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III.

And so I walked home. Better so, perhaps, after all, than in the lively sleigh, with the tinkling bells.

“It was a calm and silent night!–
Seven hundred years and fifty-three
Had Rome been growing up to might,
And now was queen of land and sea!
No sound was heard of clashing wars,–
Peace brooded o’er the hushed domain;
Apollo, Pallas, Jove, and Mars
Held undisturbed their ancient reign
In the solemn midnight,
Centuries ago!”

What an eternity it seemed since I started with those children singing carols. Bethlehem, Nazareth, Calvary, Rome, Roman senators, Tiberius, Paul, Nero, Clement, Ephrem, Ambrose, and all the singers,–Vincent de Paul, and all the loving wonderworkers, Milton and Herbert and all the carol-writers, Luther and Knox and all the prophets,–what a world of people had been keeping Christmas with Sam Perry and Lycidas and Harry and me; and here were Yokohama and the Japanese, the Daily Argus and its ten million tokens and their readers,–poor Fanny Woodhull and her sick mother there, keeping Christmas too! For a finite world, these are a good many “waits” to be singing in one poor fellow’s ears on one Christmas-tide.

“‘Twas in the calm and silent night!–
The senator of haughty Rome,
Impatient urged his chariot’s flight,
From lordly revel, roiling home.
Triumphal arches gleaming swell
His breast, with thoughts of boundless sway
What recked the Roman what befell
A paltry province far away,
In the solemn midnight,
Centuries ago!

“Within that province far away
Went plodding home a weary boor;
A streak of light before him lay,
Fallen through a half-shut stable door
Across his path. He passed,–for naught
Told what was going on within;
How keen the stars, his only thought,
The air how calm and cold and thin,
In the solemn midnight,
Centuries ago!”

“Streak of light”–Is there a light in Lycidas’s room? They not in bed! That is making a night of it! Well, there are few hours of the day or night when I have not been in Lycidas’s room, so I let myself in by the night-key he gave me, ran up the stairs,–it is a horrid seven-storied, first-class lodging-house. For my part, I had as lief live in a steeple. Two flights I ran up, two steps at a time,–I was younger then than I am now,–pushed open the door which was ajar, and saw such a scene of confusion as I never saw in Mary’s over-nice parlor before. Queer! I remember the first thing that I saw was wrong was a great ball of white German worsted on the floor. Her basket was upset. A great Christmas-tree lay across the rug, quite too high for the room; a large sharp-pointed Spanish clasp-knife was by it, with which they had been lopping it; there were two immense baskets of white papered presents, both upset; but what frightened me most was the centre-table. Three or four handkerchiefs on it,–towels, napkins, I know not what,–all brown and red and almost black with blood! I turned, heart-sick, to look into the bedroom,–and I really had a sense of relief when I saw somebody. Bad enough it was, however. Lycidas, but just now so strong and well, lay pale and exhausted on the bloody bed, with the clothing removed from his right thigh and leg, while over him bent Mary and Morton. I learned afterwards that poor Lycidas, while trimming the Christmas-tree, and talking merrily with Mary and Morton,–who, by good luck, had brought round his presents late, and was staying to tie on glass balls and apples,–had given himself a deep and dangerous wound with the point of the unlucky knife, and had lost a great deal of blood before the hemorrhage could be controlled. Just before I entered, the stick tourniquet which Morton had improvised had slipped in poor Mary’s unpractised hand, at the moment he was about to secure the bleeding artery, and the blood followed in such a gush as compelled him to give his whole attention to stopping its flow. He only knew my entrance by the “Ah, Mr. Ingham,” of the frightened Irish girl, who stood useless behind the head of the bed.