Her words ended in a high succession of convulsive liquid notes. Her hands, which she had clasped above her head as her story mounted into tragedy, twined and knotted themselves together. For a moment grief dulled the ominous red gleam in her eyes, and the children saw with consternation that they swam with tears. But the tears did not fall, much to Mary Wescott’s relief. The hard lines came back around her mouth. Again her nostrils quivered.
“They kill my husband. They want to kill me and my children—but my husband—he hide us in a cave where he keep the silks and jewels. They do not find us. If they find us—I kill—one—two—three! I kill because they kill my husband!”
The fascinated children stared, half frightened, now at their guest who dared to use a word so tremendous in its import, and who, moreover, they felt sure, was entirely capable of its actual embodiment, now at their parents, between whom they had caught in passing certain questioning glances. Their father and mother, it must be admitted, were experiencing not a few misgivings at this bloodthirsty turn in Mary Christmas’ recital; for although they had not made a scientific study of the child from the embryo to the beginning of adolescence, they understood quite as clearly as modern parents that there are several things of which children may just as well remain in ignorance.
It was John who came to the rescue with quite the most satisfactory thing that ever happened. When the old clock on the mantel had ticked away those few monstrous, weighty seconds during which the Wescott children were about to embark their thoughts on perilous, uncharted seas, during which Mr. Wescott fruitlessly searched for new topics of conversation and Mrs. Wescott feared that her husband, for once in his life, had made a mistake in judgment, during which Mary Christmas sat with her hands knotted above her head and her revengeful words echoing in the still room, John suddenly knew exactly what to do. Nor was this strange if one stops to think about it. John was five years old—only a few short years removed from those light-filled days when he had known Everything. Perhaps some shadowy recollection of those days, some sense of that which was then luminous and orderly, came stealing upon him like the faint fragrance of violets in a fresh spring rain. Perhaps it was the knowledge which he had then—which we all have, but so soon forget—that made him suddenly understand the nothingness of hatred and revenge.
But explanations at best are tiresome things. The important fact now is, not how he knew what to do, but that he did it. He slipped from his chair on the other side of his mother, crossed the room behind his father, and walked straight into Mary Christmas’ lap with its ample folds of black. He must have walked straight into her heart, too, and driven out everything else but himself, for her arms came down and went around him, and her sudden tears made ultramarine spots on his blue gingham blouse. Then Mr. Wescott blew his nose mightily, and Mrs. Wescott fussed with the tea things, and Mary and Cynthia alike felt their throats grow big to bursting, and Roger shook a threatening fist at the surprised head of the baseball captain which had appeared in the window. And it all ended by Mary Christmas’ telling them of Raphael and little Mary, aged respectively five and seven, who were staying with their aunt in Erzerum until their mother could earn enough money to bring them across the ocean to America.
“To Portland,” explained Father Wescott to the children. “That’s where Mary Christmas lives now, when she’s not traveling about.”
The four Wescotts knew Portland. For years, in fact up to this very minute, they had held it in highest esteem. It was the largest city as well as one of the oldest in the State of Maine; it had been the scene of a battle in the Revolutionary War; it was the birthplace of their favorite poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. They had dreamed of going with their father some day to see Portland—its fort, the gray battleships in its wide harbor, the room in which Mr. Longfellow was born. Now all at once it had become a charmless place. Its years were but moments in the light of the centuries which had passed over the land of Mary Christmas; its single combat meaningless and trifling compared with the numberless battles which had succeeded one another upon those hoary plains. Even its Mr. Longfellow, venerable, indeed patriarchal as he looked in the school readers, was simply out of it when lined up for inspection between Methuselah and Enoch! Portland, heretofore a dream city, had, in view of this recent knowledge, become as dull, stale, and familiar as their own village. The one lure that it now possessed was the fact that Mary Christmas had chosen it as her new home.
“And now,” said Mary Christmas, all dark things faded from her face, “now I give gifts. Come!”
III
UNBURIED TREASURE
She rose from the table, still holding John by the hand, and led the way into the library, on the floor of which lay the great black bundle, like a mysterious treasure from a story-book of wonders. The excited children stood at the four points of the compass while with their father’s help she unbound the cords that held it in place. At last the shining black cover opened, disclosing yet other bundles which in their turn must be undone. The few slow seconds which the great clock in the corner ticked away seemed like hours before these smaller bundles disclosed their motley contents upon the library floor.