Christmas Eve and Christmas Day Part 7

Then poor Mary explained more at length that Emily had brought in Dr.

c.u.mmings's Manual[1] about the use of milk with children, and that they had sent round to the Corlisses', who always had good milk, and had set a pint according to the direction and formula,--and that though dear little Jamie had refused the groats and the barley, and I know not what else, that at six he had gladly taken all the watered milk they dared to give him, and that it now had rested on his stomach half an hour, so that she could not but hope that the tide had turned, only she hoped with trembling, because he had so steadily refused cow's milk only the week before.

[1] Has the reader a delicate infant? Let him send for Dr. c.u.mmings's little book on Milk for Children.

This rapid review in her entry, of the bulletins of a day, is really the beginning of this Christmas story. No matter which day it was,--it was a little before Christmas, and one of the shortest days, but I have forgotten which. Enough that the baby, for he was a baby still, just entering his thirteenth month,--enough that he did relish the milk, so carefully measured and prepared, and hour by hour took his little dole of it as if it had come from his mother's breast. Enough that three or four days went by so, the little thing lying so still on his back in his crib, his lips still so blue, and his skin of such deadly color against the white of his pillow, and that, twice a day, as Dr. Morton came in and felt his pulse, and listened to the panting, he smiled and looked pleased, and said, "We are getting on better than I dared expect." Only every time he said, "Does he still relish the milk?" and every time was so pleased to know that he took to it still, and every day he added a teaspoonful or two to the hourly dole,--and so poor Mary's heart was lifted day by day.

This lasted till St. Victoria's day. Do you know which day that is? It is the second day before Christmas; and here, properly speaking, the story begins.

II.

ST. VICTORIA'S DAY.

St. Victoria's day the doctor was full two hours late. Mary was not anxious about this. She was beginning to feel bravely about the boy, and no longer counted the minutes till she could hear the door-bell ring.

When he came he loitered in the entry below,--or she thought he did. He was long coming up stairs. And when he came in she saw that he was excited by something,--was really even then panting for breath.

"I am here at last," he said. "Did you think I should fail you?"

Why, no,--poor innocent Mary had not thought any such thing. She had known he would come,--and baby was so well that she had not minded his delay.

Morton looked up at the close drawn shades, which shut out the light, and said, "You did not think of the storm?"

"Storm? no!" said poor Mary. She had noticed, when Robert went to the door at seven and she closed it after him, that some snow was falling.

But she had not thought of it again. She had kissed him, told him to keep up good heart, and had come back to her baby.

Then the doctor told her that the storm which had begun before daybreak had been gathering more and more severely; that the drifts were already heavier than he remembered them in all his Boston life; that after half an hour's trial in his sleigh he had been glad to get back to the stable with his horse; and that all he had done since he had done on foot, with difficulty she could not conceive of. He had been so long down stairs while he brushed the snow off, that he might be fit to come near the child.

"And really, Mrs. Walter, we are doing so well here," he said cheerfully, "that I will not try to come round this afternoon, unless you see a change. If you do, your husband must come up for me, you know.

But you will not need me, I am sure."

Mary felt quite brave to think that they should not need him really for twenty-four hours, and said so; and added, with the first smile he had seen for a fortnight: "I do not know anybody to whom it is of less account than to me, whether the streets are blocked or open. Only I am sorry for you."

Poor Mary, how often she thought of that speech, before Christmas day went by! But she did not think of it all through St. Victoria's day. Her husband did not come home to dinner. She did not expect him. The children came from school at two, rejoicing in the long morning session and the half holiday of the afternoon which had been earned by it. They had some story of their frolic in the snow, and after dinner went quietly away to their little play-room in the attic. And Mary sat with her baby all the afternoon,--nor wanted other company. She could count his breathing now, and knew how to time it by the watch, and she knew that it was steadier and slower than it was the day before. And really he almost showed an appet.i.te for the hourly dole. Her husband was not late. He had taken care of that, and had left the shop an hour early.

And as he came in and looked at the child from the other side of the crib, and smiled so cheerfully on her, Mary felt that she could not enough thank G.o.d for his mercy.

III.

ST. VICTORIA'S DAY IN THE COUNTRY.

Five and twenty miles away was another mother, with a baby born the same day as Jamie. Mary had never heard of her and never has heard of her, and, unless she reads this story, never will hear of her till they meet together in the other home, look each other in the face, and know as they are known. Yet their two lives, as you shall see, are twisted together, as indeed are all lives, only they do not know it--as how should they?

A great day for Huldah Stevens was this St. Victoria's day. Not that she knew its name more than Mary did. Indeed it was only of late years that Huldah Stevens had cared much for keeping Christmas day. But of late years they had all thought of it more; and this year, on Thanksgiving day, at old Mr. Stevens's, after great joking about the young people's housekeeping, it had been determined, with some banter, that the same party should meet with John and Huldah on Christmas eve, with all Huldah's side of the house besides, to a late dinner or early supper, as the guests might please to call it. Little difference between the meals, indeed, was there ever in the profusion of these country homes. The men folks were seldom at home at the noon-day meal, call it what you will.

For they were all in the milk-business, as you will see. And, what with collecting the milk from the hill-farms, on the one hand, and then carrying it for delivery at the three o'clock morning milk-train, on the other hand, any hours which you, dear reader, might consider systematic, or of course in country life, were certainly always set aside. But, after much conference, as I have said, it had been determined at the Thanksgiving party that all hands in both families should meet at John and Huldah's as near three o'clock as they could the day before Christmas; and then and there Huldah was to show her powers in entertaining at her first state family party.

So this St. Victoria's day was a great day of preparation for Huldah, if she had only known its name, as she did not. For she was of the kind which prepares in time, not of the kind that is caught out when the company come with the work half done. And as John started on his collection beat that morning at about the hour Robert, in town, kissed Mary good-by, Huldah stood on the step with him, and looked with satisfaction on the gathering snow, because it would make better sleighing the next day for her father and mother to come over. She charged him not to forget her box of raisins when he came back, and to ask at the express if anything came up from town, bade him good-by, and turned back into the house, not wholly dissatisfied to be almost alone.

She washed her baby, gave him his first lunch and put him to bed. Then, with the coast fairly clear,--what woman does not enjoy a clear coast, if it only be early enough in the morning?--she dipped boldly and wisely into her flour-barrel, stripped her plump round arms to their work, and began on the pie-crust which was to appear to-morrow in the fivefold forms of apple, cranberry, Marlboro', mince, and squash,--careful and discriminating in the nice chemistry of her mixtures and the nice manipulations of her handicraft, but in nowise dreading the issue. A long, active, lively morning she had of it. Not dissatisfied with the stages of her work, step by step she advanced, stage by stage she attained of the elaborate plan which was well laid out in her head, but, of course, had never been intrusted to words, far less to tell-tale paper. From the oven at last came the pies,--and she was satisfied with the color; from the other oven came the turkey, which she proposed to have cold,--as a relay, or _piece de resistance_, for any who might not be at hand at the right moment for dinner. Into the empty oven went the clove-blossoming ham, which, as it boiled, had given the least appetizing odor to the kitchen. In the pretty moulds in the woodshed stood the translucent cranberry hardening to its fixed consistency. In other moulds the obedient calf's foot already announced its willingness and intention to "gell" as she directed. Huldah's decks were cleared again, her kitchen table fit to cut out "work" upon,--all the pans and plates were put away, which acc.u.mulate so mysteriously where cooking is going forward; on its nail hung the weary jigger, on its hook the spicy grater, on the roller a fresh towel. Everything gave sign of victory, the whole kitchen looking only a little nicer than usual. Huldah herself was dressed for the afternoon, and so was the baby; and n.o.body but as acute observers as you and I would have known that she had been in action all along the line and had won the battle at every point, when two o'clock came, the earliest moment at which her husband ever returned.

Then for the first time it occurred to Huldah to look out doors and see how fast the snow was gathering. She knew it was still falling. But the storm was a quiet one, and she had had too much to do to be gaping out of the windows. She went to the shed door, and to her amazement saw that the north wood-pile was wholly drifted in! Nor could she, as she stood, see the fences of the roadway!

Huldah ran back into the house, opened the parlor door and drew up the curtain, to see that there were indeed no fences on the front of the house to be seen. On the northwest, where the wind had full sweep,--between her and the barn, the ground was bare. But all that snow--and who should say how much more?--was piled up in front of her; so that unless Huldah had known every landmark, she would not have suspected that any road was ever there. She looked uneasily out at the northwest windows, but she could not see an inch to windward: dogged snow--snow--snow--as if it would never be done.

Huldah knew very well then that there was no husband for her in the next hour, nor most like in the next or the next. She knew very well too what she had to do; and, knowing it, she did it. She tied on her hood, and b.u.t.toned tight around her her rough sack, pa.s.sed through the shed and crossed that bare strip to the barn, opened the door with some difficulty, because snow was already drifting into the doorway, and entered. She gave the cows and oxen their water and the two night horses theirs,--went up into the loft and pitched down hay enough for all,--went down stairs to the pigs and cared for them,--took one of the barn shovels and cleared a path where she had had to plunge into the snow at the doorway, took the shovel back, and then crossed home again to her baby. She thought she saw the Empsons' chimney smoking as she went home, and that seemed companionable. She took off her over-shoes, sack, and hood, said aloud, "This will be a good stay-at-home day,"

brought round her desk to the kitchen table, and began on a nice long letter to her brother Cephas in Seattle.

That letter was finished, eight good quarto pages written, and a long delayed letter to Emily Tabor, whom Huldah had not seen since she was married; and a long pull at her milk accounts had brought them up to date,--and still no John. Huldah had the table all set, you may be sure of that; but, for herself, she had had no heart to go through the formalities of lunch or dinner. A cup of tea and something to eat with it as she wrote did better, she thought, for her,--and she could eat when the men came. It is a way women have. Not till it became quite dark, and she set her kerosene lamp in the window that he might have a chance to see it when he turned the Locust Grove corner, did Huldah once feel herself lonely, or permit herself to wish that she did not live in a place where she could be cut off from all her race. "If John had gone into partnership with Joe Winter and we had lived in Boston." This was the thought that crossed her mind. Dear Huldah,--from the end of one summer to the beginning of the next, Joe Winter does not go home to his dinner; and what you experience to-day, so far as absence from your husband goes, is what his wife experiences in Boston ten months, save Sundays, in every year.

I do not mean that Huldah winced or whined. Not she. Only she did think "if." Then she sat in front of the stove and watched the coals, and for a little while continued to think "if." Not long. Very soon she was engaged in planning how she would arrange the table to-morrow,--whether Mother Stevens should cut the chicken-pie, or whether she would have that in front of her own mother. Then she fell to planning what she would make for Cynthia's baby,--and then to wondering whether Cephas was in earnest in that half nonsense he wrote about Sibyl Dyer,--and then the clock struck six!

No bells yet,--no husband,--no anybody. Lantern out and lighted. Rubber boots on, hood and sack. Shed-shovel in one hand, lantern in the other.

Roadway still bare, but a drift as high as Huldah's shoulders at the barn door. Lantern on the ground; snow-shovel in both hands now. One, two, three!--one cubic foot out. One, two, three!--another cubic foot out. And so on, and so on, and so on, till the doorway is clear again.

Lantern in one hand, snow-shovel in the other, we enter the barn, draw the water for cows and oxen,--we shake down more hay, and see to the pigs again. This time we make beds of straw for the horses and the cattle. Nay, we linger a minute or two, for there is something companionable there. Then we shut them in, in the dark, and cross the well-cleared roadway to the shed, and so home again. Certainly Mrs.

Empson's kerosene lamp is in her window. That must be her light which gives a little halo in that direction in the falling snow. That looks like society.

And this time Huldah undresses the baby, puts on her yellow flannel night-gown,--makes the whole as long as it may be,--and then, still making believe be jolly, lights another lamp, eats her own supper, clears it away, and cuts into the new Harper which John had brought up to her the day before.

But the Harper is dull reading to her, though generally so attractive.

And when her Plymouth-Hollow clock consents to strike eight at last, Huldah, who has stinted herself to read till eight, gladly puts down the "Travels in Arizona," which seem to her as much like the "Travels in Peru," of the month before, as those had seemed like the "Travels in Chinchilla." Rubber boots again,--lantern again,--sack and hood again.

The men will be in no case for milking when they come. So Huldah brings together their pails,--takes her shovel once more and her lantern,--digs out the barn drift again, and goes over to milk little Carry and big Fanchon. For, though the milking of a hundred cows pa.s.ses under those roofs and out again every day, Huldah is far too conservative to abandon the custom which she inherits from some Thorfinn or some Elfrida, and her husband is well pleased to humor her in keeping in that barn always, at least two of the choicest three-quarter blood cows that he can choose, for the family supply. Only, in general, he or Reuben milks them; as duties are divided there, this is not Huldah's share. But on this eve of St. Spiridion the gentle creatures were glad when she came in; and in two journeys back and forth Huldah had carried her well-filled pails into her dairy. This helped along the hour, and just after nine o'clock struck, she could hear the cheers of the men at last.

She ran out again with the ready lighted lantern to the shed-door,--in an instant had on her boots and sack and hood, had crossed to the barn, and slid open the great barn door,--and stood there with her light,--another Hero for another Leander to buffet towards, through the snow. A sight to see were the two men, to be sure! And a story, indeed, they had to tell! On their different beats they had fought snow all day, had been breaking roads with the help of the farmers where they could, had had to give up more than half of the outlying farms, sending such messages as they might, that the outlying farmers might bring down to-morrow's milk to such stations as they could arrange, and, at last, by good luck, had both met at the depot in the hollow, where each had gone to learn at what hour the milk-train might be expected in the morning. Little reason was there, indeed, to expect it at all. Nothing had pa.s.sed the station-master since the morning express, called lightning by satire, had slowly pushed up with three or four engines five hours behind its time, and just now had come down a messenger from them that he should telegraph to Boston that they were all blocked up at Tyler's Summit,--the snow drifting beneath their wheels faster than they could clear it. Above, the station-master said, nothing whatever had yet pa.s.sed Winchendon. Five engines had gone out from Fitchburg eastward, but in the whole day they had not come as far as Leominster. It was very clear that no milk-train nor any other train would be on time the next morning.

Such was, in brief, John's report to Huldah, when they had got to that state of things in which a man can make a report; that is, after they had rubbed dry the horses, had locked up the barn, after the men had rubbed themselves dry, and had put on dry clothing, and after each of them, sitting on the fire side of the table, had drunk his first cup of tea, and eaten his first square cubit of dipped-toast. After the dipped-toast, they were going to begin on Huldah's fried potatoes and sausages.

Huldah heard their stories with all their infinite little details; knew every corner and turn by which they had husbanded strength and life; was grateful to the Corbetts and Varnums and Prescotts and the rest, who, with their oxen and their red right hands, had given such loyal help for the common good; and she heaved a deep sigh when the story ended with the verdict of the failure of the whole,--"No trains on time to-morrow."

"Bad for the Boston babies," said Reuben bluntly, giving words to what the others were feeling. "Poor little things!" said Huldah, "Alice has been so pretty all day." And she gulped down just one more sigh, disgusted with herself, as she remembered that "if" of the afternoon,--"if John had only gone into partnership with Joe Winter."

IV.

HOW THEY BROKE THE BLOCKADE.

Three o'clock in the morning saw Huldah's fire burning in the stove, her water boiling in the kettle, her slices of ham broiling on the gridiron, and quarter-past three saw the men come across from the barn, where they had been shaking down hay for the cows and horses, and yoking the oxen for the terrible onset of the day. It was bright star-light above,--thank Heaven for that. This strip of three hundred thousand square miles of snow cloud, which had been drifting steadily cast over a continent, was, it seemed, only twenty hours wide,--say two hundred miles, more or less,--and at about midnight its last flecks had fallen, and all the heaven was washed black and clear. The men were well rested by those five hours of hard sleep. They were fitly dressed for their great encounter and started cheerily upon it, as men who meant to do their duty, and to both of whom, indeed, the thought had come, that life and death might be trembling in their hands. They did not take out the pungs to-day, nor, of course, the horses. Such milk as they had collected on St. Victoria's day they had stored already at the station, and at Stacy's; and the best they could do to-day would be to break open the road from the Four Corners to the station, that they might place as many cans as possible there before the down-train came. From the house, then, they had only to drive down their oxen that they might work with the other teams from the Four Corners; and it was only by begging him, that Huldah persuaded Reuben to take one lunch-can for them both. Then, as Reuben left the door, leaving John to kiss her "good-by," and to tell her not to be alarmed if they did not come home at night,--she gave to John the full milk-can into which she had poured every drop of Carry's milk, and said, "It will be one more; and G.o.d knows what child may be crying for it now."

So they parted for eight and twenty hours; and in place of Huldah's first state party of both families, she and Alice reigned solitary that day, and held their little court with never a suitor. And when her lunch-time came, Huldah looked half-mournfully, half-merrily, on her array of dainties prepared for the feast, and she would not touch one of them. She toasted some bread before the fire, made a cup of tea, boiled an egg, and would not so much as set the table. As has been before stated, this is the way with women.

And of the men, who shall tell the story of the pluck and endurance, of the unfailing good-will, of the resource in strange emergency, of the mutual help and common courage with which all the men worked that day on that well-nigh hopeless task of breaking open the highway from the Corners to the station? Well-nigh hopeless, indeed; for although at first, with fresh cattle and united effort, they made in the hours, which pa.s.sed so quickly up to ten o'clock, near two miles headway, and had brought yesterday's milk thus far,--more than half way to their point of delivery,--at ten o'clock it was quite evident that this sharp northwest wind, which told so heavily on the oxen and even on the men, was filling in the very roadway they had opened, and so was cutting them off from their base, and, by its new drifts, was leaving the roadway for to-day's milk even worse than it was when they began. In one of those extemporized councils, then,--such as fought the battle of Bunker Hill, and threw the tea into Boston harbor,--it was determined, at ten o'clock, to divide the working parties. The larger body should work back to the Four Corners, and by proper relays keep that trunk line of road open, if they could; while six yoke, with their owners, still pressing forward to the station, should make a new base at Lovejoy's, where, when these oxen gave out, they could be put up at his barn. It was quite clear, indeed, to the experts that that time was not far distant.

And so, indeed, it proved. By three in the afternoon, John and Reuben and the other leaders of the advance party--namely, the whole of it, for such is the custom of New England--gathered around the fire at Lovejoy's, conscious that after twelve hours of such battle as Pavia never saw, nor Roncesvalles, they were defeated at every point but one.

Before them the mile of road which they had made in the steady work of hours was drifted in again as smooth as the surrounding pastures, only if possible a little more treacherous for the labor which they had thrown away upon it. The oxen which had worked kindly and patiently, well handled by good-tempered men, yet all confused and half dead with exposure, could do no more. Well, indeed, if those that had been stalled fast, and had had to stand in that biting wind after gigantic effort, escaped with their lives from such exposure. All that the men had gained was that they had advanced their first depot of milk--two hundred and thirty-nine cans--as far as Lovejoy's. What supply might have worked down to the Four Corners behind them, they did not know and hardly cared, their communications that way being well-nigh cut off again. What they thought of, and planned for, was simply how these cans at Lovejoy's could be put on any downward train. For by this time they knew that all trains would have lost their grades and their names, and that this milk would go into Boston by the first engine that went there, though it rode on the velvet of a palace car.

What train this might be, they did not know. From the hill above Lovejoy's they could see poor old Dix, the station-master, with his wife and boys, doing his best to make an appearance of shovelling in front of his little station. But Dix's best was but little, for he had but one arm, having lost the other in a collision, and so as a sort of pension the company had placed him at this little flag-station, where was a roof over his head, a few tickets to sell, and generally very little else to do. It was clear enough that no working parties on the railroad had worked up to Dix, or had worked down; nor was it very likely that any would before night, unless the railroad people had better luck with their drifts than our friends had found. But, as to this, who should say? Snow-drifts are "mighty onsartain." The line of that road is in general northwest, and to-day's wind might have cleaned out its gorges as persistently as it had filled up our crosscuts. From Lovejoy's barn they could see that the track was now perfectly clear for the half mile where it crossed the Prescott meadows.

I am sorry to have been so long in describing thus the aspect of the field after the first engagement. But it was on this condition of affairs that, after full conference, the enterprises of the night were determined. Whatever was to be done was to be done by men. And after thorough regale on Mrs. Lovejoy's green tea, and continual return to her constant relays of thin bacon gilded by unnumbered eggs; after cutting and coming again upon unnumbered mince-pies, which, I am sorry to say, did not in any point compare well with Huldah's,--each man thrust many doughnuts into his outside pockets, drew on the long boots again, and his buckskin gloves and mittens, and, unenc.u.mbered now by the care of animals, started on the work of the evening. The sun was just taking his last look at them from the western hills, where Reuben and John could see Huldah's chimney smoking. The plan was, by taking a double hand-sled of Lovejoy's, and by knocking together two or three more, jumper-fashion, to work their way across the meadow to the railroad causeway, and establish a milk depot there, where the line was not half a mile from Lovejoy's. By going and coming often, following certain tracks well known to Lovejoy on the windward side of walls and fences, these eight men felt quite sure that by midnight they could place all their milk at the spot where the old farm crossing strikes the railroad.

Meanwhile, Silas Lovejoy, a boy of fourteen, was to put on a pair of snow-shoes, go down to the station, state the case to old Dix, and get from him a red lantern and permission to stop the first train where it swept out from the Pitman cut upon the causeway. Old Dix had no more right to give this permission than had the humblest street-sweeper in Ispahan, and this they all knew. But the fact that Silas had asked for it would show a willingness on their part to submit to authority, if authority there had been. This satisfied the New England love of law, on the one hand. On the other hand, the train would be stopped, and this satisfied the New England determination to get the thing done any way.

To give additional force to Silas, John provided him with a note to Dix, and it was generally agreed that if Dix wasn't ugly, he would give the red lantern and the permission. Silas was then to work up the road and station himself as far beyond the curve as he could, and stop the first down-train. He was to tell the conductor where the men were waiting with the milk, was to come down to them on the train, and his duty would be done. Lest Dix should be ugly, Silas was provided with Lovejoy's only lantern, but he was directed not to show this at the station until his interview was finished. Silas started cheerfully on his snow-shoes; John and Lovejoy, at the same time, starting with the first hand-sled of the cans. First of all into the sled, John put Huldah's well-known can, a little shorter than the others, and with a different handle. "Whatever else went to Boston," he said, "that can was bound to go through."

They established the basis of their pyramid, and met the three new jumpers with their makers as they went back for more. This party enlarged the base of the pyramid; and, as they worked, Silas pa.s.sed them cheerfully with his red lantern. Old Dix had not been ugly, had given the lantern and all the permission he had to give, and had communicated some intelligence also. The intelligence was, that an acc.u.mulated force of seven engines, with a large working party, had left Groton Junction downward at three. Nothing had arrived upward at Groton Junction; and, from Boston, Dix learned that nothing more would leave there till early morning. No trains had arrived in Boston from any quarter for twenty-four hours. So long the blockade had lasted already.