With a taper at the end of a long cane, I had just ignited the last of the candles, and the great Christmas-tree stood up before us, clad, from its bole to its highest twig, in a shimmering garment of light. We two were alone in the schoolroom, but beyond the closed door, we knew, was Mr. Weaverly; and, beyond him again, a sea of expectant faces filling the wide porch, and stretching out half across the street under the still, frost-bound night. Every child that was not whispering excitedly to its neighbour, was crooning to itself with irrepressible joy; and the sound came to us through the solid timber like the sound of a bee-hive just going to swarm.
‘Now open the door,’ said the Reverend, getting into his corner. ‘And if you miss a single thing, I’ll haunt you when I am gone to the end of your miserable life.’
I turned the key in the lock, and retreated hastily. The door flung open. I saw the black form of Mr. Weaverly flicker aside, and expected the whole room to be invaded in a minute by an avalanche of scrambling, vociferating mites. But it did not happen so.
‘Not one has come in yet,’ said I, over the Reverend’s shoulder. ‘They are just peering in at the door. I can see thirty faces, perhaps, with thirty mouths, and twice as many eyes, opened wide; but never a smile among the lot. How quiet they keep! But now trembling fingers are coming round the doorposts, and a boot or two has got beyond the threshold. The reluctant vanguard is being pressed forward by those behind. They are creeping in now at last. The crowd has divided, and they are edging up the room right and left, keeping their shoulders against the walls. And all the time every wide-open eye remains fixed upon the tree in awestruck delight. You hear that low whispering note? They are beginning to find their voices again, and the girls are at last venturing to let go one another’s hands. They are all in now, I think. At least the room could hardly hold another—’
And just as a failing mill-dam begins to ooze, then to trickle and spurt, and finally, in a moment gives way before the pressing tide, so the silence now broke down under the flood of child voices. Shouts and hurrahs, shrill peals of laughter, a hubbub of delighted commentary, made the rafters vibrate above us, and the window-glass tremble in its quarries. Before the din had so far moderated that I could get my tongue to work again in the old vicar’s service, Weaverly and his satellites were forging ahead with the first joyful business of the night.
It all comes back to me now—as I sit alone and late by my workroom fire—clearer perhaps than when I was in the vortex of it all, with the happy voices ringing about me, and the toy-drums and trumpets, the mouth-organs and the whistle-pipes, each going to swell the already deafening chorus the moment it was cut from the tree and put into some eager, uplifted hand. I can see the great glittering pyramid of the tree slowly giving up its treasures, until it bears nothing but the queen-doll waving her star-tipped wand up among the flags and paper chains and holly garlands of the ceiling. I see Weaverly, poised on the top of the rickety ladder, gingerly dislodging her from her perch, while two overdressed and over-perfumed ladies hold the ladder firm below, and gaze up at him with fond and anxious eyes.
Now at last I see the Christmas-tree deserted, forgotten, while the tables at the end of the room are unloading themselves of their cakes and oranges and the score of other items appertaining to the feast. This is a silent time, save for the exploding crackers and occasional shrieks of fearsome delight; but it is over at last. The games begin, and with them reawakens all the old turmoil in redoubled fury. Though each of us has eaten more than is credible in any but a Downland-bred child, this in no way impairs our agility. We hunt the slipper; we sing ourselves hoarse with ‘Green Gravel’; we play ‘Blind Man’s Buff,’ and the Reverend, being caught, is allowed to go through the part of Blind Man, at his own jovial suggestion, without the handkerchief over his eyes.
And now two things come back to me more significant than all. But for this busy quarter of an hour—when he is staggering to and fro, clutching at pinafores and shock heads of hair—the Reverend has been rather a silent and deliberate figure in the midst of all the madcap business, more detached and quiet than I have known him at other Christmas gaieties bygone. He has hovered about on the fringe of the merrymaking, happy-faced as ever, yet with a certain slowness, a languor, that I have never marked in him before. This is the one thing. The other is a random glance I take over my shoulder at the Christmas-tree, when the fun and frolic are at their highest. Pathetically forlorn and deserted it looks, with bits of string clinging here and there to its drooping green fronds, a single shining trinket hanging forgotten on one of its lower branches, and half its glory already quenched. As I look at it, every moment sees another candle gutter out and die. A few minutes more, I think, and it will be nothing but a sombre and solemn fir-tree again, ready to be carted down and set once more amidst the silent glooms of the wood. Somehow, in spite of myself, the two things, the two thoughts, blend themselves indivisibly together. I am glad now that, while through the long evening I poured into the Reverend’s patient ear much idle chatter and many feather-brained conceits, I said no word to him about the dying Christmas-tree.
While I have been sitting here, turning over these thoughts, my own candles have burned low: the wood-fire has sunk to a few waning embers: it must be growing late, how late I do not guess until I turn to look at the clock. Almost midnight! Another minute or two, and then—Christmas morning! Perhaps, as the night is so clear and still, I shall be able to hear the hour chime in far-off Stavisham. I go to the window, throw back the casement against the rustling ivy, and look forth.
There is the glimmer of a lantern over by the Seven Sisters on the green, and a sound of people talking quietly together. I think I can distinguish George Artlett’s deep tones, and his brother Tom’s—the Singing Plowman’s—higher, clearer speech, and an admonitory word or two that might be Weaverly’s. The clock is striking now. Before its last droning note dies on the frosty air, the darkness beneath me fills with a living, joyous music: