He watched Lois knitting and patching her poor little gifts, with
a vague feeling that every stitch made the time a moment shorter
until he should be free, with his life in his hand again. She
left the hospital at last, sorrowfully enough, but he made her
go: he fancied the close air was hurting her, seeing at night the
strange shadow growing on her face. I do not think he ever said
to her that he knew all she had done for him, or thanked her; but
no dog or woman that Stephen Holmes loved could look into his
eyes, and doubt that love. Sad, masterful eyes, such as are seen
but once or twice in a lifetime: no woman but would wish, like
Lois, for such eyes to be near her when she came to die, for her
to remember the world's love in. She came hobbling back every
day to see him after she had gone, and would stay to make his
soup, telling him, child-like, how many days it was until
Christmas. He knew that, as well as she, waiting through the
cold, slow hours, in his solitary room. He thought sometimes she
had some eager petition to offer him, when she stood watching him
wistfully, twisting her hands together; but she always smothered
it with a sigh, and, tying her little woollen cap, went away,
walking more slowly, he thought, every day.
Do you remember how Christmas came that year? how there was a
waiting pause, when the States stood still, and from the peoples
came the first awful murmurs of the storm that was to shake the
earth? how men's hearts failed them for fear, how women turned
pale, and held their children closer to their breasts, while they
heard a far cry of lamentation for their country that had fallen?
Do you remember how, amidst the fury of men's anger, the
storehouses of God were opened for that land? how the very
sunshine gathered new splendours, the rains more fruitful
moisture, until the earth poured forth an unknown fulness of life
and beauty? Was there no promise there, no prophecy? Do you
remember, while the very life of the people hung in doubt before
them, while the angel of death came again to pass over the land,
and there was no blood on any door-post to keep him from that
house, how serenely the old earth folded in her harvest, dead,
till it should waken to a stronger life? how quietly, as the time
came near for the birth of Christ, this old earth made ready for
his coming, heedless of the clamour of men? how the air grew
fresher above, day by day, and the gray deep silently opened for
the snow to go down and screen and whiten and make holy that
fouled earth? I think the slow-falling snow did not fail in its
quiet warning; for I remember that men, too, in a feeble way
tried to make ready for the birth of Christ.
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