Then an idea came to Mary Christmas which made her halt in the inspection of her wares and laugh in glad relief. She knew now the very thing for Father Wescott, the thing that would suggest to him always the depths of her gratitude. With another of her quick movements she loosed the red necklace about her throat and threw it impulsively over the head of Mr. Wescott. It lay across his white collar and on the bosom of his white shirt, red as the geraniums in the porch tubs outside or as great drops of blood. And as Mary Christmas saw the stones pulsating there below Mr. Wescott’s surprised, embarrassed face, she did a most peculiar thing. She threw herself face downward on the library floor and kissed the self-polished toe of his shoe!
The four Wescotts were quite at a loss as to how to receive this last event in such a long and overwhelming train. The laugh had died away on Mary Christmas’ lips before she had thrown herself at their father’s feet. Apparently, then, the situation was not to be considered humorous. And yet the expression on their father’s face, to the older ones at least, banished seriousness. He had been sufficiently ill at ease when Mary Christmas had thrown the beads about his neck, but now that she lay prostrate before him, the embarrassment on his face had given place to a kind of empty foolishness which was irresistibly funny. So, in spite of the warning glances of their mother, they laughed—laughs which were echoed and re-echoed by the baseball team, and in which Mary Christmas, raising herself from the floor, joined, perhaps a little tolerantly.
Mr. Wescott then went to the stable, somewhat, it must be admitted, after the manner of one escaping from a situation, to harness the horses preparatory to carrying their guest and her great bundle a few miles on their way; and in his absence, while Mary Christmas tied up her wares in neat packages and placed them for wrapping in the black oilcloth, Mrs. Wescott explained to the children the reason for this singular expression of her gratitude.
Appearing suddenly that morning in the yard of a house on the outskirts of the village, she had startled the inmates, who were quite unused to peddlers of her description, into the fear that, with her dark face, uncertain speech, strange gestures, and outlandish clothing, she must mean evil—thievery, kidnapping, or worse. Suspicious and impulsive by nature, they had not stayed to question her, but, hailing the town sheriff who by ill luck was passing by, had demanded that she be taken before the judge to answer for misdeeds contemplated if, fortunately, not performed. Such had been the source of her anxious tears, the traces of which had so nearly troubled Mary Wescott, and such the occasion which had prompted Mr. Wescott, secure in her innocence, to protect and befriend her.
They drove away a few minutes later, Mr. Wescott holding the reins and Mary Christmas beside him, her great bundle securely tied to the back of the carriage. The children waved them up the hill and out of sight, repeating to themselves her farewell words:—
“Next year when the roads are dry and the petals fall—like this—I come again. You wait—for me?”
That night every Wescott dreamed of Mary Christmas. Mr. Wescott sat quite up in bed, declaiming indignantly his very words of that morning to her stupid accusers, and aroused Mrs. Wescott, who for what seemed hours had been enduring the hardships of a Monday in an Armenian kitchen. Roger killed three monstrous Turks, alone and single-handed, to avenge the death of Mary Christmas’ husband; while John was a shepherd boy, tending his sheep in wide pastures and wearing a many-colored cap, at which all of his silly sheep laughed again and again. As for Mary and Cynthia, they spent the night in a whirl of excitement in which Methuselah and Enoch strove to enlist Mr. Longfellow’s assistance in a headlong rush against hordes of barbarians. The State of Maine bard, however, obstinately declined to be “up and doing”; indeed, he proved himself worse than useless in the heat of the encounter, although he doubtless realized more fully than ever before the earnestness and the reality of life!
IV
A WILD CRAB-APPLE TREE
THAT winter, which everyone called an “old-fashioned” one because the harbor was frozen for miles toward the open sea and the snow blocked the roads in great, curving drifts, they planned and replanned the journey which Mary Christmas would make in the spring. Often in the evening, when the supper dishes were washed and put away, when Mr. Wescott was lost in the Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan and the boys were popping corn over the glowing embers in the deep fireplace, Mrs. Wescott, Mary, and Cynthia would trace her way in the family atlas, which had been purchased at some sacrifice because it featured the State of Maine.
Leaving Portland, her great pack bulging with her wares, she would doubtless take the road to Brunswick, the seat of Bowdoin College, that venerable institution which had been the Alma Mater alike of Mr. Longfellow and of Father Wescott. From thence she would follow the coast, passing through Wiscasset, which held the oldest deed in America in its courthouse, through the friendly towns of Newcastle and Damariscotta, through Belfast and Searsport, once famous for their sea captains and for their gracious, white-winged clippers. The roads that she would travel would be like those they knew—roads that climbed rocky, fir-clad hills and at their summits gave one far-reaching stretches of sea with surf-swept islands and towering white lighthouses; lonely by-roads that led to scraggly farms and gray farmhouses, where lived people who fought a losing fight against the barren land; elm-shaded village roads bordered by green-shuttered houses and by white gates like their own. She would cross the wide Penobscot where it narrowed enough to encourage a ferry, and, passing through Bucksport with its gray fort and old graveyard, would come by easy stages over dark, tumbling hills, on which great shadows alternately marched and rested, to their own village.