Leona Dalrymple - When the Yule Log Burns
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Leona Dalrymple >> When the Yule Log Burns
"Oh, John, dear," Ralph heard his mother say as the Doctor came in,
"I've always said that Christmas is a mother's day. Wasn't the first
Christmas a mother's Christmas and the very first tree--a mother's
tree?" and then the Doctor's scandalized retort--"Now--now, now, see
here, Mother Ellen, it's a father's day, too, don't you forget that!"
And so on to the Christmas twilight through a day of romping youngsters
and blazing Yule-logs, of Christmas gifts and Christmas greetings--of a
haunting shame for Doctor Ralph at the memory of the wild Christmas he
had planned to spend with Griffin and Edwards.
With the coming of the broad shadows which lay among the stiff,
ice-fringed spruces like iris velvet, Doctor Ralph's nieces and nephews
went flying out to help old Asher feed the stock. By the quiet fire the
Doctor beckoned Ralph.
"Suppose, my boy," he said, "suppose you take a look at the little lad's
leg here. I've sometimes wondered what you would think of it."
Coloring a little at his father's deferential tone Ralph turned the
stocking back from the pitiful shrunken limb and bent over it, his dark
face keen and grave. And now with the surgeon uppermost, Roger fancied
Doctor Ralph's handsome eyes were nothing like so tired. Save for the
crackle of the fire and the tick of the great clock, there was silence
in the firelit room and presently Roger caught something in Doctor
Ralph's thoughtful face that made his heart leap wildly.
"An operation," said the young Doctor suddenly--and halted, meeting his
father's eyes significantly.
"You are sure!" insisted the old Doctor slowly. "In my day, it was
impossible--quite impossible."
"Times change," said the younger man. "I have performed such an
operation successfully myself. I feel confident, sir--" but Roger had
caught his hand now with a sob that echoed wildly through the quiet
room.
"Oh, Doctor Ralph," he blurted with blazing, agonized eyes, "you
don't--you can't mean, sir, that I'll walk and run like other
boys--and--and climb the Cedar King--" his voice broke in a passionate
fit of weeping.
"Yes," said Doctor Ralph, huskily, "I mean just that. Dad and I, little
man, we're going to do what we can."
By the window Sister Madge buried her face in her hands.
"Come, come, now Sister Madge," came the Doctor's kindly voice a little
later, "you've cried enough, lass. Roger is fretting about you and
Doctor Ralph here, he says he's going to take you for a little
sleigh-ride if you'll honor him by going."
Outside a Christmas moon rode high above a sparkling ice-bright world
and as the sleigh shot away into its quiet glory, Ralph, meeting the
dark, tear-bright eyes of Sister Madge, tucked the robes closer about
her with a hand that shook a little.
"'Gipsy' Hildreth!" he said suddenly, smiling, but the hated nickname
to-night was almost a caress. "Tell me," Ralph's voice was very
grave--"You've been sewing? Mother spoke of it."
"There was nothing else," said Sister Madge. "I could not leave Roger."
"And now Mother wants you to stay on with her. You--you'll do that?"
"She is very lonely," said Madge uncertainly and Ralph bit his lip.
"Mother lonely!" he said. "She didn't tell me that."
"Roger is wild to stay," went on Madge, looking away--"but I--oh--I fear
it is only their wonderful kindness. Still there's the Doctor's
rheumatism--and he does need some one to keep his books."
"Rheumatism!" said Ralph sharply.
"Yes," nodded Madge in surprise--"didn't you know. It's been pretty bad
this winter. He's been thinking some of breaking in young Doctor Price
to take part of his practise now and perhaps all of it later."
"Price!" broke out Ralph indignantly. "Oh--that's absurd! Price couldn't
possibly swing Dad's work. He's not clever enough."
"He's the only one there is," said Madge and Ralph fell silent.
All about them lay a glittering moonlit country of peaceful, firelit
homes and snowy hills--of long quiet roads and shadowy trees and
presently Ralph spoke again.
"You like all this," he said abruptly, "the quiet--the country--and all
of it?"
Sister Madge's black eyes glowed.
"After all," she said, "is it not the only way to live? This scent of
the pine, the long white road, the wild-fire of the winter sunset and
the wind and the hills--are they not God-made messages of mystery to
man? Life among man-made things--like your cities--seems somehow to
exaggerate the importance of man the maker. Life among the God-made
hills dwarfs that artificial sense of egotism. It teaches you to marvel
at the mystery of Creation. Yesterday when the Doctor and I were
gathering the Christmas boughs, the holly glade in the forest seemed
like some ancient mystic Christmas temple of the Druids where one might
tell his rosary in crimson holly beads and forget the world!"
Well--perhaps there was something fine and sweet and holy in the country
something--a tranquil simplicity--a hearty ruggedness--that city
dwellers forfeited in their head-long rush for man-made pleasure. After
all, perhaps the most enduring happiness lay in the heart of these quiet
hills.
"My chief is very keen on country life," said Ralph suddenly. "He
preaches a lot. Development of home-spirit and old-fashioned household
gods--that sort of thing! He's a queerish sort of chap--my chief--and
a bit too--er--candid at times. He was dad's old classmate, you know."
And Ralph fell silent again, frowning.
So Price was to take his father's practise! How it must gall the old
Doctor! And mother was lonely, eh?--and Dad's rheumatism getting the
best of him--Why Great Guns! mother and dad were growing _old_! And some
of those snow-white hairs of theirs had come from worrying over
him--John had said so. Ralph's dark face burned in the chill night wind.
Well, for all old John's cutting sarcasm, his father still had faith in
him and the trust in young Roger's eloquent eyes had fairly hurt him.
God! they did not know! And then this queer Christmas heart-glow. How
Griffin and Edwards and the rest of his gay friends would mock him for
it? _Friends!_ After all--had he any friends in the finer sense of that
finest of words? Such warm-hearted loyal friends for instance as these
neighbors of his father's who had been dropping in all day with a hearty
smile and a Christmas hand-shake. And black-eyed Sister Madge--this
brave, little fighting gipsy-poet here--where--But here Ralph frowned
again and looked away and even when the cheerful lights of home
glimmered through the trees he was still thinking--after an impetuous
burst of confidence to Sister Madge.
So, later, when Doctor Ralph entered his father's study--his chin was
very determined.
"I was ashamed to tell you this morning, sir," he said steadily, "but
I--I'm no longer on the staff of St. Michael's. My hand was shaking
and--and the chief knew why. And, dad," he faced the old Doctor
squarely, "I'm coming back home to keep your practise out of Price's
fool hands. You've always wanted that and my chief has preached it too,
though I couldn't see it somehow until to-day. And presently, sir,
when--when my hand is steadier, I'm going to make the little chap walk
and run. I've--promised Sister Madge." And the old Doctor cleared his
throat and gulped--and finally he wiped his glasses and walked away to
the window. For of all things God could give him--this surely was the
best!
"Oh, grandpop," cried little John Leslie 3rd, bolting into the study in
great excitement--"Come see Roger! We kids have made him the Christmas
king and he's got a crown o' holly on and--and a wand and he's a-tappin'
us this way with it to make us Knights. And I'm the Fir-tree Knight--and
Bob--he's a Cedar Knight and Ned's a spruce and Roger--he says his
pretty sister tells him stories like that smarter'n any in the books.
Oh--do hurry!"
The old Doctor held out his hand to his son.
"Well, Doctor Ralph," he said huskily, "suppose we go tell mother."
So while the Doctor told Aunt Ellen, Ralph bent his knee to this excited
Christmas King enthroned in the heart of the fire-shadows.
"Rise--" said Roger radiantly, tapping him with a cedar wand, "I--I dub
thee first of all my knights--the good, kind Christmas Knight!"
"And here," said Ralph, smiling, "here's Sister Madge. What grand title
now shall we give to her?" But as Sister Madge knelt before him with
firelit shadows dancing in her sweet, dark eyes, Roger dropped the wand
and buried his face on her shoulder with a little sob.
"Nothing good enough for Sister Madge, eh?" broke in the old Doctor,
looking up. "Well, sir, I think you're right."
Now in the silence Aunt Ellen spoke and her words were like a gentle
Christmas benediction.
"'Unto us,'" said Aunt Ellen Leslie as she turned the Christmas log,
"'this night a son is given!'"
But Ralph, by the window, had not heard. For wakening again in his heart
as he stared at the peaceful, moonlit, "God-made" hills--was the old
forgotten boyish love for this rugged, simple life of his father's
dwarfing the lure of the city and the mockery of his fashionable
friends. And down the lane of years ahead, bright with homely happiness
and service to the needs of others--was the dark and winsome face of
Sister Madge, stirring him to ardent resolution.
Part Two
In Which We Light the New Log with the Embers of the Old
I
The Fire Again
"Doctor!" said little Roger slyly, "you got your chin stuck out!"
The Doctor stroked his grizzled beard in hasty apology.
"God bless my soul," he admitted guiltily. "I do believe I have. You've
been so quiet," he added accusingly, "curled up there by the fire that I
must certainly have gotten lonesome. And I most always stick out my chin
that way when I'm lonesome."
Roger, by way of reparation, betook himself to the arm of the Doctor's
chair.
The Doctor's arm closed tight around him. A year ago this little adopted
son of his had been very lame. It was the first Christmas in his life,
indeed, that he had walked.
"Out there," said the Doctor, "the winter twilight's been fighting the
alder berries with purple spears. It's conquered everything in the
garden and covered it up with misty velvet save the snow and the
berries. But the twilight's using heavier spears now and likely it'll
win. _I_ want the alder berries to win out, drat it! Their blaze is so
bright and cheerful."
Roger accepted the challenge to argument with enthusiasm.
"_I_ want the twilight to win," he said.
The Doctor looked slightly scandalized.
"Oh, my, my, my, my!" he said. "I can't for the life of me understand
any such gloomy preference as that. Bless me, if I can."
"Why," crowed Roger jubilantly, "_I_ can, 'cause the more twilighty it
gets, the more it's Christmas eve!"
The Doctor regarded his small friend with admiration.
"By George," he admitted, "I do believe you have me there--" but the
Doctor's kindly eyes did not fire to the name of Christmas as Roger
thought they ought.
"Almost," he said, "I thought you were going to stick out your chin
again. And you're not lonesome now 'cause I'm here an' pretty noisy."
"Hum!" said the Doctor.
"Man to man, now!" urged Roger suddenly.
This was the accepted key to a confessional ceremony which required much
politeness and ruthless honesty.
"Well, Mr. Hildreth," began the Doctor formally.
Roger's face fell.
"I'm your adopted son," he hinted, "and you said that made my name same
as yours."
"Mr. Leslie!" corrected the Doctor, and Roger glowed.
"Well, Mr. Leslie," went on the Doctor thoughtfully, "I'm chuck full of
grievances. There's the rheumatism in my leg, for instance. That's no
sort of thing to have at Christmas."
"But that's better," said Roger. "You said so this morning. I 'spect you
been thinkin' too much about it like you said I did when my leg was
stiff."
"Ahem! And I did hope somebody would come home for Christmas. I like a
house full of romping youngsters--"
Roger pointed an accusing finger.
"Aunt Ellen says every blessed one of your children, an' your
grand-children too, begged and begged you to come to the city for
Christmas an'--an' you wouldn't go 'cause you're old-fashioned and like
a country Christmas so much better--an'--an' because you'd promised to
teach me to skate on the Deacon's pond an' take me sleighin'."
"Dear me," said the Doctor helplessly, "for such a mite of a kiddy, you
do seem remarkably well informed."
"Man to man," reminded Roger inexorably and the Doctor aired his final
grievance.
"And then there's that youngest son of mine--"
"Doctor Ralph?"
"Doctor Ralph! What right had he, I'd like to know, to marry that pretty
sister of yours and go off honeymooning holiday time. Didn't he know
that we needed him and Sister Madge here for Christmas? I miss 'em both.
Young pirate!"
Roger's heart swelled with loyalty. It was Doctor Ralph's skilful hand
that had helped him walk.
"Most likely," he said fairly, "I'm a little to blame there. After I
came home from the hospital, I did tell Sister Madge to marry him--"
"Most likely," acknowledged the Doctor, "I said something similar to
Doctor Ralph. I can't have you shouldering all the responsibility. Well,
your Honor, there's the Christmas evidence. What's the verdict?"
Roger considered. This man to man game had certain phraseological
conclusions.
"No case!" he said suddenly, nor would he alter his decision when the
Doctor protested against its severity.
"You had so awful many peoply sort of places to go," pointed out Roger,
and the Doctor laughed.
"And let you spend this first Christmas on your two legs in a _city_?"
he demanded. "Well, I guess not! No-sir-ee-bob! There!--the alder
berries have faded out and the garden's thick with twilight."
"And it's Christmas eve!" cried Roger, his black eyes shining with
delight.
"Speaking of Christmas," said the Doctor, sniffing luxuriously, "I feel
that I ought to slip out to the kitchen for a minute or so. I do smell
something tremendously Christmasy and spicy--"
Roger caught his breath. With a Christmas intrigue as surely in the air
as the smell of spice, here was dangerous ground.
"Aunt Ellen," he faltered, "Aunt Ellen said she couldn't pos'bly be
bothered with--with any men folks in the kitchen--not even me."
"Pooh!" rebelled the Doctor largely, "that's merely a ruse of hers to
protect the cookies. And what I'd like to know is just this--what's Aunt
Ellen doing in the kitchen anyway? Certainly old Annie's able to do the
Christmas fussing for three people. Aunt Ellen ought to be in here with
us. That was part of my lonesome grievance but I forgot to mention it."
Roger, shivering apprehensively, visioned suspicious stores of Christmas
delicacies--holly and evergreen--and a supper table set for _ten_! And
off somewhere among those purple spears of twilight old Asher, the hired
man, was waiting at the station with the big farm sleigh.
He must keep his eye upon the Doctor until six o'clock, and lure him
away from the window.
"Tell me a story," begged Roger--"over here by the fire." And his voice
was so very tremulous and urgent that the hungry Doctor abandoned his
notion of a Christmas cookie, and complied.
To Roger, in a nervous ecstasy of anticipation, the story was a blurred
hodge-podge of phrases and crackling fire, distant noises of clinking
china and hurrying feet, and wild flights of imagination.... Old Asher
must be coming past the red barn now ... and now down the hill ... and
now past the Deacon's pond ... and now--
Sleigh-bells fairly leaped out of the quiet, and Roger jumped and
gulped, aquiver with excitement. The Doctor regarded him with mild
disfavor.
"Bless my soul," he said in surprise, "that was the quietest part of my
story. You're restless."
"Go on!" said Roger hoarsely, and the obliging Doctor, mistaking his
agitation for interest, went on with his tale.
But Roger had heard old Asher driving along by the picket fence and
turning in at the gate-posts, and the story was no more to him than the
noisy crackle of the log. Off somewhere in the region of the kitchen
door he detected a subdued scuffle of many feet.
The grandfather's clock struck six.... Roger's cheeks were blazing--the
fire and the Doctor still duetting.... Why, oh, why didn't somebody
come and call them to supper?... There had been plenty of time now for
everything. Why--
The door swung back and Roger jumped. Old Annie, Asher's wife, stood in
the doorway, her wrinkled face inscrutable.
"Supper, sir!" she said and vanished. Hand in hand, the Doctor and Roger
went out to supper.
The dining-room door was closed. That in itself was unusual. But the
unsuspecting Doctor pushed through with Roger at his heels, only to halt
and stare dumfounded over his spectacles while Roger screamed and danced
and clapped his hands. For to the startled eyes of Doctor John Leslie,
the snug, old-fashioned room was alive with boys and holly--boys and
boys and boys upon boys, he would have told you in that first instant of
delighted consternation, in different stages of embarrassment and rags.
And one had but to glance at the faces of old Asher and Annie in the
kitchen doorway, at Aunt Ellen, hovering near her Christmas brood with
the look of all mothers in her kind, brown eyes, and then at Roger,
scarlet with enthusiasm, to know that the Doctor had been the victim of
benevolent conspiracy.
"It's a s'prise!" shrieked Roger, "a Christmasy s'prise! Aunt Ellen she
says you're so awful keen on s'prisin' other folks that we'd show
you--an'--an' you'll have a bang-up Christmas with kids like you love
an' so will I, an' so will they an' the minister he went to the city
and found seven boys crazy for Christmas in the country an'--"
"Roger! Roger!" came Aunt Ellen's gentle voice--"do please take a
breath, child. You're turning purple."
The Doctor adjusted his glasses.
"Seven boys!" he said. "Bless my soul, when I opened that door I saw
seventy boys!" He counted them aloud--then for no reason at all save
that he had glanced into seven eager faces, thinner and sharper than he
liked, for all they glowed with excitement and furtive interest in the
long supper table asparkle with lights and holly, he wiped his glasses
and patted Roger on the back.
"Is your leg botherin' so much now, daddy Doctor?" demanded Roger.
"Nothing like so much," admitted the Doctor.
"Are you lonesome 'nuff now to stick out your chin?"
"Bless your heart, Roger," admitted the Doctor huskily, "I'm so full of
Christmas I can hardly breathe!"
"Hooray!" said Roger. "Me, too."
II
It Blazes Higher
It was well that the Doctor had a way with boys, for there was a problem
to be solved here with infinite tact--a problem of protuberant eyes and
paralyzing self-consciousness, of unnatural silences and then unexpected
attempts at speech that died in painful rasps and gurgles, of stubbing
toes and nudging elbows, of a centipedal supply of arms and legs that
interfered with abortive and conscience-stricken attempts at courtesy,
and above all an interest in the weave of the carpet that was at once a
mania and an epidemic--but by the time supper was well under way,
things, in the language of Roger, had begun to hum, and by the time the
Doctor had mastered the identities of his guests, from Jim, the shy,
sullen boy who would not meet his eyes, to Mike's little brother, Muggs,
who consumed prodigious quantities of everything in staring silence, and
looked something like a girl save for a tardily-cast-off suit of Mike's,
somewhat oceanic in flow and fit, the hum had become celebrative and
distinctly a thing of Christmas.
Constraint in the mellowing halo of a Christmas eve supper where holly
and a Yule-log blazed and the winter wind frostily rattled the
checker-paned windows of the sitting-room in jealous spleen, fled to
join the Doctor's rheumatism.
By the time the grandfather's clock struck seven through a haze of
holly, the Doctor had pokered the Yule-log into a frenzied shower of
gold; apples and nuts were steadily disappearing from a basket by the
Doctor's chair and the Doctor himself was relating an original Christmas
tale of adventure, born of uncommon inspiration and excitement, to a
huddled group with circular eyes and contented stomachs. But
Muggs--inimitable workman--his small face partially obscured by the
biggest apple in the basket, had not yet spoken, and Jim, the shy,
sullen little boy to whom Roger had taken a fancy because he was lame,
had met the Doctor's eyes but once, and then with a rush of color.
Now, whether it was the scheming excitement of a busy day or the warmth
of a busy log or the rambling yarn of a busy Doctor, who may say?
Certainly Roger fell asleep at a fictional crisis and remained asleep
for all that Jim furtively nudged him.
"There!" said the Doctor as the clock struck eight, "that's all. To bath
and beds, every one of you! Annie's had a lamp on the kitchen table this
half hour ready to light you up the stairs. My! My! My!--but there's a
busy day ahead. Roger! Well, of all ungrateful listeners! Roger!"
But in the end, the Doctor carried Roger up to bed, preceded by Annie
with the lamp. And while Annie was turning back quilts and smoothing
pillows and fumbling at windows, with the freedom of long service she
soundly berated the Doctor for postponing the bed-time hour with his
Christmas twaddle.
"And Mister Muggs there," she said severely, "has had one apple too
many, I'm thinkin', and the last one as big as his head. He'll need a
pill before morning. The child's packed himself that hard and round ye
fear to touch him." And then because Muggs was such a very little boy
Annie was minded to assist with his bath, and laid kindly hands upon an
indefinite outer garment which began immediately beneath his arm-pits
and ended at his shoe-tops in singular fringe.
"An', ma'am," she explained to Aunt Ellen a little later, "I had to let
him go in to his bath by himself. No more had I touched his
bushel-basket of rags--an' they were hitched over his shoulders with
school straps and somebody's shirtwaist underneath--than he let out a
terrific shriek (ye must have heard him) an' all the boys come runnin'
and crowdin' round him and starin' so frightened at me, an' his brother
yelled at him to keep quiet or something or somebody'd get him, and he
kept quiet that sudden I could fairly see the child swell. He's
unnatural still and unnatural full, ma'am, an' the Doctor better leave
his pills handy."
Bathed and freshly night-gowned, the Doctor's guests tumbled, a little
noisily into bed. Only Jim lay silent and wakeful. Once he nudged his
bed-fellow.
"Luke," he whispered, "d'ye think I'd orta tell 'em?"
"Aw," said Luke sleepily, "dry up, Jim! Gosh, ain't the bed soft!"
Jim sighed.
Christmas came to the old farmhouse with the distant echo of village
bells at midnight but, long before that, Christmas, in a fur cap and
great-coat had swept up the driveway with a jingle of sleigh-bells,
behind old Polly, the Doctor's mare, his sleigh packed high with
bundles. By the light of a late moon, flinging festal silver on the
snow, it might be seen that Christmas resembled a somewhat guilty
looking old gentleman with a grizzled beard.
"I'll catch old Scratch!" he admitted, suddenly overcome by the bulbous
appearance of the sleigh, "but Ellen may say what she will. She
_couldn't_ have thought of everything!"
No call for pills came that night from Muggs, asleep in a crib that had
seen much service. He was awake however long before daylight, trembling
with excitement.
"Mike, oh Mike!" he called hoarsely. "Wake up. It's Christmas mornin'."
Mike, in a big bed with Marty Fay, sat up.
"Don't you _dare_ open your mouth to-day!" he cried in blood-thirsty
accents, "or Mom Murphy'll git ye surer'n scat. Ain't I schemed enuff to
git ye here? Huh? Wanta be sent home--huh?" Muggs ducked beneath the
blankets with a shivering wail.
III
The Log at Dawn
In the still, cold corridors of a farmhouse, with frost-jungles clouding
every window pane and a zero-dark outside, the cry of "Merry Christmas!"
is most at home. Let noses be ever so cold and blanketed bodies ever so
warm, the cry fills the dawn with electric energy. The Doctor began it.
He knew by the instant response that he had started something that he
could not stop. Almost in no time, it seemed, Roger was leading a wild,
bare-footed scamper down the stairs--for Roger _knew_--and the Doctor,
hastily bath-robed and slippered, was on behind with a lamp. But here
was no cyclonic invasion of a dark, cold sitting-room. Old Annie and
Asher knew boys! A log blazed brightly in the fireplace and the lamp was
lit. If the room was over-warm, it proved simply that Annie had seen
boys of another generation rushing down of a Christmas morning, scantily
clad.
And the King of Christmas trees blazed in candle-glory from wall to
wall, tinselled boughs sagging with the weight of its Christmas
freight. It could not have been bigger--it could not have glittered
more. It had as many arms as an Octopus and its shaggy evergreen head,
starred gorgeously with iridescence, brushed the old-fashioned paper on
the ceiling. A great, lovable Christmas giant guarding a cargo of
Christmas gifts!
