Clare gave a last look at the pile of brushwood, then, with a sudden exclamation of surprise, stepped nearer and parted the branches of the Christmas−tree near its top which leaned against the smoke−blackened wall.
“Oh look!” she cried. “You've forgotten the doll! How lucky I noticed it!”
The little figure in green that she had seen on the tree on Christmas Eve was still there, tied with thread to the stem of the tree and hidden by the branches. She tugged and twisted it to free it. The few threads soon broke and she turned with the doll in her hand, to find Mrs. Sterne looking at her rather oddly, with raised eyebrows.
Clare looked down at the doll. It was beautifully made and dressed; its silken hair and delicately carved and painted features were most life−like.
“What a shame if it had got burnt,” she said. “It's so pretty. It's one that Niall made, isn't it?” “Yes,” said Mrs. Sterne. She paused and then, when she spoke again, she sounded a little at a loss.
“I hadn't exactly forgotten it,” she said slowly. “We leave the doll on when we burn the tree after Christmas. It's an old superstition. We've always done it in our family. It's supposed to bring good luck throughout the next year, you know.”
Clare looked crestfallen. “Oh ... Oh dear, I'm sorry.... I shouldn't have taken it off.” She turned uncertainly towards the tree again as if wondering whether she should put it back. “Oh, but what a shame to burn such a pretty little thing,” she exclaimed again. “It must have taken him weeks to make it!”
She sounded so distressed that Mrs. Sterne laughed, and patted her shoulder.
“As a matter of fact he said it was a dud,” she said. “But I'll tell you what: we won't burn that one. You have that one. I'll cut one out of paper for tonight. I don't expect the Fates or the Fairies or whoever it is receives these sacrifices will know the difference.”
Clare was still more embarrassed. “Oh, but if it's Niall's...” she began. Mrs. Sterne laughed at her objections, and, carrying the doll off to the dining−room, quickly wrapped it in a piece of tissue−paper and stowed it in the pocket of Clare's coat. “There,” she said. “Perhaps it will bring you good luck all this year.”
Clare still protested that she could not take it. But in the end, blushing a little for the lameness of the compromise, and the confession of superstition, she said:
“I'll ask him if he'll let me keep it till after Easter, just till the exam.”
“Of course!” said Mrs. Sterne, smiling. “That's it. My grandmother would have read a meaning into your coming into the house and taking the Christmas doll from the tree, like that. But I expect you don't believe in omens?”
“Only good ones,” said Clare firmly.
She gave herself to the Latin lesson that afternoon with an even greater cheerfulness and energy than before Niall went away. Throughout their reading and the digressions Mrs. Sterne permitted she was alert to catch any hint of the time when Niall was expected, but Mrs. Sterne did not refer to his home−coming again.
The short afternoon darkened, Mrs. Sterne made the tea and they drank it by the firelight, and at last Clare, seeing that it was turned four o'clock, dared linger no more in the hope of hearing his footstep in the hall.
She set off along the winding drive alone, and she went now with a brisk step. The disappointment of not seeing Niall this afternoon was nothing in comparison with the certainty that he would be there at tea−time tomorrow. Clare had discarded all pretence with herself now. She curled her fingers round the little parcel in her pocket and rejoiced that she was in love with Niall Sterne and would see him in twenty−four hours' time. He had come back and the magic circle was whole again. She felt the bright certainty ring her round like the still, clear circle of flame that had shone round the girls in her dreams.
A little before the lodge−gates were reached the drive turned sharply round a great flat rock that obtruded from the slope of the hill. Just as she reached this point Clare was startled by an animal that shot down from the dusk of the wood, stood poised for a second in the middle of the path and then scurried back behind the rock. It was too big for either rabbit or stoat, and as it disappeared she had a glimpse of a long furry tail held high. A fox? she thought, moving slowly forward again and looking wonderingly after the creature. Suddenly it sprang into full view again, on the rock, on a level with her shoulder: an enormous cat. She gave a gasp—Grim, of course! She called his name aloud.
She was answered gaily from the wood by a human voice:
“And his master! Less active on this confounded hillside but no less happy to see you!”
There was a slithering and a crackling of branches and then a tall form came scrambling down the slope of a little path under the trees beside the rock.
“Niall!” she exclaimed, aware, but heedless, of the joy and relief that sounded in her voice. He had taken her in his arms before she could speak another word and held her, looking down into her face. They looked at one another in the thickening dusk for a long time and Clare marvelled at the great tenderness the twilight seemed to lay on his face, marvelled until she understood, with a sudden, strange defection of her bodily strength, that it was not the twilight alone that had changed him. His arms encircling her were very hard and strong; she wished their circle might never be broken again.
“I am so glad it wasn't long. So very glad,” she said at length. “Have you missed me so?'
She nodded. “The nights were the worst,” she said, in a voice which, in spite of herself, had a pitiful little note of pain in it. “I couldn't sleep. I had—ah! such wearying dreams. I cried in my sleep.”
He nodded slowly and understandingly.
“But I have drawn the circle again now. The spell is whole. Do you want it never to be broken again?” “Never.”
He kissed her. “Never is a word of power,” he said, in a voice as low and serious as her own. “And Solomon never sealed a spell with an impression more potent than this.”
She clung to him, but at last he gently loosed her, stroked her hair, and said regretfully: “This is too short a meeting. There will be Miss Geary waiting for you at the lodge−gates, and my mother waiting for me in the house....”
“But did she expect you so early?”
“Ah, I came by a short−cut over the hill. I met this old poacher hunting in the wood and he heard you and led me to you.”
“Good Grim,” said Clare softly, stroking his broad head. “Oh look!” she exclaimed, suddenly recollecting and pulling the wrapped−up doll from her pocket. “I ought to tell you—I was helping your mother to pile up the Christmas decorations for burning and I saw this—the doll—on the tree and I thought it'd been overlooked—I mean, I didn't know she meant to burn it—”
He took the little parcel quickly from her and felt it with his fingers as if identifying its contents. “She gave it to you?” he enquired sharply.
“Yes,” said Clare. “I wanted to put it back when she told me, but she said you wouldn't mind, and it is so pretty—I couldn't bear to think of its being just burnt: all that work. You don't mind, do you?”
“Why,” he answered, hesitating a little. “Why, no. If you like it, I'm pleased that she gave it you. Only I'd rather have made one for you specially—a perfect one. That's one of my failures.”
“A failure?” she exclaimed. “But it's a lovely little thing. Why is it a failure?”
“I don't know why,” he said slowly. “I don't know why it was wrong. But something did go wrong with the animation. That's why I put it on the tree. I wouldn't have burnt a good one, of course.”