languor and
weariness that made it very sweet and
pathetic. And I
heard him tell Aunt Janet that he did not like to see the child
getting so much the look of her Aunt Felicity.
"Cecily is
perfectly well," said Aunt Janet
sharply. "She's only
growing very fast. Don't be foolish, Alec."
But after that Cecily had cups of cream where the rest of us got
only milk; and Aunt Janet was very particular to see that she had
her rubbers on
whenever she went out.
On this merry Christmas evening, however, no fears or dim
foreshadowings of any coming event clouded our hearts or faces.
Cecily looked brighter and prettier than I had ever seen her, with
her
softly shining eyes and the nut brown gloss of her hair.
Felicity was too beautiful for words; and even the Story Girl,
between
excitement and the
crimson silk array, blossomed out with
a charm and
allurement more
potent than any regular loveliness--
and this in spite of the fact that Aunt Olivia had tabooed the red
satin slippers and mercilessly decreed that stout shoes should be
worn.
"I know just how you feel about it, you daughter of Eve," she
said, with gay
sympathy, "but December roads are damp, and if you
are going to walk to Marrs' you are not going to do it in those
frivolous Parisian concoctions, even with overboots on; so be
brave, dear heart, and show that you have a soul above little red
satin shoes."
"Anyhow," said Uncle Roger, "that red silk dress will break the
hearts of all the
feminine small fry at the party. You'd break
their spirits, too, if you wore the slippers. Don't do it, Sara.
Leave them one wee
loophole of enjoyment."
"What does Uncle Roger mean?" whispered Felicity.
"He means you girls are all dying of
jealousy" target="_blank" title="n.妒忌;猜忌">
jealousy because of the Story
Girl's dress," said Dan.
"I am not of a
jealous disposition," said Felicity loftily, "and
she's entirely
welcome to the dress--with a
complexion like that."
But we enjoyed that party hugely, every one of us. And we enjoyed
the walk home afterwards, through dim, enshadowed fields where
silvery star-beams lay, while Orion trod his
stately march above
us, and a red moon climbed up the black horizon's rim. A brook
went with us part of the way, singing to us through the dark--a
gay, irresponsible
vagabond of
valley and wilderness.
Felicity and Peter walked not with us. Peter's cup must surely
have brimmed over that Christmas night. When we left the Marr
house, he had
boldly said to Felicity, "May I see you home?" And
Felicity, much to our
amazement, had taken his arm and marched off
with him. The primness of her was
indescribable, and was not at
all ruffled by Dan's hoot of
derision. As for me, I was consumed
by a secret and burning desire to ask the Story Girl if I might
see HER home; but I could not screw my courage to the sticking
point. How I envied Peter his easy, insouciant manner! I could
not emulate him, so Dan and Felix and Cecily and the Story Girl
and I all walked hand in hand, huddling a little closer together
as we went through James Frewen's woods--for there are strange
harps in a fir grove, and who shall say what fingers sweep them?
Mighty and sonorous was the music above our heads as the winds of
the night stirred the great boughs tossing athwart the starlit
sky. Perhaps it was that aeolian
harmony which recalled to the
Story Girl a legend of elder days.
"I read such a pretty story in one of Aunt Olivia's books last
night," she said. "It was called 'The Christmas Harp.' Would you
like to hear it? It seems to me it would just suit this part of
the road."
"There isn't anything about--about ghosts in it, is there?" said
Cecily timidly.
"Oh, no, I wouldn't tell a ghost story here for anything. I'd
frighten myself too much. This story is about one of the
shepherds who saw the angels on the first Christmas night. He was
just a youth, and he loved music with all his heart, and he longed
to be able to express the
melody that was in his soul. But he
could not; he had a harp and he often tried to play on it; but his
clumsy fingers only made such
discord that his companions laughed
at him and mocked him, and called him a
madman because he would
not give it up, but would rather sit apart by himself, with his
arms about his harp, looking up into the sky, while they gathered
around their fire and told tales to wile away their long night
vigils as they watched their sheep on the hills. But to him the
thoughts that came out of the great silence were far sweeter than
their mirth; and he never gave up the hope, which sometimes left
his lips as a prayer, that some day he might be able to express
those thoughts in music to the tired, weary, forgetful world. On
the first Christmas night he was out with his fellow shepherds on
the hills. It was chill and dark, and all, except him, were glad
to gather around the fire. He sat, as usual, by himself, with his
harp on his knee and a great
longing in his heart. And there came
a marvellous light in the sky and over the hills, as if the
darkness of the night had suddenly blossomed into a wonderful
meadow of
flowery flame; and all the shepherds saw the angels and
heard them sing. And as they sang, the harp that the young
shepherd held began to play
softly by itself, and as he listened
to it he realized that it was playing the same music that the
angels sang and that all his secret
longings and aspirations and
strivings were expressed in it. From that night,
whenever he took
the harp in his hands, it played the same music; and he wandered
all over the world carrying it;
wherever the sound of its music
was heard hate and
discord fled away and peace and good-will
reigned. No one who heard it could think an evil thought; no one
could feel
hopeless or
despairing or bitter or angry. When a man
had once heard that music it entered into his soul and heart and
life and became a part of him for ever. Years went by; the
shepherd grew old and bent and
feeble; but still he roamed over
land and sea, that his harp might carry the message of the
Christmas night and the angel song to all mankind. At last his
strength failed him and he fell by the
wayside in the darkness;
but his harp played as his spirit passed; and it seemed to him
that a Shining One stood by him, with wonderful
starry eyes, and
said to him, 'Lo, the music thy harp has played for so many years
has been but the echo of the love and
sympathy and
purity and
beauty in thine own soul; and if at any time in the wanderings
thou hadst opened the door of that soul to evil or envy or
selfishness thy harp would have ceased to play. Now thy life is
ended; but what thou hast given to mankind has no end; and as long
as the world lasts, so long will the
heavenly music of the
Christmas harp ring in the ears of men.' When the sun rose the old
shepherd lay dead by the
roadside, with a smile on his face; and
in his hands was a harp with all its strings broken."
We left the fir woods as the tale was ended, and on the opposite
hill was home. A dim light in the kitchen window betokened that
Aunt Janet had no idea of going to bed until all her young fry
were
safely housed for the night.
"Ma's
waiting up for us," said Dan. "I'd laugh if she happened to
go to the door just as Felicity and Peter were strutting up. I
guess she'll be cross. It's nearly twelve."
"Christmas will soon be over," said Cecily, with a sigh. "Hasn't
it been a nice one? It's the first we've all spent together. Do
you suppose we'll ever spend another together?"
"Lots of 'em," said Dan
cheerily. "Why not?"
"Oh, I don't know," answered Cecily, her footsteps lagging
somewhat. "Only things seem just a little too pleasant to last."
"If Willy Fraser had had as much spunk as Peter, Miss Cecily King
mightn't be so low spirited," quoth Dan, significantly.
Cecily tossed her head and disdained reply. There are really some
remarks a self-respecting young lady must ignore.
CHAPTER IV
NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS
If we did not have a white Christmas we had a white New Year.
Midway between the two came a heavy snowfall. It was winter in
our
orchard of old delights then,--so truly winter that it was
hard to believe summer had ever dwelt in it, or that spring would
ever return to it. There were no birds to sing the music of the
moon; and the path where the apple blossoms had fallen were heaped
with less
fragrant drifts. But it was a place of wonder on a
moonlight night, when the snowy arcades shone like avenues of
ivory and
crystal, and the bare trees cast fairy-like traceries
upon them. Over Uncle Stephen's Walk, where the snow had fallen
smoothly, a spell of white magic had been woven. Taintless and
wonderful it seemed, like a street of pearl in the new Jerusalem.
On New Year's Eve we were all together in Uncle Alec's kitchen,
which was tacitly given over to our revels during the winter
evenings. The Story Girl and Peter were there, of course, and
Sara Ray's mother had allowed her to come up on condition that she
should be home by eight sharp. Cecily was glad to see her, but
the boys never hailed her
arrival with over-much delight, because,
since the dark began to come down early, Aunt Janet always made
one of us walk down home with her. We hated this, because Sara
Ray was always so maddeningly self-conscious of having an escort.
We knew
perfectly well that next day in school she would tell her
chums as a "dead" secret that "So-and-So King saw her home" from
the hill farm the night before. Now,
seeing a young lady home
from choice, and being sent home with her by your aunt or mother
are two entirely different things, and we thought Sara Ray ought
to have sense enough to know it.
Outside there was a vivid rose of
sunset behind the cold hills of
fir, and the long reaches of snowy fields glowed fairily pink in
the
western light. The drifts along the edges of the meadows and
down the lane looked as if a
series of breaking waves had, by the
lifting of a magician's wand, been suddenly transformed into
marble, even to their toppling curls of foam.
Slowly the splendour died, giving place to the
mystic beauty of a
winter
twilight when the moon is rising. The hollow sky was a cup
of blue. The stars came out over the white glens and the earth
was covered with a
kinglycarpet for the feet of the young year to
press.
"I'm so glad the snow came," said the Story Girl. "If it hadn't
the New Year would have seemed just as dingy and worn out as the
old. There's something very
solemn about the idea of a New Year,
isn't there? Just think of three hundred and sixty-five whole
days, with not a thing happened in them yet."
"I don't suppose anything very wonderful will happen in them,"
said Felix pessimistically. To Felix, just then, life was flat,
stale and
unprofitable because it was his turn to go home with
Sara Ray.
"It makes me a little frightened to think of all that may happen
in them," said Cecily. "Miss Marwood says it is what we put into
a year, not what we get out of it, that counts at last."
"I'm always glad to see a New Year," said the Story Girl. "I wish
we could do as they do in Norway. The whole family sits up until
midnight, and then, just as the clock is
striking twelve, the
father opens the door and
welcomes the New Year in. Isn't it a
pretty custom?"
"If ma would let us stay up till twelve we might do that too,"
said Dan, "but she never will. I call it mean."
"If I ever have children I'll let them stay up to watch the New
Year in," said the Story Girl decidedly.
"So will I," said Peter, "but other nights they'll have to go to
bed at seven."
"You ought to be
ashamed,
speaking of such things," said Felicity,
with a scandalized face.
Peter
shrank into the
background abashed, no doubt believing that
he had broken some Family Guide
precept all to pieces.
"I didn't know it wasn't proper to mention children," he muttered
apologetically.
"We ought to make some New Year resolutions," suggested the Story
Girl. "New Year's Eve is the time to make them."