It was Christmas Eve, and the family circle of Luke Steffink, Esq., was
aglow with the amiability and random mirth which the occasion demanded.
A long and lavish dinner had been partaken of, waits had been round and
sung carols; the house-party had regaled itself with more caroling on its
own account, and there had been romping which, even in a pulpit
reference, could not have been condemned as ragging. In the midst of the
general glow, however, there was one black unkindled cinder.
Bertie Steffink, nephew of the aforementioned Luke, had early in life
adopted the profession of ne’er-do-weel; his father had been something of
the kind before him. At the age of eighteen Bertie had commenced that
round of visits to our Colonial possessions, so seemly and desirable in
the case of a Prince of the Blood, so suggestive of insincerity in a
young man of the middle-class. He had gone to grow tea in Ceylon and
fruit in British Columbia, and to help sheep to grow wool in Australia.
At the age of twenty he had just returned from some similar errand in
Canada, from which it may be gathered that the trial he gave to these
various experiments was of the summary drum-head nature. Luke Steffink,
who fulfilled the troubled role of guardian and deputy-parent to Bertie,
deplored the persistent manifestation of the homing instinct on his
nephew’s part, and his solemn thanks earlier in the day for the blessing
of reporting a united family had no reference to Bertie’s return.
Arrangements had been promptly made for packing the youth off to a
distant corner of Rhodesia, whence return would be a difficult matter;
the journey to this uninviting destination was imminent, in fact a more
careful and willing traveller would have already begun to think about his
packing. Hence Bertie was in no mood to share in the festive spirit
which displayed itself around him, and resentment smouldered within him
at the eager, self-absorbed discussion of social plans for the coming
months which he heard on all sides. Beyond depressing his uncle and the
family circle generally by singing “Say au revoir, and not good-bye,” he
had taken no part in the evening’s conviviality.
Eleven o’clock had struck some half-hour ago, and the elder Steffinks
began to throw out suggestions leading up to that process which they
called retiring for the night.
“Come, Teddie, it’s time you were in your little bed, you know,” said
Luke Steffink to his thirteen-year-old son.
“That’s where we all ought to be,” said Mrs. Steffink.
“There wouldn’t be room,” said Bertie.
The remark was considered to border on the scandalous; everybody ate
raisins and almonds with the nervous industry of sheep feeding during
threatening weather.
“In Russia,” said Horace Bordenby, who was staying in the house as a
Christmas guest, “I’ve read that the peasants believe that if you go into
a cow-house or stable at midnight on Christmas Eve you will hear the
animals talk. They’re supposed to have the gift of speech at that one
moment of the year.”
“Oh, _do_ let’s _all_ go down to the cow-house and listen to what they’ve
got to say!” exclaimed Beryl, to whom anything was thrilling and amusing
if you did it in a troop.
Mrs. Steffink made a laughing protest, but gave a virtual consent by
saying, “We must all wrap up well, then.” The idea seemed a
scatterbrained one to her, and almost heathenish, but if afforded an
opportunity for “throwing the young people together,” and as such she
welcomed it. Mr. Horace Bordenby was a young man with quite substantial
prospects, and he had danced with Beryl at a local subscription ball a
sufficient number of times to warrant the authorised inquiry on the part
of the neighbours whether “there was anything in it.” Though Mrs.
Steffink would not have put it in so many words, she shared the idea of
the Russian peasantry that on this night the beast might speak.
The cow-house stood at the junction of the garden with a small paddock,
an isolated survival, in a suburban neighbourhood; of what had once been
a small farm. Luke Steffink was complacently proud of his cow-house and
his two cows; he felt that they gave him a stamp of solidity which no
number of Wyandottes or Orpingtons could impart. They even seemed to
link him in a sort of inconsequent way with those patriarchs who derived
importance from their floating capital of flocks and herbs, he-asses and
she-asses. It had been an anxious and momentous occasion when he had had
to decide definitely between “the Byre” and “the Ranch” for the naming of
his villa residence. A December midnight was hardly the moment he would
have chosen for showing his farm-building to visitors, but since it was a
fine night, and the young people were anxious for an excuse for a mild
frolic, Luke consented to chaperon the expedition. The servants had long
since gone to bed, so the house was left in charge of Bertie, who
scornfully declined to stir out on the pretext of listening to bovine
conversation.
“We must go quietly,” said Luke, as he headed the procession of giggling
young folk, brought up in the rear by the shawled and hooded figure of
Mrs. Steffink; “I’ve always laid stress on keeping this a quiet and
orderly neighbourhood.”
It was a few minutes to midnight when the party reached the cow-house and
made its way in by the light of Luke’s stable lantern. For a moment
every one stood in silence, almost with a feeling of being in church.
“Daisy—the one lying down—is by a shorthorn bull out of a Guernsey cow,”
announced Luke in a hushed voice, which was in keeping with the foregoing
impression.
“Is she?” said Bordenby, rather as if he had expected her to be by
Rembrandt.
“Myrtle is—”
Myrtle’s family history was cut short by a little scream from the women
of the party.
The cow-house door had closed noiselessly behind them and the key had
turned gratingly in the lock; then they heard Bertie’s voice pleasantly
wishing them good-night and his footsteps retreating along the garden
path.
Luke Steffink strode to the window; it was a small square opening of the
old-fashioned sort, with iron bars let into the stonework.
“Unlock the door this instant,” he shouted, with as much air of menacing
authority as a hen might assume when screaming through the bars of a coop
at a marauding hawk. In reply to his summons the hall-door closed with a
defiant bang.
A neighbouring clock struck the hour of midnight. If the cows had
received the gift of human speech at that moment they would not have been
able to make themselves heard. Seven or eight other voices were engaged
in describing Bertie’s present conduct and his general character at a
high pressure of excitement and indignation.
In the course of half an hour or so everything that it was permissible to
say about Bertie had been said some dozens of times, and other topics
began to come to the front—the extreme mustiness of the cow-house, the
possibility of it catching fire, and the probability of it being a Rowton
House for the vagrant rats of the neighbourhood. And still no sign of
deliverance came to the unwilling vigil-keepers.
Towards one o’clock the sound of rather boisterous and undisciplined
carol-singing approached rapidly, and came to a sudden anchorage,
apparently just outside the garden-gate. A motor-load of youthful
“bloods,” in a high state of conviviality, had made a temporary halt for
repairs; the stoppage, however, did not extend to the vocal efforts of
the party, and the watchers in the cow-shed were treated to a highly
unauthorised rendering of “Good King Wenceslas,” in which the adjective
“good” appeared to be very carelessly applied.
The noise had the effect of bringing Bertie out into the garden, but he
utterly ignored the pale, angry faces peering out at the cow-house
window, and concentrated his attention on the revellers outside the gate.
“Wassail, you chaps!” he shouted.
“Wassail, old sport!” they shouted back; “we’d jolly well drink y’r
health, only we’ve nothing to drink it in.”
“Come and wassail inside,” said Bertie hospitably; “I’m all alone, and
there’s heap’s of ‘wet’.”
They were total strangers, but his touch of kindness made them instantly
his kin. In another moment the unauthorised version of King Wenceslas,
which, like many other scandals, grew worse on repetition, went echoing
up the garden path; two of the revellers gave an impromptu performance on
the way by executing the staircase waltz up the terraces of what Luke
Steffink, hitherto with some justification, called his rock-garden. The
rock part of it was still there when the waltz had been accorded its
third encore. Luke, more than ever like a cooped hen behind the
cow-house bars, was in a position to realise the feelings of
concert-goers unable to countermand the call for an encore which they
neither desire or deserve.
The hall door closed with a bang on Bertie’s guests, and the sounds of
merriment became faint and muffled to the weary watchers at the other end
of the garden. Presently two ominous pops, in quick succession, made
themselves distinctly heard.
“They’ve got at the champagne!” exclaimed Mrs. Steffink.
“Perhaps it’s the sparkling Moselle,” said Luke hopefully.
Three or four more pops were heard.
“The champagne _and_ the sparkling Moselle,” said Mrs. Steffink.
Luke uncorked an expletive which, like brandy in a temperance household,
was only used on rare emergencies. Mr. Horace Bordenby had been making
use of similar expressions under his breath for a considerable time past.
The experiment of “throwing the young people together” had been prolonged
beyond a point when it was likely to produce any romantic result.
Some forty minutes later the hall door opened and disgorged a crowd that
had thrown off any restraint of shyness that might have influenced its
earlier actions. Its vocal efforts in the direction of carol singing
were now supplemented by instrumental music; a Christmas-tree that had
been prepared for the children of the gardener and other household
retainers had yielded a rich spoil of tin trumpets, rattles, and drums.
The life-story of King Wenceslas had been dropped, Luke was thankful to
notice, but it was intensely irritating for the chilled prisoners in the
cow-house to be told that it was a hot time in the old town to-night,
together with some accurate but entirely superfluous information as to
the imminence of Christmas morning. Judging by the protests which began
to be shouted from the upper windows of neighbouring houses the
sentiments prevailing in the cow-house were heartily echoed in other
quarters.
The revellers found their car, and, what was more remarkable, managed to
drive off in it, with a parting fanfare of tin trumpets. The lively beat
of a drum disclosed the fact that the master of the revels remained on
the scene.
“Bertie!” came in an angry, imploring chorus of shouts and screams from
the cow-house window.
“Hullo,” cried the owner of the name, turning his rather errant steps in
the direction of the summons; “are you people still there? Must have
heard everything cows got to say by this time. If you haven’t, no use
waiting. After all, it’s a Russian legend, and Russian Chrismush Eve not
due for ’nother fortnight. Better come out.”
After one or two ineffectual attempts he managed to pitch the key of the
cow-house door in through the window. Then, lifting his voice in the
strains of “I’m afraid to go home in the dark,” with a lusty drum
accompaniment, he led the way back to the house. The hurried procession
of the released that followed in his steps came in for a good deal of the
adverse comment that his exuberant display had evoked.
It was the happiest Christmas Eve he had ever spent. To quote his own
words, he had a rotten Christmas.