On Christmas Day In The Evening Part 2

It saves complications. Sewall's head's level--trust him."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Billy!" His sister Margaret's voice was anxious.

"Are you sure you'd better?"]

V

"I can't--" said a very old man with a peaceful face--now wearing a somewhat startled expression-- "I can't quite believe you are serious, Mr. Sewall. The people are all expecting you--they will come out to hear you. I have not preached for--" he hesitated-- "for many years. I will not say that it would not be--a happiness. If I thought I were fit.

But----"

"If I were half as fit," answered Sewall, gently, "I should be very proud. But I'm--why, I'm barely seasoned, yet. I'm liable to warp, if I'm exposed to the weather. But you--with all the benefit of your long experience--you're the sort of timber that needs to be built into this strange Christmas service. I hadn't thought much about it, Mr. Blake, till I was on my way here. I accepted the invitation too readily. But when I did begin to think, I felt the need of help. I believe you can give it. It's a critical situation. You know these people, root and branch. I may say the wrong thing. You will know how to say the right one."

"If I should consent," the other man said, after a silence during which, with bent white head, he studied the matter, "what would be your part?

Should you attempt--" he glanced at the clerical dress of his caller-- "to carry through the service of your--Church?"

Sewall's face, which had been grave, relaxed. "No, Mr. Blake," said he. "It wouldn't be possible, and it wouldn't be--suitable. This is a community which would probably prefer any other service, and it should have its preference respected. A simple form, as nearly as possible like what it has been used to, will be best--don't you think so? I believe there is to be considerable music. I will read the Story of the Birth, and will try to make a prayer. The rest I will leave to you."

"And Him," added the old man.

"And Him," agreed the young man, reverently. Then a bright smile broke over his face, and he held out his hand. "I'm no end grateful to you, sir," he said, a certain attractive boyishness of manner suddenly coming uppermost and putting to flight the dignity which was at times a heavier weight than he could carry. "No end. Don't you remember how it used to be, when you first went into the work, and tackled a job now and then that seemed too big for you? Then you caught sight of a pair of shoulders that looked to you broader than yours--the muscles developed by years of exercise--and you were pretty thankful to s.h.i.+ft the load on to them? You didn't want to s.h.i.+rk--Heaven forbid!--but you just felt you didn't know enough to deal with the situation. Don't you remember?"

The old man, with a gently humorous look, glanced down at his own thin, bent shoulders, then at the stalwart ones which towered above him.

"You speak metaphorically, my dear lad," he said quaintly, with a kindly twinkle in his faded blue eyes. He laid his left hand on the firm young arm whose hand held his shrunken right. "But I do remember--yes, yes--I remember plainly enough. And though it seems to me now as if the strength were all with the young and vigorous in body, it may be that I should be glad of the years that have brought me experience."

"And tolerance," added William Sewall, pressing the hand, his eyes held fast by Elder Blake's.

"And love," yet added the other. "Love. That's the great thing--that's the great thing. I do love this community--these dear people. They are good people at heart--only misled as to what is worth standing out for.

I would see them at peace. Maybe I can speak to them. G.o.d knows--I will try."

VI

"The Fernald family alone will fill the church," observed the bachelor son of the house, Ralph. He leaned out from his place at the tail of the procession to look ahead down the line, where the dark figures showed clearly against the snow. By either hand he held a child--his sister Carolyn's oldest, his brother Edson's youngest. "So it won't matter much if n.o.body else comes out. We're all here--'some in rags, and some in tags, and some in velvet gowns'."

"I can discern the velvet gowns," conceded Edson, from his place just in front, where his substantial figure supported his mother's frail one.

"But I fail to make out any rags. Take us by and large, we seem to put up rather a prosperous front. I never noticed it quite so decidedly as this year."

"There's nothing at all ostentatious about the girls' dressing, dear,"

said his mother's voice in his ear. "And I noticed they all put on their simplest clothes for to-night--as they should."

"Oh, yes," Edson chuckled. "That's precisely why they look so prosperous. That elegant simplicity--gad!--you should see the bills that come in for it. Jess isn't an extravagant dresser, as women go--not by a long shot--_but!_" He whistled a bar or two of ragtime. "I can see myself now, as a lad, sitting on that fence over there--" he indicated a line of rails, half buried in snow, which outlined the borders of an old apple orchard-- "counting the quarters in my trousers pockets, earned by hard labour in the strawberry patch. I thought it quite a sum, but it wouldn't have bought----"

"A box of the cigars you smoke now," interjected Ralph unexpectedly, from behind. "Hullo--there's the church! Jolly, but the old building looks bright, doesn't it? I didn't know oil lamps could put up such an illumination. --And see the folks going in!"

"See them coming--from all directions." Nan, farther down the line, clutched Sam Burnett's arm. "Oh, I knew they'd come out--I knew they would!"

"Of course they'll come out." This was Mrs. Oliver. "Locks and bars couldn't keep a country community at home, when there is anything going on. But as to the _feeling_--that is a different matter. --Oliver, do take my m.u.f.f. I want to take off my veil. There will be no chance once I am inside the door. Nan is walking twice as fast now as when we started.

She will have us all up the aisle before----"

"Where's Billy Sewall bolting to?" Guy sent back this stage-whisper from the front of the procession, to Margaret, his wife, who was walking with Father Fernald, her hand on his gallant arm. In John Fernald's day a man always offered his arm to the lady he escorted.

"He caught sight of Mr. Blake, across the road. They're going in together," Margaret replied. "I think Mr. Blake is to have a part in the service."

"Old Ebenezer Blake? You don't say!" Father Fernald e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed in astonishment. He had not been told of Sewall's visit to the aged minister. "Well--well--that is thoughtful of William Sewall.

I don't suppose Elder Blake has taken part in a service in fifteen years--twenty, maybe. He used to be a great preacher, too, in his day.

I used to listen to him, when I was a young man, and think he could put things in about as interesting a way as any preacher I ever heard. Good man, too, he was--and is. But n.o.body's thought of asking him to make a prayer in public since--I don't know when. --Well, well--look at the people going in! I guess we'd better be getting right along to our seats, or there won't be any left."

VII

The organ was playing--very softly. Carolyn was a skilful manipulator of keyboards, and she had discovered that by carefully refraining from the use of certain keys--discreetly marked by postage stamps--she could produce a not unmusical effect of subdued harmony. This unquestionably added very much to the impression of a churchly atmosphere, carried out to the eye by the Christmas wreathing and twining of the heavy ropes of s.h.i.+ning laurel leaves, and by the ma.s.sing of the whole pulpit-front in the soft, dark green of hemlock boughs and holly. To the people who entered the house with vivid memories of the burning July day when words hardly less burning had seemed to scorch the barren walls, this lamp-lit interior, clothed with the garments of the woods and fragrant with their breath, seemed a place so different that it could hardly be the same.

But the faces were the same--the faces. And George Tomlinson did not look at Asa Fraser, though he pa.s.sed him in the aisle, beard to beard.

Miss Jane Pollock stared hard at the back of Mrs. Maria Hill's bonnet, in the pew in front of her, but when Mrs. Hill turned about to glance up at the organ-loft, to discover who was there, Miss Pollock's face became as adamant, and her eyes remained fixed on her folded hands until Mrs.

Hill had twisted about again, and there was no danger of their glances encountering. All over the church, likewise, were people who avoided seeing each other, though conscious, all down their rigid backbones, that those with whom they had fallen out on that unhappy July day were present.

There was no vestry in the old meeting-house; no retiring place of any sort where the presiding minister might stay until the moment came for him to make his quiet and impressive entrance through a softly opening pulpit door. So when the Reverend William Sewall of St. John's, of the neighbouring city, came into the North Estabrook sanctuary, it was as his congregation had entered, through the front door and up the aisle.

There was a turning of heads to see him come, but there was a staring of eyes, indeed, when it was seen by whom he was accompanied. The erect figure of the young man, in his unexceptionable attire, walked slowly, to keep pace with the feeble footsteps of the very old man in his threadbare garments of the cut of half a century ago, and the sight of the two together was one of the most strangely touching things that had ever met the eyes of the people of North Estabrook. It may be said, therefore, that from that first moment there was an unexpected and unreckoned-with influence abroad in the place.

Now, to the subdued notes of the organ, which had been occupied with one theme, built upon with varying harmonies but ever appearing--though perhaps no ear but a trained one would have recognized it through the veil--was added the breath of voices. It was only an old Christmas carol, the music that of a German folk song, but dear to generations of Christmas singers everywhere. The North Estabrook people recognized it--yet did not recognize it. They had never heard it sung like that before.

"_Holy night! peaceful night!

All is dark, save the light Yonder where they sweet vigils keep O'er the Babe, who in silent sleep Rests in heavenly peace._"

It was the presence of Margaret Sewall Fernald which had made it possible to attempt music at this service--the music which it seemed impossible to do without. Her voice was one of rare beauty, her leaders.h.i.+p that of training. Her husband, Guy, possessed a reliable, if uncultivated, ba.s.s. Edson had sung a fair tenor in his college glee-club. By the use of all her arts of persuasion Nan had provided an alto singer, from the ranks of the choir which had once occupied this organ-loft--the daughter of Asa Fraser. Whether the quartette thus formed would have pa.s.sed muster--as a quartette--with the choir-master of St. John's, may have been a question, but it is certain the music they produced was so far above that which the old church had ever heard before within its walls that had the singers been a detachment from the choir celestial those who heard them could hardly have listened with ears more charmed.

As "Holy Night" came down to him, William Sewall bent his head. But Ebenezer Blake lifted his. His dim blue eyes looked up--up and up--quite through the old meeting-house roof--to the starry skies where it seemed to him angels sang again. He forgot the people a.s.sembled in front of him--he forgot the responsibilities upon his shoulders--those bent shoulders which had long ago laid down such responsibilities. He saw visions. It is the old men who see visions. The young men dream dreams.

The young city rector read the Christmas Story--out of the worn copy of the Scriptures which had served this pulpit almost from the beginning.

He read it in the rich and cultivated voice of his training, but quite simply. Then Margaret sang, to the slender accompaniment of the little organ, the same solo which a famous soprano had sung that morning at the service at St. John's--and her brother William, listening from the pulpit, thought she sang it better. There was the quality in Margaret's voice which reaches hearts--a quality which somehow the famous soprano's notes had lacked. And every word could be heard, too--the quiet throughout the house was so absolute--except when Asa Fraser cleared his throat loudly in the midst of one of the singer's most beautiful notes. At the sound Mrs. George Tomlinson gave him a glance which ought to have annihilated him--but it did not. She could not know that the throat-clearing was a high tribute to the song--coming from Asa Fraser.

"_How silently, how silently, The wondrous gift is given; So G.o.d imparts to human hearts The blessing of His heaven....

O Holy Child of Bethlehem!

Descend to us, we pray; Cast out our sin, and enter in, Be born in us to-day._"

Then William Sewall made a prayer. Those who had been looking to see old Elder Blake take this part in the service began to wonder if he had been asked into the pulpit simply as a courtesy. They supposed he could pray, at least. They knew he had never ceased doing it--and for them. Elder Blake had not an enemy in the village. It seemed strange that he couldn't be given some part, in spite of his extreme age. To be sure, it was many years since anybody had asked him to take part in any service whatsoever, even a funeral service--for which, as is well understood, a man retains efficiency long after he has ceased to be of use in the pulpit, no matter how devastating may be the weather. But that fact did not seem to bear upon the present situation.

A number of people, among them Miss Jane Pollock, were beginning to feel more than a little indignant about it, and so lost the most of Sewall's prayer, which was a good one, and not out of the prayer-book, though there were phrases in it which suggested that source, as was quite natural. The city man meant to do it all, then. Doubtless he thought n.o.body from the country knew how to do more than to p.r.o.nounce the benediction. Doubtless that was to be Elder Blake's insignificant part--to p.r.o.nounce the----