Thanks to OriginalMcFishie for a proof that would stand up to Nan and Jerry, and to PelirrojaBiu for some seriously excellent sleuthing. You are amazing. I tossed in a gratuitous (and weather-inappropriate!) bicycle here, just to say hey.

December, 1912

Peace on Earth, Good-Will to Men

Walter paused by the old Methodist graveyard, looking up at the golden glow of the manse. Through the frost-rimed windows, he could see that the sitting room was crowded with young people chatting, canoodling, and laughing over glasses of ruby-red punch. Jem and Jerry were home from Redmond and the Queen's contingent had arrived yesterday. On arrival, Faith had sent a note over to Lowbridge:

We mean to get up a little pre-Christmas party at the manse tomorrow evening. Father and Rosemary have taken Bruce to visit the over-harbor Wests, so it will just be our own friends, with everyone back from the ends of the earth for the holiday. Won't you come join us, Walter?

Walter leaned on his bicycle and sighed. It had been a cold and slippery ride from Lowbridge. Six miles, but it felt longer. His head had ached all through school today and he had nearly fallen asleep halfway through demonstrating a proof of Euclidean prime numbers. He wished himself in bed, feeling a sudden, childlike longing for Ingleside and the weight of familiar quilts. Perhaps he would only stay a little while . . .

Trudging up the ice-encrusted walk and onto the porch, Walter knocked at the manse door. It opened, releasing a puff of warm air that rushed out to engulf him.

"Walter!" Di exclaimed, dragging him into the hall. "We thought you mightn't have gotten Faith's note!"

"How's the party?" Walter asked, shrugging off his coat and leaving drips of cold mud on the mat.

"Well, you missed Nan and Jerry going three rounds on the causes of the Thirty Years' War," Di groaned. "Apparently there is disagreement over whether it was primarily a religious conflict pitting Catholic against Protestant, or the birth-pangs of the modern nation-states as they transitioned from medieval to modern forms of government."

"I take it that the question remains unresolved?"

Di chuckled. "Faith finally shoved some fruitcake into their mouths and sent them to their respective corners. It was getting tedious."

Di led Walter into the sitting room, where firelight and the scents of cinnamon and spruce enfolded the company in mellow merriment. Walter nodded greetings to Mary Vance and Miller Douglas, squashed into a single armchair. He settled into a miraculously vacant seat by the fire, surveying the jolly crowd. Over by the upright piano, Jem was telling a garrulous story to the rapt delight of Carl, Shirley, and several of their friends. Faith was running back and forth from the kitchen, calling to an unseen Una and passing plates of cookies among the chattering guests. Di had gone to conference with Nan, who was smiling and nodding eagerly. Jerry was deep in conversation with Gertrude Oliver on some point — if Gertrude was here, surely Rilla was around somewhere? Walter had an overwhelming impression of buzzing and too-bright lights and a curious heaviness in his limbs.

Suddenly, Walter's head rang. No; no, it was only a bell. Nan was ringing a bell. Must she? And with such enthusiasm?

"Listen, everyone," Nan called, her voice sweet and clear. "We're going to sing carols! I've copied out some lyrics and Laura has agreed to play for us."

A freckled girl with unmanageable sandy hair rose from her seat and moved toward the piano, ducking her head shyly as the boys made way for her. Laura shuffled through the sheet music on the rack and held one up for Nan to see.

"Excellent!" Nan beamed. "Christmas Bells!" She scooped a little stack of cards from the table beside her and distributed them among the guests. There weren't quite enough to go around, but that only gave the revelers excuses to get close to one another, giggling and leaning familiarly over shoulders for a better view.

Laura settled her fingers over the piano keys and plinked a gentle introduction. At Nan's signal, the partygoers joined in with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's much-beloved words.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Walter did not sing, though this had always been one of his favorite carols. He loved the image of Christmas Day dawning continuously over the earth from East to West, welcomed in every moment by another bell taking up the joyous peal. He closed his eyes, and let the words flow over him.

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Walter opened his eyes when he heard the next verse begin. Nan's doing, he knew. Most people didn't bother to sing the middle section, but Nan loved Longfellow, too, and would not abridge him.

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Walter's breath caught. He remembered Professor Griswold's lecture on Longfellow's biography: how Longfellow's wife had burned to death in their home, despite Longfellow's efforts to smother the flames with his own body; how the poet's famous beard camouflaged the physical scars he bore for the rest of his life; how his 18-year-old son Charley had run away to fight in the American Civil War soon after; how Longfellow had penned "Christmas Bells" sitting by Charley's hospital bed, uncertain whether the boy would ever recover from the terrible wounds he had suffered in battle.*

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

The singers were doing very well for an informal gathering. Of course, most of them knew the song already — at least the first verses and the last. And Laura played very sweetly.

Walter felt unaccountably moved by them all. Perhaps it was only that he was so very tired, but the familiar faces around him shimmered in the hearthlight, strong and happy and beautiful in their youth and vigor. Now that the less familiar verses were past, they looked up from their lyric sheets, smiling at one another as they crescendoed into the finale.

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.

As the final notes dropped from Laura's fingers, Walter was confused to find the room moving around him, even as he sat still. He blinked, but could not clear his head. He caught one last sight of Jem, looking alarmed and moving toward him fast, before blackness closed around him from every side and he slumped in the chair, unconscious.

*Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote "Christmas Bells" in 1863. I trust that readers of "Within a Forest Dark" will remember the horrific circumstances of Fanny Longfellow's death in 1861. She was buried on their 18th wedding anniversary; Henry was too grief-stricken and too injured to attend her funeral. For the next several years, he threw himself into translating Dante's Divine Comedy, including Inferno, which he had always hated teaching to his students at Harvard. That Christmas, he wrote in his journal, "How inexpressibly sad are all holidays." The next year, he wrote, "'A merry Christmas' say the children, but that is no more for me." On the anniversaries of the day Fanny finally agreed to marry him (after refusing him previously), Henry would copy lines from Inferno into his journal: "There is no greater sorrow than to be mindful of the happy time in misery."

In 1863, Longfellow's 18-year-old son Charley joined the army against his father's wishes. On November 27, 1863, Charley was gravely wounded in the back and shoulder. After receiving word, Henry rushed hundreds of miles to the hospital in Washington, D.C., where he found Charley struggling to survive his injuries (he did recover, which is fairly miraculous given the medical interventions available). Longfellow composed "Christmas Bells" during that visit to Washington.

Most modern versions of "Christmas Bells" don't include the middle verses (and don't get me started on the version that replaces "wild and sweet" with "mild and sweet"). But for both Longfellow's sake and for Walter's, I wanted the partygoers here to sing all the verses as Longfellow wrote them: It was as if an earthquake rent / The hearth-stones of a continent . . .

If you want to hear an instrumental version of the tune that the Blythes would have known for "Christmas Bells" (different from the tune most familiar to modern ears, at least in the US), the 19th-century version I listened to as I wrote this vignette is "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" on an album called "Bethlehem's Child," by the Mormon Christmas Ensemble.