Sally! She was a little afraid to examine too particularly the elements of her quite extraordinary love for Sally. She loved her for herself, of course, but there was also in her love an element of quite selfish gratitude. Damerosehay, her beloved home, and David her dearest and her best, had nevertheless become a bit too much for her just lately. She was glad now to keep just her deep love for them but to transfer the responsibility to Sally. She was equal to it. Her voice came floating down to Lucilla, assuring her of that.
“And yet I wish but for the thing I have:
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.”
Lucilla shut her eyes in unspeakable thankfulness. It seemed to her that she hardly had a thing left to wish for. The lovely rhythm of voice answering voice flowed on like music, but the words singing in her mind came from another play of her beloved Shakespeare. “If it were now to die, ’twere now to be most happy; for my soul hath her content so absolute—”
It was nearly over. The girl’s voice, and the man’s answering, for the last time.
“Good-night, good-night! Parting is such sweet sorrow
That I shall say good-night till it be morrow.”
“Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast!
Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest!”
— 3 —
Ben had opened the drawing-room door noiselessly from within and Romeo had stepped into the wedge of darkness. Juliet had gone away up the stairs and the balcony was empty. There was a moment’s sense of almost intolerable loss, and then the lights were lit and everyone was laughing and talking, and congratulating Lucilla upon the brilliance of her family, and the homemade fudge was going round again.
“Are you getting tired, Mother?” Nadine asked Lucilla.
“Only nicely tired,” said Lucilla. “I doubt if I’ve ever felt so happy in all my life.” She reached out a hand and laid it on her daughter-in-law’s knee. “Nadine, my darling, you have done everything I wanted you to do and you are my very dear child.”
“I’m glad you’re pleased with me, Mother,” said Nadine, meekly, but with a flash of slightly sarcastic humor.
George, concerned that Lucilla should be even nicely tired, was shoving an exceedingly hard velvet cushion down her back. “It’s the children’s show now,” he said, “and then it’s Malony’s and Annie-Laurie’s turn, and then I think that’s the lot.”
“Mother!” cried Margaret in distress. “You haven’t got your footstool, and the draft under the front door is wicked. Hilary! Did you leave Mother’s footstool in the car?”
“Don’t fuss, dear,” implored Lucilla. “Stay where you are, Hilary. The lights are being put out again.”
They went out and Nadine adroitly removed the hard velvet cushion from behind Lucilla’s back and slipped it beneath her feet. “My very dear child,” repeated Lucilla.
The drawing-room door opened again and a slim young stripling in striped tights and a striped cloak came through, wearing a realistic badger’s mask that hid his face. But his grace and lightness of movement, like David’s but without the assurance of David’s training, proclaimed him Ben, even before he lifted the badger’s snout back over his head like a hood and showed his brown face. He had his Panpipe in one hand, and a long white scroll in the other, and he bowed to them very courteously before he sat down at the foot of the Christmas tree and began to read from his long scroll.
Lucilla’s heart swelled with pride. There was not a trace of nervousness about him, and his voice was clear and perfectly modulated as he began to read the Knyghtwood legend in simple lovely verse that she knew he had written himself.
She glanced at her son and daughter-in-law. They had, she considered, never fully appreciated their first-born, never fully realized his quality that was perhaps the flowering of his mother’s first and only willing yielding to her husband’s love. She noticed with satisfaction that Nadine’s head was almost arrogantly lifted, and there was a faint tender smile on her lips. That’s all right, thought Lucilla, as the years go on she’ll take in him the same sort of delight that once she took in David. George’s mouth had fallen open, and he was passing one hand in a bewildered sort of way over his thick gray hair. (How much better he was looking, by the way. Upon him, as well as Ben, the Herb of Grace had seemed to work a miracle of healing.) It’s jolted him, dear old boy, thought Lucilla; do him good. Hilary, she noted, was smiling at her with an echo of her own delight. He had taught Ben, once, and had always been aware of his quality.
Ben’s story began with the founding of the great Abbey beyond the river by King John as an act of reparation for his sins, and told how for forty-five years the monks labored at its building until at last the glorious place was finished and they could take up their work of prayers and labor, carried on until Henry VIII of detested memory drove them away.
But before that evil day came there lived at the monastery a lay brother, a fine artist and craftsman, a man of jovial disposition, bountiful and warmhearted and overflowing with good will to all God’s creatures. As was only fitting for a man of such gifts he was appointed by the father abbot as host of the pilgrim inn, maison-dieu, where pilgrims visiting the Abbey were lodged and entertained, this same inn where they were gathered now.
A great host was this brother, with a huge welcome for all who came, and safely and warmly did he lodge them here, and tender was his care of them. The fare was frugal, perhaps, for such was the brother’s love for all living things that he would permit no snaring of the wild creatures to satisfy the greed of man, but there would be bread in plenty, made from the corn that the monks grew in their wide fields, and wine from their vineyards, and milk and butter and cream from the dairies. The pallets would be hard, and the furniture of the simplest, but in cold weather there would be a roaring fire on the hearth of the great hall, and their eyes would feast upon beauty wherever they looked, for the frescoes and carvings of their artist-host were lovelier than any tapestries and silken hangings.
And great was this man also in wisdom and counsel, and skilled in the care of sick bodies as well as sick minds and souls, and those who became members of his flock for only a short while under this roof would not forget him while they lived.
But it was not enough for this brother that he should spend himself upon human creatures only. The animals and birds also were God’s sons, and for them also he built a maison-dieu within the woods. Here in the cold winters he would feed them, the deer and the rabbits, the badgers, the foxes, and the birds. Such was his power over them that they were always at peace with each other within the sanctuary that he had made for them, and they were so tame that when they had hurt themselves they would come to him that he might tend their injuries.
There was one animal in particular who was his special friend, a great white deer who was always with him in the woods, and was of such incomparable beauty that there were those who thought him not quite a creature of this earth. Of the death of this man there was no record, nor of the death of the deer. The body of the one, perhaps, lay within the Abbey garth, and the body of the other, if he was really a creature of this earth, within the woods. But their spirits lived on. Still, in this house, was welcome and safety and healing for mind and body. Still, in the woods, the creatures found sanctuary. Still, both here and there, came sometimes a half-seen vision of great beauty to gladden the mind of a man and the heart of a child.
No one quite knew at what point in the earlier part of Ben’s narrative they became aware of the figure who stood at the branching of the stairs, a bearded burly figure clothed in the rough habit of a Cistercian monk. His arms were held wide in welcome, and his hooded head was thrown into relief by the illumined figure of the white deer in the alcove behind him. First one and then another saw him, and when their awed attention had been e
ntirely captured, Ben paused for a moment in his reading, glanced at the front door, which mysteriously opened at this point, and then with his eyes followed the progress of unseen pilgrims across the hall and up the stairs to their host. It was so cleverly done that those pilgrims were as real to the audience as though they had been actors of flesh and blood. They could hear their footfall and their voices and see how their feet trod eagerly the worn bent bow of each stair.
Then the door softly closed and Ben began reading again of how the animals, too, had had their sanctuary, and the drawing-room door opened and two little animals ran through, a water rat and a mole, soft and furry, with brown bright eyes peeping through the masks that covered their faces. They ran upon all fours but Mole held up his left hind foot because he had hurt it, and Rat kept stopping and holding a paw pathetically to one eye, which seemed to have something in it. They ran up the stairs to the brother, and he held out his arms to them, and bound up Mole’s paw and removed the obstruction from Rat’s eye.
A magnificent but extremely wicked-looking fox was the next animal, whom one gathered from his size to be Tommy. Halfway across the stage he paused and groaned, holding a stomach obviously a good deal too full of stolen goose. Everyone was laughing now, and their amusement was echoed by the big man above. His laughter rolled down to meet poor Fox, who hung his head comically and then lolloped up the stairs to lap a healing dose from a big brown bowl. He was followed by a sweet-faced rabbit with a torn ear, who must be Caroline, followed by Mary and the cat Smith. They were attached to the person of the rabbit by green ribbons, as a precautionary measure, but the spirit of the thing seemed to have entered into them, for it was they who pulled Rabbit, not Rabbit them, up the stairs to the brother. Their entrance was the sign for Ben to finish his narrative, pick up his pipe, play a sweet air, and begin to sing the song that Annie-Laurie had written for the occasion, the other animals joining in with their clear high voices to the rumbling accompaniment of the brother’s deep bass.
“Sing hey for the moon and the starry sky,
The river, the wood, and the sea,
For the fish and birds and animals all,
And the grass so green on the lea.
But most of all for the fair Christmas rose
And the lights on the candled tree.
“Sing hey for the chimney and rooftree wide,
Sing hey for the walls and the floor,
For the warmth of fire on the glowing hearth
And the welcoming open door.
But most of all for the peace and good will
And the joy at our deep heart’s core.
“Sing hey for the men, the hosts of this house,
Sing hey for the first and the last.
Sing hey for the guests who have gathered here,
Both tonight and in ages past.
And sing hey for the love between host and guest
That will hold them forever fast.
“Sing hey for the God Who fashioned for us
This bountiful splendor of earth,
Sing hey for courage and wisdom and love
For beauty and healing and mirth.
But most for the Child Who on Christmas Day
Took upon Him our human birth.”
During the last verse a chiming of bells was heard, and the children came trooping down the stairs, singing the first verse again. When they reached the stage they divided, and a fairylike figure in silver and green floated out from among them. It was Annie-Laurie in a wide ballet dress of frosted fir-dark green. Her bells were round her waist, and she had a wreath of Christmas roses on her hair. Malony as Father Christmas came through the drawing-room door at the same moment, while David unseen in the drawing room played the air of their dance upon the piano, and the children, gathered round the real Christmas tree, hummed it very softly.
The genius of Annie-Laurie was, as David had said, unforgettable. The comic antics of Father Christmas, the children in the animal costumes, and the brilliantly lighted tree made a bizarre background against which her delicate loveliness drifted like thistledown against the bright colors of a summer day. And it was the thistledown that captured the attention and held it as though with a spell.
Hilary, watching her with an intensity that missed nothing, thought that most touchingly in her dancing did Annie-Laurie express her own personality, her essential childlikeness, her truth and tenderness, even her fear. She was like a child in her unself-consciousness and absolute absorption in what she was doing, and her simple movements had a clean perfection that was like light. The softly chiming little bells, the half smile on her lips, the arms held out now and then in welcome to the Christmas tree, peopled the shadows with unseen children. And now and then she would pirouette lightly to one side, as though a puff of rough wind had caught the thistledown and scared it; and then she would hold out her hand to Father Christmas and he would swing her back to the center of the stage again.
Like a flame aspiring, David had said. Hilary thought it a perfect simile. She was like one of the flames on the tree behind her, as light and delicate, as fragile, and with the same power of lifting one for the moment out of the mud. Hilary always found it impossible to look at a candle flame and remain gloomy. The shape of it, like tapering hands held palm to palm in faithful prayer, the wavering yet hopeful fight against the darkness, its tiny loving glow of warmth. It was no wonder that Mother Church, all down the ages, had had such a passion for lighting candles.
Go on, Annie-Laurie! Hilary cried out to her wordlessly. Don’t stop! Don’t stop! But she had stopped. With a final tinkling of fairy bells the thistledown had drifted down to rest. And now she was holding out her hands to the invisible fire and singing the bell song, the children accompanying her very softly. Then singing still more softly they trooped noiselessly away, led by Father Christmas, and only Annie-Laurie was left, singing the last verse alone, with the brother still up there on the stairs. To the music of her own bells she drifted once more round the stage and then up the stairs towards him, and bending towards her he gathered her in as though she were the spirit of all delight. Then the lamp that illumined the alcove went out, and only the Christmas tree was still shining.
— 4 —
The stand-up supper in the kitchen that now followed was uproarious by reason of relaxed tension. . . . For Annie-Laurie’s genius had swung them rather high, and they returned to earth with a bang. . . . Also the supper, the result of a genius in Nadine and Auntie Rose no less of its kind, and the vigorous rakings of Auntie Rose beneath the counter of her nephew the grocer, was almost prewar. The guests ate and drank, waited upon by the actors still in their costumes, until some lingering sense of decency bade them forbear, and even then they were reluctant to go home. Not for years, they said, had they been to such a splendid party; and some of them added softly and with perfect truth that not for years had they felt so welcomed, so happy, and so hopeful; or so safe. It was not only the family; it was the house. There was something about the house. . . .
But they had to go home. Pilgrimages, these days, were unfortunately not the leisured affairs they had been in the old days; they were over tragically soon. One by one they said their reluctant good-bys, went out into the night, and drove away slowly, looking back at the lights still streaming from door and windows.
The family and household were left to sit round the fire, devouring the food and drink that were left, and congratulating themselves upon the glorious success of their evening.
“It was worth it,” said Nadine, sitting with Mary on her lap, exhausted yet happy. “I’m glad we did it, George.” And she yawned and leaned shamelessly against him, one of her hands in his, the other resting on Ben’s shoulder, where he sat on the floor leaning against her knees.
“Taking it by and large, I’m glad we came to the Herb of Grace,” said Tommy thickly, through the very last sausa
ge roll, which he was sharing with the cat Smith.
“Everything,” murmured Caroline, divested now of her rabbit’s mask and curled up sleepily against George’s other shoulder, “has turned out just perfect.”
“Yes, darling, it has,” said Lucilla, her hand in Sally’s. “And I’ll take a glass of sherry before I go home.”
“Mother!” expostulated Margaret propped against Hilary. “That’s your second tonight. You’ll have indigestion.”
“Since when has sherry given me indigestion?” demanded Lucilla indignantly. “Don’t fuss, darling. Up to the top, David.”
There was now exactly half an inch of sherry left in the decanter, and David bestowed it upon Annie-Laurie, where she and Malony sat together on the settle by the fire, his hand in hers. Jill and Auntie Rose were on the other settle, each with a twin asleep in her arms. It was a queer thing, but an extraordinary lack of reserve seemed to have fallen upon them all. Looking round David perceived that he, Tommy, and the cat Smith were the only ones who weren’t propped against somebody or holding somebody’s hand; Tommy and Smith because of their absorption in food, and he because both sides of Sally had already been appropriated by her father and Lucilla. He sat down on the other side of Annie-Laurie and took her hand gently. “What about it?” he murmured. “Didn’t it come back?”
She looked at him inquiringly.
“The love of it,” said David softly. “It came back to me. A little while ago I felt I never wanted to be behind the footlights again. Tonight I knew it was the only place where I ever really do want to be; apart from being in my home with Sally. We belong there, you and I and Malony.” He still held her hand, and the firm clasp of it, like the clasp of Sally’s arms the other day, told her what a steady strength the friendship of these two would be if she liked to trust to it in the days to come. Beyond her David could feel Malony’s passionate encouragement. “Shall we go back, the three of us?”