McClure's Magazine/Volume 34/Number 2/The Lighted House

by Mary Stewart Cutting

THE LIGHTED HOUSE.

BY MARY STEWART CUTTING

ALTHOUGH hardly anyone knew little Mrs. Sinclair,—she had moved into the place only two months before, and had never been out of the door since,—everybody going down to the village on the afternoon of Christmas eve had noticed her sitting at the second- story window of the big double house fronting directly on the snowy street, the folds of a blue curtain behind her, and her small face, with its fair hair, pressed closely against the pane, looking down at the children who went past in twos and companies, most of them scarlet-coated or scarlet-capped, their heads turning upward as if pulled with a string as they passed underneath her window; they were used to seeing her smiling wistfully at them.

There was a Christmas tree this afternoon at the other end of the town, and the children going to that took hands along the narrow, slippery white pavement, the older leading the younger; their eyes had almost the expression of infantile holiness that children wear coming home on Sunday morning from Sunday-school, when they are very clean and dressed in their best and are still filled with the wonder of being so very good. It was the wonder of the Christ mas party that filled them now. The thin winter sunlight was already beginning to be gathered into a red glow in the west, leaving the world damply colder, before the glow suddenly faded out, and there remained only the white snow and the black of the lamp-posts, with the yellow flicker of the little flames against the growing darkness, while Mrs. Sinclair still sat there for all to see.

Young Mrs. Hartwell, tearing along toward the village with a friend in tow, a little earlier than this, looked up at the window, as so many others had done, and, smiling, waved her hand impulsively.

“I don't really know her; I haven't called yet, she said, “but, dear me, on Christmas eve! Doesn't she look pretty?”

The hand that Polly Hartwell waved was incased in a glove that was flappingly unbuttoned at the wrist; her black-winged hat tipped insecurely on her rumpled brown hair as she tore ahead—it had evidently been snatched up at the last minute and fastened to her coiffure by the single jab of a hat-pin; her eyes were surrounded by deep, haggard lines,—although their expression was eagerly undaunted,—and on the back of her black cloth walking-skirt a white thread lay clingingly in long loops and spirals. Mrs. Center, her companion, though much older, showed equal signs of haste and disorderliness, reflected in the aspect of the other women who were abroad, every self-respecting person being immersed on Christmas eve in that last, ever-increasing whirl of “things to do” that made a conventional appearance impossible. Ranville kept its Christmas with enthusiasm. Mrs. Center half unconsciously retrieved an unhooked and dangling belt ribbon as she responded to her friend's remark, after a glance across the street.

“She doesn't see us—she's looking at the children. She's perfectly crazy about children—they know her, even if we don't. I haven't called on her yet, but I'm going to, of course, after— What did you say? No, it's not expected for two or three weeks. Did you hear that they'd been married for ten years, and this will be the first? They count everything on it. Mary, the doctor's wife, says she's not at all strong—he's very anxious about her. Mary says she's a perfect darling. Mary sends little Gordon in there every morning”; Mrs. Center paused an instant; “she says Mrs. Sinclair loves to squeeze him.”

“She must be sweet. I'll let Robin go over to-morrow, and Juliet, to wish her a Merry Christmas,” said Mrs. Hartwell, with a little break in her voice. In Ranville Christmas was not so much the festival of a Child as a festival of children—it was the children themselves that counted; they were of paramount importance. For this one day, at least, the houses in which there were many vaunted the fact; where there was but one child, whole outlying families grouped themselves triumphantly around the solitary chick; but even toward the households where there were none there was a feeling that at this season children really belonged to all who loved them. In that joy of spending one's self for "Christmas” one got back to something unexpectedly dear and divine that was the child heart in one's self. People unconsciously proclaimed the loss of what was theirs by right when they complained that they no longer enjoyed Christmas. Polly Hartwell went on:

“Oh, I do hope she'll get through all right. Perhaps by another Christmas—goodness, I nearly knocked over that child!” She swerved around a light-haired infant standing stockily in the middle of the pavement. “Why, it's the baker's little boy! Run home, Otto! I do hope there'll be nothing to interfere with this Christmas. I think it's so dreadful when things happen then. Isn't it interesting when children get big enough to really appreciate things—but your children are grown up, of course, Mrs. Center.”

“Your own children are never grown up,” said Mrs. Center contentedly.

“You see, Juliet is eighteen months old, and Robin is three years! I'm furnishing a doll house for Juliet, like one I used to have, and Robert is working on a perfect model of a boat for Robin—of course, after the children are in bed—every part of it is exact. He says he wants Robin to have the right idea of a boat, to begin on. Robert fools with it himself every night before he gets to work on it—that's what takes him so long! but he's going to finish it to-night, if he sits up till morning. I've got to get some more ribbon for those dolls. I just thought I'd dress a big one for the new washerwoman's little girl—I didn't know she had a little girl until this morning; and I have the dearest little bit of a doll with two long braids—it's so sweet I want to play with it myself—for—you won't tell?”

"No,” said Mrs. Center.

"Well, it's for little Alma Kenny. She wants a doll, and, what do you think, she's ten, and the family think she's too big for toys. She's to have a mahogany bedstead and a dressing-table instead. Some people have the strangest ideas! So I'm going to dress the doll for her. I can't bear to think of a child's being disappointed—I can't bear to think of anybody disappointed on Christmas day, can you? I wish Mrs. Sinclair could be out having a good time, don't you? Oh, here's Townley's. I must get my ribbon— No, you've got to come in too; we always go around together on Christmas eve. I like to do everything on Christmas the way we've done it before.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Center, yielding. It is the oldest custom that is the dearest at Christmas. Woman of fifty though she was, the plea was valid, although every minute was precious. That long opera-cloak for Elinor, made out of an old velveteen skirt, for which the inspiration, as usual, had come at the eleventh hour, would take most of the night for completion. That was the trouble, that, no matter how forehanded you were about present-giving, you always thought of more and more things you wanted to do as the time lessened. Townley's lighted interior was full of women supplementing with the “last things” which they had meant to buy in town and hadn't—even Miss Grayson, who never gave anything but her exquisite little iced cakes, was buying more tissue paper to use in the wrapping of an extra couple of dozen. It was almost like a tea, you met so many people that you knew under the green festooning over the ribbon-counter. There was a cheerfulness, a lightsomeness about the whole thing—the stress of preparation was really almost over, the holiday of Christmas eve already begun.

Mrs. Hartwell hurried home to get back before her husband came from the station. He had promised to leave town early, but, after all, he did not arrive until long after dark, with his arms delightfully full of bundles. The children were already in bed and asleep, but she dramatically reproached and forgave and kissed him all at once—dragging him in to look at the pendant stockings, while he smiled down at her,—he was a good-looking young man,—before he had even brushed the snow off his overcoat.

“We'll get to work just as soon as you finish your dinner,” she said happily. “Is it snowing very hard?”

“Yes; very quietly, but very fast—the air is thick with flakes. You can't see anything in the street but the double house on the corner below—it's lighted up from top to bottom. Are they having a party?”

“What house do you mean?”

“Why, the one those new people moved into—Sinclair, the name is. I met him the other day—nice fellow. He seemed rather anxious about his wife.”

“And that house was all lighted up?” There was an arrested note in Mrs. Hartwell's voice. In Ranville there were only two occasions when every room in a house was lighted—for an entertainment, or for a fight with death. She pressed to the door to look for herself. Yes, the house down the street wore a fearsome illumination—every window blazed out brilliantly even through the softly falling snow. It was very still—so still that far away one could hear a strange, low, recurrent murmur that was the rolling of great waves upon the distant shore. It was an eerie sound. Mr. Hartwell put his arm around his wife as she stood there. The next moment somebody ran up the steps—a large woman, with a cloak over her head.

“Let me in just a minute, will you? It's Mrs. Fowler, Mrs. Hartwell—I thought you didn't recognize me at first.” She brushed the snow from her hair. “No, I can't sit down—they want me down at the house—at the Sinclairs'. I thought perhaps Mr. Hartwell would see about delivering these—they're all marked.” She laid down a pile of oddly shaped red tissue-paper parcels, tied with holly ribbon, on the hall table. “Why,”—she looked at the evidently uncomprehending faces opposite her with astonishment,—“why—don't you know? Hadn't you heard, Mrs. Hartwell? You saw her sitting by the window this afternoon, didn't you?—Mrs. Sinclair, I mean. Emily Center said you nearly tumbled over little Otto, the baker's child, in the road there. Well, it happened just after we all came home from Townley's. Emily Center just turned the corner in time to see it. That child was standing out in the street in front of Stetsons' automobile—that fool boy was running it, and he had his head turned t'other way, talking to some one. Mrs. Sinclair threw up the window like a flash and leaned out and called, 'Come to Santa Claus, little Otto, quick!' Emily said her voice was so sweet and clear—and he ran, and the car just grazed his blouse, no more. That fool boy went right to pieces when he saw; they had to take him into the drug-store and fix him up. Land, he's nothing but a young one himself! And then Mrs. Hanssen came out and grabbed Otto—she was so busy fixing his tree, she'd forgotten all about him— But when they went upstairs to her, she was lying on the floor in a dead faint—and oh, my, my, she'd been hoping so, before, that everything would go all right. She knew it was just a chance, her having a real baby of her own, but she'd been so careful, for its sake. She'd been hoping so! And now—" Mrs. Fowler's voice trembled; she had to stop for a moment before she went on: “There's just a chance. The doctor's sent for two more doctors, and they can't get 'em. Mr. Sinclair, he's 'most crazy. He found these things in her room—they're for the children—he said he knew she'd like to have 'em sent out now, by to-morrow— Oh, doesn't it seem the worst ever, on Christmas eve!"

Ranville long remembered that night. The snow fell so fast and so thickly that it broke down the telegraph wires; far-off screeching, abortive train-whistles shrilled through the stillness at unscheduled intervals from shunting cars on sidings; passage from house to house became unexpectedly difficult; people who had intended to go out for more “last things” left them off the list, and made what they had do. The cold grew bitter; husbands made up the fires while their wives trimmed trees and tied up parcels. Yet none were so busy that they did not go to the window every little while and look up or down the street or across the fields to the double house that, with all its lights blazing, shone hazily through the falling snow. There was no lessening of the illumination. Each house burned a light in some room until a late hour, but that was the only one that had lights in all the rooms, that no one might hasten into one of them for some need and meet the delay of darkness. The other houses were alight for pleasure, but this one for sorrow—a fight with death, where one must keep all one's weapons handy. There was a woman there fighting for her own life and that of a child—and a helpless man who, while other people had so much, was like to lose all he had. In spite of the enshrouding snow and the bitter cold, word went from telephone to telephone of what was happening; figures ran here and there, cloaked or overcoated, on errands made necessary by the disabling of the telephone in the double house itself. Polly Hartwell, running upstairs betweenwhiles to put another stitch into the clothes of the little doll with the light braids,—for a child mustn't be disappointed on Christmas day, no matter what sorrow was abroad,—had twice buttoned up Robert's coat for him, at a telephone summons—after the pathetic delivering of Mrs. Sinclair's little parcels—and sent him plowing knee-deep through the drifts, once with a great bottle of alcohol, and once with a bulky kerosene stove. Twice he had gone out, at his wife's entreaties, to remonstrate with the family two houses below, whose dog would keep howling in a manner that curdled the blood, though, as Polly bitterly pointed out, he hadn't even the excuse of a moon to howl at. And for a fifth time he had rushed out, without any coat, to help Mrs. Center as she went staggering along with that big pot of hot coffee. The Farringtons had sent over hot biscuits and stuffed eggs for the workers in the lighted house, whose strength needed to be kept up through the night—Mrs. Fowler, good soul, had stayed there, wringing her hands, all this terrible Christmas eve, as a means of communication with the outer world. The Stetsons' automobile had been run untiringly, in the intervals of conveying children to and from the Christmas tree, taking the two long-cloaked nurses to the house before the festivities, and dashing up and down with supplies. Every one knew by telephone the exact moment when it brought the doctor from the long-delayed train from town. Every one knew when the word went around that there was a chance. Every one knew when the greatest doctor of all was expected to reach there. The Stetsons' automobile brought him, after a long, long time. The last that could be done was done now.

Then the trains seemed to stop running; the whistles ceased, except very far off. It was growing late indeed. As Robert and Polly sat there in the nursery, with the pretty tinseled tree in the corner of the room, his fingers ploddingly adjusting the blocks and tackle of the “model” boat, and hers taking stitches in the doll's hat with its bit of scarlet feather, there was a growing sense of awe; in the stillness the dull, muffled, recurrent sound of the ocean could be heard. Polly shivered—death seemed to be coming very near. Many people had died on Christmas eve, on Christmas day, and that fact had always seemed to give an additional pang to bereavement. Suddenly, in some way, it seemed instead to bless it, as if to bring heaven and earth so near at this holy tide that it made little matter on which side you stood, you were in touch with those you loved anyway.

The children stirred in their sleep, and she went in to cover them, her rosy darlings, her treasures—and after a minute Robert came and stood beside her. Juliet lay with an old doll in her arms. Robin opened his blue eyes as his father and mother looked at him, murmured, “Santa Claus!” and shut them. The two who stood there were so rich—it was almost as if they had no right to be so rich; that longing woman yonder had never put her arms around a child of her own, that agonized man— Oh, was there nothing to be done for them now but to wait—and wait—for the end?

“Hartwell!”

There was a hoarse whispering call from the stairway.

“Yes!” whispered Robert, tiptoeing out, with Polly holding fast to his hand.

“I knocked, but you didn't hear,” said the newcomer, a dark-haired, stocky young man from the opposite house, which had kept in telephone communication during the evening. “I found that the door was unlocked, and I knew you were up, so I walked in.”

“That's all right, Bowley," said Robert. “You're out of breath, aren't you—been running?"

“No," said Bowley.

“You haven't heard anything——"

The other checked him with a gesture. “No—oh, no. The fact is, my wife wants to know, Mrs. Hartwell, if you can put on your overshoes and wrap something around you, and come across the street for a moment. I'll get you over all right. Lucy's about crazy looking at the lights in that house since Doctor Armstrong got there. She's got such a cold herself, I can't let her out, or she'd come over to you.”

“Yes, of course I'll go,” said Polly, fumbling hastily in the closet. “What does she want me for?”

“She thinks, you know—she says—well, 'when two or three are gathered together in His name'—" Mr. Bowley lowered his voice in the embarrassment that an unwonted expression of a religious sentiment is apt to bring. “You know the rest of it. Of course, there are two of us, but I've got the worst kind of a mind; if I want to really fix it on anything, I always think of football instead—so she thought perhaps three would be better. She's looking up the right prayer out of the Prayer Book. It can't do any harm—” His voice pleaded for leniency.

“No, it can't do any harm,” said Robert, with prompt indorsement. He lingered irresolutely after carrying his wife bodily down the steps.

“I'd come over myself—I would indeed, but I don't like to leave the children to-night, when Polly's out. Besides, I can't seem to let go of a cigar to-night—mouth's so dry!” He took a last furtive look down the street. The dampness of the snow gave the illuminated house a larger nimbus.

It was very, very late—so late now that it was early—it was near morning. One knew it was near the dawn, for one of Mrs. Center's roosters was crowing, but it was still very dark. There had been so many things to finish, after all the interruptions, that the Hartwells had not gone to bed yet—they were just finishing when the door opened once more quietly below. It was a woman's voice this time that said softly, “May I come up?”

“It's Mrs. Fowler,” said Polly apprehensively. She turned pale and clutched the table, while Robert ran downstairs, coming up the moment after with a supporting arm around Mrs. Fowler's broad figure. For a large, heavily built woman, Mrs. Fowler looked extraordinarily unstable—she seemed to rock where she stood, and to crumple up inertly as she sank into a chair. Her face was white, with great dark marks under her eyes, which were full of tears, yet there seemed to be a light behind them.

“She needs something to drink,” said Hartwell authoritatively, but Mrs. Fowler waved the suggestion away.

“The doctor gave me something—I'm all right—I just came in to tell you—” Mrs. Fowler burst into a fit of weeping, her face hidden in her hands, and then raised it, to add in a shaky voice of triumph: “I ain't given way like this till now. You can get your presents ready—and put blue bows on 'em. What do you think? She has a little boy! I knew you'd be glad—a little boy!”

“Oh,” said Polly, her eyes brimming over. She sat down suddenly because she couldn't stand. “Did she—was it——”

Mrs. Fowler nodded her head, with a shudder coming over her; her face seemed to grow white and damp with the horror of remembrance. “Awful. The doctor he thought—well, we thought at one time that she was—gone, but that's all over now. I waited until morning to be sure. Why, the way she's coming up is wonderful! The doctor says he never saw anything like it. And a little boy! Why, she ain't remembering anything she's gone through, lying there looking at him. And you never in your life saw a little boy that looked so like a little boy—his feet and hands——”

Mrs. Fowler broke down and wept unreservedly, her face emerging like the sun after a heavy fog.

“What do you think Mrs. Fair did? She doesn't know Mrs. Sinclair, but she ran home a few minutes ago and got a little Teddy bear she'd bought for Hubert—he's got two besides—and she tied a blue ribbon around its neck and sent it in for a first Christmas present, and the nurse let Mr. Sinclair take it up to her—though his hands shook so he could hardly hold it. She's forbid to speak, but the nurse tied it to the footrail of the bed, so's she could see it. She's lying there—they say you never in your born days saw any one with such a look as she has, with the little boy on her arm, and his own little Teddy bear at the foot of the bed. Mr. Sinclair, he gets out of the way when he sees me coming, but land, I don't mind a little thing like that. He'd like to be able to act as if they'd been accustomed to having a baby every week or so; it sort of rakes him all up to be feelin' so much! He's been writing a whole pile of telegrams already. Mrs. Gracie, she's got a little tree, and she's going to dress it up and send it around to-morrow afternoon—everybody can send things to put on it, if they want to. The nurse, she's real nice—she says if any of the children come around she'll give 'em a peep at the little boy.”

Mrs. Fowler rose to throw her arms around Polly. “Oh, my dear, ain't it just grand!”

The windows were all darkened at the double house down the street in that darkness of the dawning, save where one peaceful glimmer came from the window of that upper room. The oldest Christmas story is always the dearest. Every one in the village seemed to touch something of the divine spirit of the first Christmas in this old, old, commonplace joy of welcoming a little child into the world.