“Jerry and José!”
“Hot sausage,” said Jerry.
“Hot sausage,” said José.
“Stow that,” he said sternly. “Life is real, life is earnest, especially in such a terrible crisis as has now arisen. If you don’t want to do the nice play that Ben has written for you, what do you want to do?”
“Hot sausage,” said Jerry.
“In the little house,” said José.
“What little house?” asked David.
“In the Place Beyond,” said Jerry. “The man gave them hot sausage.”
“And bandaged them,” said José.
Memory stirred in David. “The Place Beyond. That’s where you went that day in the autumn when Sally lost you and I drove you home in my car. It’s in Knyghtwood, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Jerry. “But Beyond.”
“Beyond what?” asked John Adair.
“Where the rest of you go.”
“What was the man like?” demanded Ben.
“Big,” said Jerry. His eyes went to John Adair and fastened on his beard. “A beaver. And he laughed. He had a dressing gown on.”
“How do you know it was hot sausage he gave them?” asked Tommy, always interested in food.
“It was good,” said José. “They liked it.”
“The term hot sausage is used symbolically?” suggested John Adair. “Another would perhaps have described the nourishment provided by this unknown personage as honeydew and the milk of Paradise. It’s all a question of digestion. Coleridge’s was weak, I believe. He would have turned nauseated from the thought of hot sausage. It was the unsubstantiality of honeydew (what is it, by the way?) that doubtless appealed to him. And milk of Paradise sounds predigested.”
The children never listened very much to Old Beaver when he rambled on. “Who were the blokes the man gave the sausage to?” asked Tommy.
“They weren’t blokes,” said Jerry.
“Animals?” asked Ben eagerly.
“Some of them,” said José.
“And birds?” asked Caroline with shining eyes.
“Yes,” said Jerry.
“And he bandaged their hurt paws and mended their broken wings?” asked Ben.
“Yes.”
“Was his beard brown and had his dressing gown a dark hood that he wore over his head?”
“Yes.”
“Was he like the man in the picture I painted?”
“Yes.”
Ben was almost panting with eagerness. “The man who painted the chapel walls and carved these posts and the little white deer in the alcove and was Mine Host of the Herb of Grace? And you saw him out there in the wood?”
“Yes.”
“Had he the white deer with him?”
“Yes. The Person with the Horns.”
“They’re saying yes like a parrot,” said David. “You’re getting them rattled.”
“We never get them rattled,” said Tommy. “It’s they who get us rattled. They’ve made it all up, of course. They’ve got it from that yarn of Auntie Rose’s.”
“What yarn?” asked David.
“Oh, some yarn Auntie Rose’s Fred’s great-granny told him when he was a boy. Ben will remember.”
“A monk from the abbey,” said Ben, quickly and softly, loved birds and beasts. He built a chapel in the woods and fed them there and looked after them when they were sick. That’s a legend that must have been handed down for generations. Fred’s great-granny, perhaps, heard it from her great-granny. Auntie Rose told it to us. If she hadn’t perhaps it would have been lost.”
“Well, we’ll see that it isn’t,” said David. “We’ll drive it home. Did Auntie Rose’s Fred, by any chance, identify our chap here with the monk of the woods?”
“Yes. He told Auntie Rose that only a chap who loved birds and beasts could have carved those pillars and the white deer. Fred must have got to know the man from living in the house, like we have. Fred was keen on the creatures too. Auntie Rose said he never shot anything.”
“You don’t either,” said Caroline. “Not like Tommy.”
“The dynasty goes on,” said John Adair. “And a man’s sons are not always those of his own flesh.”
“What had better go on,” said David, “is the rehearsal.” But for a moment his eyes met those of John Adair; he had lost his own father in his boyhood, but in these last few weeks the loss had been made good. “I can see the thing shaping. We’ll have a stage shaped like an L, taking in the stairs and the drawing-room door as entrances, with the Christmas tree at the angle of it. Write out the legend, Ben, in blank verse if you like, and then you can sit under the tree, as Badger, and read it. The stage will be Knyghtwood. The stairs will lead up to the Place Beyond, where the alcove is. Our monk will be there, with the white deer in the alcove behind him. The creatures will come in through the drawing-room door and go up the stairs and he’ll deal out hot sausage. The twins will show us how it should be done. Mr. Adair will be the monk.”
“Not on your life,” said John Adair. And the twins agreed with him. “His beard’s all wrong!” they yelled in outrage.
“Thank heavens he’s got a beard,” said David, “and don’t cavil as to its color. Now we’ll have to work like blazes. Only two days. Where’s Ben?”
Ben had already slipped away into the drawing room to write out the legend in his best blank verse.
CHAPTER
19
— 1 —
Through the blue dusk of a perfect Christmas Day the guests drove to the Herb of Grace. The gate had been left open for them, and the oak trees seemed to bend over them in a friendly sort of way as they bumped their way along the lane. The headlights of their cars showed a few sparse flowers on the gorse bushes, the English gorse that keeps a few golden blossoms all the winter through, even beneath a coverlet of snow. But there was no snow tonight, though it had turned frosty. The sky was cloudless, and the few stars that had appeared shone very brightly, giving promise of a blaze of glory to come. At the turn of the lane they heard the owl hooting in Knyghtwood, but the ghostly trees upon either side made no sound, for it was a windless night. The lanterns had been lit and placed upon the walls, and down at the bottom of the lane they could see the glint of them upon the water.
Light streamed from the Herb of Grace, from every window and from the open front door, and the very jubilation of that light had something to say of the utter happiness of the day that had been spent within. To most of the occupants of the cars the world seemed a dark enough place, but at the sight of that light their heavy hearts lifted a little. There were still children in the world, and while there were children, men and women would not abandon the struggle to make safe homes to put them in, and while they so struggled there was hope.
As they went up the steps to the green gate and along the garden path to the front door, those men and women were typified for them by George and Nadine, standing at the door to welcome them, with their children behind them. And within were Lucilla, Hilary, Margaret, John Adair, Sally and David, men and women whose worth was a good thing to feel about one on Christmas Day. But it was the children who mattered. It was the children who were the point of it all.
As they were divested of their wraps they exclaimed in delight at the appearance of the wide old hall, with the yule log blazing on the hearth, and the holly-wreathed lights burning in their candle sconces all round the walls. Their seats had been arranged diagonally across the hall to face the L-shaped stage, with its exits to stairs and drawing room.
At its angle stood the glorious Christmas tree, bright with lighted candles. In the end, as it represented Knyghtwood, it had been decided to give it no decoration except the candles that burned in the wood at sunset. And it needed no other, for the candles shone so gloriously that looking at them the Eliots almost forgot the awful job they had
had getting them all fixed upright. The stage was covered in green cloth and Knyghtwood holly, and holly concealed the footlights. The old carved posts to the left of the front door were lightly wreathed with ivy and looked like trees growing.
George and John Adair and David handed round cocktails (Sally and the children having mysteriously disappeared), and as they made them last as long as possible the guests became conscious of a delightful jovial glow of hospitable warmth wrapping them round, which most of them put down to the potency of the admirably mixed cocktails, though just a few noticed the formation of the stairs and were reminded of a great dark figure with arms held out in welcome. They all noticed the alcove where the stairs branched, and the strange little carved figure within it cleverly lit by a concealed light, so that it shone like a lamp. They became increasingly aware of that shining image. They did not know what it was but it drew and held them.
Until their attention was captured by a thread of music reaching out to them, pulling at them. Somewhere in the depths of the old house young voices were singing the “Adeste fideles.”
“Will you come this way?” said Nadine, and she led them through the hall to the kitchen, garlanded with greenery, and up the turret stairs to the chapel. They had heard of the discovery of the frescoes and they caught their breath in amazement. The candles had been lighted in the branched candlesticks on the altar, and the pots filled with holly and fir, and above them rose the strange figure of the great white deer with the crucifix in his antlers, dominating the chapel as the little carved figure below dominated the hall.
They sat on the benches and looked about them with delight at the trees and flowers, the birds and the beasts, and the young knight riding through the wood, while behind them Sally and Annie-Laurie, Malony, Jill, and the children, standing in a row one on each side of the door, finished the “Adeste fideles” and embarked upon “The First Nowell” with a perfection of tone and rhythm which they had not dared to hope for during the preceding awful week. It was, as Annie-Laurie had prophesied, all right on the night. The glorious conviction lent such wings to their voices that the tentative efforts of the guests were soon caught up and lifted into a volume of sound so satisfactory that Sally, followed by David, was able to leave them and slip away.
When she had gone Annie-Laurie led the singing, her sweet clear voice rising in carol after carol. They were all so absorbed, singing in that lovely glowing place, that only Malony looked at Annie-Laurie. And he could not take his eyes from her face as she stood there singing, sword-straight, her hands behind her back, her eyes quiet and happy. Just so, with that perfection of simplicity, had she sung in the old days. His heart pounded with joy. She was coming round, his girl. At last she was coming round. This place, this blessed place, had healed her.
He could no longer sing, so much too large had his throat become for his too-tight collar. He loosened it impatiently with his forefinger and croaked like a raven. Annie-Laurie heard him and looked round, her eyes lighting up with tender amusement. It was a sweet look that she gave him, over the heads of the twins, the kind of look she had given him when Midge was a little thing. That good old bloke the Reverend Hilary had been right. He had said it would all come out in the wash (or words to that effect) and it had. His eyes holding Annie-Laurie’s, he suddenly found his voice again and bellowed of the holly and the ivy as loudly as any of them. That was the last carol. When it was over Annie-Laurie opened the door and they went downstairs to laugh and talk in the kitchen, and be told about the frescoes, and eat homemade fudge, until a bell rang and Nadine led them back into the hall.
— 2 —
What next? they wondered, settling into their seats while the lights round the walls were put out and the hidden footlights shone in their place. These Eliots were extraordinarily good at throwing a party. What next? There was a moment of thrilled expectation and then the drawing-room door opened and Romeo in his silver-gray doublet and hose, a short orange cloak over one shoulder, the light gleaming on his silvery fair head, came through onto the stage. There was a gasp and then silence. It was difficult to believe their good fortune. They were to see one of the most famous actors of their generation playing his most famous part, and they were not to pay a penny for the privilege. Just one whisper broke the silence. It came from an old gentleman in the front row. “Fifteen shillings, at least, a seat in the stalls costs you nowadays,” he whispered delightedly behind a horny hand to his daughter. “Ssh! ” said his daughter severely. But he had expressed the feelings of them all.
“He jests at scars, that never felt a wound.
But soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!”
The familiar words floated out into the room like music. The incomparable beauty of the golden voice, the silvery figure, gripped their hearts. All David’s family, with the exception of Lucilla, as always when they saw him on the stage, suffered from sudden shock. Was this David, often so edgy, so difficult, often (though of course they loved him) such a sore trial to them? The perfect co-ordination of voice and movement, that complete absorption of the artist in his art that gave to it a depth that suggested stillness even while he spoke and moved, the grace and beauty so quietly and unself-consciously worn, the exciting sense of power held back—those marks of a great actor gave an illusion of perfection that lifted this figure above all human frailty. Impossible to reconcile this David with the other. Then, abruptly, they didn’t try. This was Romeo, not David. The two had nothing to do with each other.
But Lucilla was the exception. She sat between Nadine and George in the back row to which the family had been relegated to keep the heat of the fire off the guests. Though she was unaware of it she looked beautiful in her old but well-cut, full-skirted black velvet dress. Drafts were inimical to her, and because of them she had a black lace scarf draped over her white hair and round her shoulders. She sat very upright, her blue eyes fixed on the man on the stage, and her hands were folded quietly in her lap.
Lucilla saw no discrepancy between David her grandson and David the actor, because for her the transformation of the one into the other was not a sudden thing, beginning with David and ending with Romeo, but a process that began much further back than that and stretched much further on; it began in her own being and reached on through the beings of unborn children for she could not know how long. Her body had only partly helped to make the body of the man on the stage, but she knew that it was her spirit alone which had created his genius. David’s father had been her very special child, spiritually the child of great love and sacrifice. Because of her anguish of self-denial Maurice had been born. David’s beauty was Maurice’s, but his genius was the flowering of her anguish and the resurrection of her death. She knew now, at the end of her life, that that was always the way of it. “Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die . . .”
The genius would flower again, perhaps, in one of his children or grandchildren, and in that child’s child, and so it would go on, but it would have been lit from the same spark. She felt no pride, only a humble thankfulness that she had died that death. There was no discrepancy anywhere. It was natural that the lamp should be a frail earthen thing in comparison to the light within, for it had not created it and only held it for a short moment. . . . As the alcove up there held the shining figure of the white deer, as this house held a spirit of whose strength she was deeply aware this Christmas night, and to whom she offered salutation.
“Romeo . . . take all myself.”
With a sigh Lucilla relaxed and looked up to the balcony from which the warm, deep voices floated. Sally was doing well, dear child, but she was not hoodwinking her audience into forgetfulness of her personality. She was not Juliet, but merely Sally Adair playing Juliet to the best of her ability under the circumstances. But she looked very lovely. A piece of scarlet brocade stretched across the stairs was her balcony; the illumined alcove was her window. Her
peacock-blue gown made a wonderful splash of color, and the light behind her set her hair on fire. David had taught her to speak her part very prettily, and Lucilla could feel that all shrinking and fear had left her once she was well launched, leaving her utterly glad to be his foil.
“For stony limits cannot hold love out,
And what love can do that dares love attempt.”
Is it well with the child? That eternal question that goes with the begetter of life through every moment of every day and every night was very alive in Lucilla this evening. All was well with her grandchildren, David and Sally. She thanked God for it and remembered the son and daughter upon either side of her. She put out her hand impulsively and took George’s. He turned and smiled at her and she saw the new happiness in his eyes. All that he had to give he had given Nadine long ago; all that love could do to make her happy he had done. Had she let him into her heart at last? For the first time since Romeo had stepped on the stage to make love to the young Juliet she dared to look at the woman beside her. On and off through the evening she had been haunted by those earlier words of Romeo that had not been spoken tonight.
Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!
For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.
Nadine met her look with a steady smiling glance. Her face looked worn in the light of the fire, but peaceful as Lucilla had never seen it, and Lucilla knew that on this Christmas Day she had, at long last, let George in. With these two, also, all was well at last.
Hilary was beyond Nadine; he was a happy man. And Margaret on the other side of George looked tired but happy; when they were settled in Lavender Cottage Lucilla hoped she wouldn’t even look tired. And her five younger grandchildren, George’s children—she looked about for them but could not see them—bless them, they must be getting ready for some little entertainment of their own—they were all right. She had never been so happy about her dear Ben as she was now. He had grown steadily stronger this winter, and he had lost that nervous hesitancy that had so troubled her. He had a new confidence, a new certainty, which she believed he owed to that good man (where was he, by the way?), John Adair, her Sally’s father.