Black against the sky were the chimneys and the roof of the old farmhouse, friendly as the stars were the few lighted windows that linked hands with them to brighten night. Under the stable door a line of light showed. André, late as it was, must be busy there. Sophie remembered again that it was Christmas Eve when angels as well as demons are abroad. All stables are holy on Christmas Eve. It struck Sophie suddenly, as she looked at that line of light under the door, that they hold a heaven that can be clasped in the arms and an infinity so small that it can be seen and comprehended.
IV
A cow was sick and André was late in the stable that night. When he came out, leaving, according to the Island custom on Christmas Eve, fresh hay in the stalls and everything clean and sweet, he forbore to lock the door and left it just unlatched. This was so that Maximilian, when midnight struck and Christmas Day was born, could find his way in and kneel with the other animals. André laughed at himself as he pocketed the unused key, and wondered what on earth Ranulph would think of him if he knew. But he was not ashamed. He loved the Island legends; his mother had taught them to him, and whenever he could he reverenced and followed them. On his way to the house he noticed that Sophie had left Maximilian unchained in his kennel, and also that Maximilian was awake and waiting. His eyes in the darkness were like two bright stars. André patted him as he passed and Maximilian’s tongue shot out like a long pink snake, and coiled itself for a moment damply and lovingly round André’s finger. Marmalade was also awake and in the yard, but she was not waiting for anything. She was curvetting about, her green eyes like the lights of the “faeu Bellengier,” and her tail twitching. Sometimes she would crouch on the ground watching something invisible, then she would leap at it, swerve aside from it, spit at it, and then tear round the yard as though chasing it. But whatever it was she liked it. There was an unholy glee in her face and the lights in her eyes were the wicked lights such as witches tie on the ends of their broomsticks. Whatever it was she was chasing André was quite sure it had no business in his yard on Christmas Eve. Had it not been that Maximilian was absorbed in the stable door André would hardly have liked to leave him alone with Marmalade and the thing she was playing with. But so engrossed was Maximilian with holy things that he seemed safe from the unholy. . . . André let himself into the house and went upstairs to Rachell.
Ranulph’s little room over the stable had a window that commanded both the stable door and Maximilian’s kennel. Ranulph, sleepless, was sitting and smoking at it as the night crept on. A little fire of vraic was burning in his grate but there was no other light. Only the moonbeams slid from wall to ceiling and mingled their silver with the golden glow of the vraic. It was Ranulph’s first Christmas Eve in the Island since his young manhood, and he should have been thinking solemn thoughts. The past should have passed before him like a depressing pageant, and remorse and regret for a mis-spent life should have been with him in the room. But in reality he was trying to think of nothing at all except the peace and warmth of the room and his own sense of well-being. He preferred not to inquire into the cause of his satisfaction. He had no wish to admit to himself that he had utterly capitulated at last. All his life he had pursued complete independence as the highest good and now he had abruptly given up the chase and allowed himself to become hopelessly involved in place and person once again. He had no wish to look himself in the face and own up to his weakness. Sufficient that his captive state had brought him to this warm and peaceful room and to this dreamy pleasure and—freedom? Was it true that he felt, as he sat there, a free man? That corroding bitterness that his failure to find freedom had produced in him was now, to a large extent, gone. He was almost free of it and with it of his past life and all its horror. Was the paradox he had spoken of to Colin present in his own life? Had the acceptance of fetters unlocked the prison house? That eternal paradox! But he would not think and abruptly, as thoughts came, he turned from them to stir the fire or knock out his pipe. Thought was too confusing. He wanted only to enjoy with simplicity—a thing he had not done since his childhood’s days. He began to think of his childhood and of the many Christmas Eves he had known in the old house in Le Paradis. While his mother lived Christmas had been Christmas, in spite of his father, whose tyranny brooded even over such things as Christmas trees and cakes and threatened to take the heart out of all rejoicing. He marvelled now to think how his mother must have fought and toiled to keep a little spontaneity in their common life. When she had died spontaneity had died with her. He and André had had no choice but to fit into an iron groove or cast themselves adrift. The thought of past Christmases made him think of the Island legends his mother had told them as they sat round the fire on Christmas Eve roasting their chestnuts. In imagination he could see the drawing-room at the Le Paradis house lit by the leaping flames of the fire and the starlight over the sea. His father was in the library, and they had dared to pull the curtains and open the window. His mother, her hand raised to keep the heat of the flames from her face, would sit on the floor by the fire, her dark maroon dress billowing out around her so that she looked like a dark rose flung down on the hearthrug, and tell the Christmas stories to him and baby André. It was so he liked best to remember her, for it was only when her husband was absent that she seemed truly herself—when he was there she was not allowed to sit on the floor and there seemed a constraint and heartbreaking sense of frustration about her. Watching the leaping flames of his own fire, seeing the stars through the window, he could hear her voice telling how at midnight on Christmas Eve the animals all knelt down to worship and the water was turned to wine. . . . A faint sound crept through the quiet of the room, hardly louder than the stir of the flames and the whisper of the sea. The bells were ringing. Down in St. Pierre the steeple of the Town Church and the squat little tower of St. Raphael’s must be rocking and trembling with a cascade of sound, but up here at Bon Repos the chiming was so faint that it seemed unearthly. Ranulph glanced at his watch. Twelve o’clock. He looked out of the window. There was a line of light under the stable door. André, the idiot, must have left his lamp there when he went to tend the sick cow. As Ranulph watched he saw a dark shadow slip across the yard, push open the stable door and disappear. It was Maximilian. Ranulph suddenly decided that it was his duty to go and put out that light in the stable—no point in wasting oil. He was halfway across the room when he remembered his mother had told him as a small boy that no human being must set foot in the stables at midnight on Christmas Eve. It was the animals’ hour. The poor ill-treated donkey, kicked and cuffed through the centuries, yet permitted to carry a King to Jerusalem; the cow, slaughtered for man’s food yet giving its own sweet hay for a babe to lie on; the horse and the dog who bear so patiently with the folly of human kind, these are safe from man and may worship alone and at peace. Ranulph decided to leave the light alone and sat down again. As he did so he laughed and wondered what on earth André would think of him if he knew.
V
Colette, being the youngest of the family, was naturally the first to wake up on Christmas morning. She wriggled up from the bottom of her bed and popped her head out. It was still dark, but a faint greying where the window was gave promise of the dawn. It was very cold, and Colette, like a tortoise thinking better of it, withdrew her head and crept beneath her shell again. There in the warm darkness she remembered her stocking. Now that Jacqueline was growing up, Colette and Colin were the only ones of the family left to have stockings, for Rachell had decreed that those old enough to go to early Mass should lay aside such childish things as stockings. The sucking of pink sugar pigs in the early hours of Christmas morning was, so she said, for the consolation of those who had to be kept out of mischief until their elders returned from church. When she remembered her stocking Colette scrambled down to the bottom of the bed, dragged away the bedclothes, thrust her head out of the aperture and grabbed it. Then she retired under cover again, hugging its delicious hard bulkiness to her bosom. She did not want to wake
up Peronelle by demanding a light, so, having satisfied herself by pinching that the sugar pig was there, and the orange and the apple, and the boiled sweets, and the doll, she fell asleep again, clasping it to her as a mother her babe. When she awoke it was to find Peronelle removing layers of bedclothes off the top of her head.
“A Merry Christmas, darling,” cried Peronelle. “How it is you don’t suffocate I don’t know. And you’ve lain on your stocking. The doll will be all over pig.”
Colette sat up and hugged Peronelle.
The candles were lighted, but day was faintly blue behind the curtains, and Peronelle was in her hat and coat ready to go to Mass.
Then began a frantic hubbub of Christmas hugs. Michelle and Jacqueline in their coats and hats came along to kiss and be kissed. Rachell in her best mantle, with her prayer book in her hand and every hair in place, sailed in to bless them. André, with his waistcoat inside out and his hair awry, rushed frantically everywhere looking for a lost stud. Colin in his white nightshirt played leapfrog over the beds, and down below the back door clicked as Sophie came back from an incredibly early Mass to get the breakfast and keep an eye on the youngest children while the others went to church.
At last the hubbub subsided and Colin and Colette hung out of the window to watch the landau drive off to church in the dim frosty dawn. Over the sea a star shone faintly in a brightening sky but night still clouded the land, and the landau, driving off under the trees with its swinging lamps, disappeared in a mysterious darkness. Colin stayed at the window watching the lights disappear and listening as the sound of the wheels died away. He felt awed. The darkness that had swallowed his family held the mysteries of religion that were yet unknown to him but known to them. Out of the darkness he felt fingers stretch and touch him, and something in him awoke and stirred a little.
Colette brought him back to reality by butting him in the back.
“Look,” she said, pointing, “is that the star?”
Colin looked. The star over the sea was still there, though the deep blue of the sky behind it was slowly changing to a dove-grey barred with pale lemon and lavender.
“It might be,” said Colin, “but I don’t think it’s fat enough. The star in the Christmas pictures is always fat, with spokes.”
“Perhaps they’ve fallen off,” suggested Colette, “if the star was new when Jesus was born it must be very nearly worn out by this time.”
“Stars,” said Colin, “don’t wear out. They are like God. Always as good as new.”
“My stocking!” squeaked Colette suddenly and trundled rapidly back to her bed.
Following a time honoured custom in the du Frocq family they wrapped themselves in quilts and got into their parents’ bed to open their stockings, drawing the curtains to form a sultan’s tent, and sitting enthroned on the high pillows in great state. The stockings were all that could be desired. Each contained the essentials, the sugar pig, the orange, the apple, and the boiled sweets, and many delights besides, such as a doll and a miniature flat iron for Colette, a water pistol and a sailor’s whistle for Colin. They had a lovely time. They ate all the boiled sweets except a few moist globules kept for the family, and all of the pigs except the hind quarters, kept for Rachell. Colette’s pig, as Peronelle had predicted, had stuck to the doll, but it didn’t really matter, and the paint from the doll’s face that adhered to the flanks of the pig tasted quite nice. Colin filled his pistol with water and squirted at the picture of the Last Judgment, getting the angel with the trumpet full in the chest every time, and Colette, each time he hit the mark, blew the whistle. After an hour of this Sophie came up, took away the pistol and the whistle, mopped up the water and dressed them. Sophie seemed in an extremely good mood. She did not scold at all, even though the water was dripping down the Last Judgment and collecting in a pool on the floor, and she never smacked them once as she hustled them into their clothes. Her eyes were shining, her round red cheeks were redder than ever, and her stays creaked and popped like joyously tapping drums. Colette, quick to feel what others were feeling, sensed her joy.
“Have you had a sugar pig, Sophie?” she asked.
“Better than that,” said Sophie, bursting to communicate her news, if only to the children. “I’ve had the offer of a husband. Holy Virgin! On Christmas morning, too!”
“Is that all?” said Colin, disappointed.
“Walking back from Mass he popped the question, as they say in England,” said Sophie, “and there was I looking in the fairy well only last night and never saw a thing but the stars and the sky—just shows you there’s nothing in these tales.”
Colette, pleased but uncomprehending, put her arms as far round Sophie’s waist as they would reach and kissed her.
“Who popped the question?” asked Colin.
“Jacquemin Gossilin,” chattered Sophie. “It was that blue coat and skirt did it. All yesterday afternoon his eyes were on it.”
Colin politely said nothing, but he was dismayed. How are the mighty fallen! He could not believe that his friend Jacquemin Gossilin could be such an utter fool as to want to marry Sophie—he could not have seen Sophie with her hair curlers in.
Island Magic Page 21