Around the Yule Log :: IV A CHRISTMAS REVERIE

IV A CHRISTMAS REVERIE

It was growing late, on a certain December evening, when I put on my dressing-gown and slippers, turned off the gas, drew my easy chair up in front of the blazing wood fire, and settled back with a long breath of comfort, thanking my lucky stars that work was over, for that day at any rate. Not that any stars were in sight, lucky or otherwise. In the first place, the windows were covered with a heavy, fuzzy layer of frost, except up in one corner where I couldn’t possibly look out without climbing into a chair; and in the next place, even if I had raised the sash, which I was by no means inclined to do, I should have seen nothing but a great, white, howling blur of snow, tossing and foaming between the brick walls which confined it, like the rapids of Niagara.

In fact the wind was with difficulty kept outside at all, and at intervals would knock savagely at the frosted pane, or shout down the chimney, to the great amusement of the good-humored fire.

Now if there is anything I particularly like, it is the sound of a furious northeaster in the chimney on such a night as this. So I sat there, watching the dancing flames, feeling the grateful warmth beginning to creep through the soles of my slippers, and listening to my boisterous friend outside, when I became conscious of a curious optical effect in one of the black marble pillars which supported my mantel. As the shadows flitted to and fro about its Ionic scrolls, it looked exactly as if it were nodding its head, and the fringe of the lambrequin hung out over its forehead like a mass of disheveled hair. Yielding myself wholly to the queer fancy, I was not at all surprised to have the pillar straighten itself up until it was nearly six feet tall, and ask me in rather a severe voice what I meant by translating notus, “northeast wind?”

“I didn’t mean to, sir,” I stammered, feeling all at once greatly in awe of the projecting tuft of hair that loomed up threateningly over me. “I suppose it was because it was snowing, and the northeast wind is really”—Here I paused, for I happened to glance at the window as I spoke, and behold, there was no sign of frost or snow on the dusty pane. I looked foolish and—I had scrambled to my feet when the question was asked—sat down hastily.

“Next!” said the tall figure, bending its dark brows on a boy who had glided in unobserved and taken his seat beside me. While he was translating in a hesitating and monotonous voice what seemed to be a passage from Virgil, I had time to look about me, at the same time experiencing an odd sensation of waking up after a long sleep. It had been a wild, strange dream, then,—my college life, my adventures abroad, my business and its cares. Yes, even the few gray hairs that had begun to peep around my ears were but fancied symptoms of maturity and age. For here I was, where of course I ought to be, sitting on a hard bench, Virgil in hand, following the recitation and reading ahead hurriedly about where I thought my turn would come. Every moment the scene became more natural, and the dream-life of my manhood more and more indistinct. The old head master, Francis Gardner, whom I now recognized beyond all doubt, soon reached my end of the class once more, but before he could call on me to translate, the hands of the clock touched eleven, and we were dismissed for recess.

Down we poured over the long, worn staircase, which trembled under our tread, one flight after another, until we reached the yard. Here we played our old games, running to and fro between the high brick walls, and dodging around their sharp angles. At length the bell—I can hear its exact tones now—called to us from a window overhead, and we scrambled up again, taking our places at our desks with just as much bustle and interchange of sly thrusts as we dared. One boy was late, and the Doctor met him at the threshold.

“Now, sir,” said he sternly, looking down at the culprit, and fixing upon him a glance which I never knew to fail of inspiring awe, “Now, sir, do you want a rasping?” The boy shuffled his feet back and forth on the floor, twisted his hat in his hands, and began to mumble an excuse.

“Look here,” said the tall figure, “you can take either of the two horns of the dilemma,” holding up two fingers. “Either you went so far away that you couldn’t hear the bell, or you didn’t start when you did hear it. Which horn will you take?”

How that boy trembled as he surveyed those long, gaunt fingers on which hung his fate! Foolish fellow, not to know the warm heart that was beating behind all the kind old Doctor’s frowns! For do I not remember his many gentle deeds, often done in secret and found out by accident? It seems only yesterday, when, having sent one of his scholars away in disgrace, and learned a few days later that the boy was at home and sick, he had misgivings that he had been unjust, and appeared at that boy’s door after school hours with a bouquet at least a foot in diameter, and the injunction—awkwardly enough given—that the boy should not be worried about what had occurred, nor about the lessons he was losing. Feeble as he was, with age and disease fast laying hold upon him, the head master had traversed the entire breadth of the city in the dead of winter to leave this message for the pupil he feared he had wronged.

While I was reflecting upon these things the Doctor had finished his rebuke to the tardy boy and left the room. Others came and went. The boys’ faces were all familiar, and my heart brimmed over with delight as I recognized those whom, in my dream of college and business, I had thought of as sober, work-a-day men. Here was the round-eyed, mischievous fellow whom I had fancied to be a learned physician; another, a librarian; a third, a student and teacher of German, but now, bereft of whiskers and bass voice, once more a boy, and the scapegrace of the class. Then there were the teachers. One, whose fair, scholarly face I had never expected to see again on this earth, was busily explaining a Latin exercise to the class, with the aid of several old vellum-bound books he had brought from his own private library. Another bustled in with a carpetbag and a hearty, cheery air; compared the school clock with his watch (of whose almost superhuman accuracy we boys always stood in awe), and heard us recite in French. This lesson passed off with a briskness and good will that waked us all up as if we had been out in the fresh air, and left us keen for the next study. Meanwhile I caught glimpses of other teachers, all more or less associated with the dearest and best days of my life. There was he who once invited us all out to skate on his pond, in the country; who knew how to be stern with wrong-doers, but who was known to stay late in the afternoon, day after day, to hear a sick boy recite lessons in his home, that the little fellow might not fall behind his class, and so lose a possible chance for a prize. In my after-dream, his hair had been threaded with gray; but now it was brown, as I remembered it of old. Still another was a young man whose even-handed justice—“squareness,” we used to call it—was proverbial among my schoolmates. I had heard that his own son had since grown old enough to pass through college most honorably, and that he himself had taken the place of the grim Doctor in some strange air-castle of a new schoolhouse, far from its former site. Now I realized that I was back in the old days, and laughed to myself so loud that nothing but a disingenuous cough, into which I dexterously turned my mirth, saved me a mark for misconduct.

But now the room was hushed, as the master addressed us in quiet, earnest tones. He was bidding us good-bye for a few days, and ended by wishing us all a Merry Christmas.

Bless me, how we did throng around the desk on our way out, and return his hearty greeting! In spite of my sense of the reality of the whole scene, I could not dispel a strange foreboding that I was saying farewell to school and master forever. The twilight shadows of the short winter afternoon—it was storming furiously now, and had grown quite dark within doors—gathered about the old man’s form as he sat there shaking hands with one after the other, his eyes twinkling in their deep sockets, and meeting with kindly glance the fresh young boy faces around him. In a moment more this was all forgotten, for we had reached the street, and were rioting about in the snow as only boys let out from school for a week’s vacation can do. How we did assail policemen and wagon-drivers and pretty girls, to be sure! These last were on their way home from school, too, and many were the laughing glances and shy smiles that were flung us in return for our harmless pats of snow.

Full of the merriment of the day, although not yet aware that it was really Christmas Eve, I made my way up to Boylston Market, which was completely transfigured from a rather jail-like and dreary receptacle for unpleasantly red shoulders of mutton and beef, to a wonderland of evergreen and holly; it had not yet given place to a great dry-goods emporium. Here I saw my former teachers—God bless them, every one!—approach in a group, very much like boys themselves, for the time, and select various wreaths and bunches of green for home. I touched my “B. L. S.” cap respectfully as they passed, but a flurry of snow came between and they did not see me. I stretched out my hand to them, but they were gone. Again the aching sense of loss, the dread of finding that I was in the midst of unrealities came over me, and I shivered from head to foot. Pulling my cap low over my ears, I hurried back to Bedford Street. Alas! my worst fears were realized. The old schoolhouse was gone. Strange faces stared at me through the darkening storm. I leaned against the black iron fence, which still remained, and hid my face in my hands. As I did so, the wind moaned drearily overhead, and I heard the snow and sleet drifting against—what? My own window-panes!

Yes, the dream was truth, and the truth was a dream. I shivered again, in my easy chair, felt of my beard, stretched myself and rose stiffly to my feet. The fire had burned low, had fallen in entirely between the andirons, and the room was growing more chilly. I took some good birch sticks from the wood-box, encouraged them with a handful of dry cones, and, as they threw out their cheerful warmth, I became more and more content to remain a man, and leave my boyish days tied up, like old letters, in an out-of-the-way corner where I could take them out and live them over again at will.

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