The young doctor did not follow them, indeed Rose had not invited him in again. But a few moments later she must have remembered his existence, for she came out for the second time into the cold.
Dr. Barton extended his hand, but apparently Rose did not see it, for she kept her own arms by her sides, saying in somewhat the same manner she had used earlier in the day to Sylvia: “I am sorry, Dr. Barton, you do not think I can be interested in the care of a sick little girl, and that you feel me unworthy to be a Camp Fire guardian. I know that I haven’t all the knowledge and character that is necessary, but I am learning, and – ”
Rose would not listen to the young man’s explanation or apology, for with a quick good-night she turned and left him endeavoring to say something to her which evidently she did not care to hear.
CHAPTER X
Esther’s Old Home
However, of all the Sunrise Camp Fire club it was Esther Clark who actually had the strangest Christmas eve experience. Betty had rather opposed her going over to the orphan asylum for a last rehearsal of her song with Herr Crippen. It was not really necessary, for Esther knew her song as well as she ever would be able to learn it and could only fail in her singing of it on Christmas night should her audience happen to frighten her voice away. Nevertheless, Esther had a kind of sentiment in seeing her old friends at the asylum on Christmas eve, since this was the first year that she could remember when her Christmas had not been spent with them, and there would be no opportunity for visiting the next day.
For some reason or other, which Esther had never had satisfactorily explained to her, she had been kept longer at the orphan asylum than any of the other children. Indeed she was sixteen, almost seventeen, in the spring before when Mrs. Ashton had persuaded the superintendent to let her try the experiment of having Esther as her daughter Betty’s companion. Ordinarily the children were sent away to live and work in other people’s homes when they were thirteen or fourteen; many of them were adopted by the farmers in the surrounding neighborhood when they were almost babies, so that Esther naturally felt her obligation to be the deeper. Notwithstanding she was not thinking a great deal about her former lonely life at the asylum, nor even of the queer German violinist’s interest in her voice, as she drove Fire Star over the now familiar road. Both her mind and heart were heavy with the news Dick Ashton had been able to whisper to her in a few hurried moments when they had been alone in the cabin that morning soon after Dick’s arrival. Mr. Ashton had lost not merely a small sum of money which might cause him temporary inconvenience, as Betty imagined. He had had such serious losses that Dick’s mother had written begging him and Betty to cut down their living expenses as closely as possible. And some one had to tell Betty. Dick was not a coward; in making his confidence he simply wondered if Esther would not be able to console his sister afterwards and to explain conditions to her better than he could, because Betty never had seemed able to understand any question of money matters however much she seemed to try. The actual facts he himself would tell her as soon as the holiday season had passed.
There was one way in which Betty could save money, Esther decided. She should no longer pay for her singing lessons. Indeed she would ask the German violinist that morning if there were not some way by which she could help him, by playing his accompaniments, perhaps, if he succeeded in getting up a violin class in Woodford. Anyhow she would earn the money for her own lessons in some way, for, unselfish as Esther was, her music lessons meant too much to her, were too important to her future, even to think of giving them up altogether.
The professor was waiting for her in the big, bare, ugly parlor of the asylum which, however, possessed the glory of a not utterly impossible piano. Nevertheless, Esther only waved her hand to him as she passed the door on the way to her older friends. She was thinking that he looked older, poorer and homelier than ever with his red hair, his spectacled, pale blue eyes and his worn clothes. He had a little sprig of holly in his buttonhole, in a determined German effort to be a part of the prevailing Christmas cheerfulness.
Then, half an hour later, Esther sang her song straight through without hesitation or a single mistake to the elderly German’s way of thinking. For when she had finished he looked at her speechless for a moment, and then taking off his spectacles wiped away a kind of mist from his glasses. “Ach, my dear young Fräulein, you haf the great thing I hoped for through all my youth and then gave up when the years found me – an almost big violinist – das Talent! Was ist es in English, genius, nicht wahr?” And then, with Esther blushing until the burning in her throat and cheeks was almost painful, and twisting her big hands together in the ungainly fashion Betty had almost broken her of, he went on, seemingly unconscious of her presence. “I am that thing you call a failure, but I used to dream I might haf a child who some day would go farther than I was able and then when I had to gif up this also – Ach, Himmel!”
To Esther’s great embarrassment Herr Crippen then began sobbing in a most un-American fashion. “It was my own fault. I should never haf gone away, I – ”
But whatever else he may have poured forth in his present state of emotion was heard only by the four walls of the room, for Esther, in utter consternation, slipped out, hurrying toward the small study in the rear of the house where she knew she would find her old friend, the superintendent, at work. She told him rather shyly of her unceremonious leave taking, asking him to make her apologies to Herr Crippen and to beg him to come early to their Christmas entertainment the next night. Then, when she had put out her hand for farewell, quite unexpectedly the superintendent asked her to sit down again, saying that he would like to tell her Herr Crippen’s story and the reason he had come into their neighborhood, since possibly she might be able to assist him.
Afterwards for more than an hour Esther listened to a most surprising narrative and later on drove back to Sunrise cabin puzzled, thoughtful and just the least shade frightened and unhappy. However, she made up her mind not to let anything trouble her until after their wonderful Christmas had passed.
CHAPTER XI
Gifts
“Oh come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant;
Oh come ye, oh come ye to Bethlehem;
Come and behold Him born the King of angels;
Oh come, let us adore Him,
Oh come, let us adore Him,
Oh come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.”
Esther sang the first few lines of the beautiful Christmas hymn in a low voice but with gathering strength until when she had reached the refrain Sunrise cabin was filled with melody.
She had awakened before any one else on this Christmas morning and after thinking over more quietly the events of yesterday, had slipped into her clothes and then stolen into the living room hoping that her hymn might be the first sound that her friends should hear.
It was a perfect winter day. From the window Esther could see the snow-crowned peak of Sunrise Hill from which the dawn colors were now slowly fading and beyond a long line of the crystal hills. Wherever the Sunrise Camp Fire girls should go in after years, to whatever places their destinies should call them, the scene surrounding their camp could never be forgotten, nor could there be found many places in the world more beautiful.
Of course Esther had until now seen nothing beyond the New Hampshire hills and so this morning, with a little only half-defined fear tugging at her heart, she gazed at the landscape until the eternal peace of the mountains rested and soothed her. Then, turning away, she went first to building up their great log fire until its flames roared up the chimney and then to the singing of her song.
By and by, with a blue dressing gown wrapped about her, Betty came into the room, and stood resting an elbow on the piano. Polly and Mollie followed, and soon after Meg and Eleanor with Miss McMurtry between them, until finally every member of the Sunrise club had gathered in the room, including the little probation girl who entered last holding tight to Rose’s hand. She looked like a pale little Christmas angel with her big blue eyes set in a colorless face and her soft rings of light yellow hair, which had been cut close on account of recent fever, curling like a fringe about her high forehead. When Esther came to the last verse of her hymn, there were many other voices to join in with hers, and somehow all their eyes turned instinctively toward the great pine tree which stood undecorated upon the farthest corner of their stage with the great silver star overhead.
“Yea, Lord, we greet Thee, born this happy morning;
Jesu, to Thee be glory given;
Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing;
Oh come, let us adore Him,
Oh come, let us adore Him,
Oh come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.”
There was an instant’s hush after this and then a surprising amount of noise. Surely Esther’s idea had been a very lovely one, for there was little Christmas peace and quiet at the cabin for the rest of the wonderful and eventful day.
Some weeks before the girls had decided that there would be no present giving among themselves except the merest trifles, since all their money and energy must be spent in making a success of their Camp Fire play, but this did not forbid the receiving of gifts from the outside. So before breakfast was over offerings began to arrive, some of them for individual girls but more for the camp. Mr. and Mrs. Webster sent from the farm a great roasted goose stuffed with chestnuts, a baked ham and two immense mince pies, while Billy Webster, who drove over to bring the gifts, shyly tucked into Mollie’s hands a bouquet of pink geraniums and lemon verbena from his mother’s little indoor garden. To Polly, with a perfectly serious expression, he presented a bunch of thistles grown on the mountains that fall and made very brilliant and effective by having their centers dyed scarlet and being tied with a bright red ribbon. They were beautiful enough to have been bestowed on any one and would be an ornament for the cabin living room all winter, and yet Polly, though she was far too clever to betray herself, could not but wonder if there were not a double meaning attached to Billy’s gift.
Dick Ashton gave no individual presents, not even one to Betty, but to the club he gave a reading lamp so brilliant that half a dozen girls might do their studying around it at night. If it were placed on the piano Esther might be able to read her most intricate music without difficulty.
Then there were other more valuable gifts, Mr. Wharton, Sylvia’s father, who had unexpectedly gone to Europe for a few weeks, left a check to supply the winter’s coal bill, while Mrs. O’Neill from over in Ireland sent a set of kitchen aprons, which she had made during that winter, for each member of the Sunrise club including Mammy.
There was a mysterious communication received by Betty Ashton, however, of which she did not speak to any one, not even to Polly. She was not at all sure from whom it came, but naturally there was but one person whom she could suspect. The post-mark was a near-by town, and it was a common looking gift – just a card with the picture of a ladder rising in the air, apparently by its own volition, and very slowly ascending it the figure of a young man. Yet the words written below were of far finer significance than the picture and Betty really wondered how they had ever made their appeal.
“And men may rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things.”
At four o’clock, when the girls were resting for an hour before getting ready for the evening’s entertainment, convinced that there was nothing more to come for any one of them, there appeared at the cabin door certainly the most unlooked-for gift.
Rose happened for the moment to be alone in the living room, having firmly ordered the girls off to their bedrooms to lie down while she attended to some final arrangements, such as finding space for a few more chairs for their audience than had been sent out from town an hour before.
So the sounds outside did not at first attract her attention, though they were most unusual. But suddenly, when a large form apparently flung itself against the door and there followed a low muffled cry, Rose, without a thought of Christmas, ran hastily to the rescue. Fortunately she was not nervous, else she might have been frightened when an unexpected object leapt up to her shoulders and a warm wet tongue caressed her cheek. Straightway her cry of surprise and admiration brought half a dozen girls to her side, who had found sleep at so critical a time quite out of the question. Imagine their surprise at finding their new guardian being embraced by a cream and brown and gold St. Bernard dog, already a tremendous fellow and yet still in his puppyhood.
Polly, who was ever a lover of dogs, got down on her knees before him.
“Whose ever can he be and how has he found his way to our cabin?” she cried, but before her question was ended Polly herself discovered a small envelope attached to the dog’s collar and tearing it off hastily presented it to Rose with an eastern salaam, as she happened to be already seated on the floor.
“From an unknown admirer, Rose? Isn’t this like a story book?” Betty commented with an unnecessary expression of demureness, for she had noticed an evident though faint blush touching their guardian’s cheeks. But Rose answered with a dignity that somehow made Betty feel ashamed of herself.
“No, Betty, the dog is for our club if you girls wish to keep him. Dr. Barton writes that he feels we are too much alone in these woods in the winter and that if we will forgive his solicitude he has sent us a third Camp Fire guardian.” And Rose slipped the stiff little note she had just received inside her pocket, realizing that it was as near an apology as the severe young doctor could bring himself to make.
CHAPTER XII
The Camp Fire Play
By eight o’clock on Christmas evening every seat in the Sunrise cabin living room was filled except two, and toward these the eyes of every girl hidden behind the khaki curtain turned questioningly for the last fifteen minutes before their Camp Fire play was to commence. However then, to Polly’s despair, their last hope died away – the great lady and the great actress in one – would not form a part of their Woodford audience, even her own Miss Adams had likewise failed her.
Nevertheless their entertainment was to begin promptly (on this Miss McMurtry and Miss Dyer had both insisted), since punctuality was so seldom a feature of amateur plays they wished thus to show one of the superior results of the Camp Fire training.
A Camp Fire Morality Play: These words were printed on the Christmas programs and it was an old time morality play such as we have seen and read in “Everyman” that Polly and Betty had attempted to write, assisted of course by both their guardians and with suggestions from every girl in the Sunrise club. Whether they were successful in keeping close to the old model was not so much their ideal as the desire to show both by words and tableaux the aims and the influence of the Camp Fire organization, and what women have given to the world since the primitive time when human life centered about the camp-fire.
At a quarter past eight the curtain arose slowly, showing the stage in semi-darkness and representing a scene in a primeval forest. In the corner is the bare pine tree, the ground is strewn with twigs, fir cones and needles, and there within the instant the figure of a woman enters. It is Polly! And because of her great disappointment there is a tragic droop to her shoulders, a pathetic expression in her great wide-open Irish blue eyes. She had hoped so much from Miss Adams’ promise and now – well, she must not forget her part, she must try to do her best for her friends’ sakes.
Polly is dressed in a short skirt with a fox’s skin fastened from one shoulder to her belt, there are sandals on her feet and her straight black hair is hanging about her shoulders. Unhappy, she gropes her way about the stage shivering and finding nothing to do, no place in which to rest herself. It is December, the month of the long moon, and the night promises to be bitterly cold. In another moment there is heard from the outside the crying of a child and next “Little Brother,” very proud of his rabbit coat and cap, runs forward throwing his arms about the woman’s knees and evidently begging for warmth and shelter. Still in pantomime the mother mournfully shakes her head, and with this Eleanor Meade appears representing a primitive man and carrying a brace of freshly killed game over her shoulder. This he presents to the child and the woman, but both of them shake their heads and a moment later the man drops despairingly down on the frozen ground burying his face in his hands, the child hiding between his parents for warmth. However the woman does not cover her face and by and by, picking up two dry twigs from the ground, she begins in an idle fashion to rub them together. Suddenly there is a tiny spark of light and then darkness.
It was a wise selection on the part of the Sunrise club girls to have chosen Polly O’Neill to represent the mother of all the Camp Fire women, for though she had when needful the Irish gift of expression, she had also a face so vivid and so emotional that to Polly’s own chagrin it was seldom possible for her to hide from other people what was going on in her mind. Now, however, this characteristic was of excellent service, for there was not a member of her little audience who did not in this instant guess the inspiration that had just been born in the woman.
In a seat toward the back of the living room, in as inconspicuous a spot as possible, a fragile looking woman, an unknown member of the small Woodford audience, turned suddenly to the companion beside her, nodding her head quickly. She had a plain, yet remarkably youthful looking face illumined by a pair of wonderful gray eyes with an indescribably wistful and yet understanding expression. And from now on she watched the girl on the stage more attentively.
Rising quietly, Polly seemed almost to be holding her breath. Then with eager fingers she can be seen searching along the ground until by and by she has gathered together a few twigs, and now kneeling before them appears to be uttering a silent prayer. A moment later and she picks up her former sticks, again repeating the rubbing of them together. For a while Polly seemed to be unsuccessful in making them ignite, so that in the background and well out of sight the other Camp Fire girls hold their breath with a kind of sick horror, fearing that she is going to fail here and so make a fiasco of the entire scene. But the little waiting has only made the final result more dramatic. There is a tiny flare of light, and then bending over her pile of twigs the woman lights the first Camp Fire. She guards it with her hands until there is a crackle and many spurts of yellow flame and the instant after is across the stage shaking the man by the shoulder and drawing the child toward the blaze. Together then they heap on more fuel until a really splendid fire is a-light. (And for fear any one may think that this fire in the middle of the wooden platform would probably have put an end to Sunrise cabin it must be explained that a sheet of iron had been fastened on the floor that the fire might be built with entire safety.)
Like a flame herself the woman then flies from one home duty to the other, making a bed of pine branches for the child near the fire, appearing to roast the game for her husband. Far better by her actions than by any possible words Polly told her story, until the curtain at last goes down on the beginning of the first home with the woman as its genius and inspiration.
But before the curtain has finally descended, for a moment Polly’s attention, as though drawn by an invisible magnet, centered upon the face of a stranger in the back of the living room beyond the more familiar ranks of her friends; and with a quick intake of her breath and a feeling of thankfulness that her first trial is over and that she is not obliged to speak, the young girl recognizes the famous actress. She is glad then that she had not known of her presence sooner and also that her first appearance before her has been made in pantomime, for she guesses it to be a surer test of dramatic ability than any recitation an untrained girl might be able to repeat. If she had the necessary temperament somehow in the scene just past it must have revealed itself.
But now an intermission of twenty minutes passes and the second act represents a scene wholly different from the first, for now the stage is intended to present as nearly as possible the picture of an ideal home. It was difficult to portray, of course, but then the bigger things must always be trusted to the imagination, for this home was not intended to suggest merely a single home but a kind of universal and representative one. There were beautiful pictures in it and soft rugs and many books and windows everywhere, supposedly letting in all the possible sunlight, while over in the corner the solitary pine tree still stood, but now covered with many white candles, although none of them were yet a-light.
Then the door opens and the first spirit of the home enters. This is Esther Clark wearing a kind of blue tunic with a silver band about her unloosened red hair. With swift steps and busy fingers she moves about, bringing a bunch of winter roses to a table, putting fresh logs on the fire, drawing chairs nearer to the inspiring blaze, which is now no longer a primitive camp fire but a great, hospitable open hearth.
Then Esther goes to the front of the stage and waits there for a moment in silence before beginning her speech, and there are but few persons watching her who have yet guessed what spirit she is illustrating.
Esther is awkward and not handsome; nevertheless, because she has a clear and beautiful speaking as well as singing voice she had been chosen for this particular part. Now she is plainly heard throughout the room.
“I am Work, the great Mother Spirit of the earth.
I have borne many children with a fairer fame,
Service, who is my daughter with a gentler name.”
And here Nan Graham in a yellow costume with her black hair flowing over her shoulders and her dark eyes shining walks forward and takes her place at one end of the stage just a little back of the speaker, followed by Eleanor Meade in a white robe with a wreath of laurel on her head and a scroll in her hand, who is seen by the audience as Esther continues:
“Knowledge, who needs no word of mine to prove her worth,
Beauty that shall not fade, surely it lives through me
In music, books and art, a noble trinity.”
Then Betty Ashton, whom there is no difficulty in recognizing as the spirit of Beauty, approaches the front of the stage in a dress of some soft silvery material with three stars in her hair and stands beside Eleanor.
“And Health and Happiness, would they deny their birth?
Then let them seek it in some nobler form than mine,
The quest is everlasting but the choice is thine.”
Sylvia and Beatrice Field then advance together and take their places in the center of the group, Sylvia as Health dressed in the green of the open fields and Beatrice in deep rose color.
“Trustworthiness and Sympathy dwell by my hearth
With Purity; we are the graces of the home.
And yet there is one other fairer still to come
Whose handmaids are these spirits named above;
To her alone I yield my gracious place,
The inspiration of the home – the world – is Love!”
While Esther has been finishing her verse, Juliet Field has come forth to portray the spirit of Trustworthiness in a dress of deep violet, carrying a sheath of purple lilies. Meg, with her charming face so full of humor and tenderness, is the embodiment of Sympathy, and Edith Norton as Purity has her long fair hair falling almost down to her knees and wears a dress of the palest green – like Undine when she first comes forth from the sea.
And now a crescent has slowly formed about the figure of Esther who is a little in advance of the other girls, but now as she speaks the final word – Love – she steps quietly backward and Mollie O’Neill as the spirit of Love occupies the center of the stage. She has never looked half so lovely in her life as she does to-night. Her gown is of pale pink, she has a wreath of roses in her black hair, her usually too grave expression is illumined by a smile born partly of fear and the rest of pride, which has nothing to do with her own appearance, but is a kind of shadowy pleasure in the beauty and the significance of the tableau surrounding her.
From his place behind the curtain Billy Webster wonders how he was ever able even at the beginning of their acquaintance to confuse the twin sisters. Polly in all her existence has never looked so pretty as this and probably never will, and then Billy comes to his senses in a hurry, realizing that it is now his duty to assist in letting the curtain drop on this second scene in the Camp Fire allegory.
In the last act the Christmas tree is all a-blaze with pure white candles and silver tinsel and above it is suspended a great silver star, while the girls in their many colored costumes are seen dancing before it. Then at the close of the dance Polly again enters. She is to recite the epilogue, to make plainer the ideals of the Camp Fire. But some change has come over her since the first scene, her color is entirely gone, her eyes are rimmed and, worst of all, she feels that a deadly weight is settling on her chest and that her voice is nowhere to be found. She is having an attack of stage fright, but Polly does not yet know it by that name. The truth is that she has grown desperately tired, the strain and excitement of waiting after the long day’s pleasure with the very foolish thought that her fate is probably to be decided by one person’s judgment of her abilities has proved too much for her. She tries pulling herself together, she sees many eyes turned up toward her, with one face shining a little farther off like a star. Polly opens her mouth to speak, but there is a great darkness about her, the world is slowly slipping away. She puts out both arms with a pathetic appeal for silence and patience and then suddenly some one is holding her up and the other girls are forming a rainbow circle about her so that she is safely hidden from view.
For in a flash Betty Ashton has guessed at Polly’s faintness, has signaled her companions and then reached her first, so that the curtain finally fell on perhaps the prettiest scene of all.