At the end of a week of such heroic exercising Monet said, significantly:
"You see how well I am standing this! Every day toughens us up… We ought to be leaving soon."
"After Christmas," Fred conceded, briefly.
There followed a brief respite of clear, crisp days, warming to mellowness at noon. After the midday meal everyone crawled out into the sunlight, standing in little shivering groups, while Monet played upon his violin. The cracked inventor, pulling his cardboard box on its ridiculous spools, stopped to listen; Weeping Willow forgot his grief and almost achieved a smile. Only the Emperor of Japan continued his pacing back and forth, his royal gloom untouched by any responsive chord.
But the reaction from this sedative of music was in every case violent. The remainder of the afternoon passed in tragic unquiet. One day Harrison called Fred aside. The assistant superintendent was daily yielding more and more to Fred's judgment.
"What do you think about a Christmas tree for Ward Six?"
For a moment Fred was uncertain. He knew the poignance of disturbing memories. But, in the end, he felt that perhaps the floodgate of grief had best be lifted. He knew by this time the cleansing solace of tears.
"We've never done it before," Harrison went on.
"There has been a prejudice against bringing old days back too clearly to these wretches… But Monet's been playing his music and they seem to like that."
It ended by Fred going out with Monet and one of the attendants into the hills and bringing back a beautiful fir tree. They set it up in a corner of the dining room and its bruised fragrance filled the entire building… There followed the problem of its trimming. At first some one suggested that it was more beautiful untricked with gauds, but to Fred, unlighted by any human touch its loveliness seemed too cold and impersonal and cruelly pagan. Presently the long afternoons were rilled with a pathetic bustle. Everyone became interested. They popped corn and strung it in snow-white garlands and some one from the kitchen sent in a bowl of cranberries which were woven into a blood-red necklace for the central branches. Harrison brought round a sack of walnuts and some liquid gilt and two brushes. Men began to quarrel good-naturedly for a chance at the gilding. A woman attendant, hearing about the tree, rode, herself, into the village and bought candles… Finally it was finished, and it stood in the early twilight of a dripping Christmas Eve, a fantastic captive from the hills, suffering its severe dignity to be melted in a cheap, but human, splendor… They had a late dinner by way of marking the event, and the usual turn of keys in the locks at seven o'clock was missing. At the close of the meal as they were bringing on plum pudding Fred rose from his place to light the candles… A little tremor ran through the room; Monet started to play… He played all the heartbreaking melodies—"Noël" and "Nazareth" and "Adeste Fideles." Slowly the tears began to trickle, but they fell silently, welling up from mysterious reaches too deep for shallow murmurings. Suddenly a thin, quavering voice started a song.