Christmas Outside of Eden | Page 5

eat at all. They had a sick woman on their hands who cried
not for food, but for delicacies. Instead of gathering strength, she grew
steadily weaker. And then there was the matter of sleep; it was as
scarce as food. They hardly snatched a wink of it. When they weren't
on guard or fighting, they were soothing her fretfulness, foraging for
her or thinking up some new method of keeping her warm. It was damp
in the cave; sunlight rarely tiptoed farther than the entrance. It didn't
take them long to discover that the hyena's coat had been as dearly
purchased as the forbidden fruit that had lost them the garden. Peace,
which they might have concluded in the early days, was now entirely
out of the question. Even an offer to return the hyena's coat wouldn't
have made any impression. They had carried hostilities too far; there
wasn't an animal whom they had not wounded and who wasn't mad
with them clean through from the point of his nose to the tip of his tail.
Often and often, standing in the entrance to his cave, the Man would
gaze longingly across the bronzy roof of the forest to the distant shining
of the padlocked gates of Eden. He was farther than ever from the
garden now with its tranquil blessedness. If only he hadn't learnt to
steal! Stealing had been the cause of his downfall--first the forbidden
fruit and then the hyena's coat. If he had been less enterprising and
more obedient, he would still have been the friend of God. After a
wakeful night he crept to the entrance to discover that the worst thing
of all had happened.
"A worse thing!" you exclaim. "I thought you were going to tell us a
cheerful Christmas story."
And so I am: but all the unfortunate part comes first--that's the way the
robins tell it. If you'll be patient and read on, you'll find this is the very
cheerfullest story that was ever told in earth or heaven. You may not
have noticed that we've not yet come to the first laugh. The Woman has
smiled and the hyena has scoffed; but no one has laughed. It's when we
come to the first laugh that the happiness commences.

V
The worst thing of all that the Man discovered when he crept to the
cave-entrance after a wakeful night, was this: with a terrible stealthy
silence snow was drifting down so that even the distant shining of the
gates of Eden was blotted out. It was frightening; snow had never fallen
in the world before. If it had, the Man had not seen it. Within the walls
of the garden summer had been perpetual. He stood there staring out
forlornly at the misty sea of shifting whiteness. It chilled him to the
bone. It seemed to him that the pillars of the sky had collapsed and the
dust of the moon and stars was falling. Soon everything would be
buried and the world itself would be no more. He looked at the calendar
which he had scratched upon the wall. It was the twenty-fourth day of
December. He wondered whether God knew what was happening and
whether He had planned it. Then he gave up wondering, for behind him,
from the blackness of the cave, the Woman called.
"Oh, Man," she cried, "I cannot bear this any longer!"
He groped his way to her and raised her in his arms so that her head lay
on his breast. Even in the darkness he could see the glow of her hair,
like the shadow of flame growing fainter and fainter.
"My Woman," he whispered, "what can I do for you?" And again he
whispered, "What can I do for you?"
She pressed her face close to his before she answered, petting him the
way she had been used to do in Eden. "Do for me? Nothing. You've
tried with your remedies--you've tried so hard. Poor you! If we could
only find God----"
"If we could," the Man said, "but----"
And then they both grew silent, for how could they find God when He
had climbed back to Heaven, destroying the sky-blue stairs behind
Him?
"Perhaps, He still walks in Eden." It was the Woman who had spoken.
"If you were to go and watch through the bars of Eden till He comes
and were to call to Him--if you were to tell Him that I cannot bear it
any longer and that we're sorry, so sorry--that we did it in our
ignorance----" Without ending what she was saying, she fell to sobbing.
He didn't dare to tell her that the moon and stars were falling and that
the gates of Eden were blotted out. From where she lay in the blackness
of