A Christmas Promise (27 page)

Uncle Sam finally got to his feet and waited until there was silence, not an easy achievement under the circumstances. He was looking large and imposing and unaccustomedly serious.

“One more toast,” he said. “Ellie was very emphatic in her letters to all of us, and none of us could doubt, having known Joe, that the instructions came from him and not her. We were to leave off our mourning, she wrote to us, and to come here to enjoy Christmas as we had never enjoyed it before. We have done that.” He turned to nod at Eleanor, who was seated on the arm of Aunt Ruth’s chair. “Yes, we have done that, lass, thanks to you and thanks to the hospitality of your new husband and thanks to his friends and this house. There has never been such a Christmas as this, and Christmas Day still to come.”

There was a murmur of unusually subdued assent from his audience.

“But we have to remember for all that,” he said. “We are having this Christmas for Joe, because it was his final wish. Let us remember, then, that it is for him, and that he was the finest brother and uncle and cousin and father in the whole world. And we miss him.” He raised his glass. “We miss you, Joe.”

Aunt Beryl and Aunt Ruth raised handkerchiefs to their eyes. Everyone else raised glasses.

So, the Earl of Falloden thought, if he had been left in any doubt, it was all banished now. The strange absence of mourning clothes, the merrymaking when there should be only sober grief, were all Mr. Joseph Transome’s idea. Eleanor and the rest of the family were merely keeping a promise made to a dying and beloved man.

A Christmas promise.

He looked across the room to his wife, who had neither a handkerchief nor a glass in her hands but had them clasped on her lap. Aunt Ruth was patting them with her free hand while the other still dabbed at her eyes.

Eleanor was the marble statue again. Totally without color or expression or motion. Her eyes gazed down at her hands. And he understood finally and in a flash. He understood why she had shown no reaction to the straw outside her father’s door and the wrapped knocker the morning after their wedding and why she had not rushed upstairs to her father but had stood warming her hands at the fire even when the doctor had come into the room. He understood why she had shown no emotion at all when announcing to him her father’s death. Or the morning after. Or on the day of the funeral.

He understood that her feelings were too deep and too terrifying to be expressed. The marble statue was marble only in a very thin veneer on the outside. Beneath she was all warm, loving woman.

Conversation resumed, subdued at first, and gradually grew in cheerfulness. Tom and Bessie took themselves off to bed. Wilfred flirted with Susan and crossed the room with her to the pianoforte. Several other cousins followed them there. Sir Albert spoke quietly with Uncle Ben and the two of them left the room.

Eleanor too slipped quietly from the room without a word to anyone. Perhaps only her husband saw her go. He waited for a few minutes before going after her.

T
HE ACHE WAS THERE AGAIN AND THE HEAVY
depression and the terrible grief. Terrible because she still could not cry, though she thought she would and stood still outside the drawing room, her hands over her face, waiting for the tears to come. But it was too late. She had allowed her father to die without grieving properly for him, and now she could never do so.

The finest father in the whole world, Uncle Sam had just said. Yes, he had been. For all his busy efforts at running his business and amassing his fortune, she had always been at the center of his life. There had always been time for her. And smiles and hugging arms and love.

We miss you, Joe. I miss you, Papa, Oh, how I miss you. How I miss you.

But she could not cry. She turned to the staircase leading up to her room. She did not want to go there. She went downstairs and paused outside the library, then went on to the conservatory instead, taking a branch of candles with her. Perhaps the plants and the long windows facing out to the stars would soothe her. Perhaps they would help her to cry.

But the plants looked only gloomy in the frail light of the candles, and the starry night beyond the windows merely made her feel even more lonely. She felt alone with the vastness of the universe. She set the candles down and hugged her arms about herself. It was chilly in the conservatory.

She wished there were other arms to come around her. She remembered wishing the same thing the night her father died. But there were no other arms. Oh, Uncle Sam’s or Uncle Ben’s, perhaps. Either of them would hold her tight if she gave only the merest hint. But it was other arms she wanted. They would come about her later, no doubt, when she was in bed. And there would be the further comfort of the weight of his body and his penetration of her own. But that was not how she needed him now.

She bitterly regretted the gamble she had taken on the walk home from church—if gamble were the right word. Certainly it had not been a considered one, but one taken on the spur of the moment. At first there had been the relief, even joy, of knowing that neither of them had entered the marriage quite as cynically as both had thought at the start. But then had come the suspicion that he must blame her father, that he must hate him. And then the realization that despite everything it was a marriage that should never have been made.

Except that she had grown very quickly to value her marriage, to realize that it was what she wanted more than anything else in life, that
he
was what she wanted more than anyone. She had fallen in love with him very quickly, considering the hatred she had felt at first. And now he was everything in the world to her. He
was
the world. And Christmas and the Bethlehem star too.

But then had come the gamble. She had voiced her doubts, expecting him to confirm them, willing him to contradict her, to assure her that for him too this marriage was important, necessary even. But he had simply agreed with her. Oh, he had been interrupted by Aunt Beryl and Aunt Ruth, it was true. He had been going to say more. But the few words he had spoken had been enough.

Their marriage to him, then, was still something only to be endured, something to be made the best of. He was good at making the best of it. His inherent courtesy as a gentleman, she supposed, had helped him come to a workable relationship with her. But there was nothing more than that. No real affection. Certainly no love.

She wished she had left well enough alone. She wished she had left her dreams intact. She sat down on a chair and spread her hands on her lap. All was leaden and dead inside her. Christmas was gone.

And then the door opened and closed quietly behind her and he came close enough for her to see him set down another branch of candles and a package, although she did not look up.

The conservatory was a little brighter. And seemed a little warmer.

H
E HAD EXPECTED TO
find her in tears, though he was not surprised to find the marble statue instead. She did not look up when he came into the conservatory or show any sign at all that she was aware of his approach. She was sitting and staring at her hands.

He remembered his hesitation the evening her father died and she had come down to the salon to announce the fact to him. He remembered wondering what would happen if he went to her and put his arms about her. But at that time he had been unbelievably foolish and insensitive. He had concluded that she was without feelings, that she would resent being touched. And so he had not touched her.

He knew now that he should have done so, hostile as she was to him at that time. She had needed a human touch. By denying it to her, he had perhaps done her irreparable harm. He had denied her a necessary outlet for her grief. And he knew now that there had been grief. That there
was
grief.

He went to stand in front of her and stooped down on his haunches and took her hands in his. They were like two blocks of ice. He chafed them with his own.

“He was a good father to you, Eleanor?” he asked.

“He loved me,” she said, her voice leaden. “It is so easy to take love for granted when one has always had it. I knew he loved me as I loved him, but I did not realize perhaps how much until all love was removed.”

His heart felt like a heavy weight in his chest.

“That was why I wanted a child,” she said.

Her hands were beginning to warm just a little. “There will be a child,” he said. “Children. There will be love in our home, Eleanor.”

“Yes,” she said.

“You have been unable to cry?” he asked her.

For the first time she looked up at him, fleetingly. “Yes.”

“That is my fault,” he said. “If I had held you the night your father died, you would have cried then, would you not, and the healing would have begun.”

“We hated each other,” she said.

“Perhaps,” he said, “if I had held you and you had cried we would have hated each other less. Perhaps we would have come to like each other sooner.”

“Do we like each other?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “We do.”

She shrugged her shoulders and looked up at him again very briefly.

“I think your father realized how much you would miss him today and tomorrow,” he said. “He arranged consolation for that too. Your father was clever at arranging things, I think.”

She looked up at him and her eyes held on his.

“He left a Christmas gift for you,” he said, “and a letter. He asked me to give them to you on Christmas Day. It is Christmas Day now.”

Her lips parted, though she said nothing. Her eyes filled with longing and pain.

“Which first?” he asked.

She swallowed. “The letter,” she said.

He handed it to her and watched her break the seal with hands that trembled. He watched her as she read. She held the letter in her lap for a long while after she had finished and then held it out to him, looking briefly into his face.

“My dearest girl,” he read, “perhaps you will hate me by the time you read this, and so I feel the need to justify myself from beyond the grave. I have not much time, Ellie. I want your happiness more than I want anything before I die. I want you married to the right man as I was married to the right woman. You think Wilfred is that man. He is not. If he were, I would give you to him with my blessing. I thought perhaps my judgment of his character was unjust. I thought perhaps it was just jealousy of a man who was trying to take my daughter away from me. So I played a trick on him, Ellie. Forgive me! I offered to buy him a partnership in his shipping company if he would give you up. If he had refused, he would have had the partnership and you. As it is, he has only the partnership.

“Perhaps I should tell you now while I am still alive. But now you would be blinded by hurt. Perhaps you will be anyway as you read this. I can only hope that by the time you do, a tenderness for your husband will have replaced a puppy love for Wilfred. I chose him with care, Ellie, and am only sorry for the coercion that lack of time has forced me to use on him. He is a man of good character and good intentions. He will look after you, out of conscience and honor if nothing else. But I trust that by the time you read this there will be something else too. I think there will.”

The earl looked up at his wife. She was looking down at her hands spread in her lap again.

“Don’t grieve too much, Ellie,” her father had concluded. “I will not pretend that I have wanted to die. And yet as the time approaches, I find myself more and more eager to rejoin your dear mama. I have missed her. Part of me is missing and I am going to be complete again. Happy Christmas, my darling girl. We will be watching you from somewhere up there among the stars, your mama and papa.”

The earl folded the letter carefully and set it back down. “
Are
you badly hurt?” he asked quietly.

“About Wilfred?” she said. “I think I would have been more so if he had not come here. It was in bad taste to invite himself here and to expect me to be with him and to talk with him and to love him as I have always done. I have been disillusioned with him and angry with him.”

“But still in love with him?” he asked.

There was a short silence. Then she shook her head. “No,” she said in a whisper. “And now I am glad I am not. Papa was right about him. Papa had an annoying habit of always being right.”

“Always?” he said, but he would not allow the hope to show too clearly in his voice. This was not a moment for him but for her. He must give her back what he had deprived her of at the time of her father’s death. He picked up the package and set it in her hands.

“It is jewelry,” she said as she unwrapped the package and opened the box inside. “Gold. A locket and chain.” She lifted the locket into her hand and pressed the catch on one side of it. And sat looking down at the two miniatures inside.

He ached for her but waited for her to react in some way.

“It is the portrait of Mama that he used to wear about his neck,” she said. “I looked for it after his death but could not find it. And a portrait of himself that he must have had painted recently. Though before he grew so thin.”

He smiled at her, though she did not look up.

“Papa,” she whispered. “It was so painful to watch him lose all his weight. His eyes became so large.” She looked up then, her own eyes large and luminous. “Do you think he is with her? Do you believe in an afterlife?”

“Yes.” He nodded.

“Papa.” Her hand trembled as she looked back down at the portraits and closed the locket, holding it in the palm of her hand. Her lips were trembling too, he saw, and her shoulders.

He took her hand in his, opened her fingers gently, and took the locket. He spread the chain and placed it over her head and about her neck. He had not seen the portrait of her mother, but he suspected that Eleanor must look like her. No one else in the Transome family had her dark red hair, though Jane Gullis did. No one else had her green eyes.

He got to his feet, took her by the elbows, and drew her up with him. And into his arms, which he closed firmly and warmly about her. He felt her trembling give way to shaking. And then the tears and the sobs, deep, painful, heart-wrenching sobs. His own eyes stung and his throat ached, but he held on to her, rocking her in his arms, crooning to her, murmuring words that he could never afterward remember. Pouring his love and his strength into her with every ounce of his will.