Stopping in a small village to get the papers of three days past, Mary Christmas saw on the front page of one of them a picture and a story which set the muscles of her arms and legs into such tremor that she could with difficulty push her cart through the gate of the adjoining churchyard and up to the steps of the white church. Here she gratefully sat down in a warm ray of sunshine and tried to sense it all. And as she saw Raphael’s dark face gazing into her own and read the words that told of the Erzerum tragedy of more than twenty years ago and that spoke of Raphael as a hero, ready to avenge, she felt care slip from her shoulders just as years before she had felt quick relief upon the setting down of her great bundle on some friendly doorstep. She felt, too, as she sat there in the sunlight, the rekindling of her spirit, which, now smothered no longer, burst again into ready flame. If John Wescott could have seen her then, leaning back against the paneled door of the old church, her red silk handkerchief on her shoulders, the sun catching alike the light from the gold coins in her ears and from the tears that rolled down her tired face, he would have felt convinced that the impulsive extra hour which he took to interview the city editor of a Portland paper and which cost him six hours at home was well worth the price.
When Mary Christmas had convinced herself by twelve more readings that what the words said was indeed true, she left the church steps, stopping only to fold the miraculous paper within her gold-laced bodice and to say a prayer of thanksgiving, and wheeled her cart into a neighboring barn. Here she left it while she journeyed by stage to the nearest sizable town, returning the next day with the necessary purchases for the new work which, she decided, had become hers to perform. From her packages she brought forth an American flag with which she covered her cart, and tiny flags of the Allies which she tacked securely in the corners. Thus decorated, and armed with a veritable sword of the spirit, she started forth, choosing the most outlying roads she knew.
That spring and summer, and late into the fall, she forgot her business of selling in this new and self-imposed task of recruiting for the army. Into the most remote of farming districts she pushed her gay cart; in farmhouse kitchens, at crossroads, and among groups of men at work in the hayfields she gave her stirring message. Nor did she scorn to use any and every means of persuasion. When the story of her own wrong at the hands of the enemy failed to arouse more than an ill-expressed compassion, when the plea for making the world secure against tyranny and the simple urge of natural patriotism were not provocative of determination, her racial shrewdness came to her aid with the suggestion of expediency.
“They will make you go soon,” she would cry to half a dozen young men, impressed in spite of themselves. “Soon they will come and take you whether you want to go or not. You are not such a hero then! Go now—like my son here! Go now and offer yourselves! That is the way!”
Reluctantly she left the roads when the lowering skies foretold snow and when the hurrying November sun set in a horizon of pale green beneath overhanging clouds of purple. That winter she gave up her trade among the railroad towns, and, instead of weaving laces, knit rough socks of gray wool, sitting with little Mary in the hot back room of the bakeshop. A peace came to brood over her in those days with their short twilights. It made her oblivious of her toil-racked body, and in some strange, quiet way quenched the flames of her spirit until they glowed in a clear, steady light, a “light that never was on sea or land.” And when another spring with its drifting petals brought her the news that Raphael had given his life in France to avenge his father’s death and to alleviate, if but for a little time, the suffering of the world, she was quite content.
The drifting petals of that spring brought a message to the Wescott village also, a message that made Father Wescott again walk up the street with his collar and tie in their rightful places. He looked old and stooped as he opened the white gate and went up the driveway in the drowsy, contented hum of bees and the sweet odor of apple blossoms in warm sunlight. He did not go back to his office that day or the next, but sat with Mrs. Wescott in the library or helped her with the housework, which must be done as carefully and methodically as though they were not surrounded by some grim, overwhelming presence. And on the third afternoon, as they sat in the library, Mr. Wescott pasting stray leaves in old books and Mrs. Wescott darning some table linen which she had twice thrown away, they heard the grating of the driveway gravel and saw between the porch shutters a quick flash of red and black and gold. Then Mary Christmas burst open the door, and, after throwing herself at Father Wescott’s feet, sat with them quietly until the shadows on the orchard grass grew longer and a little girl drove her cow down the hill.
But after her lunch of sandwiches and milk she did not go until she had entered into every room of the great, empty house. Sitting together in the library, they heard her softened footsteps upstairs, visiting every one—that in which Roger had been born, those where he had played and slept, and in each they heard her high, quavering voice singing a prayer-song for the rest of his spirit. Downstairs too she knelt and prayed—in the library where he had read his books, in the dining-room where he had eaten, even in the great old stable where so many years ago he had played the part of the priest in the Etchmiadzin church. Then, her sacrifice ended, she went her way up the hill.
An hour later it came to them who still sat in the library that she had looked old and tired as she had said good-bye. They might so easily have taken her on her way! Father Wescott, reproving himself for his thoughtlessness, coaxed his car into reluctant motion, and with Mrs. Wescott beside him choked up the hill to overtake Mary Christmas and to carry her to her next stopping-place or, better still, to bring her back again with them.
They did not go far. By the path that led to the pasture bars and thence to Mary Wescott’s boulder, they saw the familiar red cart, still bedecked with its colors. Halting the car beside it, they hurried up the path, over the hummocks starred with violets, and through the alders to the boulder. There by the spring, beneath a wild plum-tree, white with bloom, lay Mary Christmas in the evening light, her face relaxed, her busy hands at rest. A song sparrow on the stunted pine tree filled the still air with notes like crystals in sunlight, and a robin called from the wild crab-apple on the hill. But Father and Mother Wescott knew, as they stood there looking upon the quiet face beneath the white blossoms, that Mary Christmas’ restless, shining spirit was heeding none of these. It had gone, they knew, in a quick flash of light across the gray, tossing ocean, to her own land, where for a season it would wander with the winds on treeless plains, look upon the ark which no eye had seen, and leave its healing power in the dim aisles of the church at Etchmiadzin. Then, satisfied and at peace, it would go to dwell in the Everlasting Halls of God!