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Regiment of Women

<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2> A week before Christmas Alwynne began to wonder how the day itself should be spent, or rather, if her plans for the spending would ever pass Elsbeth's censorship. She was doubtful. For the last two or three years Christmas had been to them a rock of collision. "The pity of it!" thought Alwynne. Once it had been the event, the crowning glory, the very reason of the ending year. A year, indeed, had always presented itself to her in advance as a wide country through which she must make her way, to reach the hostel, Christmas, hidden in the mists of time, on its further border. She had the whole map of the land in her mind, curiously vivid and distinct. She had never consciously devised the picture; it had, from the first, presented itself complete and unalterable. She stood, on New Year's Day, at the entrance of a country lane which ran between uneven hedges through a varying countryside of fields and woods and heatherland. Each change in the surroundings represented a month, the smaller differences the weeks and days. She went down this winding lane as the days went by, in slow content. January was a silent expanse of high tableland, snow-bound to the horizon. Winding down hill through the sodden grassland of the bare February country, where she lighted on nothing but early parsnip fronds and sleepy celandine buds in the dripping wickery hedges, she passed at last into the wood of March, a wood of pollard hazels and greening oaks and bramble-guarded dingles, where the anemones grew, and the first primroses. She slipped and slithered in and out of mossy leaf-pits, and the briars clawed her hair and pinafore, as she robbed the primrose clumps with wet, reddened fingers.[68] The wind shrieked overhead and wrestled wildly with the bare branches, but beyond there was blue sky and a drift of cloud. But, unawares, she would always head through the wood to where the trees grew thinner and dash out at last, through a mist of pale cuckoo-pint, into the cowslip field that was April. The path ran on through May and June between fields of ox-eye daisies and garden roses, always down hill, till she tumbled into August, the deep hot valley. There she found the sea. With September the road lifted steadily, growing stony and ever steeper. It wound on ahead of her like a silver thread through a brocade of red and gold and purple, that was heather and bracken and beech. But the beech blossoms could never be gathered; they fell apart into a shower of dull leaves, and left her with a branch of bare twigs in her hand. The briony berries that she twisted into wreaths stained her straw hat with their black, evil juice; even the manna-like old-man's-beard smelled sour and rotten. The decaying, witchlike beauty of the season tricked and frightened her; autumn was a hard hill to climb. But far away, on the summit of that difficult hill, stood a house. An old house, gaily bricked, dressed in ivy, with a belfry from which carols rang out unceasingly. It was always night-time where it stood and cheerful lights were set in every window. Alwynne never saw the house till she had turned the bend of the road into November; then it faced her suddenly and she would wave to the distant windows with a thrill of excitement, and quicken her steps, with the goal of the journey in sight at last. There was yet a weary climb before it was reached; every day of December was a boulder, painfully beclambered. But she would come to the gates at last, and tear up the frosty drive, from the shadow of whose shrubberies Jacob Marley peered and clanked at her and ghosts of Christmas turkeys gobbled horribly, to the open holly-hung doorway where Santa Claus, authentic in beard and dressing-gown, welcomed her with[69] Elsbeth's voice. Followed stay-at-home days of delirious merry-making, from which she awoke a week later, to find herself, her back to a closed door, a spent cracker in her hand, looking out again, eager and a little wistful, across the white untrodden plain of yet another January. But ever the next Christmas beckoned her anew. To Elsbeth, too, Christmas was the day of delights, and Alwynne the queen of it. To Elsbeth, too, the pleasure of it began many weeks earlier in the secret fashioning of quaint gifts and surprises, and the anticipation of the small niece's delight in them. Elsbeth would have cheerfully cut off one of her slim fingers if Alwynne had happened to covet it. The childless woman loved Alwynne—the child in Alwynne she worshipped. But though the delight of actual motherhood was denied Elsbeth, she was spared none of its chagrins. Stooping for years to a child's level, she was cruelly shaken when Alwynne, suddenly and inexplicably, as it always seems, grew up. It took Elsbeth almost as many years to straighten herself again. Years when Alwynne, in the arrogance of her enterprising youth, thought that Elsbeth was sometimes awfully childish. She supposed that she was growing old; she used not to be like that.... Thereafter, each Christmas, challenging comparison as it did with the memory-mellowed charm of its forerunners, emphasised the change that had taken place. Yearly the ideal Christmas lured them to the old observances; yearly the reality satisfied them less. Elsbeth still sat up half the night on Christmas Eve, at work upon the little tree. Alwynne still planned gorgeous and laborious presents for her aunt. Elsbeth still filled a stocking (out-size) with tip-toe secrecy, and Alwynne, at sixteen, still ran across in her dressing-gown, and curled up on Elsbeth's bed to unpack it. But at sixteen one is too old and too young to be a child any more. The tree was a fir-tree, pure and simple; the fairy lights stank of tallow; and not even for the sake of a[70] new bright sixpence, would Alwynne, in the thick of a vegetarian fad, devour a slice of the evil-coloured Christmas pudding. Elsbeth, as she saw her old-time jokes and small surprises that could no longer surprise, fall utterly flat, thought that school had altered Alwynne altogether; that she was assuming airs of maturity ridiculous in a child of her age, ("Sixteen? She's a mere baby still," affirmed poor Elsbeth,) that she was growing indifferent, superior, heartless. And Alwynne, trying to appear amused, wondered why Christmas was so different from what it used to be and wished heartily that Elsbeth would not try to be skittish. It didn't suit her—made her seem undignified. Each, longing for the old days, when the other had conjured up so easily the true spirit of the festival, tried her affectionate best to do so still; each, failing inevitably, inevitably blamed the other. Neither realised, that Dan Christmas is the god of very little children, and that where they are not, he, too, does not linger. But the last restless, unsatisfactory day had settled the matter for them finally. Alwynne had fidgeted through morning service, and pained her aunt, on the walk home, with her sceptical young comments; had omitted to kiss her under the mistletoe; had sat through the ceremonious meal, answering Elsbeth's cheerful pleasantries in monosyllables; and finally, after an unguarded remark, and the inevitable reproving comment, had flung out of the room in a fever of irritation. She came near thinking Elsbeth a foolish and intolerable old maid. And Elsbeth, sitting sadly over the fire all the lonely afternoon, puzzled meekly over Alwynne's hardness of heart, and cried a little, in pure longing, for the baby of a few years back, to whom she had been as God. They were reconciled, of course, by tea-time. Alwynne, quieted by solitude, was soon bewildered at her own ill-humour, shocked at the sentiments she had been able to entertain, remorseful at hurting Elsbeth's feelings and spoiling[71] her Christmas Day. They were able to send each other to bed happy again. But they had no more snap-dragons and early stockings. The next Christmas, shorn of its splendours, was a strange day to them both, but, at least, a peaceful one, with Alwynne at her gentlest, and Elsbeth, forgiving her as best she could, for her long skirts and her seventeen years. With the passing of yet another year, however, Alwynne's last scruple as to the sacrosanct privacy of Christmas celebrations vanished utterly. The ideal day, she saw at last, and clearly, should be neither a children's carnival, nor a symposium of relatives. (Alwynne knew of none but Elsbeth, but she dearly loved a phrase.) Christmas should be a time of social intercourse, of peace and goodwill towards men—the human race—neighbours and friends—not merely relations.... One should not shut oneself up.... It would be a sound idea, for instance, to ask some one to dinner.... A friend of Elsbeth's—or there was Clare! It would be very jolly if Clare could come to dinner.... Clare was delightful when she was in holiday mood; she could keep the table in a roar.... A little fun would do Elsbeth good.... Surely Elsbeth would enjoy having Clare to dinner? She found herself, however, experiencing considerable difficulty in opening up the project to her aunt. Elsbeth, to whom the possibility of such a request had long ago presented itself, who could have told you by sheer intuition at what exact moment the idea occurred to her niece, gave her no help. Alwynne had contrived to put her in the position of appearing to approve Clare Hartill. Clare, she felt, had had something to do with that. She knew that it would be unwise to lose the advantage of her apparent tolerance; knew that Clare expected her to lose it by some impulsive expression of mistrust or dislike, and intended to utilise the lapse for her own ends. It would be easy for Clare to pose as the generous victim of unreasoning hostility. But Clare should not, she resolved, have the opportunity. She, Elsbeth,[72] would never be so far lacking in cordiality as to give her any sort of handle. But Clare Hartill should not eat her Christmas dinner with them, vowed Elsbeth, for all that. So for a couple of days, Alwynne, approaching Elsbeth from all possible angles, found no crack in her armour, and somewhat puzzled, but entirely unsuspicious, thought it hard that Elsbeth should be, at times, so curiously unresponsive. She would not have scrupled to ask her aunt outright to invite Clare, but she quite genuinely wished to find out first if Elsbeth would mind, and never guessed that the difficulty she found in opening the matter was the answer to that question. The arrival of the turkey was her opportunity. Sailing into the kitchen in search of raisins (the more maturely dignified Alwynne's deportment, the more likely her detection in some absurd child's habit or predilection), she found Elsbeth raging low-voiced, and the small maid gaping admiration over the brobdingnagian proportions of their Christmas dinner. "Look at it, Alwynne! What am I to do? Twenty pounds! And we shan't get through ten! Really, it's too bad—I wrote so distinctly. It's impossible to return it—to Devonshire! No time. It's the twenty-second already. How shall we ever get through it?" "We might get some one in to help us," began Alwynne delightedly. But Elsbeth, very busy all of a sudden, with basin and egg-beater, whisked and bustled her out of the kitchen. Alwynne returned to the matter, however, later in the day. "Elsbeth, we shall never manage that turkey alone." "Of course, I must send some over to Mrs. Marpler," began Elsbeth hastily. Mrs. Marpler was a charwoman. Alwynne contrived to make their succession of little maids adore her, but she and Mrs. Marpler detested one another cordially. Mrs. Marpler's[73] offences, according to Alwynne, were that she was torpid, inefficient, breathed heavily, smelled of cats, and, by the complicated and judicious recital of the authentic calamities which regularly befell her, lured from Elsbeth more than her share of the broken meats and old clothes of the establishment, perquisites which Alwynne, entirely incredulous, coveted for pet dependents of her own. Alwynne's offences, according to Mrs. Marpler, were, the aforementioned incredulity, her hostile influence on Miss Loveday, a certain crispness of manner and a tendency to open all windows in Mrs. Marpler's neighbourhood. The feud distressed Elsbeth, and Alwynne's diagnosis of Mrs. Marpler's character; for she liked to believe the best of every one. Alwynne forced her to agree, but secretly she sympathised with her feckless char-lady. "Marpler has been out of work three weeks, and as poor Mrs. Marpler says, where their Christmas dinner is to come from——" "How much extra did you pay her this week?" demanded Alwynne remorselessly. "And last week—and the week before—and the week before that? Of course he's out of work. Who wouldn't be?" "My dear Alwynne, if you think they can buy a Christmas dinner on what I gave them—" retorted Elsbeth heatedly. "But it's absurd to argue with you. What do you know of what food costs?" "Anyhow, Mrs. Baker, with six children——" began Alwynne, who also had been primed by a protégée. But she recollected that she did not wish to annoy Elsbeth at this juncture. Clare must take precedence of Mrs. Baker. "Well, you can send them the legs and the carcase," she conceded; "even then there will be more than we can possibly manage. Couldn't we ask some one to spend the day with us?" "I hardly think," said Elsbeth, with a touch of severity, "that you would find any one. Most people like to keep Christmas with their Relations."[74] "Well, I haven't got any. But by all accounts I think I should hate 'em in the plural as much as I love 'em in the singular." She blew Elsbeth a kiss. "But if we could find some one—to help us eat up the turkey—and spend the evening—it would be rather jolly, don't you think? It was dullish last year, wasn't it?" "Was it?" said Elsbeth, with careful brightness. "I'm sorry. I had thought you enjoyed it." "Oh, why is she so touchy? I didn't mean anything," cried Alwynne within herself. And aloud— "Oh, I only meant without a tree or anything specially Christmassy——" "Alwynne," said Elsbeth, with scrupulous patience, "it was you who suggested not having one." "I know, I know, I know, I know!" cried Alwynne, in a fever. Elsbeth sighed. Alwynne repented. "Elsbeth darling, I didn't mean to be rude; I'm a beast. And I didn't mean it wasn't nice last year. I only meant—it would be—be a change to have some one—because of the turkey—and I thought, perhaps Clare——" "Can't you exist for a day without seeing Clare Hartill?" asked Elsbeth, with a wry smile. Alwynne dimpled. "Not very well," she said. Elsbeth stared at her plate. Alwynne edged her chair along the table, till she sat at Elsbeth's elbow. She slid an arm round her neck. "Elsbeth! Elsbeth, dear! You're not cross, Elsbeth? It's a very big turkey. Do, Elsbeth!" "Do what?" "Ask Clare. You like her, don't you?" No answer. "Don't you, Elsbeth?" Alwynne's tone was a little anxious. "Would you care if I didn't?" The pattern of her[75] plate still interested Elsbeth. She was tracing its windings with her fork. "You silly—it would just spoil everything. That's just it—I would like to get you two fond of each other, only with Clare so busy there's never a chance of your really getting acquainted." "I knew Clare Hartill long before you did, Alwynne. I knew her as a schoolgirl." "But not well—not as I know her." "No, not as you know her." "There you are," said Alwynne, with satisfaction. "That's why—you don't know her properly. Oh, Elsbeth, you must share all my good things, and Clare's the very best of them. Do let her come." "She may be engaged; she probably is." "Oh, no—Clare will be alone—I know, because——" she stopped herself. Elsbeth questioned her with her eyes. "Oh, nothing—only I happen to know," said Alwynne. "Because?" Alwynne shook her head mischievously. "Oh, well, if you won't tell me——" began Elsbeth. "Oh, I will, I will," cried Alwynne hastily. "My dear, I don't want to know Miss Hartill's secrets, or yours either," said Elsbeth huffily. But to herself, "Why am I losing my temper over these silly trifles?" "Elsbeth dear, it was nothing. Only Clare did ask me to spend Christmas Day with her." "Well?" said Elsbeth jealously. "What?" asked Alwynne's ingenuous eyes. "Are you going?" Alwynne nestled up to her, humming with careful flatness the final bars of Home, sweet home. "Elsbeth, you old darling—I do believe you're jealous! Are you, Elsbeth? Are you?" "Are you going?" repeated Elsbeth. Alwynne was sobered by her tone.[76] "I'm going to spend my Christmas Day in my own home, with my own Elsbeth," she said, "and I think you needn't have asked me." Elsbeth melted. "My dear, I'm a silly old woman——" "Yes, you tell me that once a week." "One day you'll believe it.—All right—you can ask your Miss Hartill—or shall I write?" Alwynne hugged her. "Elsbeth, you're an angel! I'll go round at once. Oh, it will be jolly." "If she comes." Alwynne turned, on the way to her bedroom. Elsbeth's intonation was peculiar. "What do you mean?" "I don't think she'll come, Alwynne." "But I know she'll be alone——" "Well, you go and ask her." "But why do you say that—in that tone?" "I may be wrong. But I've known her longer than you have. But run along and ask her." "But why? Why?" "Oh, don't bother me, child," cried Elsbeth impatiently. "Run along and ask her." <hr style="width: 65%;" /> [77] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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