Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

“ Christmas morning in the old Tory Hill Meeting-House was felt by all of the persons who were present in that particular year to be a most exciting and memorable occasion.
The old sexton quite outdid himself, for although he had rung the bell for more than thirty years, he had never felt greater pride or joy in his task. Was not his son John home for Christmas, and John’s wife, and a grandchild newly named Nathaniel for himself? ”

“ For the first six years after Justin Peabody left home, he had drifted about from place to place, saving every possible dollar of his uncertain earnings in the conscious hope that he could go back to New England and ask Nancy Wentworth to marry him. The West was prosperous and progressive, but how he yearned, in idle moments, for the grimmer and more sterile soil that had given him birth! ”

“ The chastening hand of time has been laid somewhat heavily on the town as well as on the church. Some of her sons have marched to the wars and died on the field of honour; some, seeking better fortunes, have gone westward; others, wearying of village life, the rocky soil, and rigours of farm-work, have become entangled in the noise and competition, the rush and strife, of cities. When the sexton rings the bell nowadays, on a Sunday morning, it seems to have lost some of its old-time militant strength, something of its hope and courage ”

“ Justin Peabody might have been no other woman’s star, but he was Nancy’s!
“Just you sitting beside me here makes me feel as if I’d been asleep or dead all these years, and just born over again,” said Justin. “I’ve led a respectable, hard-working, honest life, Nancy,” he continued, “and I don’t owe any man a cent; the trouble is that no man owes me one. I’ve got enough money to pay two fares back to Detroit on Monday, although I was terribly afraid you wouldn’t let me do it. It’ll need a good deal of thinking and planning, Nancy, for we shall be very poor.” ”

“ How tongue-tied he would have been, sitting on the black haircloth sofa in the Wentworth parlour and gazing at the open soapstone stove!
“Oh, men are such fools!” cried Nancy, smiles and tears struggling together in her speech, as she sat down suddenly in her own pew and put her hands over her face.
“They are,” agreed Justin humbly, “but I’ve never stopped loving you, whenever I’ve had time for thinking or loving. ”

“ His voice rang clear and true in the silence, and Nancy’s heart vibrated at the sound.
“Oh, Justin, Justin!” she whispered. “There’s something wrong somewhere, but we’ll find it out together, you and I, and make it right. You’re not like a failure. You don’t even look poor, Justin; there isn’t a man in Edgewood to compare with you, or I should be washing his dishes and darning his stockings this minute. ”

“ The church was flooded with moonlight and snowlight, and there was one lamp burning at the back of the pulpit; a candle, too, on the pulpit steps. There was the tip-tap-tip of a tack-hammer going on in a distant corner. Was somebody hanging Christmas garlands? The new red carpet attracted his notice, and as he grew accustomed to the dim light, it carried his eye along the aisle he had trod so many years of Sundays, to the old familiar pew. The sound of the hammer ceased and a woman rose from her knees. A stranger was doing for the family honour what he ought himself to have done. ”

“ These were some of the little tragedies that had sickened young Justin Peabody with life in Edgewood, and Nancy Wentworth, even then, realized some of them and sympathized without speaking, in a girl’s poor, helpless way.
Mrs. Simpson had washed the floor in the right wing of the church and Nancy had cleaned all the paint. Now she sat in the old Peabody pew darning the forlorn, faded cushion with grey carpet-thread: thread as grey as her own life. ”

“ Every eye in the church was already turned upon Justin and Nancy, and it was with almost a gasp that those in the vicinity saw a ten dollar bill fall in the plate. The sexton reeled, or, if that is too intemperate a word for a pillar of the church, the good man tottered, but caught hold of the pew rail with one hand, and, putting the thumb of his other over the bill, proceeded quickly to the next pew, lest the stranger should think better of his gift, or demand change, as had occasionally been done in the olden time. ”

“ How wasted!” she sighed. “Going home to eat her lonely supper and feed ’Zekiel . . . I can bear it for the others, but not for Nancy . . . Now she has lighted her lamp, now she has put fresh pine on the fire, for new smoke comes from the chimney. Why should I sit down and serve my dear husband, and Nancy feed ’Zekiel?”
There was some truth in Mrs. Baxter’s feeling. Mrs. Buzzell, for instance, had three sons; Maria Sharp was absorbed in her lame father and her Sunday-school work; and Lobelia Brewster would not have considered matrimony a blessing, even under the most favourable conditions. ”

“ Christmas and New Year’s both coming on Sunday this year, there’ll be a great many out to church, not counting the strangers that’ll come to the special service to-morrow. Instead of putting down my own pew carpet that’ll never be noticed here in the back, I’ll lay it in the old Peabody pew, for the red aisle-strip leads straight up to it; the ministers always go up that side, and it does look forlorn. ”

“ They were sewing in the church, and as the last stitches were being taken, Maria Sharp suddenly ejaculated in her impulsive fashion:—
“Wouldn’t it have been just perfect if we could have had the pews repainted before we laid the new carpet!”
“It would, indeed,” the president answered; “but it will take us all winter to pay for the present improvements, without any thought of fresh paint. If only we had a few more men-folks to help along!”
“Or else none at all!” was Lobelia Brewster’s suggestion. “It’s havin’ so few that keeps us all stirred up. ”

“ Indeed, you could have identified every member of the Dorcas Society that Sunday morning by the freshness of her apparel. The brown dress, then, was generally expected; but why the white cashmere waist with collar and cuffs of point lace, devised only and suitable only for the minister’s wedding, where it first saw the light?
“The white waist can only be explained as showing distinct hope!” whispered the minister’s wife during the reading of the church notices.
“To me it shows more than hope; I am very sure that Nancy would never take any wear out of that lace for hope; it means certainty!” ”

“ Time sped and efforts increased, but the Dorcases were at length obliged to clip the wings of their desire and content themselves with carpeting the pulpit and pulpit steps, the choir, and the two aisles, leaving the floor in the pews until some future year.
How the women cut and contrived and matched that hardly-bought red ingrain carpet, in the short December afternoons that ensued after its purchase; so that, having failed to be ready for Thanksgiving, it could be finished for the Christmas festivities! ”

“ Verse 5.”
“And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one another.”
Was it Mrs. Emerson? Could it be—any one else? Was it—? No, it might have been, years ago; but not now; not now!—And yet; he was always so different from other people; and once, in church, he had handed her the hymn-book with his finger pointing to a certain verse.
She always fancied that her secret fidelity of heart rose from the fact that Justin Peabody was “different.” ”

“ Women were always faithful; they always remembered old landmarks, old days, old friends, old duties. His father and mother and Esther were all gone; who but dear Nancy would have made the old Peabody pew right and tidy for the Christmas festival? ”

“ Where are the overshoes? Where are the mittens? Hurry, Jack! Hurry, Jennie!” Ding-dong! Ding-dong! “Where’s Sally’s muff? Where’s father’s fur cap? Is the sleigh at the door? Are the hot soapstones in? Have all of you your money for the contribution box?”
Ding-dong! Ding-dong! It was a blithe bell, a sweet, true bell, a holy bell, and to Justin, pacing his tavern room, as to Nancy, trembling in her maiden chamber, it rang a Christmas message:—
Awake, glad heart! ”

“ And I wasn’t sure that you really cared anything about me; and how could I have asked you when I hadn’t a dollar in the world?”
“There are other things to give a woman besides dollars, Justin.”
“Are there? Well, you shall have them all, every one of them, Nancy, if you can make up your mind to do without the dollars; for dollars seem to be just what I can’t manage.”
Her hand was in his by this time, and they were sitting side by side in the cushionless, carpetless Wentworth pew. The door stood open; the winter moon shone in upon them. ”

“ Tory Hill holds its own among the others for peaceful beauty and fair prospect, and on its broad, level summit sits the white-painted Orthodox Meeting-House. This faces a grassy common where six roads meet, as if the early settlers had determined that no one should lack salvation because of a difficulty in reaching its visible source.
The old church has had a dignified and fruitful past, dating from that day in 1761 when young Paul Coffin received his call to preach at a stipend of fifty pounds sterling a year ”

“ The Old Peabody Pew: A Christmas Romance of a Country Church Dedication
To a certain handful of dear New England women of names unknown to the world, dwelling in a certain quiet village, alike unknown:—
We have worked together to make our little corner of the great universe a pleasanter place in which to live, and so we know, not only one another’s names, but something of one another’s joys and sorrows, cares and burdens, economies, hopes, and anxieties.
We all remember the dusty uphill road that leads to the green church common. ”

“ Twice in sixty years had some well-to-do summer parishioner painted the interior of the church at his own expense; but although the roof had been many times reshingled, it had always persisted in leaking, so that the ceiling and walls were disfigured by unsightly spots and stains and streaks. The question of shingling was tacitly felt to be outside the feminine domain, but as there were five women to one man in the church membership, the feminine domain was frequently obliged to extend its limits into the hitherto unknown. ”

“ By sermon time Justin’s identity had dawned upon most of the congregation. A stranger to all but one or two at first, his presence in the Peabody pew brought his face and figure back, little by little, to the minds of the old parishioners.
When the contribution plate was passed, the sexton always began at the right-wing pews, as all the sextons before him had done for a hundred years. ”

“ Burbank with interest.
“Hasn’t he answered?” asked Maria Sharp.
Nancy Wentworth held her breath, turned her face to the wall, and silently wiped the paint of the wainscoting. The blood that had rushed into her cheeks at Mrs. Sargent’s jeering reference to Justin Peabody still lingered there for any one who ran to read, but fortunately nobody ran; they were too busy scrubbing.
“Not yet. Folks don’t hurry about answering when you ask them for a contribution,” replied the president, with a cynicism common to persons who collect funds for charitable purposes. ”

“ We might make it a picnic, bring our luncheons, and work all together; let every woman in the congregation come and scrub her own pew.”
“Some are too old, others live at too great a distance,” and the minister’s wife sighed a little; “indeed, most of those who once owned the pews or sat in them seemed to be dead, or gone away to live in busier places.”
“I’ve no patience with ’em, gallivantin’ over the earth,” and here Lobelia rose and shook the carpet threads from her lap. “I shouldn’t want to live in a livelier place than Edgewood, seem’s though! ”

“ The sexton had built a fire in the furnace on the way to his morning work—a fire so economically contrived that it would last exactly the four or five necessary hours, and not a second more. At eleven o’clock all the pillars of the society had assembled, having finished their own household work and laid out on their respective kitchen tables comfortable luncheons for the men of the family, if they were fortunate enough to number any among their luxuries. ”

“ Baxter, you shan’t clean James Bruce’s pew, or what was his before he turned Second Advent. I’ll do that myself, for he used to be in my Sunday-school class.”
“He’s the backbone o’ that congregation now,” asserted Mrs. Sargent, “and they say he’s goin’ to marry Mrs. Sam Peters, who sings in their choir as soon as his year is up. They make a perfect fool of him in that church.”
“You can’t make a fool of a man that nature ain’t begun with,” argued Miss Brewster. “Jim Bruce never was very strong-minded, but I declare it seems to me that when men lose their wives, they lose their wits! ”

“ I need your backbone and wits and pluck and ingenuity, but if I can’t ask you to sit with your hands folded for the rest of your life, as I’d like to, you shan’t use them for other people. You’re marrying me to make a man of me, but I’m not marrying you to make you a drudge. ”

“ We’ve done our best, and let’s hope that folks will look up and not down. It isn’t as if they were going to set in the chandelier; they’ll have something else to think about when Nancy gets her hemlock branches and white carnations in the pulpit vases. This morning my Abner picked off two pinks from the plant I’ve been nursing in my dining-room for weeks, trying to make it bloom for Christmas. ”