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A Still Christmas
by
“Some bigger berries, pray, Catherine,” she said, impatiently; “and, Cicely, if you feel you have loitered enough, hand me those two long ivy branches. They should droop gracefully–so! And now stand off a little way and tell me how it looks.”
The younger sister obeyed, and, stationing herself in the middle of the room, surveyed the whole effect with much approval. Annis, her fair face flushed with the exertion, balanced herself on her lofty perch and gazed complacently upon her handiwork; while even Mistress Vane, who had been seated quietly on a deep chair by the fireplace, roused herself as from a reverie, and looked half-wistfully around the cheerful room. “What bell was that I heard just now?” she asked.
“The herald’s, proclaiming a still Christmas,” answered Cicely, promptly; “and he watched me as sourly as though he knew that we were plotting treason.”
“Cecil, Cecil!” remonstrated her mother, in alarm. “Surely you did nothing imprudent.”
“I?” returned Cicely, apparently oblivious as to what she had done. “I cast up the whites of my eyes, as though repeating psalms for mine own inward sustainment; and seeing me so piously disposed, he was fain to pass on to the correction of greater sinners.”
“That were well-nigh impossible,” said her sister, laughing; but Mistress Vane only looked anxious and disturbed. The sense of insecurity to which Annis was indifferent, and which Cicely at fourteen found absolutely amusing, weighed heavily on the older woman, who had a better understanding of the danger, and who had suffered cruelly in the past. Husband and son had fallen for a lost cause, confiscation had devoured the larger portion of her once fair inheritance; and now, with her two young daughters, she found herself beset by perils, harassed by stringent laws, and at the mercy of any ill-wind fate might blow her. Cromwell’s mighty arm held the fretful country in subjection, making the name of England great and terrible abroad, and silencing every whisper of disaffection at home. The Puritans, in their hour of triumph, stamped upon the land the impress of their strong and bitter individuality; and a morose asceticism, part real and part affected, crushed out of life all the innocent pleasure of living. With every man determined to be better than his neighbor, the competition in saintliness ran high. Under its vigorous stimulus the May-pole and the Yule-log were alike branded as heathenish observances, the Christmas-pie became a “pye of abomination,” and all amusements, from the drama to bear-baiting, were censured with impartial severity. Feast-days were abolished, and even to display the emblems of the Nativity was held to be sedition. The Established Church, cowed and shorn of its splendor, was treated with surly contempt; the Catholics were altogether beyond the pale of charity. It was not a time calculated to promote festivity; yet, while the heralds proclaimed through the frosty streets that Christmas at last was dead, Annis Vane, with holly and ivy, with Yule-dough and Babie-cake, was making all things ready for its mysterious birth. And as she worked she sang softly under breath the refrain of a carol she had learned at her nurse’s knee,–
“This endris night
I saw a sight,
A star as bright as day;
And ever among
A maiden sung
Lullay, by-by, lullay.”
“Is it not strange, mother,” she said, breaking suddenly off, “that men should deem it a mark of holiness to cast derision on the birth-night of their Saviour?”
“Let us be just even to our enemies,” replied Mistress Vane, gently. “They think not to deride the Nativity, so much as to condemn the riotous fashion in which Christians were wont to keep the feast. There have been times, Annis, when the Lord of Misrule did more discredit to this holy season than does the Puritan to-day.”
Annis opened her blue eyes to their very utmost. This view of the matter was one she was hardly prepared to accept. “Why, dearest mother,” she protested, “when should we venture to be happy, if not on Christmas-day? And how can we show ourselves too joyful for our salvation? And did not his most blessed majesty King Charles knight with his own royal hand a Lord of Misrule who held court in the Middle Temple?”