III.
LITTLE FOXES.—PART II.
It was that Christmas-day that did it; I'm quite convinced of that; and the way it was is what I am going to tell you.
You see, among the various family customs of us Crowfields, the observance of all sorts of fêtes and festivals has always been a matter of prime regard; and among all the festivals of the round ripe year, none is so joyous and honored among us as Christmas.
Let no one upon this, prick up the ears of Archaeology, and tell us that by the latest calculations of chronologists our ivy-grown and holly-mantled Christmas is all a hum,—that it has been demonstrated, by all sorts of signs and tables, that the august event it celebrates did not take place on the 25th of December. Supposing it be so, what have we to do with that? If so awful, so joyous an event ever took place on our earth, it is surely worth commemoration. It is the event we celebrate, not the time. And if all Christians for eighteen hundred years, while warring and wrangling on a thousand other points, have agreed to give this one 25th of December to peace and good-will, who is he that shall gainsay them, and for an historic scruple turn his back on the friendly greetings of all Christendom? Such a man is capable of rewriting Milton's Christmas Hymn in the style of Sternhold and Hopkins.
In our house, however, Christmas has always been a high day, a day whose expectation has held waking all the little eyes in our bird's nest, when as yet there were only little ones there, each sleeping with one eye open, hoping to be the happy first to wish the merry Christmas and grasp the wonderful stocking.
This year our whole family train of married girls and boys, with the various toddling tribes thereto belonging, held high festival around a wonderful Christmas-tree, the getting-up and adorning of which had kept my wife and Jennie and myself busy for a week beforehand. If the little folks think these trees grow up in a night, without labor, they know as little about them as they do about most of the other blessings which rain down on their dear little thoughtless heads. Such scrambling and clambering and fussing and tying and untying, such alterations and rearrangements, such agilities in getting up and down and everywhere to tie on tapers and gold balls and glittering things innumerable, to hang airy dolls in graceful positions, to make branches bear stiffly up under loads of pretty things which threaten to make the tapers turn bottom upward! Part and parcel of all this was I, Christopher, most reckless of rheumatism, most careless of dignity, the round, bald top of my head to be seen emerging everywhere from the thick boughs of the spruce, now devising an airy settlement for some gossamer-robed doll, now adjusting far back on a stiff branch Tom's new little skates, now balancing bags of sugar-plums and candy, and now combating desperately with some contumacious taper that would turn slantwise or crosswise, or anywise but upward as a Christian taper should,—regardless of Mrs. Crowfield's gentle admonitions and suggestions, sitting up to most dissipated hours, springing out of bed suddenly to change some arrangement in the middle of the night, and up long before the lazy sun at dawn to execute still other arrangements. If that Christmas-tree had been a fort to be taken, or a campaign to be planned, I could not have spent more time and strength on it. My zeal so far outran even that of sprightly Miss Jennie, that she could account for it only by saucily suggesting that papa must be fast getting into second childhood.
But didn't we have a splendid lighting-up? Didn't I and my youngest grandson, little Tom, head the procession magnificent in paper soldier-caps, blowing tin trumpets and beating drums, as we marched round the twinkling glories of our Christmas-tree, all glittering with red and blue and green tapers, and with a splendid angel on top with great gold wings, the cutting-out and adjusting of which had held my eyes waking for nights before? I had had oceans of trouble with that angel, owing to an unlucky sprain in his left wing, which had required constant surgical attention through the week, and which I feared might fall loose again at the important and blissful moment of exhibition: but no, the Fates were in our favor; the angel behaved beautifully, and kept his wings as crisp as possible, and the tapers all burned splendidly, and the little folks were as crazy with delight as my most ardent hopes could have desired; and then we romped and played and frolicked as long as little eyes could keep open, and long after; and so passed away our Christmas.
I had forgotten to speak of the Christmas-dinner, that solid feast of fat things, on which we also luxuriated. Mrs. Crowfield outdid all household traditions in that feast: the turkey and the chickens, the jellies and the sauces, the pies and the pudding, behold, are they not written in the tablets of Memory which remain to this day?
The holidays passed away hilariously, and at New-Year's I, according to time-honored custom, went forth to make my calls and see my fair friends, while my wife and daughters stayed at home to dispense the hospitalities of the day to their gentlemen friends. All was merry, cheerful, and it was agreed on all hands that a more joyous holiday season had never flown over us.
But, somehow, the week after, I began to be sensible of a running-down in the wheels. I had an article to write for the "Atlantic," but felt mopish and could not write. My dinner had not its usual relish, and I had an indefinite sense everywhere of something going wrong. My coal bill came in, and I felt sure we were being extravagant, and that our John Furnace wasted the coal. My grandsons and granddaughters came to see us, and I discovered that they had high-pitched voices, and burst in without wiping their shoes, and it suddenly occurred powerfully to my mind that they were not being well brought up,—evidently, they were growing up rude and noisy. I discovered several tumblers and plates with the edges chipped, and made bitter reflections on the carelessness of Irish servants; our crockery was going to destruction, along with the rest. Then, on opening one of my paper-drawers, I found that Jennie's one drawer of worsted had overflowed into two or three; Jennie was growing careless; besides, worsted is dear, and girls knit away small fortunes, without knowing it, on little duds that do nobody any good. Moreover, Maggie had three times put my slippers into the hall-closet, instead of leaving them where I wanted, under my study-table. Mrs. Crowfield ought to look after things more; every servant, from end to end of the house, was getting out of the traces; it was strange she did not see it.
All this I vented, from time to time, in short, crusty sayings and doings, as freely as if I hadn't just written an article on "Little Foxes" in the last "Atlantic," till at length my eyes were opened on my own state and condition.
It was evening, and I had just laid up the fire in the most approved style of architecture, and, projecting my feet into my slippers, sat spitefully cutting the leaves of a caustic review.
Mrs. Crowfield took the tongs and altered the disposition of a stick.
"My dear," I said, "I do wish you'd let the fire alone,—you always put it out."
"I was merely admitting a little air between the sticks," said my wife.
"You always make matters worse, when you touch the fire."
As if in contradiction, a bright tongue of flame darted up between the sticks, and the fire began chattering and snapping defiance at me. Now, if there's anything which would provoke a saint, it is to be jeered and snapped at in that way by a man's own fire. It's an unbearable impertinence. I threw out my leg impatiently, and hit Rover, who yelped a yelp that finished the upset of my nerves. I gave him a hearty kick, that he might have something to yelp for, and in the movement upset Jennie's embroidery-basket.
"Oh, papa!"
"Confound your baskets and balls! they are everywhere, so that a man can't move; useless, wasteful things, too."
"Wasteful?" said Jennie, coloring indignantly; for if there's anything Jennie piques herself upon, it's economy.
"Yes, wasteful,—wasting time and money both. Here are hundreds of shivering poor to be clothed, and Christian females sit and do nothing but crochet worsted into useless knicknacks. If they would be working for the poor, there would be some sense in it. But it's all just alike, no real Christianity in the world,—nothing but organized selfishness and self-indulgence."
"My dear," said Mrs. Crowfield, "you are not well to-night. Things are not quite so desperate as they appear. You haven't got over Christmas-week."
"I am well. Never was better. But I can see, I hope, what's before my eyes; and the fact is, Mrs. Crowfield, things must not go on as they are going. There must be more care, more attention to details. There's Maggie,—that girl never does what she is told. You are too slack with her, Ma'am. She will light the fire with the last paper, and she won't put my slippers in the right place; and I can't have my study made the general catch-all and menagerie for Rover and Jennie, and her baskets and balls, and for all the family litter."
Just at this moment I overheard a sort of aside from Jennie, who was swelling with repressed indignation at my attack on her worsted. She sat with her back to me, knitting energetically, and said, in a low, but very decisive tone, as she twitched her yarn,—
"Now if I should talk in that way, people would call me cross,—and that's the whole of it."
I pretended to be looking into the fire in an absent-minded state; but Jennie's words had started a new idea. Was that it? Was that the whole matter? Was it, then, a fact, that the house, the servants, Jennie and her worsteds, Rover and Mrs. Crowfield, were all going on pretty much as usual, and that the only difficulty was that I was cross? How many times had I encouraged Rover to lie just where he was lying when I kicked him! How many times, in better moods, had I complimented Jennie on her neat little fancy-works, and declared that I liked the social companionship of ladies' work-baskets among my papers! Yes, it was clear. After all, things were much as they had been; only I was cross.
Cross. I put it to myself in that simple, old-fashioned word, instead of saying that I was out of spirits, or nervous, or using any of the other smooth phrases with which we good Christians cover up our little sins of temper. "Here you are, Christopher," said I to myself, "a literary man, with a somewhat delicate nervous organization and a sensitive stomach, and you have been eating like a sailor or a ploughman; you have been gallivanting and merry-making and playing the boy for two weeks; up at all sorts of irregular hours, and into all sorts of boyish performances; and the consequence is, that, like a thoughtless young scapegrace, you have used up in ten days the capital of nervous energy that was meant to last you ten weeks. You can't eat your cake and have it too, Christopher. When the nervous-fluid source of cheerfulness, giver of pleasant sensations and pleasant views, is all spent, you can't feel cheerful; things cannot look as they did when you were full of life and vigor. When the tide is out, there is nothing but unsightly, ill-smelling tide-mud, and you can't help it; but you can keep your senses,—you can know what is the matter with you,—you can keep from visiting your overdose of Christmas mince-pies and candies and jocularities on the heads of Mrs. Crowfield, Rover, and Jennie, whether in the form of virulent morality, pungent criticisms, or a free kick, such as you just gave the poor brute."
"Come here, Rover, poor dog!" said I, extending my hand to Rover, who cowered at the farther corner of the room, eying me wistfully,—"come here, you poor doggie, and make up with your master. There, there! Was his master cross? Well, he knows it. We must forgive and forget, old boy, mustn't we?" And Rover nearly broke his own back and tore me to pieces with his tumultuous tail-waggings.
"As for you, puss," I said to Jennie, "I am much obliged to you for your free suggestion. You must take my cynical moralities for what they are worth, and put your little traps into as many of my drawers as you like."
In short, I made it up handsomely all around,—even apologizing to Mrs. Crowfield, who, by the bye, has summered and wintered me so many years, and knows all my airs and cuts and crinkles so well, that she took my irritable unreasonable spirit as tranquilly as if I had been a baby cutting a new tooth.
"Of course, Chris, I knew what the matter was; don't disturb yourself," she said, as I began my apology; "we understand each other. But there is one thing I have to say; and that is, that your article ought to be ready."
"Ah, well, then," said I, "like other great writers, I shall make capital of my own sins, and treat of the second little family fox; and his name is—"