CHAPTER XXII
The week had been a clear and joyous one for Gilda. Not a shadow disturbed it.
Christmas Eve she was like a little girl, trotting about the apartment with ropes of evergreen, filling every vase with holly, hanging wreaths at every window, tying up dozens of little packages—inexpensive gifts all destined for Stuart.
That young man came in after dusk, his arms full of packages, and Gilda flew to him, on fire with curiosity, touching the brilliant Christmas ribbons with exploring forefinger.
“Everything is to be placed at the base of the tree,” she explained breathlessly, “—yours are all there, Stuart—I wonder what is in this big box! Darling—shall I take one little look? Oh, no; it wouldn’t do, would it?”
“Keep your lovely little hands off those packages,” he warned her, laying aside his hat and overcoat.
They went into the living room and she stood watching him in youthful excitement as he squatted down and laid packet after packet around the base of the tree.
“It’s the most real Christmas I ever had. It’s a storybook Christmas. All mine were in schools and most uninteresting. Isn’t our tree lovely? No, we must not light it until after dinner. Positively, dearest! And oh, Stuart, did you bring a stocking to hang up?”
He gravely unrolled and displayed the desired hosiery. Hers already hung from the mantel, daintily empty; and she hung his beside it, stepped back to view the effect, clasped her hands with a swift intake of breath.
“Don’t they look perfectly darling together!” she said as he drew her head back against his shoulder. The next instant she wriggled free, pinned a twig of holly to each stocking.
“Poke the fire, Stuart. I want to see the sparks. There! Isn’t it enchanting?”
Everything was “enchanting” or “adorable” or “darling” that Christmas Eve; the dinner, too, with its roast goose—reconnoitered with difficulty by an unskilled carver—its egg flip and mulled spiced wine, and its very British plum-pudding—that over-praised and soggy sham—which blazed gaily under its burning sauce, and exhaled the only appetising ingredient in it—its odour.
They stood up and drank to each other, almost unsmilingly, almost awkward in a seriousness unpremeditated.
That was in flip. He got up again later, and offered their “love everlasting” in a cup of mulled wine.
An odd shyness overcame her; she was able to reply only with a smile; but as she lifted her silver cup, a swift mist glimmered in her eyes.
She closed her eyes and kissed the rim of her goblet; they exchanged cups, drank to love in silence.
Very soon they were at their ease again with each other.
“A Christmas goose,” he commented, “is very English.”
“They always sent me one.”
He looked up interrogatively.
“To school—wherever I happened to be—in Belgium, or France. There came always a Christmas box from my father—always.”
He nodded gravely.
“Mother also sent me my Nöel,” she added.
“That helped,” he ventured.
“Yes.... Convent schools are not gay at Christmas-tide.... Isn’t this a most enchanting Christmas?”
He thought: “You pathetic kid!” But he said it was truly an old fashioned and genuine Christmas Eve.
As they left the table she said a trifle bashfully to the boy:
“I don’t know what Christmas bowl we should drink after dinner. I’ve looked all through Dickens and his stories are full of steaming bowls, but he doesn’t say how they’re made——”
Stuart shouted with laughter, and they went on gaily to the piano.
For a while she sang in her clear, childish voice the quaint French carols—the Nöel of the peasants, or its sweet and sophisticated modern equivalents—charming chorals of convent days.
She drifted to a familiar hymn. He leaned beside her, sang with her.
Her white hands hung listlessly on the keys; her cheek touched his.
Hesitatingly she mentioned her own faith; waited for some response. In the wistful silence his boy’s heart grew heavy. The Talkers had left in him little with which to meet her appeal.
“Have you no God?” she asked in a low voice.
“I would—would like to have one. Children are better off.”
“You are only a boy, Stuart. You still need God.”
He nodded. Presently he said: “I needed Him when you died that night. I asked Him to be fair to you.”
“You prayed for me?”
“I asked justice. I was over-wrought, overwhelmed. I suppose I reached out instinctively for help—my mind confused with memories of Christ—of miracles—and the little dead girl He made alive again——”
“Jairus’ daughter.”
“I remember now.... You seemed such a little girl to be dead....”
She said, seriously: “Do you think it was Christ—or what Pockman did?”
“I want to think that what Pockman did was by grace of Christ.... I don’t see why a modern mind may not believe that.... Except....”
“What, Stuart?”
“Oh, I don’t know.... There is so much to think of ... so much science and logic—and the wisdom of modern thinkers to consider. The trend of thought is not toward Christ as the ultimate solution of the world’s problems.”
The girl sat very still, her cheek pressed against his shoulder.
She said: “How can modern science admit spiritual survival and deny Christ?”
“Spiritual survival is being proven.”
After a pause: “I didn’t think I was at liberty to tell,” she said in a voice that was nearly a whisper, “but I saw Christ’s shadow, once.”
He turned slowly to look at her.
“When I lay dead in the chair.... You laid me there. Then you went away.... Shall I tell you?”
He scarcely nodded.
“I lay there, dead. Sadoul came from behind the portières. My soul was already leaving me. Sadoul saw it.
“God only knows what he meant to do—but suddenly the white shadow of Christ passed between Sadoul and me!... I saw His shadow on the air, and knew it. And that is all I knew until I opened my eyes and saw you beside my bed——”
She pressed her face convulsively against him.
The boy caressed her passionately, in silence, trembling to remember.
What she had told him was the delirium of a dying brain. But he did not say so. All he did say was:
“Sadoul did not come from behind the portières. I was alone with you when you died.”
“Sadoul was there.”
“No, dear——”
“I tell you he was behind the curtains, Stuart!”
“But I went down stairs to find him——”
“You went down and did not find him. When you returned he was gone. But he was there. I saw him.”
She sat upon the piano bench beside him and patted her bright hair into better order. He gave her a vague, incredulous look. Then an odd mental flash stilled his heart for an instant—a mere glimmer—a phantom thought scarce formed.
“Behind the curtains,” he repeated, mechanically.
She nodded, still busy with her hair.
“Stuart,” she said, “it is all passed and happily ended by the grace of God. I died: God heard your prayer and gave me my soul again. Pockman was only the instrument He chose——”
She turned and took his hand impulsively:
“Darling, can’t you believe that Christ made me alive again?”
“Yes, I can—in a way——”
“Believe it this Christmas Eve. That would be the most wonderful gift for us—your new faith. Because you saw. What more does anybody ask? What clearer proof had the publican, Jairus? He asked aid. Christ answered and raised his child from the dead. You asked God to help me——” She threw wide her arms—“here I am, alive!” And she flung her arms around his neck.
She touched the keys again. He sat humbly beside her, silent, while she sang in her lovely, child’s voice the nobler hymns, or, sometimes, only played them.
And very soon it was time to light the magic tree. But first she banished him to her bedroom, closed the door, then ran to her desk and took out the gaily beribboned little gifts for his stocking.
When it was filled and bulging, she called to him and, in turn, submitted to banishment, and he drew from his overcoat pocket the gifts destined for her slim stocking, filling it from toe to knee.
It lacked a few minutes to midnight when they lighted the tree. She cried out in delight and caught his hand.
They stood so until the clock struck.
At the last stroke she turned and wished him an excited Christmas greeting, and:
“Oh, Stuart!” she cried, “I want to see what is in that large box!——”
It was her old-fashioned French doll of wax. It opened and shut its eyes. It bleated “Ma-ma” when its tummy was discreetly pressed.
She clung to it through all the heavenly excitement of that Christmas morn. A slim hoop of diamonds glittered on her wrist; there were some beautiful handkerchiefs, stockings, a garnished suitcase, boxes of gloves, books, bon-bons—and then the foolish little gifts, odd, pretty, dainty things without value. But amid all she clutched her doll to her breast in a passion of half laughing, half childish possession—the strange instinct that persists so often despite self-mockery, pretense, and denial—the little girl deathless in the adolescent—the heart’s eternal youth till it beats its own requiem to the last faint throb—the Feminine, immutable, imperious, imperishable.