Green Sofa and Open Fire
Sumner, Diana
GREEN SOFA AND OPEN FIRE By DIANA SUMNER CHRISTMAS Eve. The four were together again. The boy back from Yale, the girl from a country boarding school near Boston. They all liked being together and...
...Then the boy and girl standing together read the Christmas story from "And there were Shepherds abiding in the fields"- to "the Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger...
...They were very fond of each other, and called themselves the four vagabonds and went off vagabonding on rare and choice occasions...
...Afterward they wished each other a Merry Christmas in the moonlight, drove home and fell heavily into bed, whence they emerged some hours later for a gay breakfast, and the Family Ritual...
...A radiant pair they were to the parents' eyes, rosy, golden-headed comrades, merry and vital...
...The dim, rich light, the sense of mystery and leisure, absorbed unwrappings, exclamations all over the room, little bursts of affectionate gratitude, laughs, jokes, real pleasure over the few real presents "lean and keen and clean"-which, they sometimes said, was a good way to live...
...The boy was in training-the girl, rather wise...
...They used to recite it but this year they had been too hurried and too lazy to learn it...
...A few really priceless parcels were secretly smuggled under the tree...
...Each one of the four was surprising the others, and popping mysterious objects into stockings at the last minute...
...They were useful and funny and dear...
...Daddy and the youngsters laughed and sang about the tree, which shimmered, gleamed and grew rich...
...It had always been like that...
...The mother understood this...
...It was a green Christmas with a bright moon...
...No, not one...
...Depressing to see how extremely long the stockings became when hung-with a ten-cent bottle of honey and almond cream in the toe, especially the maid's...
...Then the mother sat at the piano and played Holy Night in the darkened room, lighted only by that mysterious tree...
...They were all in the parlor trimming the Christmas tree and filling a row of stockings that hung from the mantelpiece...
...The family, followed by the household, marched in and sang together in chorus Holy Night, It Came upon the Midnight Clear, and Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem...
...The youngsters felt it, but would understand better later on...
...They all liked being together and they were not often together...
...And so it had proved, for nearly a quarter-century...
...The family was saved from despair, however, by shoe trees judiciously wrapped, which helped fill the dreary length...
...They sang over a few carols for the morning and then-off to Midnight Mass...
...When they were married the man and his wife had said that, where they had the green sofa and an open fire, there home would be...
...Most of the packages came from the five- and ten-cent store...
...Roots were constantly being torn up, as one abiding place was changed for another...
...The man belonged to the Pennsylvania Railroad, and had been moved about a good deal, as railroad men are...
...Could there ever be another Christmas quite so homely, so innocent, so glad as this...
...Perhaps the four said truly that they were the only family on the Main Line that had not one bit of candy...
...She watched him with passionate gratitude as their eyes met, and each recalled a Christmas Eve not many years ago, when he lay in hospital in deadly danger, and their two hearts were wrung...
...They had such good times then that the mother, who had lived a long time and was rather given to pondering things in her heart, realized in an impersonal and literary way the priceless sparkle and satisfaction of those hours, and wondered if the four of them did not actually hold in their hands the best thing in the world- though fleetingly...
...That sofa was an important member of the family...
...The green sofa symbolized home...
...Except in New York where there was only a radiator...
...They were happy together and did not miss too much, those older two, what had been or what might have been...
...First, all dashed upstairs and brushed their teeth...
...It had been the same since they could remember...
...But she pondered in her heart, with the ache of human things...
...The mother sat on the green sofa wrapping numberless little packages in flowered papers and tying them with colored ribbons and with gold and silver cord...
...It seemed so natural for those quiet, expert hands to make everything go right, for that endless strength and kindness to come to every rescue, to be the background of the family life, without which it could not go on...
...Daddy hung wreaths, set up the tree, arranged lights, kept always tinkering at something...
...They gave the household their stockings from the mantelpiece, and their boxes from under the tree, and then the four were alone, and the fun began...
...Old pain stirred, but was stilled...
...perhaps the more, that they were perpetually strangers making new beginnings...
...Firelight on the ceiling, too...
...And as was her practice when the perplexed tumult of life rose strong on the spiritual ear, to threaten the golden moment, she bowed her head: "In manus tuas Domine...
...the mother feasted unsated, happy eyes and continually wrapped little gifts...
...They carried ashes from one hearth to another, to light the first fire upon...
...To the mother it seemed as fine gold...
...So the mother sat on the green sofa (which was very shabby now) and listened, with infinite content, to the little voice of the fire quietly talking on the hearth of the dimly lighted, harmonious room...
...It was cozy and merry...
Vol. 11 • December 1929 • No. 7
