Around the Yule Log :: X CHARITY AND EVERGREEN I

X CHARITY AND EVERGREEN I

“Well, for my part, I could never, never forgive a man who did such a thing!”

It was late in the afternoon of a clear, cold day in December when Charity Holmes, sitting in the midst of a spicy mound of evergreen on Farmer Ralston’s kitchen floor, and looking up from her work with a bright flush on her pretty cheeks, made this severe remark. Of the three other women in the room, two, the farmer’s daughters, young girls like herself, were quite of her opinion; but the fourth, a white-haired old lady with lavender bows on her cap and sunshine in her motherly face, patted the nearest indignant girl’s shoulder reprovingly, and remarked:

“There, there, dears; don’t be so hard. We’re all of us human, and drink’s a terrible thing. Sometimes it don’t seem any more a man’s fault than tumbling into a hole in the road.”

“But if he has dug the hole himself, grandmother”—

Any further argument was interrupted at this point by the appearance of an immense bundle of evergreen at one of the windows, entirely blocking up its small, frosty panes. Presently an honest and merry face showed itself down at one corner.

“It’s Tom, with more green!” cried the two Ralston girls, jumping up and running to the porch door to let in the big brother.

Charity stayed behind with grandmother, but Tom’s eyes found her in a twinkling. How demurely she sat there, tying away with all her might, while the awkward fellow made a great to-do piling up his load beside her, and managed to get hold of somebody’s hand down among the princess-pines, and—then something happened behind grandmother’s back that made somebody’s fresh young cheeks pinker than ever.

“Tom, Tom!” cried Charity, shaking her head as soberly as if she hadn’t been the cause of his mischief.

“Yes, ma’am,” answered innocent Tom. “Want some more?”

“Now, Tom, if you’re really going to stay you must work in good earnest. Just pick out some good long strings of ‘creeping Jenny’ and lay them right beside me—so!”

Thereupon Tom, great, breezy, good-natured Tom, doubled himself up on the floor, boots and all, and pretended to immerse himself, body and mind, in the complicated task assigned him, meanwhile blundering in the most absurd manner, and continually mistaking that bewildering little hand for the delicate vines, and at the same time winking at grandmother, thereby confusing her and making her feel that she was an accomplice; and in fact conducting himself altogether so outrageously that the girls ended by pelting him with evergreens until he escaped to the woodshed, where the ringing blows of his axe soon gave notice that he was making ready for the blaze in the great fireplace that was to brighten the long winter evening before them.

Charity was the daughter of a neighbor. She and Tom Ralston had played together since they were babies; then, leaving the district school, and entering upon the heavier duties of life, they had grown bashful, and kept away from each other just long enough to find out that they could not possibly do so any longer. So they were engaged, to the quiet satisfaction of both families. The marriage was to be on New Year’s and the young folks were working hard on their evergreen trimming, which Tom had promised to take up to the city, a dozen miles away, and sell for them, the day before Christmas. Charity was to go with him, as she had a few little purchases to make; and besides, she had never seen the city at this “holiday season,” when it is at its merriest.

Swiftly the full, busy days flew by. The evening before they were to start, Tom was walking home with Charity. As they reached the little plot of ground before her house they looked up into the starlit, moonlit sky. At least Charity did. I am afraid Tom was finding moon and stars and no end of things more precious to him in the grave brown eyes so near his own.

“No, Tom,” said she, answering his look, “I’m just thinking about—up there! and all we can be to each other and the rest of the world.”

“My darling! I wish I were a good man, I wish I were stronger! If it were not for you!”—

He checked himself, and she could feel the brace of his muscles under the coatsleeve where her hand rested, as if he were even then fighting with some invisible foe. A light cloud came over the moon’s face, and the road and fields, covered with new-fallen snow, looked colder than before. She shivered, and drew more closely to his side. He was quick to read her thoughts, this big, clumsy fellow, and he spoke instantly.

“I know, Rita,” he said, softly, stroking her hand and using the pet name that he had made for her when they were children; “I know you’ll stand by me through everything. And, whatever evil things I have in me, with you at my side, I’ll try to put down. Heaven help me!”

He took off his cap, and Charity thought she never saw him look so noble and humble and manly as he did then. The moon, too, was out again, and its light rested like a benediction on his broad forehead, whose veins stood out strangely to-night.

A moment later and he was gone. Charity watched him striding away across the field until he was out of sight. As she turned to her own home she noticed his tracks and the dark blotches they made on the pure, white surface of the snow before her door. Somehow they troubled her, and, without thinking, she made a little futile brush at the nearest footprint with the corner of her shawl, thus only enlarging and making it more unsightly than before. Then, with a nervous laugh at her own foolish fancies, she entered the house.

II

The next morning, long before the rest of the family were astir, Charity was sitting at her window, hooded and wrapped for the long ride. How she had looked forward to this day! With refreshing sleep and the sweet hopefulness of morning, all her doubts of the preceding night had flapped away like bats into the darkness where they belonged; and she was as fair and rosy and bright-eyed as the dawn itself when she appeared at the door a few minutes later, in answer to a merry jingle of sleighbells. Tom’s mood was as happy as her own, and the sturdy little horse jogged along only too fast over the icy road when they had turned his head toward the city.

There was much to talk about. Tom had not been idle these last few days, and had a great deal to tell her about her room in the old Ralston house, where he was to take her on New Year’s day. She listened shyly, glancing up at him now and then with a happy face and starry eyes, as he described the improvements he hoped to make on the farm, and the hay he should take from the new meadow he had just bought, and the hammock he should put up for her under the elms for the long, quiet summer days.

“Only,” she broke in eagerly, “you know I must work, too, while you are in the field”—

Then she grew rosy again, and subsided into the great buffalo robes, while Tom wandered inconsequently from the subject, and the horse started ahead suddenly when he wasn’t by any means expected to, and the dark trees beside the road rustled as if they were singing softly, and—oh, dear! it was a wonderful ride altogether.

“See!” whispered Tom, pointing to the horizon just before them.

A very grave and sweet look came into the girlish face, as she followed his glance and saw the star in the east shining brightly through the swaying pine boughs.

“Christmas, Christmas,” he whispered. “Oh, my darling, what a gift He is giving me on his birthday—how much more precious than the gold and frankincense He received eighteen hundred years ago!”

So they glide along as blessed as if the poor old sleigh, with its odorous load of evergreen and holly, were a heavenly chariot bearing them away from everything low and bad and wretched in the world, until they draw near the city. The houses stand more and more closely together. A milkman passes at full trot, and, seeing the country team and its errand gives them the first jovial greeting of the day. Shutters come down, blinds fly open, boys emerge from side streets, blowing on their fingers and crying the morning papers.

“Mister, gimme some green?” one calls out now and then. And good-natured Tom turns round in his seat, pulls out a bunch of his merchandise and hands it to Charity, that she may have the pleasure of giving it away. Now they are fairly within the long, brick-walled streets, and the city is awake. Tom leaves Charity at the house of a friend and makes an engagement to call for her as soon as his load is sold (half of it has been ordered and engaged already), which will probably be at about four. He will come at five, anyway; if he should miss the hour—here he looks at her slyly and they both have a good laugh at the absurdity of the idea—she can come to the market and find him. Then they will have before them the beautiful Christmas-eve ride home: “When,” says Tom solemnly, “the little horse will probably be so tired that we will have to let him walk most of the way!”

III

Swiftly the hours of the happy day flew by. Charity completed her humble purchases, which, after all, were hardly more than an excuse for accompanying Tom to the city, and drank her fill of the joyous sights and sounds on every side. Early in the afternoon it occurred to her to surprise Tom at his post before the hour they had named. Accordingly she dressed herself for the walk, putting into her pocket a little purse she had bought as a Christmas gift for him, and planning to give it to him then and there, so that he might bring home in it the results of the day’s sales. With a little inquiry she found her way through the crowded streets to the market, which was like a huge beehive—except that the bees had no stings. For on everybody’s face was the starlight of Christmas, and good-will toward men reigned supreme. The sidewalks outside the market were simple avenues of evergreen. It hung in festoons from the sides of the buildings and overhead; it bubbled over from innumerable boxes and barrels, and ran along the snowy curbstone in a fragrant stream. Rows of trees leaned complacently against the posts and each other, meditating on glories to come; holly glistened and twinkled in the red winter sunlight at every window, and a few stout, jolly-looking marketmen had even procured sprays of real English mistletoe, which they hung proudly over their shop doors; but the full advantage of which, judging from the freedom with which they allowed no end of pretty girls to pass to and fro under it without molestation, they by no means appreciated. Charity was delighted with everything, and half expected to see the jovial “Ghost of Christmas Present” himself seated amidst the heaps of plenty, scattering good things right and left. Failing of him, the next best would certainly be Tom; whom, however, she sought in vain. It was just three o’clock when she started again, a little wearily, for the house.

“I must have just missed him,” she thought, “and he’ll be there waiting for me.”

No, Tom was not there, and had not been seen. Charity fingered the purse in her pocket a little nervously, and waited. How brightly the sun shone in the quiet street where her friends lived! The snow had begun to melt here and there, and children, finding it properly moist for their play, were tumbling about in it and making forts, men, and snowballs. One keen-eyed little fellow moulded a lot of large oblong-shaped balls, and came with an armful before the window where Charity sat, making a mocking bow to her, and calling out:

“Who wants to buy my nice melons! Here’s your fine fresh fruit; all ripe; all ripe!”

Still no Tom. Charity tried to talk with her hosts, but it was hard work, and she was glad when they left her to wait silently with her eyes on the distant street corner where she had last seen him and his evergreen. People came and went along the brick sidewalk. There were little icy spots just in front of her window, where the gutter had discharged the drip from the roof, and it had frozen in ridges the night before. She became dully interested in watching the passers-by get over this place. Some approached it cautiously and crept with timid steps across the treacherous surface; some did not see it at all until they were fairly upon it, and escaped with a slide and a bound; some avoided it altogether by making a wide circuit into the street; children slid fearlessly upon it, making sport of what was so dangerous to their elders. One strong, well-built man—a clergyman he appeared from his dress—started across it boldly but carefully, slipped midway, and fell with such a crash that the girl uttered an involuntary cry and started up from her chair; but the man regained his feet and limped away, with an ugly stain across his shoulder and a bit of red on his white hands.

While Charity gazed pityingly after him, a twinkling light appeared far down the street; then another, and another. It could not be that the lamps were being lighted! Yes, the short December day was over—it was Christmas Eve.

Charity turned to look at the clock, but was obliged to move across the room before she could see through the gathering dusk, that it was—six o’clock!

She resolutely but hurriedly drew on her cloak, as she had done a few hours before, in her own country home; and bidding good-bye to her friends with lips which she could not keep from quivering, declined all offer of escort and once more turned her face toward that busy center of the holiday, the market. To and fro she went among the kind-hearted dealers, with her one question repeated over and over until she was sick at heart. No one had seen Tom since morning, one or two looked at her a little curiously, and once a great burly fellow engaged her very closely in conversation as a tall man in helmet and brass buttons passed them, half carrying, half dragging a poor, battered creature over the slippery sidewalk. It was an old, white-haired man of whose wretched, drunken, despairing face she caught a glimpse, as the throng of idle spectators swept by. Something in the manner of her kind friend made her look up quickly at him. He grew redder than ever, and quickly turned away his head; but it was too late; she knew the truth at last. Tom was like—that!

After what seemed days of anguish she found herself in the stifling atmosphere of the railroad station, where she would have to wait two hours for a homeward-bound train. She shrank into a corner and tried to forget herself in sleep, but every faculty was on the alert with an unnatural tension. Women with tired faces and illy dressed babies sank upon the seats about her and silently waited for their trains, or in jarring, monotonous voices, and the minor keys always used by late passengers, discussed the ailments of their neighbors and the high price of goods. A crowd of rough fellows sauntered by outside the windows and filled the air with coarse jokes and snatches of ribald song. Charity clenched her little hands that Tom had kissed under the princess-pine and endured it all, with her eyes on the grimy face of the clock, until the train backed into the station and bore her away.

At a little before midnight she reached her own home. While she stood on the worn door-stone, her whole frame trembling from exhaustion and the long agony of that evening, her eyes fell on Tom’s footprints of the night before. For one moment a hard look came into her face; then she suddenly stooped, kissed the light snow as if it had been a cold, dead face, and moaning, “O Tom, Tom, how could you!” with a sob like that of a hurt child, turned and went in out of the night. And this was her Christmas Eve.

IV

When Charity awoke next morning the sun was shining cheerfully in upon the smooth yellow floor of her little room and its mats of braided rags. The sky was of the bluest and the earth of the whitest; a flock of sparrows were wishing each other Merry Christmas in the boughs of an old appletree near by; the cattle in the barn, contentedly ruminating over their morning allowance of hay, seemed rehearsing to each other the old story of the manger and the wonderful night in Palestine. As these pleasant sights and sounds stole in upon the girl’s senses, a happy smile broke upon her lips and she felt at peace with the whole world. Then came, like a flash of red lightning out of the sparkling blue sky, the memory of the preceding day. Her brain reeled under the shock of returning recollection, as, one by one, every kindly evasive word of her informants came back to her. But Charity was a girl of quick impulses and decided action. In five minutes she had made up her mind what to do. Half an hour later she was standing behind grandmother’s chair at Farmer Ralston’s with white face and set lips. The family, she found, were somewhat concerned about Tom’s absence, but they had not been in any real alarm, as he might have changed his plans and remained in the city, leaving Charity with her friends for the night. Now they crowded about her, all asking questions at once, and growing momently more frightened at her silence. She managed to tell them that Tom had not kept his appointment—that she could learn nothing definite about him—that she had guessed from what little information she had been able to obtain, that he had been taken sick and carried to the hospital—or somewhere; it was nothing serious, she was sure, and at any rate she was going up to the city that morning on the train to find out all about it. Tom’s father was too old and feeble to undertake the trip, and his sister had better not leave home that day—Christmas. She could do better alone, as she knew the streets pretty well (here her voice failed her a little), and besides, it would only worry Tom to see them all coming. So she went as she wished to, alone.

Arriving in the city, she examined a directory in the nearest drug store and copied off the numbers and localities of all the police stations in the city proper. Then she found her way without much trouble to the market and asked the tall, broad-shouldered policeman on duty there for directions to the nearest station. He looked down pityingly on the young girl, appealing to him with her white face and eyes that betrayed her suffering on that glad Christmas morning.

“Nothing serious, is it, miss? A fight, maybe, or something o’ that sort?”

“Oh, no, sir! I only want to see if—if—somebody”—

The kind-hearted officer guessed her trouble immediately.

“I see, I see,” said he, softening his voice still more. “He didn’t get home last night after he was paid off. Well, I guess you’ll find it all right; anyway, I hope you will. Take your first turn to the left, and two blocks further you’ll come to my station. Tell the sergeant you saw Brown, and that I sent you to him for information.”

Charity thanked him with a grateful look that was better than words, and moved with rapid steps along the icy sidewalk in the direction indicated. She was courteously received at the station, but no one knew anything about Tom. Nor did they in the next station she visited, nor in the third or fourth. It was now nearly noon, and people were beginning to sit down to their Christmas dinners. The table at Farmer Ralston’s was always a jolly place, and at Christmas time the fun was uproarious. Charity had been invited every year since she could remember, and she gave a little gulp as she thought of the row of bright, laughing faces that would have been gathered in the old kitchen, still sweet with the resinous odors of the evergreen that had lain there in piles in those last happy days that now seemed ages ago. Wearily she mounted the granite steps of Station Five and repeated her question. The lieutenant, a brisk, wiry man, with a heavy gray moustache and little, piercing eyes, cast a quick glance at her and consulted his book. Presently he gave a little nod, and raising his voice, called out, “Norcross, here a minute!”

A uniformed officer in an adjoining room opened himself like a kind of long jack-knife, rose from the bench where he had been reclining and stood at the walnut rail in front of his superior, awaiting orders. The lieutenant took a key from the rack at his side and handed it to Norcross.

“This lady wants to see No. 3. Show her down.”

The officer bowed respectfully and led the way down a flight of stone steps into what at first appeared to be a sort of cellar, with grated windows near the ceiling on one side and a row of iron-barred doors on the other.

“There,” said the officer, pointing.

Charity paused a moment and pressed her hand against her heart; for a moment she could not have spoken, it beat so fiercely. Then she advanced across the brick floor, and standing by the door of Cell No. 3, looked in through the bars.

At first she could see nothing, but, as her eyes became accustomed to the dim light, she could distinguish at one side a narrow iron bed, and lying motionless upon it, his head buried in his arms, a crumpled, stained, wretched figure—yes, Tom!

The rustle of the girl’s dress fell upon his ear. He raised his head slightly, recognized the sound, turned away again without looking her in the face, and shook with such a tempest of sobs that Charity trembled and could not speak the grave, deliberate words she had prepared on the way.

“Landlord, fill the flowing bowl!”

sang some poor creature shrilly, two or three doors away. How Charity remembered all these things afterward! While the officer stepped aside to quiet the noisy prisoner she forced herself at last to speak.

“Mr. Ralston”—Tom started, and she saw his grasp tighten on the iron rail of the bed, “I have come to take you away from this place. I shall send for the bail commissioner at once” (she had learned her lesson well, poor child!), “so that you can catch the two o’clock train. No!” she went on quickly, checking him with a gesture as he was about to speak, “you mustn’t stay here another night, nor another hour. It would kill your father if he knew it, and we couldn’t answer his questions to-night.”

The strong man bowed his head again, without a word. She hesitated an instant, then left him, and walked across the floor and up the stone stairway with a firm step. Tom looked after her wistfully, but she did not even glance toward his cell. Within half an hour he was sent for, and found Charity, with the commissioner and the sergeant, sitting behind the rail, in the room above. The bail was quickly arranged, the officer handed over a jack-knife and a few coppers he had taken from Tom’s pockets the night before, and told him he could go where he pleased until nine o’clock the next morning, when the court opened.

There was a constrained silence for a moment in the little office. At last Tom raised his eyes, with a look in them half questioning, half appealing, to the girl’s white face, at the same time involuntarily extending his hand toward her. For the first time in his life he found no response in the brown eyes, staring stonily out of the barred windows.

His hand slowly dropped to his side. With a dazed look he turned first to the officers, then to Charity, as if he did not understand. Still there was no response in the brown eyes, staring stonily out of the barred windows. Still Tom stood there helplessly, not quite understanding it all. Glancing at his stained and rumpled clothes he brushed them a little, mechanically, passed his hand over his forehead once or twice, then turned humbly toward the door, passed out bareheaded and was gone.

How Charity found her way home she never knew. When she entered her own little chamber at dusk and buried her aching head in her pillow, she had a vague recollection of wandering about the gay city streets for hours, of finally seeking the railroad station, of cooling her hot forehead against the frosty pane of the car, and watching the snowflakes that came faster and faster from the darkening sky. Tom had come home, the station-master had told her carelessly, and that was all she cared to know.

How he endured the ignominy of appearing and paying his fine in the municipal court the next day, she did not ask; nor did she even see him for a week. After the excitement of that gloomy Christmas came, with the reaction, a complete nervous exhaustion, which mercifully spared her the torture of questioning eyes and tongues until beyond New Year’s—that should have been her wedding-day.

Meanwhile she wavered irresolutely between one and another course of action. Now she felt she must cry out to him to forgive her own cruel hardness in his time of trouble; now the Puritan blood she had inherited asserted itself, and her face grew hard again as she thought of his weakness.

The meeting could be put off no longer. It came, and in the same dear old kitchen where they had worked together. The man looked straight into her eyes and said, quietly:

“Charity, I have done you and myself a great wrong. I shall try to do better. God knows how hard I shall try—am trying! Will you forgive me? Will you help me?”

After all, she was hardly prepared for this, and though she began bravely enough with, “Mr. Ralston,” she soon broke down altogether. “Of course,” she told him, “the wedding must be postponed indefinitely. Further than that—I can’t tell what—O Tom! how could”—she began afresh, but stopped at his look, and slowly walked out of the room and house.

V

Slowly the long weeks of late winter succeeded each other, alike monotonous, gray and dreary. Tom Ralston worked, at first manfully, then doggedly, on the farm, fighting with a strong will against public opinion and private temptation. Everybody had heard of his fall. Young girls eyed him curiously from the opposite side of the road, and the frequenters of the village store gathered at night to sit around the stove, heels in air, and bring out stories of old Major Ralston, two or three generations back, whose dissipations had been town talk; and the gossips gravely wagged their heads and said: “’Twas bound to crop out sooner or later.”

So passed the icy months, and song-sparrows and bluebirds began to flit among the naked boughs like dreams of spring. Following them came the robins, plump and cheery embodiments of summer. One morning in April the maples and oaks stretched out their arms, full of rosy and restless baby leaves born in the night. The heats of July parched the land; September laid her gentle hand upon its brow until it was refreshed and slept.

Still Tom Ralston worked on, through sun and shower, seed-time and harvest, beginning at last to win approving nods and kindly smiles and words from his self-appointed critics. Still Charity, with heavy heart, went about her routine of household duties, from which all the sweetness, the vague looking forward, the pretty, girlish longing which had of late clothed them were gone. When she met Tom, as she was often obliged to, she spoke not coldly indeed, but as to a mere acquaintance. Right or wrong, she had conscientiously chosen her course, and she would keep it to the end. She would never marry a man who might become a drunkard, and perhaps leave his curse to be inherited by his innocent children.

It was five days before Christmas when Charity, having finished her daily tasks, stole away to spend the last hour or two of the short winter afternoon in her favorite walk, an old logging-path through the pine woods. The air was deliciously clear and sweet. Overhead, a flock of chickadees called to her merrily, and hung upside down among the tasseled boughs in search of insects and other small bird food. Not an anxious search, by any means; rather a contented one, on the whole, as if they were quite sure their daily bread had been given them, and they were only to see that it was not wasted. Charity half unconsciously took note of their happy little movements to and fro, as, for the hundredth time, she went over and over the arguments against forgiving Tom. She had just reached the triumphant “lastly,” in her course of reasoning, when, suddenly startled by the breaking of a twig, she glanced up, to see the subject of her syllogisms not twenty feet away, gathering evergreen. Like the rushing waters of a great tide, sweeping away her artificial landmarks and barriers, came the overwhelming conviction that it was she, and not the man before her, who needed forgiveness.

At the sound of her dress, Tom, too, had started up, as he did in the cell a year ago; but presently went on with his task, stooping low over a refractory vine of princess pine.

“It was the least I could do,” he said humbly, and with evident effort. “I shall take it up to the city myself and sell it for the girls.”

Something in her very silence, or perhaps a slight exclamation that escaped her lips, made him look up. She stood there, alternately paling and flushing, with a look in her eyes he had not seen for many a long day. He sprang to his feet, but she put out her hand to check him.

“Tom,” she began, with quivering lip, “dear Tom, can you forgive”—

What was the use of her hand then! If she had been surrounded by Napoleon’s Old Guard I believe Tom would have got at her somehow. Forgive her! Bless you, if you had seen him for the next five minutes, or had heard them talk as they walked home together beneath the pines, you would have been puzzled to know which forgave or which was forgiven, or which had done right or wrong, or whether either had ever doubted the other for an instant of their lives.

“‘Suffereth long and is kind,’” whispered grandmother that night, stroking the girl’s brown hair.

Of course Tom went home with her afterward, in the old way, and made footprints again before her door, while the moon smiled to itself and poured down its silvery blessing upon them.

So they had a merry Christmas after all, and a New Year’s wedding, on which occasion grandmother was resplendent in fresh ribbons, and the girls laughed and cried by turns.

The hard, dreary year of Tom’s struggle is long since past, but as Christmastide draws nigh and the wreaths are hung at the windows, Charity Ralston, the dearest and brightest little woman in all the country, looks fondly into her husband’s strong, manly face, and lays her cheek upon his shoulder in a way that tells him she remembers. He, too, has never forgotten, and, standing there in the twilight, with the sweet Christmas incense of the evergreen about them, he tells her again how he endured, and hoped, and loved, and ends by holding her close in his arms, while she whispers, “Merry Christmas, Tom!”

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