they were all to spend christmas eve with us, our nearest and dearest. on christmas day even the kinfolk farthest removed, both as to kin and to kind, have a right by virtue of red holly to one’s companionship. but christmas eve is for the meeting of one’s dearest and they had all been summoned to our house: the chartres, the cleatams, miss willie lillieblade, hobart eddy, avis and lawrence, and enid and david and the baby. as for viola and our telephone and lisa and eric they were all in naples and i dare say looking in each other’s eyes as if vesuvius were a mere hill.
there was to be with us one other—eunice wells, who was lame. she was in new york on the pleasant business of receiving a considerable legacy from a relative, a friend of ours, whose will, though eunice had previously been unknown to pelleas and me, endeared her to us.
“to my beloved niece, eunice wells,” the testament went, “i give and bequeath this and that for her piety, her love of learning and her incomparable courage in bearing sorrow.”
was not that the living may breathing in a rigid and word-bound instrument of the law? and what a picture of eunice wells. pelleas and i had sought her out, welcomed her, and bidden her on christmas eve to dine with us alone and to grace our merry evening.
at five o’clock on the day before christmas, just as pelleas and i rested from holly hanging and were longing for our tea, hobart eddy was announced. i say “announced” because we usually construe nichola’s smile at our drawing-room door to mean hobart eddy. she smiles for few but to hobart she is openly complaisant, unfolding from the leather of her cheek an expression of real benignity.
“how very jolly you look,” he said, as we sat in the ingle. “holly over the blindfold hope and down the curtains and, as i live, mistletoe on the sconces. aunt etarre, i shall kiss you from sconce to sconce.”
“do,” said i; “of late pelleas is grown appallingly confident of my single-minded regard.”
“alas,” hobart said, “nobody wants to kiss me for myself alone.”
on which he put back his head and sat looking up at the blindfold hope, wreathed with holly. and his fine, square chin without threat of dimple, and his splendid, clear-cut face, and his hand drooping a little from the arm of his chair sent me back to my old persistent hope. heaven had manifestly intended him to be a young husband. he of all men should have been sitting before his own hearth of holly and later making ready the morrow’s yule-tree for such little hearts as adore yule-trees....
suddenly hobart eddy looked over at us and, “i say, you know,” he said, “what do you think it is all for?”
“the holly?” pelleas asked unsuspectingly.
“the mistletoe?” i hazarded.
“no, no,” said hobart eddy with simplicity, “everything.”
pelleas and i looked at each other almost guiltily. here were we two, always standing up for life and promising others that it would yield good things; and yet what in the world could we say to that question of hobart’s, fairly general though it is: “what is it all for?”
pelleas spoke first, as became the more philosophical.
“it’s to do one’s best, wouldn’t one say?” he said, “and to let the rest go.”
“ah, yes, i see,” said hobart eddy, talking the primal things in his trim staccato, “but it’s so deuced unnatural not to know why.”
“yes,” pelleas admitted, “yes, it is unnatural. but when one does one’s worst it gets more unnatural than ever.”
hobart eddy looked critically at the fire.
“but, good lord,” he said helplessly, “suppose—suppose a black beetle argues that way, and does his best, and lives to a good old beetle age. and suppose another black beetle gives up in the beginning, and takes some morphine-for-beetles, and next minute gets crushed by a watering cart. what then?”
“but i,” said pelleas with admirable dignity, “am not a beetle.”
“but confound it, sir,” hobart said, “i’m afraid i am. that’s the difference.”
“all philosophical arguments,” pelleas observed, wrinkling the corners of his eyes, “end that way. but beetles or not, doing one’s best is the only way out.”
“but the ‘best’ of a beetle—” hobart shrugged.
then i spoke out with conviction.
“you, for example, hobart eddy,” i said, “would be a perfect husband.”
“thanks, dear heart,” he replied, “it’s a common virtue, that.”
“it’s very uncommon,” i protested stoutly; “i can think of no one besides pelleas and you and wilfred and horace and lawrence and david and our telephone and eric who in the least possess it. hobart eddy, if you would marry—”
“don’t tell me, aunt etarre,” he said, “that a married beetle is in the scheme of things any nearer the solution than a single one. besides—” he added and stopped. i had noted, when we were on this not infrequent subject, that he was wont to say this, and stop; and when he did so my heart always went a thought faster than my reason: what if he did love some one of whom we had never guessed? but that i dismissed as absurd; for in that case, how should she not love him?
“you were meant by heaven to be a husband,” i muttered, unconvinced, “you look at a picture on the wall as if you were saying: ‘how are you to-day, dear?’”
“but even if one does one’s best, as you say,” hobart went on, “it’s the being beaten in the end that annoys me. i hate the certainty of being beaten in the end. i can throw it off now i’m young—comparatively young. but look at ’em pile up: failures, humiliations, estrangements, the beastly little stabs at you, your own cursed mistakes—why, one is beaten in the beginning, for that matter. when you’re young, even a little young, you don’t know that. but as you get older, even supposing you do your best, you know you’re beaten. it’s deuced unsportsmanlike of somebody.”
i looked at pelleas with the glance that means an alarm, for something to be done at once. he knew; and he did quite what i had hoped.
“we are more than seventy,” pelleas said serenely, “and we’re not beaten.”
“but you—” hobart protested, “you’ve had half the world at your feet. you’ve won everything. you’ve been ...” and so on, in his choicest social hyperbole.
“hobart,” pelleas said, “etarre and i have been married for fifty years. in that time we have lost, year after year, both hopes and realities. i have seen my work harshly criticized and even justly rejected. one year we had hardly a centime to pay nichola. as it is, we escape from each day by way of the dark for fear the next will find us penniless. we lost—we need not speak of that, but you know how our little boy—my son—died before his first birthday. o, do you think.... the sorrows, the estrangements, the failures, the ill-health, the little stabs at us, above all the cursed mistakes of my own—do you think we have not had these? do you think we don’t know, hobart? do you think we haven’t paid, to the last farthing? good god!” said pelleas. “and yet we are not beaten. and we never shall be beaten, dead or alive. and without defiance. without defiance.”
“no,” said i, nodding with all my might, “never beaten. except for a little at a time when it hurts most. but never beaten.”
“how, though?” hobart said helplessly, “i say, how do you do it, you know?”
“well, you see,” pelleas answered gravely, “i don’t know much about myself. one doesn’t know. i don’t know where i stop and where the rest of it begins. i stop somewhere, i dare say—my consciousness and all that must stop somewhere. but i’ve never found the last of me. i’ve always felt as if i were working along with a few sets of faculties when i’ve really got no end of them. and i don’t know where these stop. perhaps they don’t stop at all. and so when i get a knock-down blow i fall all of a heap—that is, as much of me as i know about falls. that much of me may be beaten. but not the rest. and then i reach up a hand to the rest of me that i don’t know about and i say: ‘but there’s all that strength left that i don’t know yet. and i don’t know where that stops. i’ve never found out that it stops at all. it is infinite strength and i can use it and be it when i like.’ beaten?” said pelleas; “i can no more be beaten than i can be smothered in the open air. that strength is exhaustless, like the air. and nothing can shut it out—nothing.”
“not even your own mistakes? not even irreparable loss?” said hobart.
“no,” pelleas said, “those are hardest. but not even those.”
o, i could not have loved him if he had talked to hobart about resignation and rewards. yet perhaps to some these are another language for victory—i do not know.
“isn’t that better,” pelleas demanded, “than taking morphine-for-beetles? besides, after a while you learn what that other strength is. you learn who it is. and how near that someone is. but not always at first—not at first.”
“but alone ... one is so deucedly alone ...” said hobart uncertainly.
“of course,” pelleas said, “we need an amazing lot of little human cheerings-up. the part of us with which we are acquainted has to be cheered up somewhat. well, and isn’t it—isn’t it? look at the charming things that are always happening! and these help one to believe right and left.”
i hardly heard nichola come in with the tea. hobart absently took the heavy tray from her and then, while she arranged it:—
“but in the last analysis,” he said, “you’ve got to dig your way out of things alone, haven’t you? nobody can help you.”
“no!” pelleas cried, “no, you have not. not when you learn who the strength is....”
but with that my attention wandered from pelleas to nichola. my royal sèvres always looks so surprised at nichola’s brown hands upon it that i have long expected it to rebuke her for familiarity. and if it had done so at that moment i could have been no more amazed than to see nichola, still bent above the tray, rest her hands on her knees and look sidewise and inquiringly at hobart eddy.
“what nonsense, anyway,” pelleas was saying, “every one can help every one else no end. it’s not in the big lonely fights that we can help much—but it’s in the little human cheerings-up. when we get strength the next thing to do is to give it. beetles or not—it’s merely a point of moral etiquette to do that!”
“ah, but,” hobart said, smiling, unconscious of nichola’s little eyes immovably fixed on his face, “but when they reach you out a hand people usually pinch by instinct instead of patting.”
at that nichola’s little quick-lidded eyes began to wink, brows lifting. and, still leaning hands on knees:—
“yah!” she said, “none of what you say is so.”
nichola employs the indirect method about as habitually as do thunder and lightning. and in this directness of hers hobart, that master of feint and parry, delights.
“no, nichola?” he said, smiling, “no?”
she got stiffly erect, drawing her hands up her apron to her thighs, her eyes winking so fast that i marvel she could see at all.
“but the whole world helps along,” she said shrilly, “or else we should tear each other’s eyes out. what do i do, me? i do not put fruit peel in the waste paper to worrit the ragman. i do not put potato jackets in the stove to worrit the ashman. i do not burn the bones because i think of the next poor dog. what crumbs are left i lay always, always on the back fence for the birds. i kill no living thing but spiders—which the devil made. our lady knows i do very little. but if i was the men with pockets on i’d find a way! i’d find a way, me,” said nichola, wagging her old gray head.
“pockets?” hobart repeated, puzzled.
“for the love of heaven, yes!” nichola cried. “pockets—money—give!” she illustrated in pantomime. “what can i do? on thursday nights i take what sweets are in this house, what flowers are on all the plants, and i carry them to a hospital i know. if you could see how they wait for me on the beds! what can i do? the good god gave me almost no pockets. it is as he says,” she nodded to pelleas, “helping is why. yah! none of what you say is so. mem, i didn’t get no time to frost the nutcakes.”
“it doesn’t matter, nichola—it doesn’t matter,” said i, holding hard to the arms of my chair. so that was where she went on her thursday nights out ... so that was where the occasional blossoms on my plants....
“i dare say you’re right, you know, nichola,” hobart was saying gravely.
she was almost out of the room but she turned, rolling her hands in her apron.
“since bible days i was right,” she said, and leaning forward, nodding her head at every word, to the utter amazement of pelleas and me: “‘they helped everybody his neighbour,’” she quoted freely, “‘and everybody said to his brother, “you be of good courage.” so the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith; and the one that smoothed with the hammer, him that smote with the anvil.’ che!” she cried; “you must start in that way and then some good will come. do i not know? some good will come, i say. it never, never fails.”
“right, nichola,” said hobart, still gravely, “i haven’t a doubt of what you say.”
“the tea’s all gettin’ cold,” she added indifferently as she went between the curtains.
“nichola and i,” pelleas said in distress, “throw in our opinions with the tea, hobart. they don’t come extra.” but he was smiling and so was hobart and so was i, with my inevitable tear.
the next instant nichola was at the portières again.
“the leddy with canaries in her head is in the lib’ry,” she said.
“canaries, nichola?” i echoed.
“it’s the truth!” she proclaimed, “the one with canaries singin’ in her head till it shows through,” and instantly she vanished.
“whom can she mean?” said i helplessly. for i have no acquaintance who has a bird shop though i have always thought that bird-shop proprietors must be charming people.
“it’s probably somebody with parrots on her bonnet,” hobart suggested helpfully.
i hurried across the hall, noting how the holly wreaths showed bright in the mirrors as if the pleasantest things were about to happen. for in dim light a mirror does not merely photograph. it becomes the artist and suggests. and a mirror wreathed with holly on the day before christmas is no more like an ordinary mirror than an ordinary woman is like a bride.
this thought was in my mind as i entered the library and found eunice wells, whose “piety and love of learning and incomparable courage in bearing sorrow” had drawn her to us no more than had her helplessness and her charm. and suddenly i understood that there are some women who seem always like brides, moving in an atmosphere apart, having something of joy and something of wistfulness. with eunice the joy was paramount so that i knew now what nichola had meant by the “canaries singing in her head till it shows through.” but my heart smote me, for it seemed to me that that joy was a flower of renunciation instead of the flower of youth. and how should it be otherwise? for there beside her chair lay her crutch.
“ah,” i cried, “you are just in time, my dear, for a cup of tea and a nutcake with no frosting. and merry christmas—merry christmas!”
i shall not soon forget her as she looked lying back in pelleas’ big chair, all the beauty of her face visible, hidden by no mask of mood; and in her cheek a dimple like the last loving touch in the drawing of her. i had never seen an invalid with a dimple and some way that dimple seemed to link her with life.
“besides,” i continued, “i’ve a friend whom i want you to meet—a man, a youngish man—o, a merry-christmas-and-holly-man, to whom i am devoted. come in as you are—the tea ruins itself!”
“ah, please,” eunice begged at this, “will you forgive me if i sit here instead while you go back to your guest? i would far rather be here and not talk to—to strangers. you will not mind?”
“do quite as you like, dear child,” i replied, for this atrocious ethics is the only proper motto for every hostess.
so, her wraps having been put aside, i made her comfortable by the fire with magazines, and a christmas rose in a vase. and i went away in a kind of misery; for here was one for whom with all my ardour i could plan nothing. her little crutch would bar the way to any future of brightness. i had a swift sense of the mockery that christmas holly may be.
“i amuse myself with nutcakes, me,” said hobart eddy as i entered the drawing-room, “and where, pray, is the canary lady?”
“she is a very fragile canary lady,” i answered sadly; “she is lame, you know, hobart.”
“and has she no tea?” he demanded.
“she was too tired to join us,” i explained; “pelleas will take her cup to her when nichola brings the hot water.”
“let me take it to her,” hobart suggested when nichola came in with the hot-water pot. “i won’t stay,” he promised as i hesitated, “and do let me be useful. i can’t look out for the emotions of the ashman and the next poor dog, but i want to help. helping is why,” he smiled at nichola.
“you must forgive nichola and me our trespasses,” pelleas murmured uneasily.
“forgive them? i’m going to practice them,” hobart said, rising; “i’m going to take tea and a nutcake to the canary lady in the library and cheer her up, carpenter to goldsmith.”
“well, then,” said i, since “do quite as you like” is the proper motto for every hostess, “do so. but mind that you do not stay at all.”
nichola brought the little silver card tray from the hall, and about the plate of cakes and the fragrant cup i laid a spray or two of holly.
“heigh ho! sing, heigh ho! unto the green holly:
most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:”
hobart hummed as he moved away.
“fancy rhyming ‘holly’ with such a sentiment!” i cried after him.
nichola stood nodding her head.
“che!” she said, “i said a word to him about the universe. he understood. some good will come.”
she went away muttering and pelleas and i changed eyes.
“pelleas,” i said wonderingly, “she has ideas!”
we had already surprised her in an emotion or two; but of course ideas are another matter.
“more and more,” pelleas said meditatively, “i suspect people of ideas. they seem sometimes to have ideas when they have no minds. i dare say they are acted on by emanations.”
“but, pelleas,” i said, “think of old nichola going alone to that hospital on her thursday evenings. think of her understanding that helping is why, and quoting from isaiah!”
“she believes,” pelleas meditated, “that our sun is the largest body in all the systems and that our moon is next in size. but for all that she knows helping is why. that the carpenter must encourage the goldsmith. yes, nichola must be acted on by emanations.”
we sat silent for a little. then,
“do you remember,” i asked irrelevantly—but i am not sure that there is such a thing as irrelevance—“how you insisted that every one in the world who is worth anything loves some one as much as we do, or else expects to do so, or else is unhappy because the love went wrong?”
“and it’s true,” said pelleas.
“for all but hobart,” i assented; “it was true for miss willie and for nichola. but not for hobart. and i have been wondering how any one who is not in love can live through a christmas without falling in love. christmas seems a kind of loving-cup of days.”
“we should sing it,” pelleas suggested,
“heigh ho! sing, heigh ho! unto the green holly:
high love is high wisdom, to love not is folly:”
“that is the way it really is,” said i comfortably; and then i woke to the other realities. “pelleas,” i cried, “where is hobart?”
where was hobart eddy indeed? it was quite ten minutes since he had gone with the canary lady’s cup, and i had charged him not to stay at all.
“really,” i said, “we must go after him. this is too bad of him, too—i can’t forgive myself. let us go after him, pelleas.”
i took the little hot-water pot for an excuse and we went across the hall.
“heigh ho! sing, heigh ho! unto the green holly:
high love is high wisdom, to love not is folly:
then, heigh ho! the holly!
this life is most jolly.”
pelleas hummed the whole way.
the library door was ajar and we entered together. do you think that we did not feel the bewilderment of gods and men when we saw, in the firelight, hobart eddy with eunice wells in his arms?
i hugged my little hot-water pot and could find no words as they turned and saw us. but ah, hobart eddy’s face! i say to every one that it was transfigured, like the face of one who has found the secret of the days. and as for dear eunice—but then, had not i, who am a most discerning old woman, already comprehended that eunice had looked like a bride from the beginning?
“aunt etarre!” cried hobart eddy like a boy, “i’ve found her again. i’ve found her!”
i clasped pelleas’ arm while i tried to understand. we who had despaired of contriving for hobart eddy a concrete romance, were we to gather that this was love at first sight, on our hearth-rug? even we have never officiated at anything so spectacular as love at first sight. but my mind caught and clung to that “again.”
“‘again’?” i echoed it.
“i have loved her for years,” hobart said; “she was to have been my wife. and she went away, went without a word, so that i couldn’t trace her, and why do you think she did that? because the lameness came—and she never let me know.”
“it wasn’t ... i thought ... o, i ought not now ...” eunice cried, “but not because i don’t care. o, never that!”
on which, “hobart eddy! eunice!” i uttered. “like a young husband, you know—didn’t i say so? haven’t i always said so? pelleas, you see the rule does apply to hobart too! and i thought of a bride at once, at once and then that dimple—o,” said i, “i don’t know in the least what i’m talking about—at least you don’t know. but i don’t care, because i’m so glad.”
“you dear fairy god-people,” hobart eddy said in the midst of his happiness, “you told me charming things were always happening!”
“to help us to believe,” i heard pelleas saying to himself.
o, i wish that we two had had more to do in bringing it all about. as it was i was very thankful that it proved not to be love at first sight, for i would see one’s love, like one’s bonnets, chosen with a fine deliberation. but about this affair there had been the most sorrowful deliberation. pelleas and i sat on the sofa before them and they told us a fragment here and a fragment there and joy over all. hobart eddy had met her years before in her little new england town. his wooing had been brief and, because of an aunt who knew what it was to be an ogre, nearly secret. week by week through one spring he had gone to see eunice, and then had come her ugly fall from her saddle of which until now he had never known; for when she understood that the lameness was likely to be incurable she and that disgustingly willing aunt had simply disappeared and left no trace at all.
“what else could i do?” eunice appealed to us simply; “i loved him ... how could i let him sacrifice his life to me ... a cripple? aunt lydia said he would forget. i had no home; we were staying here and there for aunt lydia’s health; and to leave no trace was easy. what else could i do?”
“o,” hobart eddy said only, “eunice, eunice!” there was that in his voice which made pelleas and me look at him in the happiest wonder. and i remembered that other note in his voice that day in the orchard with enid’s baby. in the statue story pelleas and i have never believed that galatea came to life alone. for we think that the pygmalions have an awakening not less sacred.
i do not in the least remember how pelleas and i got out of the room. i do remember that we two stood in the middle of our drawing-room looking at each other, speechless with the marvel of what had come. no wonder that the blindfold hope over the mantel had wreathed herself in holly!
it was late when hobart hurried home to dress and it was later still when we four had dinner which i do not recall that any of us ate. and then pelleas and i left those two in the library in the presence of their forgotten coffee while we flew distractedly about giving last touches for our party, an event which had all but slipped our minds.
“pelleas,” said i, lighting candles, “think how we planned that hobart’s wife must be a woman of the world!”
“but eunice,” pelleas said, “is a woman of many worlds.”
our shabby drawing-room was ablaze with red candles; and what with holly red on the walls and the snow banking the casements and bells jingling up and down the avenue, the sense of christmas was very real. for me, christmas seems always to be just past or else on the way; and that sixth sense of christmas being actually now is thrice desirable.
on the stroke of nine we two, waiting before the fire, heard nichola on the basement stairs; and by the way in which she mounted, with labor and caution, i knew that she was bringing the punch. we had wished to have it ready—that harmless steaming punch compounded from my mother’s recipe—when our guests arrived, so that they should first of all hear the news and drink health to eunice and hobart.
nichola was splendid in her scarlet merino and that vast cap effect managed by a starched pillowcase and a bit of string, and over her arm hung a huge holly wreath for the bowl’s brim. when she had deposited her fragrant burden and laid the wreath in place she stood erect and looked at us solemnly for a moment, and then her face wrinkled in all directions and was lighted with her rare, puckered smile.
“mer—ry christmas!” she said.
“merry christmas, nichola!” we cried, and i think that in all her years with us we had never before heard the words upon her lips.
“who goes ridin’ behind the sleigh-bells to-night?” she asked then abruptly.
“who rides?” i repeated, puzzled.
“yes,” nichola said; “this is a night when all folk stay home. the whole world sits by the fire on christmas night. an’ yet the sleigh-bells ring like mad. it is not holy.”
pelleas and i had never thought of that. but there may be something in it. who indeed, when all the world keeps hearth-holiday, who is it that rides abroad on christmas night behind the bells?
“good spirits, perhaps, nichola,” pelleas said, smiling.
“i do not doubt it,” nichola declared gravely; “that is not holy either—to doubt.”
“no,” we said, “to doubt good spirits is never holy.”
on this we heard the summons at our door, and nichola went off to answer it. and in came all our guests at once from dinner at the chartres’; and at nichola’s bidding they hastened straight to the drawing-room and cried their christmas greetings to pelleas and me, who stood serving the steaming punch before the fireplace.
they were all there: madame sally in black velvet and a diamond or two; polly cleatam with—as i live!—a new dimple; and wilfred and horace acting as if christmas were the only day on the business calendar; miss willie lillieblade, taking a christmas capsule from the head of her white staff; avis and lawrence, always dangerously likely to be found conferring in quiet corners; and enid and david and the baby—we had insisted on the baby and he had arrived, in a cocoon of valenciennes. and when the glasses had been handed round, pelleas slipped across the hall to the library and reappeared among us with eunice and hobart.
“dear, dear friends,” pelleas said, “dear friends....”
but one look in the faces of those three was enough. and i, an incarnate confirmation, stood on the hearth-rug nodding with all my might.
i cannot tell you how merry we were in that moment or how in love with life. i cannot recall what tender, broken words were said or what toasts were drunk. but i remember well enough the faces of eunice and hobart eddy; and i think that the holly-wreathed mirrors must have found it difficult to play the artist and suggest, because that which they had merely to reflect was so much more luminous.
in the midst of all, nichola, bringing more glasses, spoke at my elbow.
“mem,” she asked, “air them two goin’ to get marrit?”
“yes, nichola,” i said, “yes, they are. they are!”
nichola stood looking at me and winking fast, as if the air were filled with dust. and then came that curious change in her face which i had seen there before: a look as if her features were momentarily out of drawing, by way of bodying forth some unwonted thought.
“i made that match,” nichola acknowledged briefly.
“nichola!” i said in bewilderment.
“it’s so,” she maintained solemnly; “didn’t i say a word to him this afternoon—a word about the universe? he begun to understand how to act. for the love of heaven, did i not say some good would come?”
“you did say so, nichola,” i answered, “and certainly the good has come.”
“che!” said nichola, nodding her head, “i am sure about all things, me.”
i turned to pelleas, longing to tell him that we were finding the end of one rainbow after another. and pelleas was at that moment lifting his glass.
“here’s to christmas,” he cried as he met my eyes, “the loving cup of days!”
