Shawe was the first to bring the stillness to an end. They had been sitting quiet, nobody could tell how long, when he got to his feet. Noiselessly as he moved he broke the spell, and eyes that had grown misty looked at him, some with resentment, others with curiosity, and others again with reproach. Old Jerome’s gaze held the latter quality. Nobody knew much about Shawe, anyway. He was not one of them. He had come to the camp some weeks before, and would be gone in a day or so—up to Merle this time, and then—He was a wanderer—some outcast, perhaps, from a better life gone by. Nobody knew him. They had no quarrel with him; he was a good enough fellow, only not of them. They watched him, therefore, almost coldly, yet noting with jealous satisfaction that he stepped warily as he passed from the room; then they fell to thinking again—with a difference.
He came back after a short absence with a soft, dark mink’s skin in his hand,—a bit of fur that a woman’s fingers could fashion into a cap to cover a child’s golden hair,—and went to the small stocking, cramming the gift far down to keep that other company. A breath of approval fairly twinkled around the room. The grave faces melted into smiling delight; and just as the circles widen in a pool of water when a stone is thrown in, spreading farther and farther till the whole surface is disturbed, so every one present came within the influence of Shawe’s action. As if by one accord the men hurriedly left their places, making scarcely any noise, yet jostling against one another in their eagerness to play at being Santa Claus; each man seeking out his kit, and returning with what would be the likeliest thing to please a little child.
A bright red handkerchief, an orange one, a third as many colored as Joseph’s coat, an old habitant sash worth its weight in gold to a connoisseur, a scarf-pin set with a cairngorm the size of a man’s thumb-nail—this from Sandy!—a—you mustn’t laugh—a pair of brand-new suspenders, and big and little coins that spelled liquor or tobacco to the givers, and now bought what pleased them infinitely more. Of course one stocking couldn’t begin to hold the gifts, though they were massed into a dizzy pyramid at the top, so its mate was pressed into service and crowded likewise. There was a distressing similarity in the presents when you came to think of it, especially where handkerchiefs were concerned; still, no man withheld his giving because another’s choice was necessarily the same; he added his contribution proudly, as if it were the only one of its kind. Frenchy, who had a pretty trick of carving, gave a really beautiful little frame which his deft fingers had made in the long evenings; and the cook, when no one was looking, slipped in his prayer-book, though I don’t believe any one that night would have laughed at his having it with him. The young fellow they called Kid—he was something of a dandy—added a ring of massive proportions. It wasn’t gold, but he pretended it was, and liked to wear it when he went to dances to make the girls think he was a fine, up-and-coming man. And Jerome—poor old Jerome—
It was a very meagre kit that he rummaged through again and again,—one that he himself had packed; and when a man has to take care of himself he doesn’t put in any useless traps, any—what you’d call gewgaws; not when he’s old, that is. So he could find nothing there; and a search through his pockets revealed the same depressing poverty. He had nothing—nothing but a certain battered snuff-box that had been his companion for so many years that it would be easier to imagine him without his head than without the box. He was evidently of that opinion, for he stowed it down in his pocket with an air of great finality. But nevertheless, polished to an almost glittering show of youth and filled with coins, it very fitly crowned the motley collection.
It had taken some time to play Santa Claus, for each man had to wait his turn to stow away his gift; there were no deputies allowed on this occasion, and the bungling fingers couldn’t work very quickly,—didn’t try to, if the truth were known. But all too soon the joyful task came to an end, and the men stood back radiant-eyed, looking at those bulging little red stockings as if they were the most beautiful things in all the world.
How the glow spread and spread in their hearts, though the fire, banked for the night, was shining quite dimly now! That mighty threefold cable of the Christmas-tide—with its strand of inheritance, its strand of opportunity, its strand of affection—bound them very closely to one another; in that moment old wrongs and heart-burnings, bitternesses and rivalries slipped away, and they knew the blessedness of peace and good-will. Happy? There was just one thing to make them happier,—the merry voice of a little child greeting the misty light of the Christmas dawn.
CHAPTER V
THE PEACE OF GOD
TOWARD midnight somebody stepped close to the improvised bed and stood looking down with troubled eyes at the child curled up among the blankets there. The light from the low fire cast an occasional flickering flame upon the tiny segment of cheek just visible above the woollen covering, like a snowdrop peeping out of a mass of old bracken, and on the floating strands of hair that had lost their golden sheen in the semi-obscurity. An hour or so earlier the men had gone to their bunks in the long loft overhead, and their heavy breathing now proclaimed the fact that they were resting from their labors. Every one in the house was sleeping but Shawe; even old Jerome, who sat huddled by the side of the little one, nodded at his post. He had maintained the right of watching, by supremacy of his years and her evident preference for him, jealously putting aside all offers that his vigil be shared. He stirred now and opened his eyes, staring into the face of the man above him.
“What is it?” he demanded with a low, savage growl.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Shawe whispered back, “for thinking of the ones who are mourning for her,—her mother and uncle. The father isn’t home, she said. Don’t you remember—‘God bless far-away daddy’? So he won’t be troubled. But the others—they ought to know. We’ve had all the Christmas sport and they nothing but black misery and bitterness. They ought to know quickly.”