Ms. Davenport's Christmas

by M C Beaton

  Lucinda giggled. “I have been saving a great surprise for you. You will never guess how wicked I have been.”

  “Surprise me.”

  “After that first skating party, I felt something had to be done.”

  “We discussed that.”

  “No, no, it is something else. I asked Colonel Tenby if he knew where the Davenports lived, and he said as a matter of fact he did—Marston Park, outside Darlington.” Lucinda hugged herself in glee. “This is the best bit. I wrote to Mrs. Davenport and sent it express.”

  “You what!”

  “I wrote to Mrs. Davenport. I said I shared her sympathies about Christmas, for it is well-known that the Davenports are famous Puritans. I said it was sad that the Harringtons should be introducing Miss Jilly and Miss Mandy—silly names—to such wicked frivolity such as skating parties with well-known rakes, not to mention encouraging them to look forward to and take part in every pagan ritual of Christmas.”

  Harriet looked at her in horror. “But they will post south to rescue their daughters from sin as soon as possible. If letters can get through, and they evidently can, they will be here quite soon. Do you know that the new mail coaches can travel from London to Edinburgh in thirty-four and half hours? It will take less than that from York.”

  “Pooh! That was the whole idea in writing to them.”

  “But they will produce your letter. You will be exposed as a sneak.”

  “Not I. I am not so silly. I used a plain seal and scrawled some indecipherable signature at the bottom of the page.”

  A slow smile dawned on Harriet’s face. “You clever puss. They should be here any day now.”

  “Yes, because although we have had some snow here, it has nearly cleared, and Colonel Tenby’s friend who wrote to him from Yorkshire said they had had no snow there yet at all, an exceptionally mild winter in the North.”

  Harriet said, “It is cold again and the sky is leaden. What if it should snow and block the roads before they arrive?”

  “I am sure they are nearly here. Besides, these northern Puritans are a hardy lot. To save their chicks from evil, they are quite capable of walking!”

  And both began to laugh.

  “It is not like you to interfere,” Lady Harrington was saying to her chastened husband. “Rakes, indeed. Those gentlemen have been the soul of kindness to my chicks.”

  “Not your chicks.”

  “I feel as close to them as if they were my own daughters. They would be a steadying influence. They are ideally suited. Things were going splendidly until you interfered. They had eyes only for Jilly and Mandy until you put your oar in.”

  “Well, my dear, it is not like you to be so cross with me,” pleaded Sir John. “I thought I was doing it for the best. But only think. The Davenports are good blood, but not equal to a duke’s family. They could be, but their very parsimoniousness and Puritanism put them beyond the pale.”

  “Now I don’t know how to lure them back,” fretted his wife, hardly listening to him. “Christmas at Mrs. Tenby’s will be such a dismal affair that I am sure the young people at least will call, and perhaps our lords with them.”

  Upstairs, Jilly was trying to cheer Mandy by reading to her from a book of Richard Steele’s essays. “Only hear this, Mandy,” she said, and began to read aloud:

  “I am a young woman and have my fortune to make, for which reason I come constantly to Church to hear Divine Service, and make Conquests; but one great Hindrance in this my design is that our Clerk, who was once a Gardener, has this Christmas so over-decked the Church with Greens that he has quite spoiled my prospect, insomuch that I have scarce seen the young Baronet I dress at these last three Weeks, though we both have been very Constant at our Devotions, and do not sit above three Pews off. The Church, as it is now equipped, looks more like a Greenhouse than a Place of Worship; in the middle Isle is a very pretty Shady Walk, and the Pews look like so many Arbours on each side of it. The Pulpit itself has such Clusters of Ivy, Holly and Rosemary about it that a light Fellow in our Pew took Occasion to say that The Congregation heard the Word out of a Bush, like Moses.”

  Mandy gave a rueful little laugh. “No one could accuse us of having dressed at our lords tonight. What guys we looked in our fancy dress compared to Lucinda and Harriet.”

  Jilly frowned. “I think it is all most odd. Our gentlemen were paying every attention to us and then suddenly they grew cool and talked to Lucinda and Harriet as if they were the only ladies in the room. I felt diminished and very unfashionable and shabby.”

  The door opened and Lady Harrington came in. “Good, you are still awake. I have a confession to make.” She told them about the letters from home, ending up by saying ruefully, “It was indeed very bad of me. I have kept them all, but for the first, which I regret to say I burned. Here they are. I should not judge what you should read or not read.”

  So after she had gone, Jilly and Mandy read the letters, feeling the iron fetters of rigid behavior closing about them.

  “I refuse to worry,” said Jilly at last. “It is not as if they will come all the way south to get us in the middle of winter. They will arrive in the spring, and Christmas will be long past, and I am sure Lady Harrington will not tell them about the celebrations. Mandy, we should put these two gentlemen right out of our heads. They are not for us, and sighing and dreaming about them is only going to spoil everything for us.”

  “So you, too?” asked Mandy in a little voice.

  “Yes, I, too. So we will stick together and see it through and have as much fun as we can.”

  Mr. Travers, Mr. Andrews, Belinda, and Margaret arrived the next day when they were hard at work with the decorations.

  The tradition of bringing holly and ivy and mistletoe or any other evergreen into the house was a Christmas practice that went back to the Romans. Bringing evergreens home and presenting branches to people was a custom in Rome during the Christmas celebrations; evergreen was a token of good luck. It was relatively easy for the church to make holly a Christian symbol. Its sharp leaves and red berries became associated with Christ’s crown of thorns. Ivy was more difficult, it being associated with Bacchus, the Roman god of wine. Nevertheless, the customs and superstitions associated with holly and ivy, like the Yule log, had really nothing to do with Christianity at all.

  Lady Harrington told them that in the Cotswolds the tradition was that if the first holly to be brought into the house was prickly, the master would rule for the coming year; if the holly was smooth-leaved, then the mistress would rule. Sir John said ruefully that it did not matter whether the holly brought into Greenbanks was prickly or plain, for Lady Harrington always ruled the roost.

  With many sly looks at the ladies, Mr. Travers asked if there was to be a mistletoe bough. Sir John grinned and said they always had one over the door. “Though the church don’t approve,” he added.

  “They do at York Minster,” explained Mandy shyly. “It is the only church in the whole of Britain exempt from the rule that mistletoe is not to be used as a church decoration. Each Christmas a bough of mistletoe is brought in by the clergy and laid on the altar, and then they proclaim… How does it go, Jilly?”

  “They proclaim ‘a public liberty, pardon, and freedom to all sorts of inferior and even wicked people at the gates of the city to the four corners of the earth.’”

  “Forgiveness for all, hey?” said Mr. Jensen. “I like that.”

  “At our seminary,” put in Belinda, “we were told that mistletoe was pagan because it was a custom of the Druids. The arch Druid was supposed to have cut the mistletoe with a golden sickle during November each year. It was caught as it fell from the tree by virgins holding out a white cloth. This was followed by a prayer and the sacrifice of white oxen. The mistletoe was then divided up amongst the people, who took it home to hang over their doors. It was held to work miracles of healing, to protect against witchcraft, and to bring fertility to the land and the people of the house.” She blushed suddenly as if she ha
d caught herself out in saying something indecent.

  “Well, we just put it over the door,” said Sir John cheerfully, “and Jimmy brings it. No virgins or gold sickles necessary. Then each time you gentlemen kiss one of the ladies, you pluck off a berry, and when all the berries are gone, no more kissing.”

  How quickly one became used to freedom, thought Jilly sadly. Just after their arrival, she and Mandy would have been thrilled by all the fun and chatter, and yet both of them stiffened every time they heard a horseman out on the road. And could they really return to the life they had once led? But rebellion was not possible. Their parents held the purse strings.

  They had even lost the attention of Mr. Travers and Mr. Jensen, who seemed happy with Belinda and Margaret. They might even propose, thought Jilly enviously, and their parents would be delighted and no obstacle would be put in their way.

  But one look at Mandy’s wistful face rallied her. She would not let anything spoil their day.

  She had not counted on the arrival of Colonel Tenby.

  The colonel was seriously worried. He had had an acrimonious exchange with his wife the night before, and for once, he had got the better of her. He had stated firmly that she had to change her ways. He was unhappy. He felt quite amazed at his courage when he thought again of the way he had stood up to her. But it was when he had been retiring to his room, which was along the corridor from those occupied by Lucinda and Harriet, that he had heard the girls laughing and then he distinctly heard Harriet say, “You are indeed wicked, Lucinda. When the Davenports get that letter you wrote to them, they will scorch the earth beneath their chariot wheels racing to rescue their daughters from corruption.”

  He had stood appalled, debating whether to enter the room and demand to know why they had done such a terrible thing. But he knew at the same moment that they would both deny it, say he had misheard and be politely shocked that he should do such an ungentlemanly thing as to listen at doors.

  He felt he could not turn to his wife. He had noticed Mrs. Tenby’s machinations to make a match between Lord Ranger, Lord Paul, and Harriet and Lucinda. He realized his wife would think what Lucinda had done was fair game and then she would no doubt help her in her lies that no such letter had been sent. It was then he thought of Lady Harrington and decided to ride over to Greenbanks.

  The air was very quiet and still and his horse’s hooves rang on the iron of the frost-bound road. Snow to come, he thought, looking up at the sky. The countryside seemed to be waiting for it. Nothing moved in the quiet gray landscape, and even the smoke from cottage chimneys hung in long, thin columns on the bitter air.

  When he arrived at Greenbanks, Jimmy was hoisting the mistletoe bough over the door and Mr. Travers was already kissing all the ladies while Sir John laughed and plucked off berries for each kiss until Lady Harrington cried on Mr. Travers to stop or there would be no berries left for anyone else, meaning no kisses.

  Jilly and Mandy were disappointed in their first kisses. Mr. Travers’s mouth had been a trifle wet, and both were hard put to stop themselves from taking out their handkerchiefs and scrubbing their mouths.

  Then they both heard the clip-clop of a horse’s hooves out on the road, coming ever nearer to the gate at the end of the short drive. Jilly could see hope springing up in Mandy’s eyes. One horse, thought Jilly. They would surely come together if they were coming at all.

  And then her hopes were dashed when Sir John cried, “Here comes the colonel, and looking deuced grim, too. I wonder what the matter is.”

  Jimmy ran to take the colonel’s horse as he swung down from the saddle. “Good day,” said the colonel. “Sir John and Lady Harrington, an urgent word with you in private, if you please.”

  Wondering, they led him indoors to a small morning room. “Now, Colonel,” said Sir John. “Sit down and tell us what ails you. For you are looking like Winter himself.”

  “This has been the last straw,” said the colonel wearily, passing his hand over his brow and slightly dislodging his white wig. “I was on my way to bed last night when I overheard Harriet and Lucinda talking. As far as I can gather, Lucinda has sent a letter to Mr. and Mrs. Davenport warning them that their daughters are being led astray.”

  “And what did they say to that when you confronted them?”

  “I did not. I did not know what to do. I was sure Lucinda would simply lie and say I had misheard. You can guess how they would go about it. People who listen at doors never hear the right thing. That sort of business. A gentlemen never listens at doors. This has been a dreadful holiday. My wife… my wife has somehow got it into her head that she can marry off Lucinda and Harriet to Lord Paul and Lord Ranger, and they… they are using her for their own ends. Demme, I wish I had never left my regiment. You know what they’ll be doing at the barracks at Christmas? There’ll be fun and balls and parties. Look at me. I am an old man.”

  “Nonsense,” said Sir John hurriedly. “Same age as myself.”

  “I feel like a hundred,” said the colonel fretfully. “Do you know, I am not going to put up with this one moment longer. I am going back to my regiment and I am leaving today! Because if I wait much longer, the snow I fear is coming will begin to fall and block the roads. For your sakes, I hope it does. For if those Davenports arrive, the first sight of an evergreen branch will have them hauling their daughters off, no matter what the weather.”

  “Perhaps the Davenports never received that letter,” said Lady Harrington hopefully. “I mean the last letter arrived here not so long ago, and it was full of ranting and raving about Christmas but not a word about having received any letter.”

  “What should I do about Lucinda?” asked the colonel.

  “Nothing,” said Lady Harrington sweetly. “I will attend to the matter.” She turned to her husband. “You entertain our young guests. I will take the carriage and go back with the colonel. I am afraid, Colonel, that I am also going to give your wife a piece of my mind. It is my belief she coerced Mr. Nash into writing a letter to me telling me the ball at Moreton was canceled. Mr. Nash has disappeared, but he cannot hide forever, and I will get the truth out of him sooner or later.”

  “I don’t care,” said the colonel. “I’m going home to pack!”

  Mr. and Mrs. Davenport and the maid, Abigail, had left the mail coach and transferred to the Oxford coach. They had not noticed the rigors of the journey. Mortification was good for the soul. Both were fired with crusading zeal. They had not sent any warning of their impending arrival. The Harringtons must be given no time to take down those pagan decorations, the Davenports naively assuming that the Harringtons would wish to cover up the evidence of their sin if forewarned. Even the last letter sent from the North had been left for a servant to post so that the Harringtons would not know they were already on the road.

  The Davenports were not sad or worried, but angry and elated at the same time. The devil lurked around every corner, and it was their duty to thrash him out of hiding.

  Lord Ranger and Lord Paul were playing billiards. “Have you noticed,” asked Lord Ranger, “that the nearer Christmas draws, the more stultified the atmosphere in this house becomes? I suppose we ought to join the ladies, but Harriet will promptly produce her folio of dreadful watercolors for me to admire, and Lucinda, I believe, is netting you a purse.”

  “I just remembered. Gully Parker—do you remember old Gully, sold out when we did?—has a tidy place over near Chipping Norton. If we ride there today, we could have some fun now that the Harringtons are out of bounds.”

  “I don’t care if the Harringtons are out of bounds, I am going there on Christmas day. I want to see those two young ladies enjoy their first Christmas, and nothing is going to stop me,” said Lord Ranger.

  “Then let us go and join the ladies in the drawing room and break the news to Mrs. Tenby that she must live without us for the rest of the day and then we’ll go and see Gully.”

  “Looks like snow. What if we get trapped?”

  “Then we won�
��t have to spend Christmas in this mausoleum. Come along.”

  They put on their coats and made their way upstairs to the drawing room.

  At the sight of them, Harriet promptly struck an Attitude. It was very fashionable for ladies to strike Attitudes, usually supposed to represent some heroine of Greek mythology. Harriet was meant to look like Pandora opening the box. She stared down at her work basket with an expression of horror on her face.

  “Got indigestion, have you?” asked Lord Ranger. “It was that buttered crab at dinner the other night.”

  “Lady Harrington,” announced Peter, the footman.

  Lady Harrington, like a warship under full sail, walked into the room, followed by the colonel.

  “My dear Lady Harrington,” cried Mrs. Tenby. “To what do we owe the honor of this visit?”

  Lady Harrington’s bright eyes fastened on Lucinda. “You,” she said in tones of loathing, “are a snake in the grass.”

  Lucinda stood up. “What can you mean, my lady?”

  “I mean that you wrote to Mr. and Mrs. Davenport and told them that their daughters were celebrating Christmas, knowing full well that Christmas is anathema to those Puritans.”

  “That’s a lie,” shrieked Lucinda, turning pale.

  “No, it’s not,” said the colonel. He caught sight of himself in the mirror and straightened his wig. “Heard you myself last night, you and Lady Harriet; laughing and chattering about it, you were.”

  “People who listen at doors never hear the right thing,” said Harriet.

  “Not with a precious pair like you,” said Lady Harrington wrathfully. “And you…” She rounded on Mrs. Tenby. “I know you persuaded that sniveling creature, Nash, to write to me and tell me the ball at Moreton had been canceled. What did you bribe him with, hey? He has money enough.”

  “He is greedy for fine porcelain,” said the colonel. “By God, madam, if I find out that is where my plate went and that it has not been broken, then I will wring Nash’s scrawny neck.”