Their Yesterdays

by Harold Bell Wright

But this woman who knew herself to be a woman could not interest herself in these things to which she tried to give attention. She felt that in giving herself to these things she would betray Life. She felt the hollowness, the shallowness, the emptyness of it all in comparison with that which is divinely committed to womankind. She could not but wonder: what would be the racial outcome? When women have long enough substituted other ideals for the ideals of motherhood—other passions for the passions of their sex—other ambitions for the ambition to produce and to perfect Life—other desires for the desire to keep that which Life has committed to them—what then? "How," she asked herself, "would the world get along without mothers? Or how could the race advance if the best of women refused to bear children?" And then came the inevitable thought: are the best women, after all, refusing to bear children? Might it not be that the wisdom of Mother Nature is in this also, and that the refusal of a woman to bear children is the best evidence in the world that she is unfit to be a mother? Is it not better that the mothers of the race should be those who hold no ideal, ambition, desire, aim, or purpose in life higher than motherhood? Such women—such mothers—have, thus far, through their sons and daughters, won every victory in Life. It is they who have made every advance of the race possible. Will it not continue to be so, even unto the end? Is not this indeed the law of Life? If there be any work for women greater or of more value to the human race than the work of motherhood then, indeed, is the end of the world, for mankind, at hand.

From where she lay, the woman, when she first awoke that Christmas morning, could see the sun just touching the topmost branches of the tall trees that grew across the street.

It was a beautiful day. But the woman did not at first remember that it was Christmas. Idly, as one sometimes will when awakening out of a deep sleep, she looked at the sunshine on the trees and thought that the day promised to be clear and bright. Then, looking at the clock in the chubby arms of the fat cupid on the mantle, she noticed the time with a start of dismay. She must arise at once or she would be late to her work. Why, she wondered, had not someone called her. Then, a crumpled sheet of tissue paper and a bit of narrow ribbon on the floor, near the table, caught her eye and she remembered.

It was Christmas.

The woman dropped back upon her pillow. She need not go to work that day. She had not been called because it was a holiday. Dully she told herself again that it was Christmas.

The house was very quiet. There were no bare feet pattering down the hall to see what Santa Claus had left from his pack. No exulting shouts had awakened her. In the rooms below, there was no cheerful litter of toys and games and pop corn and candy and nuts with bits of string and crumpled paper from hastily opened parcels and shining scraps of tinsel from the tree. There were no stockings hanging on the mantle. At breakfast, there would be a few friendly gifts and, later, the postman would bring letters and cards with the season's greetings. That was all.

The sun, climbing higher above the tall buildings down town, peeped through the window and saw the woman lying very still. And the sun must have thought that the woman was asleep for her eyes were closed and upon her face there was the wistful smile of a child.

But the woman was not asleep though she was dreaming. She had escaped from the silent, childless, house and had fled far, far, away to a land of golden memories. She had gone back into her Yesterdays—to a Christmas in her Yesterdays.

Once again a little girl, she lived those happy, busy, days of preparation when she had asked herself a thousand times each day: what would the boy give her for Christmas? And always, as she wondered, the little girl had tried not to wish that it would be a doll lest she should be disappointed. And always she was unable to wish, half so earnestly, for anything else. Again she spent the hours learning the song that she was to sing at the church on Christmas eve and wondered, often, if he would like her new dress that mother was making for the occasion. And then, as the day drew near, there was that merry trip to the woods to bring the tree, followed by that afternoon at the church. The little girl wondered, that night of the entertainment, if the boy guessed how frightened she was for him lest he forget the words of his part; or, when she was singing before the crowd of people that filled the church, did he know that she saw only him? And then the triumph—the beautiful triumph—of that Christmas morning!

The little girl in the Yesterdays needed no one to remind her what day it was. As soon as it was light, she opened her eyes, and, wide awake in an instant, slipped from her bed to steal down stairs while the rest of the household still slept. And there, in the gray of the winter morning, she found his gift. It was so beautiful, so lifelike, with its rosy cheeks and brown hair that, almost, the little girl was afraid that she was not awake after all; and she caught her breath with a gasp of delight when she finally convinced herself that it was real. She knew that it was from the boy—she knew. Quickly she clasped it in her arms, with a kiss and a mother hug; and then, back again she ran to her warm bed lest dolly catch cold. The other presents could wait until it was really, truly, daylight and uncle had made a fire; and she drew the covers carefully up under the dimpled chin of her treasure that lay in the hollow of her arm, close to her own soft little breast, as natural as life—as natural, indeed, as the mother life that throbbed in the heart of the little girl.