.”

“Speaking of stimulants, have some more tea,” said the old lady. “Albert, pass the gentleman’s cup.”

“He ain’t got the tower did yet,” said the boy.

“Albert!”

Albert brought the cup.

Presently Albert’s mother took him off, protesting, to his supper, and Wallace and the girl sat before the fire while the mother chatted on an amazing variety of topics, evidently pleased at the chance of a new listener, and asked innumerable questions about affairs of the hour, which the man answered as best he could.

The girl came with him to the outer door.

“I like your mother,” he said.

“Most people do, who aren’t afraid of her,” she smiled.

As he drew on his gloves, she stood in the doorway not minding the cold, and the last glimpse he had was of her face, rosy and smiling, in the slit of golden light, her eyes alone telling him good night, while the face of Albert was suddenly squeezed through between her skirts and the door frame and his small voice piped, “I got a steam train you ain’t saw!”

“You _haven’t seen_,” Wallace heard faintly, as the door closed.

Even the little shops in North Topsville were gay for Christmas. Nearly all had small evergreens before the doors, and attempted window displays. As Wallace walked back for supper, it occurred to him that he ought to buy Albert a present. But there seemed to be nothing quite satisfactory in the local market. It would be a good joke to write and ask one of the To-Hell-with-the-Merry-Yule-Tide Association to select it for him in New York. He smiled as he thought of Mercer’s remarks when the request came. What was the name of that Fifth Avenue toy shop, anyhow? Wallace searched his memory till the name came to him, and wrote at once for a toy aeroplane such as he had seen in the windows, the propeller operated by rubber bands. But he didn’t write to Mercer. He wanted to be sure of the toy.

The next day it snowed, a soft, steady, dry fall, and after working all the morning before his cheerful fire, the ideas coming with unaccustomed fertility, Wallace set out for a tramp. He wondered if he dared ask the girl to go with him, and was still debating the point when he found himself on her porch. Yes, she would go; she loved to tramp in the snow. In three minutes she reappeared, wrapped in white woollens, and strode beside him down the path, while the wails of Albert were heard at being left behind.

“Poor chap,” said Wallace, “it’s a great tragedy not to be allowed to do what the big folks are doing. Perhaps I can make him a snow lady to cheer him up when we get back. Where shall we walk?”

“How would you like to take a tramp to Christmas?” the girl asked.

“Have we time?” he smiled.

She didn’t answer, but set off up the road at a swinging pace.

“You see, the honor of the town is rather at stake,” she said presently. “We can’t let you get away still a heathen. We’ve _got_ to show you Christmas.”

“Will we meet Santa Claus?” he asked.

“Oh, no, not in the daytime, silly. But we may see the prints of his reindeers’ hoofs.”

They turned up a side road after half a mile of brisk walking, passed one or two farmhouses, and began to climb a hill. The snow, which had been stinging their faces, was now abating. The wind had broken into the northwest, and in that quarter a rift of blue sky appeared.

“Look,” cried the girl, “it is clearing! Oh, I’m going to show you something beautiful!”

They now turned up a wood road, and began to make their way with difficulty through unbroken snow, four inches of feathery new fall on top, and beneath that the half-crusted old snow through which their feet broke. Wallace found it hard work, and looked at his companion solicitously. “Isn’t this too hard walking for you?” he asked.

“Are you getting tired?” she smiled. “We really should have brought snowshoes, but you’ll have to go a considerable distance to fag me. I’m used to it.”

“You are quite different from some women I’ve known in recent years, that’s a fact,” said he. “You are so wonderfully healthy!”

“I’m disgustingly so,” she laughed. “Look! One of Santa’s reindeer!”

She was on her knees in the snow, examining a hoof print. “And there are more!” she added. “See, he’s tramped around that sumach bush, and nibbled off all the buds!”

“Are we getting near Christmas?” asked Wallace.

She rose, shook her skirt, and started on. “We are,” she cried, “and here’s the sun to decorate the trees!”

Sure enough, as she spoke the sun came out, and instantly the woods around them--a grove of young chestnuts and maples--became radiant with frostwork on every twig, arching into groins of tracery overhead. Wallace fairly gasped with delight, and the girl smiled into his face.

“Have you anything as nice as that in New York?” she said. “This is all mine, too. I own this wood lot all myself.”

She hurried him on through the sunlit, elfin aisles of the frost cathedral till suddenly the hard timber ended, and a grove of young spruce and hemlock confronted them, with now and then a patriarchal old pine lifting far above the lesser trees and holding out the dazzling snow on its branches against the blue sky.

“Come in, come in,” the girl whispered, “Christmas is in here!”

Close behind her, he followed in among the evergreens. The branches shook snow down upon them as they passed through till they were powdered white. A few chickadees hopped, half invisible, among the thick foliage. A moment later they stood in an open glade, where a few dead goldenrod stalks stood up in lovely Japanese simplicity above the white carpet, and all about them was a ring of perfect Christmas trees, each loaded with snow on its lateral branches, dazzling snow against the green in the afternoon sun. Above was the blue winter sky. Only the chickadees’ song broke the perfect silence.

“This is where the Christmas trees live,” said the girl, softly. “Now, do you believe?”

“I believe,” he answered. “And there is a present for me on every branch.”

“What is that?”

He looked into her face. “Perhaps I can’t tell you now,” he answered. “I shall have to take it home and open it. I’m not used to presents, and I can’t guess from the feel of the bundle.”

“I hope it’s something nice,” she smiled.

“I’m sure of that,” said he, his eyes still on hers.

So they stood for an instant, their eyes meeting, and then her gaze dropped.

They spoke more seriously as they tramped homeward.

“Your mother’s criticism of my story, it was just--I see that now,” he said. “After all, to anyone who lives near woods like these, who has children to care for, and neighbors’ troubles to adjust, and the welfare of a community on his conscience, the life of some of us in New York, between theatres and concerts and clubs and teas, must seem rather--well, rather useless. I’ve thought sometimes--most of the time, I fear--that life outside of New York was a pretty dull and deadening thing, that I couldn’t be happy anywhere else. That’s the typical New York view. Yet all the while these woods were here, these elfin aisles of frost and twig--and--and you walking down them.”

“I know the New York view very well,” she answered, after the briefest pause, in which his last personality seemed to hover between them till she put it from her, not angrily, still less coquettishly, but rather as an interruption to graver thought. “But if you lived here in North Topsville long you would learn that there is something to be said for New York, too. I should hate to live in New York all my days. I think I should rise up like Samson and push over the walls if I were cooped up in a flat. But you noticed how Mother just ate you up conversationally? Well, that was because you came from New York, I mean because you had touched all the currents of thought and activity just by being there amid so many active people. We have to go down to New York once in a while to restock our brains as well as our wardrobes. And you’ve no idea how good the old street looks when we come back!”

“But here,” Wallace said, “you have neighbors, you have a community life, you are of use to other people. I suppose one could be in town, too, if he were big enough to realize the opportunities--to go out for them. But the average man in a city isn’t big enough.”

“Of use to other people, yes,” she answered, eagerly. “That more than anything else is at the bottom of what silly little philosophy of life I, as a woman, am permitted to have. My friends in New York ask me, as they are rushing me off to a concert or a theatre or a tea, what I find to do with myself in the country all winter. I don’t tell them--what’s the use? But there’s so much to do! So much I’m not fitted to do, though I try. You know Joe, who helped you build the slide--the merry, red-haired little chap? You must like Joe! Joe’s father drinks. How are we going to keep Joe from drinking? We mustn’t let him go the same way, must we? That’s just one of a hundred problems--all too hard for me. Sometimes I come out here to these woods and just ask and ask for help!”

Wallace looked into her flushed, eager face, lovely in its transfiguration of earnestness, and something in his own soul rose up and choked him. He saw his life as utter selfishness, and he was ashamed, ashamed as he had never been before.

“I--I--came here looking for Christmas,” he said slowly, “but I guess it’s something different from what I thought. I guess I was just a sentimental searcher after my lost childhood. Christmas is--is service, isn’t it?”

The girl looked at him, and suddenly put out her hand. He took it in his. “Yes, oh yes!” she answered. “It is service and the joy of service. It is just being glad of the chance! Oh, please always believe that!”

She gave his hand an eager pressure, while her face glowed to his.

“I promise,” he answered.

Then her fingers slipped away, and they tramped on in silence, deep in their thoughts. The woods seemed more than ever to him a frost cathedral.

Out on the open road, in the freedom of clear walking, they swung along at a faster pace, and laughter returned. They entered her house for tea, and once more Wallace saw her rebellious hair about her face, and once more the little hands of Albert grasped his, dragging him to see his toys, and sent a thrill to his heart, and once more he sat opposite to the girl in the firelight and talked, with the mother leading the conversation. He felt as if he were once more almost a part of a real family, as he had not been for many, many years. It was with a pang that he rose to go. The girl shook hands with him in the door. He could only say “Thank you,” awkwardly, and went to his hotel in a daze, like a man walking in new worlds not yet realized.

The next morning he wrote to New York for a Boy Scout manual, and for more of his clothes and possessions. At dinner a message came from the girl asking him to join in a trip to the woods after a Christmas tree, and of course he went. At the Woodford house he found a big lumber sledge waiting, with Albert already dancing up and down beside the driver, and Joe, with three other boys, dangling their legs behind. The girl soon joined them, and they went jingling up the street, the youngsters chattering, and yelling at their companions on the walk.

When they reached the grove of spruce and hemlock, everybody sprang from the sledge and began to prospect for trees.

“Don’t let them cut any from the Christmas ring,” whispered Wallace. “I--I shouldn’t want that ring altered. Please!”

The girl looked at him, and colored a little, nodding an affirmation. “You haven’t told me what the present was,” she whispered.

“I will--some day,” he answered. “I can’t quite make it out myself yet.”

For the next five minutes there was much scampering about and excitement and shouting. But presently each boy selected a tree, and Wallace, leading Albert by the hand, up to his tiny knees in snow, found a tree which just suited that young person, and then the ax went the round, and the sledge was loaded with the fragrant evergreens.

On the homeward trip, Wallace was aware of the old Christmas tingle in his veins, for beside him the boys chattered of their holiday hopes, of sleds and books and tools and toys long desired; behind him was the pile of fragrant spruce; all about him was the white world and the cold air and the jingle of sleighbells. But he was aware of something else--strange and new, of which his memory had no record. He felt an odd, new tenderness toward these children; their chatter was music to him, yes, to him who lived between his club and his apartment and never saw a child from one month to the next! He put an arm about Albert to hold him on the sledge, and longed suddenly to press the little body hard against his side. He was aware, too, of the girl--above all of the girl; but not, somehow, apart from these other little lives and this new tenderness for childhood, but rather as the crown and completion of his mood. He thought of it first as his mood, and then mentally altered the word. No, it was not a mood. It was a new, spiritual attitude, surely. It was his present on the Christmas trees, the present _she_ had given him. He longed to tell her of it. He looked at her, over the laughing, eager faces of the boys, and her eyes smiled back. He was too happy to speak. Perhaps she knew that, for she did not speak, either. When he took her hand to help her alight, it seemed to him as if they were older friends than when the ride began. An hour later, in the twilight dimness of her hall, she said to him:

“Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Mother wants you to dine with us--early, because of Albert--and maybe you’ll help us set up the tree and decorate it. We’ll try to be as Christmasy as we can for you.”

“Tomorrow I’ll--I’ll tell you what the present was,” he answered. “Ah, you’ve shown me Christmas already. I can’t explain--perhaps I shouldn’t say anything--but somehow I have felt today as if I had known you a long time, as if I had known you always, but something had separated us.” He laughed a little, embarrassed how to continue, for she was silent, her face averted. “I--guess that’s a pretty common way for a man to feel when he meets somebody who comes into his life with a big, glad, upsetting rush,” he went on. Then he finished lamely, “Rosetti has a poem about it, I recall.”

There was a long silence. In the house behind Wallace could hear Albert’s voice, chattering excitedly to his mother as he ate his supper. In the sitting room he could hear the old lady poking the fire energetically--she did everything energetically. A big grandfather’s clock on the stair landing ticked in time to his heart throbs--a curious, irrelevant fact which his mind laid hold of as the mind will in such tense moments. Finally the girl spoke, her voice low, but her eyes looking frankly up into his.

“What you have just said seems to connect me, a little more personally than I’m afraid I deserve, with Christmas,” she answered. “Isn’t it really little Albert you’ve known so long, not I?”

“It is you--Auntie Nora,” he whispered back. “Oh, I can’t tell you now, but I will--I will! Why were all the intervening years?”

“We are taught there is a reason for everything,” she smiled, her eyes veiled as a woman can veil her eyes when she chooses. But her color was high, nor did she move away from him. In the half dusk of the hall they were close together to see each other’s faces, and to hear each other’s low-spoken words. Her presence thrilled him. “Good night,” he suddenly whispered, taking her hand and holding it hard in his. “I shall find Christmas tomorrow!”

“I--I hope so,” she whispered back.

Her smile had gone, and the veil from her eyes. They seemed suddenly the eyes of all good women he was looking into. They gazed into his and told him in some mysterious way that a bond existed between him and her, that she desired his happiness, that she desired it to be the happiness which comes from the highest living. Her hand was warm in his. She did not withdraw it, but held his fingers firmly, while her eyes were lifted telling him these things the tongue cannot utter. His own eyes filled with strange tears, of happiness and humbleness, and he left her in silence.

At his hotel room he found the big parcel containing Albert’s aeroplane, and also, in his mail, a final threat from the other members of the To-Hell-with-the-Merry-Yule-Tide Association. With a smile, he put the letter in his pocket, and, unpacking the aeroplane, consumed the half hour before dinner putting it together. When it was assembled, he placed it on his bed, contemplated it in the light of Albert’s emotions--and found it good.

It was there on the bed when he came up from dinner--a child’s toy in his room, a warming reminder, a symbol. He drew a picture and wrote a poem to go with it, and then, seeing the moonlight on the village roofs, he went out into the street, his shoes squeaking on the packed snow in the zero weather, and swung up the road. In the house behind the evergreens the sitting-room window squares glowed warmly. Inside, by the fire or the lamp, she was sitting. Wallace two weeks before would have laughed down the suggestion that he could be such a banal idiot as to haunt the roadway before a woman’s house, thrilled by the thought that she was inside. Yet here he was, in the moonlight, gazing at the red window squares beyond the snowy evergreens, all his conscious being flooded with the memory of the girl within and the sense of home and hearth and loved ones.

Home and hearth--those words began to chime in his brain. Losing them, one lost Christmas. Christmas was service, and the joy and celebration of service, she had said. But were not they, the home and hearth, at the beginning and the end of service? What was all the industrial struggle of the world for at the bottom but to gain them? What was liberty but the opportunity to enjoy them? What generous or holy impulse but owed its birth to them, where even the race is born? The light went out behind the evergreens, and a moment later reappeared in the second story. He saw a figure come to the window, look for a second, and then draw down the shade. It was she! That was her chamber! Foolishly, happily, tenderly, Wallace lifted his face toward it and shaped his lips into a kiss.

As he went back to the hotel his life seemed as clear before him as the shadows of the tree trunks cast by the moonlight on the snow.