The Colonel’s face grew scarlet; then he laid a trembling hand upon the girl’s bowed head. “Child,” he said, “you—you—” Tears blinded his eyes and he stopped.
In the silence that followed came the sharp sound of a quick footfall. The Colonel looked up. Dick Fairfax stood in the doorway, his eyes burning strangely in the white misery of his face.
The father rose and straightened himself with something of his old, stern dignity; but at a warm, girlish touch he gulped.
“Dick,” he said queerly, holding out a trembling hand, “we’re—we’re both citizens of the United States, and—it’s Christmas Day.”
Almost before he had finished the boy had bounded across the floor and wrung the outstretched hand, his face radiant with delight. By the fire Ruth cried softly and the Colonel gently patted her dark head, his eyes full of tenderness. Then taking refuge from the sharp pain of his emotion in austere command:
“Dick,” he said sternly, “go to your mother.”
When Uncle Noah, in a state of beatification impossible to describe, summoned the four to the wonderful Christmas dinner Colonel Fairfax was eagerly listening to the tales of Dick’s success as told by Ruth, and Dick was gently patting his mother’s gray hair, a halo of silver crowning a face radiant with happiness—a Christmas quartet whose reconciliation Uncle Noah could as yet but imperfectly comprehend. That he had been the unconscious instrument of it all the gray-eyed lady had already told him; but Uncle Noah, busy with numberless culinary problems in the kitchen, had not as yet had time to ferret it out.
At four o’clock Major Verney, who had been restrained from dashing over to Brierwood hours before only by the necessity of soothing the ruffled feelings of his irate mother after her long wait for a belated sleigh on the porch of the Cotesville church, blustered in with the aggrieved old lady upon his arm.
“We’ve come to supper,” announced the Major. “No, Dick,” as the Colonel rose, “sit down. I know all about it, and tonight you’re all going back to Fernlands with me to celebrate the betrothal of these two youngsters.”
“It has been a day of mysteries,” the Colonel said; “but will someone please tell me what Uncle Noah was doing over at Fernlands this morning when he was needed here?”
A silence fell over the little group. The subject was one whose delicacy forbade the ghost of a blunder.
It was the Major who at last drew his old friend into the deep window recess where but the night before he had watched Uncle Noah pursuing the elusive Job, and told him the story of the faithful old negro’s Christmas Eve.
The Colonel listened intently, the snowy landscape outside growing blurred and misty as the record of the old man’s devotion gradually unfolded. Before the Major had finished the Colonel’s hand had crept to the bell at his side, and, as the darky’s shuffling footsteps echoed along the corridor, he turned again and stared with unseeing eyes at the outline of the old barn. Dick shifted the log and a crimson glow irradiated the old library, making a halo of soft fire about the figure of the old darky as he paused before his master.
“Uncle Noah,” said the Colonel brokenly, “I—” but his voice failed him, and he wrung the old man’s hand in silence.
The Major bent and whispered a few swift words to the startled darky and a great light illumined the brown face. “Doan yoh go foh to thank me, Massa Dick,” he crooned, patting the Colonel’s hand with reverent devotion; “I ain’t wuth it. All I needs, sah, is jus’ a good kick for disobeyin’ orders. ’Spects I doan understan’ it all, but I does know, sah, dat de lady wid de gray eyes whut’s at Major Verney’s is—is a good fairy, sah. An’, Colonel, de Christmas supper am ready.”
Joyously they filed out, Dick lingering in the firelight for a word with Ruth. Grandmother Verney, in high good humor, went out on the Colonel’s arm, the grievance of the morning’s belated sleigh quite forgotten in the genial warmth of the Fairfax hospitality.
“And what, Uncle Noah,” asked the Colonel of the old darky as usual, “have we tonight for supper?”
“Well, sah,” beamed Uncle Noah, “we has ham an’ turkey, an’ cranberry sauce an’ celery, an’ baked apples an’ mince pie an’ fruitcake an’—an’—laws-a-massy, Massa, I’se too kerflusterated to ricomember any mo’.”
“We’ll have them all!” cried the Colonel.
A terrific gobbling arose beneath the dining-room window, and the Major rose and stared out in astonishment.
“Merciful goodness, Dick,” he demanded, “what is that horrible racket?’
“Laws-a-massy, Massa,” cried the old darky, “it’s Job! I let him out a while back, sah, an’ I done fohgot to put him to roost. I reckon he’s come to remind me.”
And, beaming happily at the radiant Christmas party, Uncle Noah flung up the window and in a terrible voice commanded the tyrant to be silent.
THE TRUCE OF GOD, by Mary Roberts Rinehart
I.
Now the day of the birth of our Lord dawned that year grey and dreary, and a Saturday. But, despite the weather, in the town at the foot of the hill there was rejoicing, as befitted so great a festival. The day before a fat steer had been driven to the public square and there dressed and trussed for the roasting. The light of morning falling on his carcass revealed around it great heaps of fruits and vegetables. For the year had been prosperous.
But the young overlord sulked in his castle at the cliff top, and bit his nails. From Thursday evening of each week to the morning of Monday, Mother Church had decreed peace, a Truce of God. Three full days out of each week his men-at-arms polished their weapons and grew fat. Three full days out of each week his grudge against his cousin, Philip of the Black Beard, must feed on itself.
His dark mood irritated the Bishop of Tours, who had come to speak of certain scandalous things which had come to his ears. Charles heard him through.
“She took refuge with him,” he said violently, when the Bishop had finished. “She knew what hate there was between us, yet she took refuge with him.”
“The question is,” said the Bishop mildly, “why she should have been driven to refuge. A gentle lady, a faithful wife—”
“Deus!” The young seigneur clapped a fist on the table. “You know well the reason. A barren woman!”
“She had borne you a daughter.”
But Charles was far gone in rage and out of hand. The Bishop took his offended ears to bed, and left him to sit alone by the dying fire, with bitterness for company.
Came into the courtyard at midnight the Christmas singers from the town; the blacksmith rolling a great bass, the crockery-seller who sang falsetto, and a fool of the village who had slept overnight in a manger on the holy eve a year before and had brought from it, not wit, but a voice from Heaven. A miracle of miracles.
The men-at-arms in the courtyard stood back to give them space. They sang with eyes upturned, with full-throated vigor, albeit a bit warily, with an anxious glance now and then toward those windows beyond which the young lord sulked by the fire.
“The Light of Light Divine, True Brightness undefiled. He bears for us the shame of sin, A holy, spotless Child.”
They sang to the frosty air.
When neither money nor burning fagot was flung from the window they watched, they took their departure, relieved if unrewarded.
In former years the lady of the Castle had thrown them alms. But times had changed. Now the gentle lady was gone, and the seigneur sulked in the hall.
With the dawn Charles the Fair took himself to bed. And to him, pattering barefoot along stone floors, came Clotilde, the child of his disappointment.
“Are you asleep?”
One arm under his head, he looked at her without answer.
“It is the anniversary of the birth of our Lord,” she ventured. “Today He is born. I thought—” She put out a small, very cold hand. But he turned his head away.
“Back to your bed,” he said shortly. “Where is your nurse, to permit this?”
The child’s face
fell. Something she had expected, some miracle, perhaps, a softening of the lord her father, so that she might ask of him a Christmas boon.
The Bishop had said that Christmas miracles were often wrought, and she herself knew that this was true. Had not the Fool secured his voice, so that he who had been but lightly held became the village troubadour, and slept warm and full at night?
She had gone to the Bishop with this the night before.
“If I should lie in a manger all night,” she said, standing with her feet well apart and looking up at him, “would I become a boy?”
The Bishop tugged at his beard. “A boy, little maid! Would you give up your blue eyes and your soft skin to be a roystering lad?”
“My father wishes for a son,” she had replied and the cloud that was over the Castle shadowed the Bishop’s eyes.
“It would not be well,” he replied, “to tamper with the works of the Almighty. Pray rather for this miracle, that your father’s heart be turned toward you and toward the lady, your mother.”
So during much of the night she had asked this boon steadfastly. But clearly she had not been heard.
“Back to your bed!” said her father, and turned his face away.
So she went as far as the leather curtain which hung in the doorway and there she turned.
“Why do they sing?” she had asked the Bishop, of the blacksmith and the others, and he had replied into his beard, “To soften the hard of heart.”
So she turned in the doorway and sang in her reedy little voice, much thinned by the cold, sang to soften her young father’s heart.
“The Light of Light Divine, True Brightness undefined. He bears for us the shame of sin, A holy, spotless Child.”
But the song failed. Perhaps it was the wrong hour, or perhaps it was because she had not slept in the manger and brought forth the gift of voice.
“Blood of the martyrs!” shouted her father, and raised himself on his elbow. “Are you mad? Get back to your bed. I shall have a word with someone for this.”
Whether it had softened him or not it had stirred him, so she made her plea.
“It is His birthday. I want to see my mother.”
Then she ducked under the curtain and ran as fast as she could back to where she belonged. Terror winged her feet. She had spoken a forbidden word.
All sleep was gone from Charles the Fair. He lay on his elbow in his bed and thought of things that he wished to forget: of the wife he had put away because in eight years she had borne him no son; of his great lands that would go to his cousin, Philip of the Black Beard, whom he hated; of girls in the plain who wooed him with soft eyes and whom he passed by; of a Jew who lay in a dungeon beneath the Castle because of usury and other things.
After a time he slept again, but lightly, for the sun came in through the deep, unshaded window and fell on his face and on the rushes that covered the floor. And in his sleep the grimness was gone, and the pride. And his mouth, which was sad, contended with the firmness of his chin.
Clotilde went back to her bed and tucked her feet under her to warm them. In the next room her nurse lay on a bed asleep, with her mouth open; outside in the stone corridor a page slept on a skin, with a corner over him against the draught.
She thought things over while she warmed her feet. It was clear that singing did not soften all hearts. Perhaps she did not sing very well. But the Bishop had said that after one had done a good act one might pray with hope. She decided to do a good act and then to pray to see her mother; she would pray also to become a boy so that her father might care for her. But the Bishop considered it a little late for such a prayer.
She made terms with the Almighty, sitting on her bed.
“I shall do a good act,” she said, “on this the birthday of Thy Son, and after that I shall ask for the thing Thou knowest of.”
After much thinking, she decided to free the Jew. And being, after all, her father’s own child, she acted at once.
It was a matter of many cold stone steps and much fumbling with bars. But Guillem the gaoler had crept up to the hall and lay sleeping by the fire, with a dozen dogs about him. It was the time of the Truce of God, and vigilance was relaxed. Also Guillem was in love with a girl of the village and there was talk that the seigneur, in his loneliness, had seen that she was beautiful. So Guillem slept to forget, and the Jew lay awake because of rats and anxiety.
The Jew rose from the floor when Clotilde threw the grating open, and blinked at her with weary and gentle eyes.
“It is the birthday of our Lord,” said Clotilde, “and I am doing a good deed so that I may see my mother again. But go quickly.” Then she remembered something the Bishop had said to her, and eyed him thoughtfully as he stared at her.
“But you do not love our Lord!”
The Jew put out his foot quietly so that she could not close the grating again. But he smiled into her eyes.
“Your Lord was a Jew,” he said.
This reassured her. It seemed to double the quality of mercy. She threw the door wide and the usurer went out cautiously, as if suspecting a trap. But patches of sunlight, barred with black, showed the way clear. He should have gone at once, but he waited to give her the blessing of his people. Even then, having started, he went back to her. She looked so small in that fearsome place.
“If there is something you wish, little maid, and I can secure it for you—”
“I wish but two things,” she said. “I wish to be a boy, only I fear it is too late for that. The Bishop thinks so. And I wish to see my mother.”
And these being beyond his gift, and not contained in the pack he had fastened to his shoulders, he only shook his head and took his cautious way toward freedom.
Having tried song and a good deed, Clotilde went back again to her room, stepping over the page, who had curled himself up in a ball, like a puppy, and still slept. She crossed her hands on her breast and raised her eyes as she had been taught.
“Now, O Lord,” she said, “I have tried song and I have tried a good deed. I wish to see my mother.”
Perhaps it was merely coincidence that the level rays of the morning sun just then fell on the crucifix that hung on the wall, and that although during all the year it seemed to be but of wood and with closed eyes, now it flashed as with life and the eyes were open.
“He was one of Your people,” she said to the crucifix, “and by now he is down the hill.”
II.
Now it was the custom on the morning of the Holy day for the seigneur to ride his finest stallion to the top of the hill, where led a steep road down into the town. There he dismounted, surrounded by his people, guests and soldiers, smaller visiting nobility, the household of the Castle. And, the stage being set as it were, and the village waiting below, it was his pleasure to give his charger a great cut with the whip and send him galloping, unridden, down the hill. The horse was his who caught it.
Below waited the villagers, divided between terror and cupidity. Above waited the Castle folk. It was an amusing game for those who stood safely along the parapet and watched, one that convulsed them with merriment. Also, it improved the quality of those horses that grazed in the plain below.
This year it was a great grey that carried Charles out to the road that clung to the face of the cliff. Behind him on a donkey, reminder of the humble beast that had borne the Christ into Jerusalem, rode the Bishop. Saddled and bridled was the grey, with a fierce head and great shoulders, a strong beast for strong days.
The men-at-arms were drawn up in a double line, weapons at rest. From the place below rose a thin grey smoke where the fire kindled for the steer. But the crowd had deserted and now stood, eyes upraised to the Castle, and to the cliff road where waited boys and men ready for their desperate emprise, clad in such protection of leather as they could afford against the stallion’s hoofs.
Two people only remained by the steer, an aged man, almost blind, who tended the fire, and the girl Joan, whom Guillem slept to forget.
�
��The seigneur has ridden out of the gates, father,” she said. The color mounted to her dark cheeks. She was tall and slender, unlike the peasant girls of the town, almost noble in her bearing; a rare flower that Charles, in his rage and disappointment, would pick for himself.
“And were you not undutiful,” he mumbled, “you would be with him now, and looking down on this rabble.”
She did not reply at once. Her eyes were fixed on the frowning castle, on the grim double line of men-at-arms, at the massive horse and its massive rider.
“I, too, should be up there,” whined the old man. “Today, instead of delivering Christmas dues, I should be receiving them. But you—!” He swung on her malevolently, “You must turn great ox-eyes toward Guillem, whose most courageous work is to levy tribute of a dungeon!”
She flushed.
“I am afraid, father. He is a hard man.”
“He is gentle with women.”
“Gentle!” Her eyes were still upraised. “He knows not the word. When he looks at me there is no liking in his eyes. I am—frightened.”
The overlord sat his great horse and surveyed the plain below. As far as he could see, and as far again in every direction, was his domain, paying him tithe of fat cattle and heaping granaries. As far as he could see and as far again was the domain that, lacking a man-child, would go to Philip, his cousin.
The Bishop, who rode his donkey without a saddle, slipped off and stood beside the little beast on the road. His finger absently traced the dark cross on its back.
“Idiots!” snarled the overlord out of his distemper, as he looked down into the faces of his faithful ones below. “Fools and sons of fools! Thy beast would suit them better, Bishop, than mine.”
Then he flung himself insolently out of the saddle. There was little of Christmas in his heart, God knows; only hate and disappointment and thwarted pride.
“A great day, my lord,” said the Bishop. “Peace over the land. The end of a plentiful year—”
“Bah!”
The Second Christmas Megapack Page 56
