by Sara Seale
“She enjoys every moment, bless her! I must say I’m longing to see the tree lighted up. It’s like a real fairy tale Christmas to have candles. Anywhere else you would just press a switch. It isn’t at all the same thing.”
He came and sat on the stairs beside her, and their voices echoed faintly in the high, empty hall.
“You have a feeling for old-fashioned things, haven’t you?” he said. “Well, you’ve come to the right house. There’s very little that’s modern about Tremawvan. Hey! What have you done to the statues? I’m sure Brownie didn’t sanction that!”
One statue wore a wreath of mistletoe, another had a sprig of holly tucked behind one ear, while the third which stood on the landing bearing a torch wore a paper frill about its loins.
Tina giggled.
“I did it after she’d gone to bed. Do you think she’ll be shocked?”
“Thoroughly! Brownie has a deep respect for those statues. She says they are the mark of a gentleman’s establishment.” He straightened a disordered strand of her long, fine hair and smiled at her affectionately. “It’s the first time I’ve ever known you play an impudent prank. You’re beginning to feel you belong now, aren’t you, Tina?”
“To Tremawvan?”
“Of course to Tremawvan.”
She sighed, leaning against his shoulder, her eyes on the shining decorations of the tree.
“Yes,” she said, “I suppose I must. Last year when I stayed with the Johnsons I helped with the decorations too, but it wasn’t the same.”
“Serve you right!” he said unfeelingly. “You should have come home.”
“I thought you didn’t want me,” she replied simply. “I thought this sort of Christmas was just a bother.”
He was silent for a moment, feeling the closeness of the young body which rested against him and put out a hand to support her shoulders.
“You thought a lot of things that weren’t true in those days, didn’t you?” he said then.
“I don’t see how I was to know,” she answered, and was suddenly silent, remembering Belle’s taunts. There was no means ever of knowing, she thought. Pentreath motives, Pentreath wants were not as other people’s.
“Craig“ she began, but the things she wanted to ask him would not easily form themselves into words that could be said.
“Well?”
The clear eyes clouded a little.
“Nothing,” she said, “Shall I take the decorations off the statues?”
“No, leave them as they are. I don’t doubt Brownie will survive. You have a habit of beginning sentences you don’t finish. What were you really going to say?”
She turned her head on his shoulder, feeling the unfamiliar roughness of his coat beneath her cheek.
“It isn’t always easy—or sensible—to finish sentences. One sometimes speaks without thought,” she said.
“That sounds like the caution I used to tease you about getting the upper hand,” he observed.
“You’ve never teased me,” she replied seriously. “One doesn’t, you know, unless there’s fondness. It’s like taking liberties with places where you don’t belong.”
The oil lamps in their sconces were burning low and the log in the great open chimney had smouldered to fine ash, throwing the staircase in shadow. In the darkness Craig seemed anonymous, a shoulder to lean upon, a voice to reply with impersonal gentleness as he did now.
“How can you assess fondness if you don’t recognize it?”
“It’s not always easy,” she said. “Perhaps there are different kinds.”
“Very probably. Tina—” Light flooded suddenly across the flags as a door opened and Belle came into the hall, carrying a lamp.
“W-ell!” she drawled. “What a charming picture! How very surprising, Craig, to find you, of all people, canoodling on the stairs, or is Christmas making you feel sentimental?”
Craig got to his feet instantly and as he moved away from her Tina was aware of the immediate change in him.
His face in the light of Belle’s lamp looked darkly sardonic and his voice held only distaste as he answered:
“I’m not given to canoodling, as you call it, and I’m about as unsentimental as you are, Belle. Good night, Tina it’s time you were in bed.”
He crossed the hall to the living-room and shut the door and Belle gave a little laugh.
“Did I interrupt something?” she asked, then shook her head. “Really, Tina, Craig’s not a boy in his teens. You won’t make much headway with him by trying to work up a flirtation on the stairs. You’d better go to bed as he suggested. You’re looking all washed out and no wonder.”
Tina rose to allow her stepmother to pass but she made no reply.
The silver balls on the tree leapt to fleeting life in the moving lamplight as Belle went up the stairs, but for Tina the beauty had gone from the tree, and the decorated statues looked merely silly. She turned dispiritedly at the foot of the stairs and followed in the wake of the moving lamp.
There was still snow on the ground on Christmas morning, but not enough, Brownie said, to make transport difficult for the miners and cannery workers in the afternoon. It was a tradition at Tremawvan to entertain the men and their families on Christmas Day with presents from the tree and a vast high tea at five o’clock. The dining-room was already prepared with extra leaves in the huge mahogany table and piles of fruit and sweetmeats and crackers heaped on the sideboard. This year, Brownie said, was a special occasion since it also celebrated the master of Tremawvan’s engagement, and Tina was to take special pains to make an impression on the wives and children.
“I’m not very good at making impressions,” Tina laughed as they sat at breakfast. “I’ve always been well trained to keep in the background.”
“H’m,” said Brownie non-committally. “Well, that’s no bad thing if done right, but you’ll be on view, so to speak, today, Tina. You’ll be expected to behave like a gracious hostess and not a gawky girl just out of school. They’ll all be watching you.”
“It sounds alarming,” Tina said and filled her mouth too full of toast and marmalade, which, as Brownie remarked, was not the effect to be desired.
Tina felt a little flat. Paper and string littered the table and the household presents had been duly opened and admired, but only she and Brownie were there to enjoy them. Belle was, as usual, breakfasting in bed, and Craig had gone out early to see one of his men who had been taken ill in the night. Without him it was not the same. Tina’s eager fingers itched to cut through string and tear off paper, but Brownie insisted on knots being undone, patiently and methodically, and the string rolled in neat little balls before each parcel was opened. There was no one to thank for Craig’s charming seed pearls which were fashioned so delicately that they looked like an intricate necklace of lace, and she scarcely thought she owed the choice of a privately printed collection of poems to Belle’s good taste. Only to Brownie could she express her gratitude and Brownie at the moment was busy with lists for the party and paid little attention.
Belle, when she came downstairs, was gracious over her own presents but unenthusiastic about Tina’s necklace.
“Seed pearls,” she said, eyeing them without interest. “It wouldn’t have hurt my rich Cousin Craig to run to the real thing, but I suppose he thought it was hardly necessary. I expect he picked the least valuable thing from that wasted collection of his and sensibly saved his money.”
“He did not then! He spent a deal of trouble looking for something which would please Tina. I happen to know, Belle Linden, that piece is an antique and quite valuable,” Brownie snapped, but Belle only yawned.
“I can’t help it. Seed pearls always remind me of aged aunts and cameos and antimacassars,” she said. “What time does this dreary gathering arrive this afternoon?”
Brownie, snorting, swept Tina off to decorate the dining room table, and so busy was she kept that she had no opportunity of thanking Craig for his gift until she met him at lunch. Then, under Be
lle’s malicious eyes she could do no more than thank him formally and a little colorlessly for the pearls.
The memory of the night before, of the tenderness which had changed so swiftly to distasteful hauteur, still remained with her, making her feel awkward, so that she was glad to keep out of his way and use the coming party as an excuse when he suggested she should sit down and talk to him for half an hour after lunch.
“Have you been upsetting her again?” he asked Belle when they were alone.
Belle laughed, stuffing candied fruit into her mouth with greedy pleasure.
“I assure you I really don’t go round trying to upset your ewe-lamb,” she said. “What makes you think you’re out of favor?”
“I thought her manner was a little unnatural. Probably my imagination.”
“Well—” Belle made a careful selection from the box. “If you really want to know I think she was a wee bit disappointed with your present.”
“My present?” He had taken a great deal of trouble to find the right thing for Tina. “I thought it was rather charming.”
“Oh, darling, of course, and so suitable, but you know what young girls are. I think she thought that seed pearls were rather a stingy choice. She didn’t actually say so, of course, but she wasn’t exactly cordial with her thank you was she?”
“I see,” he said, his jaw tightening, and went out of the room.
II
Tina did not much enjoy the party. Aware of the watchful eyes of the women following her every movement, she was shy and self-conscious, and Craig introducing her a dozen times over seemed unaware of her little bids for his approval. Only when the tree was lighted and the children forgot their own awkwardness to exclaim with pleasure, could she relax in enjoyment, and like a child herself, cry out with delight, and linking hands with the children, sing the carols of long familiarity.
Eating and drinking loosened everyone’s tongues and Tina, as she waited on them all, forgot to be shy and did not know that they looked on her with approval and thought her a proper little maid with pretty ways and modest, too, for a foreigner. She stood beside Craig to wish them good-bye while the foreman made a speech of thanks and a roar of laughter went up when a little man with a crippled leg pointed above their heads and shouted: “Look where’n standing!”
Tina looked up. Over their heads hung a great bunch of mistletoe suspended from a chandelier that was never used, and the cry went up at once:
“Kiss ‘er, sir ... kiss ‘er, maister...”
Tina was aware of Craig’s hostility beside her. All the afternoon she had been conscious of change in him, a polite remoteness which now had become something more and she knew in one agonized moment that he did not want to kiss her. It was only an infinitesimal pause, but just that much too long, and she was conscious of all their eyes, watching, criticizing, waiting for the moment of her humiliation. And in that moment, Craig put a conventional arm about her shoulders and kissed her briefly on the lips.
Aware of her flaming cheeks, Tina shook hands, kissed children, avoiding Craig’s eyes and trying hard to push her humiliation away. They must all know now that he did not care for her, that this was just another Pentreath marriage planned for reasons which had little to do with affection. Would they say, as no doubt they had said of Craig’s father: “Thinks to better himself, doubtless,” or would they simply say he had been saddled with the Linden women and it was best to marry one of them and have done with it?
At last they were all gone. Craig was still at the gates talking to the stragglers, Belle had gone upstairs to have a bath before dinner, and Tina turned to Brownie already picking up paper hats and cracker cases from the floor.
“Brownie, it was awful,” she said tragically. “They didn’t like me, did they?”
Brownie straightened her bent back and looked at the girl sharply.
“What nonsense are you talking?” she asked with a smile. “They liked you fine, and I’ll say this for you, Tina, you’re a good little worker, and modest and natural with no side to you. You’ll do all right at Tremawvan.” She put up a hand and touched the flushed face gently. “You’re tired,” she said. “Go and rest in the living-room. There’s no one there.”
“No, I’ll help you,” Tina said, stooping to pick up a discarded rattle, but Brownie knocked it out of her hand.
“You’ll do as you’re told for once, miss,” she said crossly. “The maids will clear this in the morning, anyway. Now be off with you.”
Craig came back into the house as Tina obeyed, and Brownie looked him over sourly.
“Better take that young lady of yours a glass of sherry,” she advised. “She’s nigh on tears if I’m not much mistaken.”
Tina did not want to see him. Brownie would probably have told her that she was exaggerating his reluctance under the mistletoe, but Brownie had not seen her making a fool of him on the stairs, putting him in a position for Belle to jeer at, or for the servants and anyone else to see.
He came into the room carrying a silver tray with decanter and glasses and set it on a table near the fire.
“Brownie says you’re in need of this,” he said. “I’m afraid you’ve found the day rather tiring.”
He gave her a glass of sherry and poured one for himself.
“A happy Christmas,” he said, raising his glass to her. “A little late, perhaps, but the morning seemed occupied with other things.”
Over the rim of his glass he watched her sitting on a low stool by the fire. The color still stained her cheeks, but whether, as Brownie had suggested, tears were not far away, he was unable to judge for she kept her face averted and her eyes cast down.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a silence, “if you were upset by that ridiculous affair of the mistletoe. Had I realized the obvious foolery it must lead to we would have moved out of range.”
She looked at him then and her eyes were bright with the tears he had not been able to see before but her hurt had changed to anger since that unhappy moment of humiliation.
“Why should I be upset?” she asked. “It was you who made such a—such a business of it.”
“Is that what you thought?”
“As if,” said Tina, disregarding him, “there was anything unusual about a kiss under the mistletoe. Everybody does it. It doesn’t mean a thing.”
“Exactly,” he replied gravely. “It doesn’t mean a thing.”
She drank her sherry too fast and choked.
“It wasn’t as though,” she said, her eyes watering, “anybody knew you hadn’t kissed me before.”
He took the empty glass from her and put it down then took out his handkerchief to wipe her lashes.
“Do you feel that was remiss?” he asked and she shook her head.
“No. Our engagement isn’t like other people’s.”
“No, it isn’t, is it?” he said rather wearily and his eyes fell on the necklace he had given her that morning. Against her fair skin it lay lightly, delicately like a cobweb of lace.
“I’m afraid my present disappointed you,” he said bleakly. “Had I known you wanted something more dashing I wouldn’t have bought it.”
Her fingers touched the pearls with loving jealousy, and her earlier hurt was forgotten in this puzzling misconception.
“But I love it,” she said, surprised. “I’m afraid my thanks were rather inadequate at the time, but—”
“But you thought, for all that, I might have found something a little more handsome.”
“Do you mean the price?” she asked, remembering the Pentreaths’ commercial standards.
“Oh, the price wasn’t so meagre, though you might not think so to look at it. I didn’t think you’d learnt to value gifts by what they cost.”
She sprang to her feet, all pleasure in her necklace gone. “You’re very alike, you and Belle, after all,” she said. “Perhaps it’s a Pentreath habit to hurt and taunt, but I don’t like it. If you want to know, I would have been just as pleased with a sixpenny string fro
m Woolworths because you gave it to me, but I don’t suppose you’ll believe that because you’ve never been poor.”
Before he could speak she had darted out of the room and slammed the door behind her.
It was almost a quarrel, thought Tina afterwards, the first she had ever had with Craig and no criterion of anything that mattered, for only lovers quarrelled, lovers and of course the Pentreaths, who took pleasure in wounding each other because to none of them did it amount to importance.
After dinner Craig went to his study.
“Will you come and say good night to me on your way to bed?” he asked Tina.
She did not want to see him alone again today but in Belle’s and Brownie’s hearing she could scarcely refuse. The evening seemed long and depressing. Brownie was inclined to snap and Belle yawned on the sofa and declined to waste her time in small talk. At a quarter to ten, Tina said good night and went to Craig’s study without enthusiasm.
He was sitting by the fire reading and when he saw her he shut his book and put out an inviting hand.
“Hullo!” he said. “I wasn’t sure if you’d sneak up to bed without coming, after all.”
She crossed the room slowly and stood by his chair looking down at him. She thought he looked tired and he unexpectedly felt for her hand since she did not take the one he offered her.
“Are you still angry with me?” he asked. “You always surprise me, you know, when you stand up in your wrath and smite me. You’re such a gentle person.”
The charming smile was there, transforming his face, and she could only remember him as she loved him, easy to talk to, the dark stranger of her fortune.
She smiled a little uncertainly and his face was suddenly grave.
“I believe I owe you an apology,” he said. “I was ungracious over the matter of my present. I should have known better than to throw the cost of anything at someone like you.”
“Why did you?” she asked.
“Something Belle said. She had the impression that you were disappointed.”
“Belle!” She laughed with relief. “You must have misunderstood her. Why, it was Belle herself who said seed pearls made her think of aged aunts and cameos and antimacassars. Brownie could have told you. She was there.”