“Oh, but why burn one at all? After all, even though it doesn't work it's a beautiful bit of carving. I don't mind its not working. It doesn't matter, really, does it, your not having one on the tree?”
“Ah, no. That's only old superstition: more a childhood custom than superstition now. I suppose my grandmother—my mother's mother, that is—had a lingering sort of belief in it. Perhaps she was the very last recipient of the very last shred of the memory of a Druid tradition.”
“Druid?”
“I imagine so. It seems to me that the custom of the Christmas−tree descends from ancient religion in which worship was carried on in groves or under particular sacred trees. Trees played a large part in Druid ritual. We have the mistletoe from them. But the Druids also practised human sacrifice: the doll we put on our Christmas−tree and ceremonially burn is, I think, a substitute for the human victim the Druids sent to communicate with the immortals in their groves of Britain long ago. Barbarous, isn't it, to think of children playing at human sacrifices; but then, you practise a bit of ritual cannibalism every time you take communion in Halliwell Church, and I never heard that the Druids ate their victims. That practice came from the Orient I suppose.”
He weighed the doll in his hand a moment, and then gave it back to Clare. “Poor doll,” she said. “I'm glad I saved you.”
She pondered a moment and then said:
“I'm sorry it didn't turn out right, all the same. But how do you make them work? I've often wondered, since you told me you made puppets. I've never seen them acting. Are they very life−like? It must be very difficult to make a lot of them move at once. How do you do it? With strings?”
He was silent for some time, and it had grown so dark now that she could not see his expression clearly, but she felt that he was frowning, thinking out something very difficult. Abruptly he gripped her by the shoulders.
“Listen!” he said. “Dare you come and see my puppets act? I want you to see them. But dare you come?” “Dare?” she repeated. “Why...?”
“Because,” he went on quickly, “you will have to come at night, alone, without anybody knowing. You'll have to come in the way you came when we first met—over the wall. Dare you do that?”
She could think of nothing for a few moments but the power of his hands and the strange languor they seemed to induce in her: there was an extraordinary mingling of sadness and delight in the feeling; the surrender, or captivity, rather, in which there was such pleasure, was the very captivity she had been seeking in vain in her dreams. Niall had to repeat his question, and then she replied as though the thing were self−evident:
“Yes, of course I dare. When shall I come?”
“A week tonight—but only if it's fine. I shall see you in the afternoon before, anyway. You must come over the wall by the beech−tree where you came before, at midnight. I'll meet you.”
She did not answer, but as he bent his head she put up her lips, willingly, eagerly, to be kissed again. They parted then and Clare ran the remaining distance over the rough, hard frozen track to the lodge−gates.
Miss Geary had been waiting for her some little time, walking up and down on the road outside. Clare broke into apologies, but the old lady seemed not to have minded her wait.
“Poor Rachel must be rather lonely now, with her son away and no one else in the house,” she observed, on their way back to Paston Hall.
“Yes,” said Clare, and hesitated. “Yes, I suppose she is a bit lonely,” she added, after an appreciable pause. She had meant to tell Miss Geary that Niall was expected back this night—that he was back, but she had hesitated: she could not tell Miss Geary that she had met him in the wood; and then there was her suspicion that Miss Geary did not like Niall. The moment to tell her had gone. She remained silent, justifying herself by reasoning that Niall's return would soon become known; she would see Niall at tea−time tomorrow and if Miss Geary mentioned him tomorrow she could say quite casually that she had seen him.
5
Clare slept deep and without dreaming that night; and she woke, as she had woken sometimes as a child on holiday in Spain, with a fine feeling that content was complete, that the day before her was wholly dedicated to happiness. The impress of Niall's kisses was on her lips, the strength of his arms was round her. His return and his touch had brought the final reinforcement that gave her victory over Paston Hall.
She looked round at the too−familiar, dreary little room, and laughed at it. It had no power whatsoever over her heart now. She remembered her promise to go over Brackenbine wall at midnight to meet him, and she exulted. The freedom she had ranged the night to find was not illusion: she was free—free as she had never been before, and her freedom had been found in such a desired captivity. She tried to conjure back again the overpowering happiness of being possessed that she had experienced when his arms tightened round her and his lips pressed hers; she could recapture only a part of it and she longed for the reality to be repeated. She marvelled at the paradox that surrender could bring such victory, captivity such freedom, and as she moved about her room, she glanced sideways into her looking−glass and wondered at the smile of deep content with which her musings had lit her face.
Life and time to come were very clear and definite to Clare this morning. One more term at Paston Hall, and then, freedom of body as well as this moral freedom she had won. She scarcely doubted now that she would win the Oxford Scholarship; she felt confident of overcoming any obstacle. Oxford, and the right to manage her own life.... Long Vacation when Niall would come and stay with her people in the country cottage where her father meant to settle down... long walks through green England, rambling where they would, talk and confidence and understanding as wide and deep as a summer sea and love like a sparkle of sunrise upon it. Niall and his mother would come and visit her in Oxford, in Oxford....
She recited softly to herself as she moved about the room:
'With her fair and floral air
And the love that lingers there.... '
Ah! if it were summer now, and the green leaves were spread in Brackenbine wood and the warm sunlight were pouring down into the glades.
She stood again in front of her looking−glass: her lips were curved, her eyes were bright; and yet it was so strange that a man such as he should love her, her—for what was she but a dull, shy, awkward schoolgirl, not even pretty in a young−girl way like some who had been in the Sixth last year? How old was he? He seemed so much older than she—but then, that might be past illness or some hard experience in foreign countries; he could not be more than thirty, and perhaps much less; he talked and laughed like a boy; perhaps he was not more than six or seven years older than she. But he had lived so much more; he had had so much more experience of the world; he must have known many more attractive girls than she. He had seen men and cities, and women, and yet he loved her.
She thought of his hands, the long, strong, craftsman's hands. His life was busy with delightful occupations and bright with constant new discoveries. With a sudden remembrance of an extra pleasure blossoming on the perfection of this morning, she opened her cupboard and took out the little parcel wrapped in tissue−paper and carefully undid it to examine the doll in the daylight.
It was hard to believe that something so life−like could be carved out of wood. The features were exquisitely made and painted with great delicacy. He had said that his mother painted his puppets and dressed them; she could imagine the care, the patience and skill Mrs. Sterne would bring to the task. And this doll had obviously been painted by an artist; indeed the face was not that of a doll at all, it was really a miniature portrait representing a girl of about Clare's own age, though, she admitted, much prettier than she. The eyes, in themselves, were a marvel, being tiny orbs of a glass−like substance inlaid in the wood and reproducing perfectly, though minutely, the white, the iris and the pupil of the natural eye. The hair was wonderfully well done also. Clare wondered what material Niall had used. It looked as though it might be silk; it was pale golden in colour, thick and shining, flowing to the little figure's waist, and it was so cunningly attached to the head that it seemed to grow out of the wood as real hair grows from the living scalp. She examined the arms and turned back the dress and looked at the body and legs of the figure. The workmanship seemed perfect, the effect astonishingly life−like; the figure was painted in flesh−tone so that the grain of the wood was not visible, and the modelling was exceedingly fine and accurate, down to the smallest lines of the toes and fingers, yet the whole figure was not more than eight or nine inches high. There was something Clare could not understand about it: it was a beautiful little statuette, but how could it ever have worked? She imagined a puppet as something like a child's wooden doll, only with more and looser joints. This figure did not appear to have any movable joints at all. Gently she tried to bend its arms and legs, and could not make them move. Niall had said it was a failure. Was that what he meant? But it did not seem to have been made to be moved. Unless... she peered more closely at the knee and elbow joints, and at last she thought she could discern some extremely fine, faint lines there. Were those the joints that should have moved and would not? She could not tell; she would have to ask Niall to let her handle one of the good ones when he showed her his puppet theatre. She smoothed down the dress again and brushed the silky hair with the tip of her hair−brush. It was a delightful little figure and she loved it for its own sake as well as because it was his. Jealously she wrapped it up again and put it away at the back of the top shelf of her cupboard. Miss Geary did not ask her that evening whether Niall had returned. In fact, during the next week Clare saw little of Miss Geary, for the old lady caught a bad cold and could not go out. To Clare's astonishment, Miss Sperrod raised no objection to her returning by herself in the afternoons from Brackenbine. From time to time when she encountered her about the school the Principal asked her about her studies, mentioned Mrs. Sterne and said she hoped Clare was working hard to take every advantage of the opportunity given her, but such enquiries were made in Miss Sperrod's customary defensive way, as if to prevent rather than elicit a reply. Clare volunteered no information whatsoever about what she was doing, and believed that in reality the Principal wanted none.