# The Shadow Christmas

From Harper's Magazine, Dec 1922
    Ah, that was it! that was what made it all so fearful—the sameness, the unvaried, unbroken darkness, not a shadow anywhere. For—strangely, if you like, or not—shadows he had always loved. Nor was this wholly due to his mother's predilections and influence. She it was who had introduced him, so to speak, to a few of them; quite so! But it was he who had continued the acquaintance with the delight and fervor which were so large a part of his personality.
The Shadow Christmas
$^{by}$ Laura Spencer Portor
"SNOW for all the sleds!" said the child, and looked up at his Companion, delighted.
His Companion was tall. There was, indeed, that about him which gave a sense of unusual height and space; and a suggestion, almost, one would have said, of starlight. Something extraordinarily young and golden, at least, and luminous, such as the mind might associate always with all those "sons of the morning" which in and out of legend, at certain happy seasons, "dawn on our darkness" and "lend us their aid."
When he spoke—as he did now—one could hardly say whether he spoke at all, in the usual sense, or whether he did not convey his meaning, rather, as stars do, by some better, subtler means not commonly at men's disposal.
"You must not expect too much," he said.
But the boy paid no heed; his own knowledge being secure. Instead, he opened again his little rabbit-skin purse, and looked inside it, digging into it with one finger to make sure that the coins—a small silver flock of them—were there.
It was a strange thing, certainly, for him to have with him that little rabbit-skin purse—very strange really—on such a journey as he had come; strange too to have had it with him on such a long journey as he had gone a little less than a year ago; but in all the terror and tragedy of the world there is, nevertheless, room—as almost anyone must have observed—always room for tender whimsies; and the rabbit-skin purse was one of these.
His mother had given it to him, you see, among other gifts, on the Christmas before this one, and he had liked it better than anything bestowed upon him. So soft and so convenient to the hand! So odd and so delightful!
His other gifts of that Christmas he had been able to endure parting with at night, or had been willing to have merely beside his bed; but the purse he preferred to keep in his hand while he slept; and his mother had humored him, kissing the closed fingers before she left him for the night.
And that was how he came to have it with him now. At the very last—less than a year ago—just before he had gone away, he had wanted the feel of it in his fingers, and no one had denied him. They would have humored him in anything! Everyone was trying so to keep him from going away.
They had done their best; but no!—there was interposed between them and him presently something fatefully summoning that they could not understand. We look at the heavens nightly, but there are those with us who at a certain ineffable moment catch, as it were, the eye of a star. When this is so, it is useless to try to detain them. They leave all that has been most dear to them; leave it with a strange ease, and without renunciation at all, and are gone.
But the child, you see, when his eyes had met summoning starlight, had the little rabbit-skin purse close in his hand; and, as a matter of tenderness amounting to utter heartbreak, his mother—who could not be reasoned with at all about his going, but was swept by her grief, like a willow bending white in a tempest—had nevertheless paused in her sorrow long enough to give orders that no one should take from him now the little childish gift he had loved so well. That was like her! a woman of most deep sentiment.
The other toys and gifts that he had left behind were put away by a friend of his mother's, because his mother had not the heart to touch them, in what he and his mother called the "forgettery box." In this box there had always been put from time to time, all through the year, toys and gifts of any sort which would serve as gifts to hang upon the Christmas tree of the following Christmas. There they accumulated—almost forgotten—until the season approached.
He was thinking of this now and of what might be in the "forgettery box," when his Companion spoke again:
"Even if you should find that there was not a Christmas tree, after all," he suggested, gently, "you would not mind so very much, would you? With or without a Christmas tree, it is still a Wonderful Birthday, you know."
"Oh, I know!" said the boy, in that quite happy way in which children make necessary and generous allowance for the dullness of grown-ups, "but, you see, it's my birthday, too; and I wouldn't give you five cents for it without a Christmas tree. She always has one for me! and lots of people come!—poor children, you know, and everybody! That's why I had to come!" He looked up with wistful good humor, as though to apologize for any weariness of the long journey; for it was he, of course, in his winning way, who had quite insisted upon making it.
They came at last to the shops in the glowing heart of the little town. Here, for instance, was the shoemaker's shop, not altogether so wonderful as he had described it, but as snug and dark as a hickory nut, nevertheless; and old Palumbo himself like brown shrivelled nut meat sitting inside it.
"Hello, Palumbo!" he called.
But Palumbo went on with his task unheeding, tap-tapping, tap-tapping, tapping-tap-tap-tap—tap! Oh well, Palumbo had never been very affable, at any rate; one of those sullen-tempered older people for whom children have to make very especial allowance.
Beyond Palumbo's shop was the German candy shop, with its florid and terribly serious proprietor, with his full fish eyes and his ears set close to his head, like gills. He was standing at that very moment, clumsily, in among the wares of the window, preparatory to unhooking one of the candy canes. The boy watched him and laughed happily.
The boy caught his eye, and waved to him; and, putting his small hands on either side of his mouth, very manfully, he shouted, "Hello, Mr. Dietrick!" so that Mr. Dietrick must have heard him.
But Mr. Dietrick gave no sign. Oh, well! he was a grown-up of still another species; not sullen like Palumbo, but able to keep only one idea in his head at a time, and that one idea at that moment was the candy cane, of course.
Just then, the boy saw Martin, the drayman, expressman and general conveyor and factotum of the town. He was, as usual, seated on the high front seat of his wagon, driving the bay and the gray. Here, you understand, was quite a different and more hearty matter. For Martin and the boy had always been fast friends.
"Hello, Martin!" the boy called, excitedly.
But Martin was busy carefully guiding the bay and the gray through the crowded Christmas-eve street, and made no response.
"Martin!" the boy called, and stepped so that he almost touched the gray. The horse reared badly and received a lash, and the boy shrank back. Martin made no sign of recognition.
The boy's Companion put out a protecting hand:
"You must try to remember. They are not expecting to see you. It is different now."
The child accepted this, a little bewildered. They had talked it over on the way, yet he hardly understood it. It had for him a certain unreality. Then, suddenly, he forgot his bewilderment in delight and certainty; for here was his destination, the delightful, the forever-interesting Five and Ten Cent Store!
Oh, the gay Christmas windows! the Christmas-tree ornaments and trumpets, tin soldiers and what not! All the myriad things that bloom so faithfully at Christmas! And the music floating from inside, then flouncing, rather, and whirling like a gay dancer! You can hardly think how the music added to it all. It was this music, this scene, precisely, that the boy had boasted of to those other companions of his, beside falling waters of a peculiarly silver and musical sound in those far pastures clothed in a particularly vivid and living green. Ah, well, you may approve those pastures, if you choose! Pleasant and beautiful they were, undeniably! But for him—the snow! and for him, bless you, this—this gay racket of the Five and Ten Cent Store, on Christmas eve; all of it preparatory of course to the real objective of his journey—the still better adventure of the Christmas tree farther on.
He would pause here only long enough to buy one of the little chocolate ducks that had always been his and his mother's especial delight. They were grave, self-satisfied, amusing little creatures, that he liked, really, better than any Christmas toy. He had had many of them before. It would hardly be Christmas without one.
He threaded his way through the crowd, and came at last to a sharp-faced clerk. He remembered her very well. She was writing out purchase checks in exactly her old manner, with her over-emphatic scrawny fingers holding a desperately sharp pencil as sharp as her nose. He watched her stick the pencil at last with a vicious jab into her elaborate coiffure; saw her tear off the purchase check with that same spiteful rip of the paper. Then he edged close to her.
"Will you please wait on me?" he said. "I'd like that chocolate duck—the one with the red bill."
But she was already busy attending to someone else. He waited for another spiteful rip of the paper, then asked her again. But she was bent instead on waiting on a fat red-faced woman whom he had never seen.
He looked about, trying to find someone else who would give him the chocolate duck. Then his Companion stooped, spoke to him once more, and made a suggestion.
Again the boy felt the sense of strangeness and bewilderment; then he followed the suggestion. He made his own selection from the whole flock of chocolate ducks with red bills; opened his rabbit-skin purse and put the money on the counter beside the sharp-faced, sharp-nosed clerk, who was paying no attention to him.
"There's the money," he said.
"She will find it," said his Companion, and they threaded their way unobserved through the crowd.
"Now which of you left that?" said the sharp-faced clerk looking around accusingly for the reprehensible person.
Her customers disclaimed all knowledge of it, though she still gave them such accusing and disapproving glances that one nervous woman looked into her purse to be sure that she was not the culprit.
As the boy came into the cold air he saw three children, of nearly his own age, looking in at the Christmas window as he had done; and instantly his heart flew to them. They were boys whom he knew—Toni, Enrico, Giovanni, poor boys, who had been invited to share his Christmas with him for the past three years. They were discussing the gifts they had received at his home last Christmas, and were having some argument about them; the argument being interspersed with adoring attention to the unattainable things glowing there in front of them behind the cold glass of the window. He took his place beside them. He noticed that they had grown. They had outstripped him by about a year.
None of them turned to welcome him. All three continued to look in the window. Yet he felt in no way rebuffed, as had been the case when he had called to Palumbo, and to Mr. Dietrick, and Martin. He knew instinctively, without the least argument or uncertainty that he was present with them, in their very thoughts, and that as they looked in so avidly at the gay Christmas wares—Toni with his hands and nose pressed against the glass—they were thinking of their last Christmas at his home.
This certainty was openly verified at that very instant.
"D'ya think there'll be a Christmas tree this year?" It was Toni speaking wistfully.
The others did not answer, their hungry eyes being still busy with the feast before them.
The boy stepped in amongst them.
"Yes, of course, there'll be a Christmas tree! There always is."
"Maybe there'd be one, same as always," admitted Giovanni, in late response to Toni's query.
"Come along!" the boy said, almost a little impatiently. "There is going to be a Christmas tree!"
"Ef there was one," speculated Toni, not speaking to the boy at all, but still only to the others, "there'd be somethin' fer us, sure."
"Aw, look here! there won't be!" said Enrico. Enrico was not one whom Life had encouraged to believe easily in good fortune. He knew a thing or two about the crudeness and disappointment of the world. It seemed to him to be his duty—as it was perhaps appreciably, too, his pleasure of a kind—to correct the absurd optimism of others; to show them the obvious if dark sign-posts and put them upon the right road that would lead them to grim facts and reality.
"But there will be!" the boy said. Palumbo had not looked up; Mr. Dietrick had not heard him; Martin, even Martin, had not been aware of him; but surely it was not possible that these three boys did not know him. He felt so at home with them. Moreover, were they not talking of last Christmas and the Christmas tree, and whether this Christmas, this very one, now, they would receive any presents? Oh, they would! they would very certainly! He remembered how thick the presents hung upon the boughs; and those, even better, almost, that were gathered through all the year, here a little, there a little, in the beloved "forgettery box." He knew his mother too well to doubt there would be presents for everybody! Yes, yes! presents in plenty. He could hardly endure that these boys should doubt it. It seemed to put a shame upon him, that they could so mistake his mother.
Moreover, Christmas was his birthday! His mother had taken pains to explain that to him, once; had told him that whereas most grown people and children, most mothers and their little sons, had but one reason for celebrating the day, he and she had two. It was their day, you see, especially theirs, by a decree of the good God, and that was why they must celebrate it in an especially delightful manner, sharing it gaily and beautifully with others, in sweet token of their love of it.
Not that these three ragamuffins could be expected to guess all that, but at least they might take his word in the matter. Well, it seemed, rather, that they did. At least their thoughts were of the same pattern as his own, only dimmer. Whereas he knew past all peradventure that never, never could a Christmas go by in his home without a fitting celebration, they tended merely to hope that this might be so. Well, let them hope!—soon he would show them!
"If mebbe I wuz to get a elphunt," said Toni, the youngest.
"Aw, I'd ruther have a cannon," said Giovanni.
"You fellahs come along!" said the boy. It was unendurable to him to wait longer. He almost shouted. "Come along! All of you! There's going to be everything! There's going to be a great big tree all lights, and—and—and everything, the same as there was! There'll be a present for every one! Don't you remember last year?" (Ah, exactly! That was precisely what they were remembering!) "Just you come along with me! It's my birthday!"
Still they did not look at him, not more than had Palumho, or Mr. Dietrick, or Martin; yet he knew he was dimly with them. He could see that they glanced at one another with uncertainty, hesitancy; with sufficiently evident doubt of their own possible doubts; that they were not deaf to his suggestion; that they were thinking that there would be a Christmas tree, after all.
"Come on!" he said, starting ahead eagerly, and giving them a large beckoning gesture. "I tell you there'll be presents for everybody!"
Suddenly, Enrico flung back his head:
"Come on!" he said. "There won't be any! But you fellahs come on, and you'll see!"
The boy took a glance over his shoulder, to make sure of them. Yes! They had, in their own way, so much nearer to his own way, heard him. They understood! They were following! He hurried on. Already he could feel the glow of those dear rooms; already he could see his mother welcoming these boys—in that lovely way of hers, just keeping the tips of her fingers on their shoulders, while she smiled, herding them like so many woolly, happy, expectant sheep into the light and the glory.
The road outside the town was well known to them all. The stars shone with an especial brilliancy overhead and between the dark branches of the pines, so that each one they passed was a Christmas tree in itself, magically, celestially lighted, yet not so beautiful, oh not so beautiful by half, as the one that would soon delight their eyes! The snow was very crisp under their feet; yet even so, it sifted into their broken shoes. But no one was thinking of broken shoes. There is a time for all things!
They were passing by the old mill now—a place where the rushing waters of the weir frightened one a little, even in daytime; so they ran past it. Then as the next test of their bravery, there loomed the little stone church on the hill among its cypresses, with its churchyard sloping from it. At sight of it they huddled together very close, though the boy himself and his Companion, slightly in the lead, took no note whatever of it. But the other three had certain associations with the little graveyard, and that made a difference. This was the place, you see, that had afforded them their first real knowledge of death. For it was here, on the last day of the year before, that they had stood, by their own invitation, on the edge of a small and bereft gathering, in full wintry sunlight, and had watched the strange proceedings—something lowered, lowered away from them all, with a most fearful finality. After that there was with them a dim unrealized idea; a vague acceptance of certain facts—that the boy who had lived so happily in the great house—and had a wonderful Christmas which he shared with others—no longer scampered back and forth on his pony to and from the town; and a suspicion not altogether formed that they, for all their broken shoes and squalid homes and frequent hunger, had somehow now the better of him.
These are large and strange matters, of course, for little minds; so it was not surprising that they hurried and huddled at that particular part of the road, glad and relieved to leave it behind them.
As they went on, the boy himself began to enjoy the recollection of certain places of interest. Here was where the blackberries grew in summer. There was the old oak which his mother and he called "the fairy oak." Soon they would come to the bay bushes; next to the laurel; then, at last to the gateway. Soon now! This was the final curve of the main road! His step quickened. Yes! they were almost there! A matter of only a few moments!
No one spoke. The three hurried at his very heels, trotting along happy and assured. He had them with him now, in every sense.
There! Yes, there were the gateway pillars! The child had a lift of the heart as he came to them! So, now! on past them, up the pebbly driveway, a dozen yards at most, where the group of spruce trees, adding to expectancy, hid the house from view.
"It's all going to be lights!" explained the boy ecstatically to the starry Presence that went beside him.
"Gee! You'll see how it's lighted up!" said Toni, his words following like an echo, almost, of the boy's words.
So! hurry! hurry! Into the deep shadow of the spruce trees, and out again! and there they were at last, at last, in full view of the house.
The boy stopped suddenly. They all stopped; they grouped and huddled themselves about him, brought together by the very momentum of their arrested speed.
What met their eyes was a large house showing against the sky, the starry sky that was myriad-lighted with all the candles of heaven, but a house with never a light to be seen in it—not one! a large and darkened place.
Even Enrico betrayed his secret hopes by having nothing scornful to say. Giovanni was mutely shocked, bewildered. Something had happened! What was it! Surely everybody in the house must be asleep! But Toni was swept by a very passion of disappointment. In a wordless rage of despair, disbelief, defeat, he stooped and picked up from the driveway a handful of pebbles.
You will understand that it was best that the boy should go into the house alone. No one either suggested this or discussed it. It was a matter simple and patent enough.
He did not attempt to reason or explain. He only hurried on. The place was familiar to his feet, every inch of it. Perhaps it was that which made the whole thing so bewildering and so heart-breaking and put the hurt in his throat.
In the front hall he stood still in the darkness.
Ah, that was it! that was what made it all so fearful—the sameness, the unvaried, unbroken darkness, not a shadow anywhere. For—strangely, if you like, or not—shadows he had always loved. Nor was this wholly due to his mother's predilections and influence. She it was who had introduced him, so to speak, to a few of them; quite so! But it was he who had continued the acquaintance with the delight and fervor which were so large a part of his personality; it was he who had sought out new ones and loved them and appreciated them and rejoiced in them. The faint blurred shadows of the delicately budded trees in spring! the crisp sure ones of the winter; sunlight-shadows, and moonlight-shadows; and, above all, oh, yes, and dearer than all, the firelight shadows! And all the things that shadows do! The quaintness, and fidelity of them; and the grotesquerie of them! The way they run when you run, and stand still on the very instant that you stand still! A nimble people, so that their following of you is nearly like a game and it is impossible to catch them napping. The way, too, that they scramble in such fantastic crooked good-natured forms, hump-backed, over irregularities and rush on and waver in absurd lengths along level places. The way, too, in an utterly other humor, they move so stately slow across the lawn that you cannot tell when they move nor how; only, coming back at a later hour, you find them standing in a different place. Or, again, best of all, the way they leap and dance back and forth as the fire-light leaps and dies down!
And his mother had explained to him once, in that sympathetic understanding way of hers which could beautifully account for anything, that it takes shadows to make the world a real place, a livable place, because, when you see a shadow, you know by that shadow's very presence, that there is something real and true, that you can lay your hands upon, which makes the shadow.
So that was the dreadful part of his experience, now! No shadows! Nothing real! No assurance of reality! only the dark—unbroken, formless, fearful; the dark which like grief, and forgetfulness, and selfishness, fives for itself only, without regard for the pain or joy or suffering of others; all the world else shut out; a fearful, shadowless thing in which all the beautiful realities of life are lost and blotted out.
He put out his hand in front of him, guarding, as his mother had taught him to do; for he had a strange sense that there were things, of a sort—strange, shadowless things—all about him, not tables and chairs, against which he might strike, but things—he could not say what! dull things, thick things, trivial things, useless things, unlovely things, fragments of floating memory, without relation; ominous things—an ugly black slate for instance with hateful sums on it; crepe veils that floated as ladies walked, and startled and distressed the fingers with their crinkly harshness. He was aware, too, of the nearness of an impudent waiting maid, whom he had once seen stick out her tongue at his mother, when his mother's back was turned. He had gone about for days carrying that ugly knowledge about with him, ashamed to tell it; ashamed as a man of honor not to tell it; until, one day, he and Buff the collie, had gone to the garden and he had dug a hole, and had dumped the knowledge into the hole, out of his cupped hands, and had filled the earth in. And Buff had barked and yelped and wagged his tail, in the most good-humored approval. After that the thing had never troubled the boy again; but now—there in the shadowless dark—there she was again, the ugly waiting maid. There was a lie, too, that he had told, though he had not meant to; and a bird soft and limp, with its songful little throat cut by the teeth of a cat. All these things were there, though he could not see them—there composing the dark. They were the dark.
He took a quick step to the newel-post, as to an island of safety in the welter of all this darkness, and breathed hard. Immediately his hand missed something. Usually, there were ropes of laurel about the post, and woven in and out of the spindles of the stairway. At this remembrance and this lack, as at a signal, the pictures of his brain, the phantasms—the things—pressed about him, a step nearer on all sides. Where was the light—the blessed, dispersing, shadow-bringing light? It should have come streaming from the big double parlors, where the Christmas tree always stood. But instead, only these doubts and fears and dark and nameless recollections stood about him, ominous, ready —ready, to take another step nearer.
Then suddenly he felt secure. The light was only a question of a moment or two longer. He believed he understood now. Of course! Was not his mother always thinking of pleasant surprises? She had planned, he felt sure, to have the tree in the great roomy nursery, where no one would expect it to be, so that he might be happily surprised. That was the way all her innocent games of disappointment ended, in delightful surprise, or in the happiest security at the last, like a quick turn in the road. How could he have forgotten that! Had she not a heart gay, like the falling of waters in the spring?
Once she had said to him:
"Timothy, I'm going to give you to your Uncle James—shall I? He wants you so. You could live with him, you know, and come to see me just once in a while."
And he had shaken his head, shocked, amazed, unwilling, frightened (how could she!) only to feel her arms about him the next instant and to know by her young kisses and her gay laughter that not for all the money in the world, nor all the pleading of all the uncles in the wide, wide world would she give him up! Oh, security again! Surely, that was it!
She was like that, a gay and unexpected fairy when she chose to be, dealing in delightful uncertainties and unlooked-for rewards. So it would be in the matter of the Christmas tree. She knew well that he would be expecting to find it in the double parlors, and not finding it there, would think for a moment there was to be none; when all the while, there it was in the nursery, grander, lovelier, than before, with all manner of surprises to make him wild with delight.
So, with this assurance he forgot the "things" in the dark, and they had no power to follow him while he made his way stumblingly, but secure and reassured, up the familiar stairs.
At the top of them was the nursery door. With a little cry, as of a child who wins in a game, he flung it open and then started back.
Darkness! Nothing but the dark. Immediately he could feel the "things," possessed anew of their power, climbing the stairs, pursuing him, an approaching and dreadful company.
He staved them off once more, remembering how his mother loved mystery, oh, yes, loved to be mysterious, for the very delight of clearing the mystery away. He would find her in her room. There she would be waiting to catch him up in her arms. He would say "Mum-Mummy! Where is it?" And she would light the lights and bring all the shadows back and would show him where it was, and he would have a real Christmas once more.
Then the fearful thought came to him that perhaps she had moved away. He had seen a small empty house, at nightfall, once—a wicked-looking place with no hope of a light in it! At the signal of this recollection all the "things" advanced once more.
He turned to flee from them. But now his hand was blessedly on the handle of his mother's door. Once safe in her room, he would know. For she could explain everything, everything! where the sun goes at night; why ducks on being absorbed in the matter of the candy cane; and Martin had not given his attention from his horses, to answer the old familiar salute; and the sharp-faced woman in the Five and Ten Cent Store had been as unaware of him as though he had not been there! But his mother! His own beautiful mother! A strange indefinable sense as of vast, estranging distances, lay between him and this sleeping form so near him. Still his reason battled with its bafflement. How could this thing happen? She might have known! She might have known he would come back! She always knew! She always understood! Everything! Had he ever begged for anything in vain? Was she not swift as a swallow to hear! Was she not just as quick as a bird to listen! Why, that was one of the most lovely things about her, that you put out your hand and found hers—there! He had done that in the dark hundreds of times. She was a mother you could count on! But now!—And Toni, Enrico, Giovanni, waiting there below in the snow! The shame of that! And that they should want a Christmas and that she should sleep on! His mother! His own mother! To have failed him and them, at such a moment!
He put his arm across his eyes to shut out the dark—the fearful shadowless dark—and turned and went, stumbbling a little, toward the door. In his mind was the thought of starlight, remote starlight, and far distances, and his Companion! If he could but get back to him across the dark!
But just then a strange thing happened! There was a sharp, fearful, scattering, shattering sound fit to waken the dead, like the crack of artillery. It broke against that window of his mother's room which looked upon the driveway!
Toni! Toni had flung his handful of pebbles!
The boy waited, without a word. In the dark he could feel rather than see that she awoke. He knew that she rose, dazed; that she paused, as though to get her bearings, then went to the window, with that old quick directness of hers which he knew so well. Against the dim square of it, he could see that she was looking out.
"Aw, there won't be any Christmas! There won't nobody come!" It was Enrico who spoke, Enrico who had received so many blows of so many kinds before this one. He had already turned to go away, and was only waiting for the others to be inevitably as well convinced as himself. Awaiting this, with a certain considerate patience, he was kicking the snow scuffingly, scoffingly, with the broken toe of one of his stiff worn shoes.
"Throw some more!" said Giovanni hopefully.
Toni was for agreeing. He half stooped, to gather another handful, and then he stood up straight and tense and Giovanni said "Gee!" so loud that you might have thought it was that that made the stars tremble. For there was a star moving in the dark house now—the star of Bethlehem itself could hardly have been more definite. It appeared first in the upper chamber, then glided and disappeared; then not the star itself but some wavering light from it could be seen floating, floating in rhythmic purpose down what might have been a stairway. Then, through the glass of the large entrance, the star itself again, moving, moving toward them. Then it paused and rested. What would happen next!
They huddled together close, and waited. What happened next was that the great front door swung open and then—then there she stood—the boy's mother. And then, shadowy and slim, she came down the steps quickly, quickly to them. She laid her two hands upon them in marvel and wonder—on Enrico's shoulder, on Giovanni's shoulder:
"Boys! what are you here for?"
They hung their heads.
"We didn't mean to wake you!" lied Enrico automatically.
She stooped and peered into their faces, so that they were obliged to look at her. And how beautiful she was, too, to be sure! and how full her face was of wonder!
"Enrico! Toni! Giovanni! It's the strangest thing in the world! Why, I dreamed that you were here! I dreamed that he told me!"
They did not perfectly understand, nor care to. They said nothing, only were absorbedly glad to be there.
"Come!" She guided them before her, like three silent but very willing sheep; guarding them with the lovely gesture of her arms that protected them, and the lovely touch on their shoulders of the tips of her fingers.
"Come! where it is warm!"
So, they trooped up the steps, she still herding them. So they left the cypresses and the snow and the starlight, and came to the star itself, which appeared to be a lamp which she had lighted. And she lighted other lamps as she went; and as she went the soft and lovely and attendant shadows of reality moved faithfully with her, wherever she moved. And the three boys, not less faithfully accompanied her, until they found themselves, at last, in a large warm room, unbelievably comfortable—a sort of heaven with chairs and a great table and a fireplace in it—yes, a great fireplace in it.
And she began to build a fire, and they helped, handing her the paper and the sticks of kindling, hardly knowing what they were doing, nor what it was all about.
How good the light was! the leaping light of the fire!
The boy stood among them unspeakably happy, without need of the delicate pleasure of words. Deeper satisfactions occupied him. Toni, Enrico, Giovanni and his mother! and his mother coming and going, bringing comfort, with her loving understanding. And the acting living thought of him there among them!—So! There was a real Christmas, after all, in a real world. The terrible egotistical darkness, which knew nothing but itself; the darkness which had had possession of that house which he had loved; and the similar, not less baffling darkness of his mother's grief—these had been dispelled. There was lamplight; there was firelight; there were shadows; other people; things outside oneself; there was a real Christmas, a Christmas of shadows and reality. He emerged from these impressions to observe his mother. She had been busy with her eager ministrations. The three boys were seated now in chairs in front of the fire. She was on her knees in front of Enrico. The boy heard her say in the old way, with the old tenderness in her voice:
"Well, you did indeed get your feet wet!"
Then he saw that Enrico's shoes were being unfastened and put aside. Then he saw her gently and deftly peel off Enrico's wet stockings, Enrico looking at her in an absorbed, puzzled way. Obviously, this was not the world as Enrico knew it or supposed it to be!
Then the boy saw that she had characteristically taken up the first thing at hand—a large and beautiful silver bowl that had always stood upon the library table, occasionally to be filled with flowers, and had it beside her filled with water. Some dim association that he could not have traced, of words he had heard in church perhaps, once upon a time, stirred in him; something about a bowl or a vase—no a box that was precious and was broken in loving devotion. He saw his mother fitting onto Enrico's feet a pair of warm stockings—his! he remembered them perfectly.
Then, suddenly, he knew! He knew that the box he had in mind was not a precious box spoken of in church at all, but his mother's box and his, of course! the forgettery box! And there it was! She had brought it, too. It was on the table. When she had finished her present task she would open it. He slipped nearer in the shadows.
A moment later the boys bent over the forgettery box. He bent over it with them!
His mother pointed out one gift after another and embraced with her glance Toni, Enrico, Giovanni.
"There they are, you see! They have been waiting for you."
The three children, rendered a little solemn by all this magic, put their hands in the box to take from it, each one, something of his choice.
The boy slipped his hand in among them, too—not to take anything.
His mother's fingers passed over his own and delicate and white took up from among the other gifts a little chocolate duck with a red bill; took it up with a little swift movement of memory and surprise, one would have said with a little sob.
"Oh," she said, "I did not know there would be one of these! He loved them—better than anything!"
She held the grave, self-satisfied little toy to her heart an instant; then, with a gesture that was to him very memory itself of all that was precious and beautiful between them, she put it with an especial tenderness that was as familiar to him as the very air—not into Toni's hand, not into Giovanni's—but into Enrico's—a special gift of favor to meet Enrico's special need.
So, it seemed suddenly, he had her back again complete, entire, like a kiss upon the lips; his mother whose heart was like the bubbling wells in spring—and who understood everything.
He felt now a desire to share all this—these riches; to tell others of these things; to boast a little, if you like, as children innocently will, of what a real Christmas may be, in the world, in the heart of a real woman and that woman his mother. He would leave them for a while presently, soon now, since in this place—the golden facts being established—he could come and go at will, with never again any fear of baffling, estranging darkness. Always now there would be light of one kind or another.
And precisely at this moment, as though they perfectly understood, and at a gay signal from the firelight, the shadows he had always so delighted in, leaped and danced in that amusing, soft-footed, friendly manner which he had always so especially loved.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1957, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 66 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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