Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
“He won’t. He always brings me the best.”
“I shall lie awake all the night listening for him.”
“I heard the little reindeer’s hoofs on the roof last Christmas.”
Dennis’ eyes were like stars. He bobbed up and down in his joy.
Alayne said, “Now children, it’s very late. You must go to bed. Help Dennis to undress, Archer. If you are good, I’ll come up and tell you a story.”
When they had gone she said, “I do wonder if we are right in encouraging their belief in a myth. There are psychologists who say its very bad for them.”
Finch gave a hoot of derision.
“Bad for them! They get a greater thrill out of it than out of anything that comes later in their lives.”
“Many experts believe they get too much of a thrill. They say there always is fear mixed with it and that their nerves may suffer afterwards. It may give them some form of neurosis later.” She looked anxiously into Finch’s eyes.
“Alayne,” he said. “I hope you are not going to be taken in by this sort of twaddle. If the psychologists want to start a campaign to protect children from fear, let them begin on the crime plays that come over the radio — the hideous pictures in the comics — but no, they’ll never do it! They’re afraid to. There’s too much money at stake. There’s no one to protect poor old Santa Claus. Even the department stores do their best to spoil him. But I want Dennis to believe in him. I want him to have the feeling I used to have when I woke on a Christmas morning and smelled the greenery and thought of the Tree and thought of Santa Claus — no fairy, but jolly flesh and blood who had come down the chimney the night before with presents for me. Gosh, the man who would take Santa Claus from the children and leave a kind of Mother Goose in his place, is about the meanest and stupidest man on earth!”
Alayne laughed and shut the windows.
“I do like you, Finch,” she said.
In the hall she found Archer not yet halfway up the stairs. She looked up at him and asked:
“Archer, do you believe in Santa Claus?”
“Do you want me to?” he countered.
“That has nothing to do with it. Just answer Mother quite simply. Do you or don’t you?”
“I’m not sure. But I won’t tell Dennis. He believes, all the time.”
“You have no feeling of fear about him?” she asked anxiously.
Archer gave one of his rare smiles. “All I’m afraid of,” he said, “is that he won’t bring me what I want.”
He continued on his way up the stairs. From the twilight of the upper passages she heard his chant. “Saliva! Oh, saliva!” And far above in his room he still lingered on the fascinating word.
There was snow and to spare for Christmas. Never since the house was built had it been so buried in snow. It had begun to fall quietly one afternoon in mid-December, just like an ordinary snowfall. In the night it had become a blizzard. The house had groaned and its shutters had rattled in the storm. When calm clear morning came it could be seen that more than two feet had been added to the depth of whiteness on the level ground. But the drifts were as high as a man’s shoulder between house and stable. It was necessary for everyone who was able to wield a snow shovel to put his strength into the clearing of paths. Even Dennis, in a scarlet snowsuit, set to work. Nicholas and Ernest never had seen any snowfall to compare with it. A hundred generations of birds had had no such struggle to find a morsel of food. Pheasants, blue jays, juncos, and even a pair of cardinals, came to the very door for the great bowls of cut-up bread and basins of wheat scattered for them by Mrs. Wragge. For five days no grocer, baker, butcher, or postman could reach the house. But it did not much matter. Mrs. Wragge baked delicious bread, a pig and a number of chickens were killed. Who wanted newspapers or letters? An enjoyable isolation cut off the family from the rest of the world. Piers’ boys and Patience came every day on skis.
At last the roads were cleared by snowploughs. The dogs ran between walls of dazzling marble whiteness. Christmas came and went. It had seemed a long year but like the snow it came to an end and the New Year dawned.
SETTLING DOWN
W
ITH DOMESTIC HELP
so difficult to secure in these last months of the war, it was impossible to guard Pheasant from overwork. As her bulk became noticeable her strength grew less. Two men and two racketing small boys required more effort in housework than she was capable of. Piers helped her all he could but his leg was a handicap to him. Maurice hated work. The very thought of physical work depressed him. He liked his books and was getting on well at the crammer’s in town. It was arranged for him to board nearby during the early months of the year, not returning home until after the baby’s birth. This disposed of him but left Nooky and Philip to be coped with. They could not be taken to Jalna because of the old uncles. Meg was willing to have them for a fortnight at the time of the birth but she could not house them for the winter. It would be impossible for her to control Philip. She knew it and he knew it. He was an obstreperous small boy and it did not shame him to be known as such. He was a bad influence on Nooky, who was by nature obedient. The two combined were never at a loss to think of things to do which they should not do. Piers delighted in their high spirits but at times he came down hard on them, always the hardest on Philip. When he considered his years in the prison camp and what his life now was, he could not be really angry with them.
What the boys needed, said Nicholas and Ernest, was the discipline of boarding school. They themselves had gone to boarding school and Renny also. The old men were very fond of Pheasant. It troubled them to see her with dark circles beneath her eyes and that tired look about the mouth. They put their heads together, and considered how they had not much longer to live and how they might as well spend their money to the advantage of the family. So they proposed to Piers that they should pay half the school fees of the boys, if he would pay the other half. Piers with gratitude accepted their offer. This left Archer in prospect of being without companions of his own age. He was now beyond Miss Pink’s little school. Because of the immense snowfall he could not be taken to a school in the town. There was little gasoline for the car. Alayne was forced to agree to let him go to school with the others.
Therefore, in mid-January, Renny set off on a bitterly cold morning, with his two nephews and his son in tow. The passengers in the train were mostly boys of seven to eighteen. None was more composed than Archer. He had said goodbye to Alayne with no sign of emotion. The last words she had heard him say, as he shouldered his boy scout kit in the hall, were, “Saliva! Oh, saliva!” in a shrill chant.
Now there followed at Jalna a period of such quiet, such tranquility of spirit as had not been known there in years. The health of the old uncles was remarkably good, considering their years. They had nothing to worry about. The War was drawing to an end. Occasionally they had spirited words over what should be done about Germany and her leaders. Their ideas clashed. Those of the gentle Ernest were drastic, but Nicholas was weary of violence. Let there be an end to violence on both sides, he said. What he wanted was assurance and peace.
Finch was off on another tour. Wakefield had gone to New York to see what chances there were for him in the theatre there. In New York he again met Molly Griffith, as he had feared he would, but the meeting was not so full of pain as he had expected. He talked to her with less constriction of the heart than he would have thought possible. She was so calm, it helped him to control himself.
Wakefield urged her to visit her step-sisters who could not understand her reluctance to do so. She must be with them for Gem’s marriage, if it were possible, he said, and she promised she would, as though she longed to do what he wanted her to. A dangerous, half-melancholy friendship now sprang up from the ruins of their blighted love. Now they sought each other’s company. They were always in each other’s thoughts. He never sent her flowers, he never gave her presents, but he would take her to as quiet a restaurant as they could find and there they would sit, after their meal, smoking, talking of the days before the War and the vicissitudes of their experiences in the theatre in London. Sometimes they would laugh over these but it was seldom that their eyes met for more than a moment. His eyes would rest on her hands or on the rising and falling of her breast. She would look straight before her but above the heads of the others in the restaurant, as though she actually were seeing pictures of their loved past. They would talk of Wales and his visit to her family.
At Jalna, Renny and Alayne had time for a happier companionship than they had known for many a year. They went about more often together. They sought out old friends, and made a few new ones. They gave a few dinner parties, though it was difficult for guests to come from more than a short distance. Alayne looked and felt well but the harassment of the months after the discovery of the theft had taken something from her that would not return.
On the anniversary of Eden’s death Pheasant gave birth to a daughter. It was a normal birth but Piers worried over her more than ever he had before. He was delighted to be the father of a little girl, though disappointed that she did not look like Pheasant. She was to be like him, he thought, though Ernest said she would be like Piers’ mother. Ernest was strong on resemblances and knew where every feature of each member of the family had come from, though he had been put to it to account for Finch when he had arrived.
The child was christened Mary Pheasant, which meant, young Philip said, Happy Bird. And she indeed started off happily for, instead of crying when Mr. Fennel sprinkled water on her face, she smiled. It was a festive occasion in the Easter holidays when all the children were home. Meg and Alayne were the godmothers, Renny the godfather. Nicholas and Ernest were there — Ernest the first to have been christened in the church, of which he reminded everyone present. The winter safely battled with and now behind them, the two old men spread their spiritual plumage in the approaching sun of summer. They got out their best clothes and donned them with zest.
Maurice had looked on the approaching birth with aversion. In hours of depression he had been convinced that his mother would die. But, when he held the tiny sister in his arms, his heart went out to her and he knew he was going to love her.
“Ha-ha,” teased Adeline, “you’re old enough to be her father. I’ve never heard of such a thing!”
“Count up the years between Wakefield and your father then,” retorted Maurice.
“There were two marriages.”
“Never mind. This infant is my sister and I’m dotty about her.”
“So am I. She’ll be like my own child, as I’m never going to marry and have any. Let’s make an agreement, Mooey, never to marry but always to be friends — sort of partners in living, proud and single — and have little Mary for our child.”
Maurice caught her almost roughly by the wrists. “Adeline,” he said, “you are the last person on earth I’d make such an agreement with.”
Something in his eyes deepened the colour in her cheeks.
“Oh, Mooey, you are a silly!” she exclaimed and began to wrestle with him.
What with skiing, skating, and hockey she was no mean opponent. All that winter Maurice had lived a soft life of study and more study. He was humiliated by the onslaught she made.
“Gosh,” he panted, “what do they teach you at that school?”
“To be ladies. Lily handed ladies.”
Maurice suddenly quelled her and gripped her against his chest. He looked unsmilingly into her eyes.
“I wish you were eighteen,” he said.
“I wish I were! I’d show you! when I am eighteen I’ll be as strong as you.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that!” He released her, almost pushing her from him.
They stood regarding each other with challenge in their eyes, then turned away, he half-angrily, she puzzled by his look but still teasing.
Patience, Adeline, and Roma, all were excited by the approaching marriage of Eugene Clapperton and Gemmel Griffith. He would like to have a large wedding but she refused this. In the first place, she said, she did not feel able to bear the strain of walking down the aisle under the gaze of a lot of people. The use of her legs was still too new to her, she might become nervous, be forced to sit down and propel herself to the altar in the old way. How would Eugene like that? she asked with a smile that, to him, was too droll to be seemly.
So they were married by Mr. Fennel who gathered them in as stray lambs, with no others present in the church but Gemmel’s three sisters — Molly had come from New York for the occasion — and Sidney Swift.
The groom was very nervous but the bride bore herself with statuesque dignity. Garda mourned to think that there was no admiring throng to gaze at Gemmel as she moved slowly down the aisle, her hand barely touching Eugene Clapperton’s arm.
Afterwards they held a reception at Vaughanlands to which not only most of the Whiteoak family came but a large number of Eugene Clapperton’s friends from the city. It was from these that the wedding presents which loaded several large tables came. No Whiteoak had bought a present but, from the corners and cupboards of the old house, had unearthed articles presentable enough to keep them in countenance. Alayne had thought that Piers and Meg had small right to do this but Renny seemed not to mind. She herself had never felt that Jalna or its contents belonged in any way to her, so made no objection. But quite unwitting of its value, Meg had given a little china figure that had been in her room when she was a girl, and to which she felt she still had a right. It was not till one of Eugene Clapperton’s friends, who was a connoisseur in china, picked it up, examined it and exclaimed in delight, that Meg realized what a mistake she had made. It was the most valuable present of all, declared the connoisseur, and asked Meg, who happened to be standing beside him, if she knew who had given it. In a faint voice Meg had answered that it was she. Fortunately none of the family was close enough to overhear but the day was spoilt for Meg. That night she lay awake for a long while considering how it might be possible to get the china figure back.