Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.
[Illustration: The old mill-house.
"Noel's Christmas Tree" Frontispiece]
NOEL'S
CHRISTMAS TREE
BY
AMY LE FEUVRE
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
LONDON, MELBOURNE AND CAPE TOWN
MADE IN ENGLAND
Printed in Great Britain by
BILLING & SONS LTD.
GUILDFORD AND LONDON
H2942
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THEIR UNKNOWN BROTHER
II. WISTARIA COTTAGE
III. THE CHRISTMAS TREE
IV. A NURSERY ENTERTAINMENT
V. LESSON DAYS
VI. INEZ APPEARS
VII. INEZ AT HOME
VIII. THE LITTLE RESCUERS
IX. THE COMING OF THE HOLIDAYS
X. THEIR PICNIC
XI. WITHOUT A MOTHER
XII. INEZ'S VOW
XIII. THEIR MOTHER'S BIRTHDAY
XIV. THE GLORY OF THE TREE
XV. TO THE BORDERLAND AND BACK
NOEL'S
CHRISTMAS TREE
CHAPTER I
Their Unknown Brother
"Dinah, do hurry up!"
A small boy with close-cropped brown head and dark eager eyes was
drumming with his fingers on the windowpane. He turned his head over
his shoulder as he spoke, and his tone was impatient.
Dinah, or Diana as she was really called, lay flat on her chest by
the schoolroom fire. Big sheets of paper were before her, and with a
good deal of sucking of her pencil she was writing rapidly. She was
very thin and pale; her nurse said she was wiry, and her fair hair was
bobbed in the usual fashion.
"How do you spell alarming, two l's and two m's?" she asked, without
raising her head.
"Hurray! Here's the taxi! Such a lot of luggage! You're too late; you
can't see it now."
Diana had dashed to the window. They were at the top of a high London
house, in one of the quiet roads of South Kensington, but try as they
could, they could neither see the cab nor its occupants now, and the
windows were too heavy to be raised.
"Aha!" shouted the boy, dancing round the room. "I saw, and you didn't!"
"What did you see?"
"A monkey, and a parrot, and a black, and a huge bunch of coco-nuts!"
"I don't believe you. Did you see—Mother?" She added the last word in
an awed whisper.
He looked at her, then impishly shook his head.
"I dare say she hasn't come. P'r'aps she's drowned in the sea."
"You wicked, wicked boy!"
"You're always making those kind of things in your stories."
Diana stole out of the room on tiptoe. Her brother Chris followed her.
Hanging breathlessly over the staircase, they vainly tried to see what
was going on in the hall. How could Granny have ordered them to stay
up in the schoolroom till sent for, when an unknown mother and brother
were arriving from India! It was too tantalizing! They could hear a
great bustle in the hall, and then a little shrill voice made itself
heard:
"I've gotted new boots with buttons."
"That's him," said Diana.
Chris danced up and down in excitement.
"We must see them," he cried.
"Then Granny or Nurse will only send us to bed. Of course Nurse is
down there. I hear her voice. Mean old thing! As if we oughtn't to see
Mother before she does!"
But the next moment Nurse came panting upstairs.
"You're to go down at once. Your mother wants to see you. She's in the
drawing-room. Are you tidy?"
She passed her hands over their hair, pulled Diana's short brown velvet
frock straight, then sent them down. And strange to say, they went very
slowly.
"My heart is thumping!" whispered Diana.
Chris stuck his chest out with some bravado.
"My heart never thumps me!" he said. "I wouldn't let it!"
But when they reached the drawing-room door he hesitated.
When you have looked forward to a thing very much and talked about
it every day, and many times a day, for quite a month, it is rather
stupendous when it actually arrives.
And then he turned the door handle, and politely stood back and let his
sister go in before him.
"Ladies first," was one of Nurse's favourite maxims. And just now Chris
felt rather glad of it!
Granny was in her easy chair with her arm round a tiny fair
curly-haired boy who stood leaning against her knees. Standing on the
hearthrug with her back to them, warming her delicate-looking hands on
which were many sparkling rings, was their mother. She was tall and
slender, and wore a close-fitting green cloth gown. She had thrown off
her thick fur coat, but wore a little sable toque over her sunny brown
hair. And when she turned round and opened her arms exclaiming, "And
here are my big boy and girl!"
Diana felt a lump rise in her throat. Inwardly she said to herself: "My
beautiful mother—"
In another moment Diana and Chris were being embraced.
Little Noel regarded them with a pucker in his baby brow. He did not
quite like seeing his mother kiss them as she kissed him.
"Now speak to your little brother. He has been longing to see
you—haven't you, Noel?"
Noel stood out straight with his hands behind him.
"I've see'd them now, Mummy, and they're just like uvver chil'en. Like
the chil'en on board."
He did not offer to kiss them, but Diana put her arms round him and
kissed him warmly.
"I think you're a dear little boy," she said. "I like your curls!"
Chris shook hands with him, and said nothing.
His mother laughed:
"Take him up to the nursery or schoolroom, or whatever you call it, and
you'll soon be friends. I think I'll have a warm bath, Mother, before
dinner. Noel and I had tea in the train. Oh, I'm tired!"
The children left the room, and climbed two flights of stairs in
perfect silence.
This new unknown brother with his baby face and flaxen curls was
amazingly self-possessed. Diana tried to take his hand, but he pulled
it away from her with a jerk. He seemed to find going upstairs a great
effort, and put his right foot foremost the whole way. When they
reached the schoolroom, at last, he heaved a little sigh.
"It's nearly as high as heaven!" he remarked.
Chris stared at him. He was going to show him the toy cupboard, but
Noel suddenly found his tongue. He stood by the fire looking into the
red coals with thoughtful face; then he turned to Diana.
"I like fires," he said, "and puppy dogs, and sa'ngwiches that taste
hot and have no sweet in them. What do you like?"
"She likes paper and pencil best," said Chris. "Dinah writes
lovely stories, Noel, about shipwrecks, and fires, and floods, and
earthquakes, and everything exciting, and her people are just going
to be killed and then they're saved, and the girls always have golden
curls and blue eyes, and the boys black flashing eyes and coal-black
hair."
Noel seemed impressed.
"What peoples do you know?" he asked. "I have two peoples always going
about with me. Do you know them? God is one, and the Devil is another.
God takes care of me and loves me. I love Him when I'm good, and I push
the Devil away; but when I'm wicked, I make friends with the Devil."
"Oh!" cried Diana in a shocked voice. "You mustn't talk out loud about
things like that. They're only spoken in church on Sundays."
"What's church?"
"Have you never been to church?" asked Chris. "It's a house with a
pointed roof or tower. Haven't you got any in India? People go to hear
the clergyman read and say prayers, and preach a sermon, and everybody
sings hymns."
"It's very dull," confessed Diana. "Grown-up people seem to like it,
but there's a lot of kneeling and sitting still. Chris and I would like
to run away out of it often."
"What do you do it for?"
"It's to worship God, Nurse says."
"Oh," said Noel with a smile, "then it's like what we have in a tent
sometimes, when the padre comes to see us. I went once, and they sang
hymns, but we hardly ever have it. I'd like to see a proper church. Is
it like the temples where the idols are?"
"We don't know anything about them," said Chris. "You wait and see next
Sunday."
Then Diana began to question the little stranger.
"Tell us," she said, with a little hesitation in her voice, "what is
Mother like?"
Noel stared at her with his big eyes.
"She's like my darling Mummy, that's what she is!"
"I mean—is she cross or kind? Does she laugh, or is she shocked? We
don't know her, and grown-up people are so very different, aren't they,
Chris?"
"Yes; Granny says some things are wrong which Nurse sees no harm about!
And Nurse is cross about something when Granny is not a bit."
"Where is your monkey, and parrot, and coco-nuts?" asked Diana.
Noel stared at her.
"Shut up!" said Chris, giving his sister a nudge. "I was only pulling
your leg. I didn't see them really."
Nurse came into the room at this moment. She took possession of Noel at
once.
"Come along, your mother says you'd best go to bed as you're tired out,
and I'll bring you your supper, when you've had your bath."
"No, fanks, I'll stay here."
Noel put his hands in his pockets and looked at Nurse defiantly. She
said nothing, but she was a big woman and Noel a tiny boy. She simply
took him up in her arms and carried him off to bed. And Noel was so
astounded that he said nothing. His ayah had been left behind in India,
and a young girl who wanted her passage home had taken charge of him on
the voyage. The consequence was that he had had things pretty much his
own way.
"I rather like him," said Diana when the door had closed upon them.
"He's a funny boy."
"He's too cocky," said Chris loftily. "I'll soon teach him!"
"But it's Mother I'm interested in," said Diana. "Oh, Chris, I think
she's lovely, and she dresses like a queen, and she's so tall and
thin, not fat like Granny, and she had buckles on her shoes that were
sparkling like her rings. I wish we could see her again to-night. Do
you think we will?"
"We're going away with her soon," said Chris. "Granny says she's going
to take us with her to Granny's old home in the country. It's that
white house with green shutters in the big garden in the picture over
Granny's sofa."
"I know," said Diana, smiling in that soft dreamy way of hers that
Chris always called "bunkum." "It's called Wistaria Cottage, and it
will be heavenly going with a strange mother into a strange country! So
many, many things might happen."
Chris laughed, but not derisively. He had had a feeling in his chest
when his mother had put her arms round him and kissed him. He thought
he had heard her murmur, "My first-born," but he could not be quite
sure. He asked Diana now if he could be a "first-born."
"Of course, you stupid, if you were born first!"
"Oh," said Chris blankly. "I didn't know it meant that! I was thinking
it was a Bible word. Wasn't it in the plagues in Egypt?"
Diana nodded.
"You're older than me."
"I know that; you generally forget it."
"I go by size."
This was an insult that Chris could not stand. He was a year older than
Diana, but she was as tall as he was, and sometimes it seemed as if she
were going to out-top him. Chris prayed in agony sometimes:
"O God, make me grow, make me grow in the night."
He was always measuring himself, and had been found by Nurse one day
lying flat on his bed, his wrists and his ankles tied to the head and
foot rail of the bed. "I'm trying to stretch myself," he said, and
Nurse had laughed at him, and told him he would grow in "God's good
time." So now he made a rush for Diana, and she fled round the room.
Chairs were knocked over, and when Nurse came in to see what was the
matter, there was a writhing mass of legs and arms on the floor. Diana
was kicking and screaming for all she was worth. If she were inclined
to be the taller, Chris was the stronger, and he was on top of her now.
Nurse soon restored quiet and order.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourselves," she said sternly; "the first
evening your mother is here. She'd be ashamed to own you if she'd seen
you a minute ago!"
"Shall we see her again?" questioned Diana eagerly.
"No, not unless you're sent for, and I know your Granny won't do that."
But they did see her again, for when they were in bed she came to visit
them in turn. Diana and Chris had each a small room of their own, and
Diana was the first one to be visited.
She sat up in bed with wide starry grey eyes, as she gazed in rapt
admiration at her mother. Mrs. Inglefield had changed her cloth gown,
and was in a powder-blue velvet tea-gown edged with sable fur. A string
of pearls was round her white throat. Diana had sometimes hung over the
banisters and watched some of Granny's friends go into the dining-room
when they came to dinner, but though she had admired all their lovely
clothes, none of them had ever belonged to her. She put her little hand
out and stroked her mother's long open velvet sleeve. And then her
mother knelt by her bed and looked at her with laughing eyes.
"Do you remember me, my sweet? Five years ago I brought you and Chris
to Granny, and I thought my heart would break. Hasn't she been a good
kind Granny to take care of you and keep you for me all these years?
You were such a tiny girl, not three years old. I suppose you can't
remember me? I'm quite a stranger to you."
Diana gave a little gulp. How she wished she could remember! But she
wouldn't tell a lie.
"I'm 'fraid I don't remember," she said with downcast head. "But you
aren't a stranger, for we've had your letters, and Chris and I have
been counting the days till you came. And, please, we do belong to you
as much as Noel, don't we? But of course he knows you better than we
do."
"Oh, we shall all know each other very soon and will be a happy family
party! Good night, darling, I'm very tired or I would stay longer.
Where does Chris sleep?"
Diana told her, and Mrs. Inglefield passed on.
Chris received her very gravely and a little shyly.
"My eldest son," his mother murmured, as she laid her hand caressingly
on his short-cropped head. "What talks you and I must have together!
I'm very unhappy at being away from dear Dad, but you seem a little bit
of him. You have his eyes, Chris. Such frank truthful eyes your Dad
has. He has never told an untruth in his life, I believe."
Chris gave a little wriggle. He could not say that of himself, but
he liked to think he had his father's eyes. He gazed at his mother
adoringly.
What a beautiful mother she was! And he was her eldest son. He smiled
at the thought of it.
"Are we going away with you to-morrow?" he asked.
"Oh, no, not for another week. I have a lot of shopping I want to do in
town, and I must see something of Granny. She's my mummy, you know."
This was quite a new idea to Chris. He pondered over it, then he said
suddenly:
"Noel is very cocky!"
"Is he? I dare say he may be, poor mite. He has lived very much alone
in India, and ruled it over the native servants. He's a very quaint
little soul with decided opinions of his own, though he looks and is
such a baby. You must show him how English boys behave, Chris, and
teach him to play fair and give honour to others. Now, good night,
darling."
Chris had never been kissed in such a tender fashion before. He lay
back with rapt eyes after she had left him. "I'm her eldest son," he
murmured to himself.
The sound of it warmed and stirred his heart. He felt it was a new
calling, a sudden incitement to heroic deeds. He would take care of
her, die for her if necessary. He was a bit of Dad: she had said so. He
must behave like Dad.
Then Mrs. Inglefield visited her baby. She thought at first that he was
fast asleep, but Nurse shook her head.
"He has been very restless and excited," she said in a low tone. "I
suppose it is his arrival here. He slept for an hour straight off and
then woke, and I can't get him asleep again."
"Of course you can't," said Noel, hearing the whisper and opening his
eyes wide. "It's dreffully hard to get me to sleep. God has to send an
angel to do it and he works at me for hours! And then, pop! Off I go!"
Then he seized his mother's hand and held it tight.
"Have you been to those uvver chil'en?"
"Yes, darling. What a happy boy you are to have a little sister and
brother to play with!"
"I don't want them. They're too large for me. How many kisses did you
give them?"
"Oh, Noel, you funny boy! Half a dozen each, I dare say. I never
counted."
"Then you mus' give me double half a dozen. You don't know them like
you know me."
His mother looked at him a little anxiously.
"Noel, darling, I love my three children exactly the same. I have
thought more of Diana and Chris than of you when we were in India,
because they were away from me. Now we are together, and I am going to
show my love as much to them as to you. You are all equal in my heart.
I shall give you half a dozen kisses now. Not one more. Now then, one
on each cheek, one on each eye, one on the top of your darling little
nose, and one on your mouth. Good night, my blessing, God bless and
keep you."
Noel took his mother's kisses very calmly.
He blew a kiss to her when she reached the door.
"I fink God likes me better than them," he murmured. "Anyhow, I'll ask
Him to."