eyes shone like a cat's, and MacGreedy felt like a half-scared mouse,
and made up his mind to cry. He put his right fist into one eye, and
had just taken it out, and was about to put his left fist into the
other, when he saw that the tutor was no longer looking at him. So he
made up his mind to go on with the raisins, for one can have a peevish
cry at any time, but plums are not scattered broadcast every day.
Several times he had tried to pocket them, but just at the moment the
tutor was sure to look at him, and in his fright he dropped the
raisins, and never could find them again. So this time he resolved to
eat them then and there. He had just put one into his mouth when the
tutor leaned forward, and his eyes, glowing in the firelight, met
MacGreedy's, who had not even the presence of mind to shut his mouth,
but remained spellbound, with a raisin in his cheek.
Flicker, flack! The school-boys stirred up snapdragon again, and with
the blue light upon his features the tutor made so horrible a grimace
that MacGreedy swallowed the raisin with a start. He had bolted it
whole, and it might have been a bread pill for any enjoyment he had of
the flavour. But the tutor laughed aloud. He certainly was an alarming
object, pulling those grimaces in the blue brandy glare; and
unpleasantly like a picture of Bogy himself with horns and a tail, in a
juvenile volume upstairs. True, there were no horns to speak of among
the tutor's grizzled curls, and his coat seemed to fit as well as most
people's on his long back, so that unless he put his tail in his
pocket, it is difficult to see how he could have had one. But then (as
Miss Letitia said) "With dress one can do anything and hide anything,"
and on dress Miss Letitia's opinion was final.
Miss Letitia was a cousin. She was dark, high-coloured, glossy-haired,
stout, and showy. She was as neat as a new pin, and had a will of her
own. Her hair was firmly fixed by bandoline, her garibaldis by an
arrangement which failed when applied to those of the widow, and her
opinions by the simple process of looking at everything from one point
of view. Her _forte_ was dress and general ornamentation; not that
Miss Letitia was extravagant--far from it. If one may use the
expression, she utilized for ornament a hundred bits and scraps that
most people would have wasted. But, like other artists, she saw
everything through the medium of her own art. She looked at birds with
an eye to hats, and at flowers with reference to evening parties. At
picture exhibitions and concerts she carried away jacket patterns and
bonnets in her head, as other people make mental notes of an aerial
effect, or a bit of fine instrumentation. An enthusiastic
horticulturist once sent Miss Letitia a cut specimen of a new flower.
It was a lovely spray from a lately-imported shrub. A botanist would
have pressed it--an artist must have taken its portrait--a poet might
have written a sonnet in praise of its beauty. Miss Letitia twisted a
piece of wire round its stem, and fastened it on to her black lace
bonnet. It came on the day of a review, when Miss Letitia had to appear
in a carriage, and it was quite a success. As she said to the widow,
"It was so natural that no one could doubt its being Parisian."
"What a strange fellow that tutor is!" said the visitor. He spoke to
the daughter of the house, a girl with a face like a summer's day, and
hair like a ripe corn-field rippling in the sun. He was a fine young
man, and had a youth's taste for the sports and amusements of his age.
But lately he had changed. He seemed to himself to be living in a
higher, nobler atmosphere than hitherto. He had discovered that he was
poetical--he might prove to be a genius. He certainly was eloquent, he
could talk for hours, and did so--to the young lady with the sunshiny
face. They spoke on the highest subjects, and what a listener she was!
So intelligent and appreciative, and with such an exquisite _pose_
of the head--it must inspire a block of wood merely to see such a
creature in a listening attitude. As to our young friend, he poured
forth volumes; he was really clever, and for her he became eloquent.
To-night he spoke of Christmas, of time-honoured custom and old
association; and what he said would have made a Christmas article for a
magazine of the first class. He poured scorn on the cold nature that
could not, and the affectation that would not, appreciate the domestic
festivities of this sacred season. What, he asked, could be more
delightful, more perfect than such a gathering as this, of the
family circle round the Christmas hearth? He spoke with feeling, and it
may be said with disinterested feeling, for he had not joined his
family circle himself this Christmas, and there was a vacant place by
the hearth of his own home.
"He is strange," said the young lady (she spoke of the tutor in answer
to the above remark); "but I am very fond of him. He has been with us
so long he is like one of the family; though we know as little of his
history as we did on the day he came."
"He looks clever," said the visitor. (Perhaps that is the least one can
say for a fellow-creature who shows a great deal of bare skull, and is
not otherwise good-looking.)
"He is clever," she answered, "wonderfully clever; so clever and so odd
that sometimes I fancy he is hardly 'canny.' There is something almost
supernatural about his acuteness and his ingenuity, but they are so
kindly used; I wonder he has not brought out any playthings for us
to-night."
"Playthings?" inquired the young man.
"Yes; on birthdays or festivals like this he generally brings something
out of those huge pockets of his. He has been all over the world, and
he produces Indian puzzles, Japanese flower-buds that bloom in hot
water, and German toys with complicated machinery, which I suspect him
of manufacturing himself. I call him Godpapa Grosselmayer, after that
delightful old fellow in Hoffman's tale of the Nut Cracker."
"What's that about crackers?" inquired the tutor, sharply, his eyes
changing colour like a fire opal.
"I am talking of _Nussnacker und Mausekönig_," laughed the young lady.
"Crackers do not belong to Christmas; fireworks come on the 5th of
November."
"Tut, tut!" said the tutor; "I always tell your ladyship that you are
still a tom-boy at heart, as when I first came, and you climbed trees
and pelted myself and my young students with horse-chestnuts. You think
of crackers to explode at the heels of timorous old gentlemen in a
November fog; but I mean bonbon crackers, coloured crackers, dainty
crackers--crackers for young people with mottoes of sentiment" (here
the tutor shrugged his high shoulders an inch or two higher, and
turned the palms of his hands outwards with a glance indescribably
comical)--"crackers with paper prodigies, crackers with
sweetmeats--_such_ sweetmeats!" He smacked his lips with a grotesque
contortion, and looked at Master McGreedy, who choked himself with
his last raisin, and forthwith burst into tears.
The widow tried in vain to soothe him with caresses, but he only
stamped and howled the more. But Miss Letitia gave him some smart
smacks on the shoulders to cure his choking fit, and as she kept up the
treatment with vigour, the young gentleman was obliged to stop and
assure her that the raisin had "gone the right way" at last. "If he
were my child," Miss Letitia had been known to observe, with that
confidence which characterizes the theories of those who are not
parents, "I would, &c., &c., &c.;" in fact, Miss Letitia thought she
would have made a very different boy of him--as, indeed, I believe she
would.
"Are crackers all that you have for us, sir?" asked one of the two
school-boys, as they hung over the tutor's chair. They were twins,
grand boys, with broad, good-humoured faces, and curly wigs, as like as
two puppy dogs of the same breed. They were only known apart by their
intimate friends, and were always together, romping, laughing,
snarling, squabbling, huffing and helping each other against the world.
Each of them owned a wiry terrier, and in their relations to each other
the two dogs (who were marvellously alike) closely followed the example
of their masters.
"Do you not care for crackers, Jim?" asked the tutor.
"Not much, sir. They do for girls: but, as you know, I care for nothing
but military matters. Do you remember that beautiful toy of yours--'The
Besieged City'? Ah! I liked that. Look out, Tom! you're shoving my arm.
Can't you stand straight, man?'
"R-r-r-r--r-r, snap!"
Tom's dog was resenting contact with Jim's dog on the hearthrug. There
was a hustle among the four, and then they subsided.
"The Besieged City was all very well for you, Jim," said Tom, who meant
to be a sailor; "but please to remember that it admitted of no attack
from the sea; and what was there for me to do? Ah, sir! you are so
clever, I often think you could help me to make a swing with ladders
instead of single ropes, so that I could run up and down the rigging
whilst it was in full go."
"That would be something like your fir-tree prank, Tom," said his
sister. "Can you believe," she added, turning to the visitor, "that Tom
lopped the branches of a tall young fir-tree all the way up, leaving
little bits for foothold, and then climbed up it one day in an awful
storm of wind, and clung on at the top, rocking backwards and forwards?
And when Papa sent word for him to come down, he said parental
authority was superseded at sea by the rules of the service. It was a
dreadful storm, and the tree snapped very soon after he got safe to the
ground."
"Storm!" sneered Tom, "a capful of wind. Well, it did blow half a gale
at the last. But oh! it was glorious!"
"Let us see what we can make of the crackers," said the tutor--and he
pulled some out of his pocket. They were put in a dish upon the table,
for the company to choose from; and the terriers jumped and snapped,
and tumbled over each other, for they thought that the plate contained
eatables. Animated by the same idea, but with quieter steps, Master
MacGreedy also approached the table.
"The dogs are noisy," said the tutor, "too noisy. We must have
quiet--peace and quiet." His lean hand was once more in his pocket, and
he pulled out a box, from which he took some powder, which he scattered
on the burning log. A slight smoke now rose from the hot embers, and
floated into the room. Was the powder one of those strange compounds
that act upon the brain? Was it a magician's powder? Who knows? With it
came a sweet, subtle fragrance. It was strange--every one fancied he
had smelt it before, and all were absorbed in wondering what it was,
and where they had met with it. Even the dogs sat on their haunches
with their noses up, sniffing in a speculative manner.
"It's not lavender," said the grandmother, slowly, "and it's not
rosemary. There is a something of tansy in it (and a very fine tonic
flavour too, my dears, though it's _not_ in fashion now). Depend upon it,
it's a potpourri, and from an excellent receipt, sir"--and the old lady
bowed courteously towards the tutor. "My mother made the best potpourri
in the county, and it was very much like this. Not quite,
perhaps, but much the same, much the same."
The grandmother was a fine old gentlewoman "of the old school," as the
phrase is. She was very stately and gracious in her manners, daintily
neat in her person, and much attached to the old parson of the parish,
who now sat near her chair. All her life she had been very proud of her
fine stock of fair linen, both household and personal; and for many
years past had kept her own graveclothes ready in a drawer. They were
bleached as white as snow, and lay amongst bags of dried lavender and
potpourri. Many times had it seemed likely that they would be needed,
for the old lady had had severe illnesses of late, when the good parson
sat by her bedside, and read to her of the coming of the Bridegroom,
and of that "fine linen clean and white," which is "the righteousness
of the saints." It was of that drawer, with its lavender and potpourri
bags, that the scented smoke had reminded her.
"It has rather an overpowering odour," said the old parson; "it is
suggestive of incense. I am sure I once smelt something like it in the
Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem. It is very delicious."
The parson's long residence in his parish had been marked by one great
holiday. With the savings of many years he had performed a pilgrimage
to the Holy Land; and it was rather a joke against him that he
illustrated a large variety of subjects by reference to his favourite
topic, the holiday of his life.
"It smells of gunpowder," said Jim, decidedly, "and something else. I
can't tell what."
"Something one smells in a seaport town," said Tom.
"Can't be very delicious then," Jim retorted.
"It's not _quite_ the same," piped the widow; "but it reminds me very
much of an old bottle of attar of roses that was given to me when I
was at school, with a copy of verses, by a young gentleman who was
brother to one of the pupils. I remember Mr. Jones was quite annoyed
when he found it in an old box, where I am sure I had not touched it
for ten years or more; and I never spoke to him but once, on
Examination Day (the young gentleman, I mean). And its like--yes it's
certainly like a hair-wash Mr. Jones used to use. I've forgotten what
it was called, but I know it cost fifteen shillings a bottle; and
Macready threw one over a few weeks before his dear papa's death, and
annoyed him extremely."
Whilst the company were thus engaged, Master MacGreedy took advantage
of the general abstraction to secure half-a-dozen crackers to his own
share; he retired to a corner with them, where he meant to pick them
quietly to pieces by himself. He wanted the gay paper, and the motto,
and the sweetmeats; but he did not like the report of the cracker. And
then what he did want, he wanted all to himself.
"Give us a cracker," said Master Jim, dreamily.
The dogs, after a few dissatisfied snorts, had dropped from their
sitting posture, and were lying close together on the rug, dreaming and
uttering short commenting barks and whines at intervals. The twins were
now reposing lazily at the tutor's feet, and did not feel disposed to
exert themselves even so far as to fetch their own bonbons.
"There's one," said the tutor, taking a fresh cracker from his pocket.
One end of it was of red and gold paper, the other of transparent green
stuff with silver lines. The boys pulled it.
* * * * *
The report was louder than Jim had expected. "The firing has begun," he
murmured, involuntarily; "steady, steady!" these last words were to his
horse, who seemed to be moving under him, not from fear, but from
impatience. What had been the red and gold paper of the cracker was now
the scarlet and gold lace of his own cavalry uniform. He knocked a
speck from his sleeve, and scanned the distant ridge, from which a thin
line of smoke floated solemnly away, with keen, impatient eyes. Were
they to stand inactive all the day?
Presently the horse erects his head. His eyes sparkle--he pricks his
sensitive ears--his nostrils quiver with a strange delight. It is the
trumpet! Fan farrâ! Fan farrâ! The brazen voice speaks--the horses
move--the plumes wave--the helmets shine. On a summer's day they ride
slowly, gracefully, calmly down a slope, to Death or Glory. Fan farrâ!
Fan farrâ! Fan farrâ!
* * * * *
Of all this Master Tom knew nothing. The report of the cracker seemed
to him only an echo in his brain of a sound that had been in his ears
for thirty-six weary hours. The noise of a heavy sea beating against
the ship's side in a gale. It was over now, and he was keeping the
midnight watch on deck, gazing upon the liquid green of the waves,
which, heaving and seething after storm, were lit with phosphoric
light, and as the ship held steadily on her course, poured past at the
rate of twelve knots an hour in a silvery stream. Faster than any ship
can sail his thoughts travelled home; and as old times came back to
him, he hardly knew whether what he looked at was the phosphor-lighted
sea, or green gelatine paper barred with silver. And did the tutor
speak? Or was it the voice of some sea-monster sounding in his ears?
"The spirits of the storm have gone below to make their report. The
treasure gained from sunk vessels has been reckoned, and the sea is
illuminated in honour of the spoil."
* * * * *
The visitor now took a cracker and held it to the young lady. Her end
was of white paper with a raised pattern; his of dark-blue gelatine
with gold stars. It snapped, the bonbon dropped between them, and the
young man got the motto. It was a very bald one--
"My heart is thine.
Wilt thou be mine?"
He was ashamed to show it to her. What could be more meagre? One could
write a hundred better couplets "standing on one leg," as the saying
is. He was trying to improvise just one for the occasion, when he
became aware that the blue sky over his head was dark with the shades
of night, and lighted with stars. A brook rippled near with a soothing
monotony. The evening wind sighed through the trees, and wafted the
fragrance of the sweet bay-leaved willow towards him, and blew a stray
lock of hair against his face. Yes! _She_ also was there, walking beside
him, under the scented willow-bushes. Where, why, and whither he did not
ask to know. She was with him--with him; and he seemed to tread on the
summer air. He had no doubt as to the nature of his own feelings for her,
and here was such an opportunity for declaring them as might never occur
again. Surely now, if ever, he would be eloquent! Thoughts of poetry
clothed in words of fire must spring unbidden to his lips at such a
moment. And yet somehow he could not find a single word to say. He beat
his brains, but not an idea would come forth. Only that idiotic
cracker motto, which haunted him with its meagre couplet:
"My heart is thine.
Wilt thou be mine?"
Meanwhile they wandered on. The precious time was passing. He must at
least make a beginning.
"What a fine night it is!" he observed. But, oh dear! that was a
thousand times balder and more meagre than the cracker motto; and not
another word could he find to say. At this moment the awkward silence
was broken by a voice from a neighbouring copse. It was a nightingale
singing to his mate. There was no lack of eloquence, and of melodious
eloquence, there. The song was as plaintive as old memories, and as
full of tenderness as the eyes of the young girl were full of tears.
They were standing still now, and with her graceful head bent she was
listening to the bird. He stooped his head near hers, and spoke with a
simple natural outburst almost involuntary.
"Do you ever think of old times? Do you remember the old house, and the
fun we used to have? and the tutor whom you pelted with horse-chestnuts
when you were a little girl? And those cracker bonbons, and the motto
_we_ drew--
'My heart is thine.
Wilt thou be mine?'"
She smiled, and lifted her eyes ("blue as the sky, and bright as the
stars," he thought) to his, and answered "Yes."
Then the bonbon motto was avenged, and there was silence. Eloquent,
perfect, complete, beautiful silence! Only the wind sighed through the
fragrant willows, the stream rippled, the stars shone, and in the
neighbouring copse the nightingale sang, and sang, and sang.
* * * * *
When the white end of the cracker came into the young lady's hand, she
was full of admiration for the fine raised pattern. As she held it
between her fingers it suddenly struck her that she had discovered what
the tutor's fragrant smoke smelt like. It was like the scent of
orange-flowers, and had certainly a soporific effect upon the senses.
She felt very sleepy, and as she stroked the shiny surface of the
cracker she found herself thinking it was very soft for paper, and then
rousing herself with a start, and wondering at her own folly in
speaking thus of the white silk in which she was dressed, and of which
she was holding up the skirt between her finger and thumb, as if she
were dancing a minuet.
"It's grandmamma's egg-shell brocade!" she cried. "Oh, Grandmamma! Have
you given it to me? That lovely old thing! But I thought it was the
family wedding-dress, and that I was not to have it till I was a
bride."
"And so you are, my dear. And a fairer bride the sun never shone on,"
sobbed the old lady, who was kissing and blessing her, and wishing her,
in the words of the old formula--
"Health to wear it,
Strength to tear it,
And money to buy another."
"There is no hope for the last two things, you know," said the young
girl; "for I am sure that the flag that braved a thousand years was not
half so strong as your brocade; and as to buying another, there are
none to be bought in these degenerate days."
The old lady's reply was probably very gracious, for she liked to be
complimented on the virtues of old things in general, and of her
egg-shell brocade in particular. But of what she said her granddaughter
heard nothing. With the strange irregularity of dreams, she found
herself, she knew not how, in the old church. It was true. She was a
bride, standing there with old friends and old associations thick
around her, on the threshold of a new life. The sun shone through the
stained glass of the windows, and illuminated the brocade, whose
old-fashioned stiffness so became her childish beauty, and flung a
thousand new tints over her sunny hair, and drew so powerful a
fragrance from the orange-blossom with which it was twined, that it was
almost overpowering. Yes! It was too sweet--too strong. She certainly
would not be able to bear it much longer without losing her senses. And
the service was going on. A question had been asked of her, and she
must reply. She made a strong effort, and said "Yes," simply and very
earnestly, for it was what she meant. But she had no sooner said it
than she became uneasily conscious that she had not used the right
words. Some one laughed. It was the tutor, and his voice jarred and
disturbed the dream, as a stone troubles the surface of still water.
The vision trembled, and then broke, and the young lady found herself
still sitting by the table and fingering the cracker paper, whilst the
tutor chuckled and rubbed his hands by the fire, and his shadow
scrambled on the wall like an ape upon a tree. But her "Yes" had passed
into the young man's dream without disturbing it, and he dreamt on.
It was a cracker like the preceding one that the grandmother and the
parson pulled together. The old lady had insisted upon it. The good
rector had shown a tendency to low spirits this evening, and a wish to
withdraw early. But the old lady did not approve of people "shirking"
(as boys say) either their duties or their pleasures; and to keep a
"merry Christmas" in a family circle that had been spared to meet in
health and happiness, seemed to her to be both the one and the other.
It was his sermon for next day which weighed on the parson's mind. Not
that he was behindhand with that part of his duties. He was far too
methodical in his habits for that, and it had been written before the
bustle of Christmas week began. But after preaching Christmas sermons
from the same pulpit for thirty-five years, he felt keenly how
difficult it is to awaken due interest in subjects that are so
familiar, and to give new force to lessons so often repeated. So he
wanted a quiet hour in his own study before he went to rest, with the
sermon that did not satisfy him, and the subject that should be so
heart-stirring and ever-new,--the Story of Bethlehem.
He consented, however, to pull one cracker with the grandmother, though
he feared the noise might startle her nerves, and said so.
"Nerves were not invented in my young days," said the old lady, firmly;
and she took her part in the ensuing explosion without so much as a
wink.
As the cracker snapped, it seemed to the parson as if the fragrant
smoke from the yule log were growing denser in the room. Through the
mist from time to time the face of the tutor loomed large, and then
disappeared. At last the clouds rolled away, and the parson breathed
clear air. Clear, yes, and how clear! This brilliant freshness, these
intense lights and shadows, this mildness and purity in the night air--
"It is not England," he muttered, "it is the East. I have felt no air
like this since I breathed the air of Palestine."