Chapter XXVI: A Pilgrimage

On the afternoon of Christmas-eve, Diana sat in the library writing to David. She had drawn up a small table close to the fire. The room was cosy, and perfectly quiet, excepting for the leap and crackle of flames among the huge pine logs.

Diana dated her letter; then laid aside her pen, and, resting her chin in her hand, read over once again David's Christmas letter, which had reached her that morning.

It was very full of the consecration of the Church of the Holy Star, which was to take place before the Feast of Epiphany.

It held no allusions to the anniversaries, so soon coming round; the days which, a year ago, had been fraught with happenings of such deep importance to them both.

Long after she had reached _Yours ever_, _David Rivers_, Diana sat with bent head, pondering over the closely written sheets, so pregnant with omissions, trying to make up her mind as to whether she should take her cue from David, and ignore the significance of these days; or whether she should act upon her first instinctive impulse, and write freely of them.

The firelight flickered on her coils of golden hair, and revealed the fact that her face had lost the rounded contour of that perfect buoyancy of health, which had been hers a year ago. Its thinness, and the purple shadows beneath the eyes, made her look older; but, as she lifted her eyes from the closely written sheets of foreign paper, and gazed, with a wistful little smile, into the fire, there was in them such a depth of chastened tenderness, and in her whole expression so gentle a look of quiet patience--as of a heart keeping long vigil, and not yet within sight of dawn--that the mellowing and softening of the spirit looking forth from it, fully compensated for the thinning and aging of the lovely face. Diana, in her independent radiance, was there no longer; but David's wife took up her pen to write to David, with a look upon her face, which would have brought David to his knees at her feet, could he but have seen it.

Uncle Falcon's amber eyes gleamed down upon her. They had never twinkled since her wedding night; but they often shone with a strangely comprehending light. Sometimes they said: "We have both won, Diana;" at other times: "We have both lost;" according to her mood. But always they were kindly; and always they gave her sympathy; and, unfailingly, they understood.

The old house rang with the merry voices of children. Notwithstanding the solemn protestations of old Rodgers, they were apparently playing hide-and-seek up and down the oak staircase, along the upper corridors, and in and out of the deep hall cupboards.

Diana was not fond of children. An extra loud whoop or bang in her vicinity, did not call up an indulgent smile upon her face; and, at last, when the whole party apparently fell headlong down the stairs together, Diana, with a frown of annoyance, rang the bell and told Rodgers to request Mrs. Mallory to see that there was less roughness in the games.

Certainly Diana was not naturally fond of children. Yet during these years in which she was striving to let her whole life be a perpetual offering of frankincense, she filled her house with them, at Christmas, Easter, and mid-summer.

They were the children of missionaries; boys and girls at school in England, whose parents in far distant parts of the world, could give them no welcome home in holiday time. They would have had a sad travesty of holidays, at school, had not Diana invited them to Riverscourt, giving them a right royal time, under the gentle supervision of Mrs. Mallory, the young widow of a missionary killed in China, who now lived with Diana, as her companion and secretary. Mrs. Marmaduke Vane had wedded Mr. Inglestry, within three months of Diana's own marriage.

As the house grew more quiet, Diana again took up her pen. She could hear Mrs. Mallory shepherding the children along the upper corridors, into a play-room at the further end of the house.

For a moment she felt a pang of compunction at having so peremptorily stopped the hide-and-seek; but salved her conscience by the remembrance of the magnificent Christmas-tree, loaded with gifts, standing ready in the ante-room, for the morrow's festivities.

Poor little forsaken girls and boys! She had no mother-love to give them. But she gave them what she could--gold, frankincense; in many cases the climate in which their parents lived provided the myrrh, when they had to be told at school of the death, in a far-off land, of a passionately loved and longed-for mother, whose possible home-coming before long, had been the one gleam of light on the grey horizon of a lonely little heart's school-life.

Poor desolate little children; orphaned, yet not orphans!

Diana laid down her pen, and stretched her hand towards the bell, to send word that the hide-and-seek might go on. Then smiled at her own weakness. Why, even their mothers would have been obliged sometimes to say: "Hush!" If only Diana had known it, their own mothers would have said "Hush!" far more often than she did!

She took up her pen, and her surroundings were completely forgotten, as she talked to David.

"RIVERSCOURT, Christmas-eve.

"MY DEAR DAVID,--How well you timed your Christmas letter.
It reached me this morning. So I have it for Christmas-eve,
Christmas-day, and Boxing-day--all three important
anniversaries to us. Had I but thought of it in time, I
might have kept a sheet for each day. Instead of which, in
my eagerness for news concerning the Church of the Holy
Star, I read your whole long letter through, the very
moment I received it. However, it will bear reading twice,
or even three times; it is so full of interest.

"Indeed I shall be with you in thought at the opening
ceremony. I intend to motor over to Winchester, and spend
the time in prayer and meditation in your little Chapel of
the Epiphany.

"It will not by any means be my first pilgrimage there,
David. It is the place of all others where I find I can
most easily pray for your work. I kneel where you knelt,
and look up at the stained glass representation of the Wise
Men. It brings back every word of the sermon you preached
this day last year.

"When you were there, did you happen to notice the window
on the left, as you kneel at the rail? It represents the
Virgin bending over the Baby Christ. She is holding both
His little feet in one of her hands. I can't understand
why; but that action seems so extraordinarily to depict the
tenderness of her mother-love. I dislike babies myself,
exceedingly; yet, ever since I saw that window, I have been
pursued by the desire to hold a baby's two little feet in
my hand that way, just to see how it feels! I am certain
your mother often held your feet so, when you were a wee
baby, David; and I am equally certain my mother never held
mine. Don't you think tenderness, shown to little children,
before they are old enough to know what tenderness means,
makes a difference to their whole lives? I am sure I grew
up hard-hearted, simply because no demonstration of
affection was ever poured out upon me in my infancy. You
grew up so sweet and affectionate to every one, simply
because your mother lavished love upon you, kissed your
curls, and held both your baby feet in one of her tender
hands, when you were a tiny wee little kiddie, and knew
nothing at all about it! There! Now you have one of my
theories of life, thought out as I knelt in your little
chapel, meaning to spend the whole time in prayer for your
work.

"Last time I was there, just as I left the chapel,
Even-song was beginning. I slipt quietly down the cathedral
and sat at the very bottom of the vast nave. The service
was going on away up in the choir, through distant gates.
The music seemed to come floating down from heaven. They
sang the 'Nunc Dimittis' to Garrett in F. 'Lord,' whispered
the angel voices, on gently floating harmony: 'Lord, now
lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.' 'Depart in
peace,' repeated the silvery trebles, soaring back to
heaven! I thought of you; and of how you quoted it, looking
up at the picture of Simeon in the temple, as we walked
down old St. Botolph's Church. How relieved you were to be
off, David; and how glad to go.

"I still make pilgrimages to St. Botolph's, when spending
any time in town; or when I take a panic over your health,
or your many African perils, snakes, poisoned darts, and
such like things--not to mention an early hippopotamus,
dancing a cake-walk in your front-garden, before breakfast.

"The verger is becoming accustomed to my visits. At first
she watched me with suspicion, evidently fearing lest I had
designs on the cherubs of the lectern, or purposed carving
my name upon the altar-rail. When she found my prayer and
meditation covered no such sinister intentions, she gave up
prowling round, and merely kept an eye on me from her seat
at the bottom of the church. Last time I went, I had quite
a long talk with her, and found her a most interesting and
well-informed person; well up in the history of the old
church, and taking a touching pride and delight in it;
evidently fulfilling her duties with reverent love and
care; not in the perfunctory spirit one finds only too
often among church officials.

"But, oh David, what a contrast between this refined,
well-educated woman, and the extraordinary old caretaker at
that church to which you went when you were first ordained!
Did I tell you, I made a pilgrimage there? I thought it a
beautiful church, and took a quite particular interest in
seeing the pulpit, and all the other places in which you
performed, for the first time, the sacred functions of your
holy office.

"But I can't return there, David, or remember it with
pleasure, because of the appalling old gnome who haunts it,
and calls herself the 'curtiker'. I never saw anything
quite so terrifyingly dirty, or so weirdly coming to pieces
in every possible place and yet keeping together. And there
was no avoiding her. She appeared to be ubiquitous.

"When I first entered the church, she was on her knees in
the aisle, flopping a very grimy piece of house flannel in
and out of a zinc pail, containing what looked like an
unpleasant compound of ink and soapsuds. Our acquaintance
began by her exhorting me, in a very loud voice, to keep
out of the 'pile.' The pail was the very last place into
which one would desire to go. So, carefully keeping out of
it, and avoiding the flops of the flannel, which landed
each time in quite unexpected places, I fled up the church.
A moment later, as I walked round the pulpit examining the
panels, she popped up in it triumphant, waving a black rag,
which I suppose did duty for a duster. Her sudden
appearance, in the place where I was picturing you giving
out your first text, made me jump nearly out of my skin.
Whereupon she said: 'Garn!' and came chuckling down the
steps, flapping her black rag on the balustrade. I hadn't
a notion what 'garn' meant; but concluded it was cockney
for 'go on,' and hurriedly went.

"But it was no good dodging round pillars or taking
circuitous routes down one aisle and up another, in
attempts to avoid her. Wherever I went, she was there
before me; always brandishing some fresh implement
connected with the process which, in any other hands, might
have been church cleaning. So at last I gave up trying to
avoid her, and stood my ground bravely, in the hopes of
gleaning information from her very remarkable conversation.
I say 'bravely,' because she became much more terrifying
when she talked. She held her left eye shut, with her left
hand, put her face very close to mine, and looked at me out
of the right eye. She didn't seem able to talk without
looking at me; or to look at me, without holding one eye
shut.

"I was dining at the Brands' that evening, and happened to
say to the man who took me in: 'Do you know how terrifying
it is to talk to a person who holds one eye shut, and looks
at you with the other?' He wanted to know what I meant; so
I showed how my old lady had done it, with head pushed
forward, and elbow well up. Everybody else went into fits;
but my man turned out to be a rising oculist, and took it
quite seriously; declared it must be a bad case of
astigmatism; asked the name of the church, and is going off
there to examine her eyes and prescribe glasses!

"I tell you all this, in case she was a protégé of yours;
for she remembers you, David.

"I am doubtful as to what manner of reception she will give
to my friend the oculist. I felt bound to tell him she
would most probably say 'Garn!' and his convulsive
amusement, seemed to me disproportionate to the mildness of
the joke. Her incomprehensible remarks, and her astonishing
cockney make rational conversation with her very difficult.
While I was in the church, a mild-looking curate came in,
and tried to explain something which was wanted. I could
not hear the conversation, but I saw her, at the bottom of
the church, holding her eye, and glaring at him. She came
back to me, brandishing a dustpan. ''Ear that?' she said.
'Garn! As I always say to 'em: "A nod's as good as a wink
to a blind 'orse!'"

"Now that sounded like a proverb, and she said it as if it
were a very deep pronouncement, which might settle all
ecclesiastical difficulties, and solve all parochial
problems. But, when one comes to think of it, what on earth
does it mean?

"Well, David, she remembers you; so I have no doubt
whatever that you know all about her; when she became a
widow--all caretakers are widows, aren't they? how, and
from what cause; the exact number of her children; how many
she has buried, and how many are out in the world; what
'carried off' the former, and what are the various
occupations of the latter. Not possessing your wonderful
faculty for unearthing the family history and inner life of
caretakers, I only know, that her favourite conviction is:
that a nod's as good as a wink to a blind horse; and--that
she remembers you.

"I felt shy about mentioning you, while I was examining all
the places of special interest; but when I reached the
door, to which she accompanied me, gaily twirling a
moulting feather broom, I turned, and ventured to ask
whether she remembered you. She instantly clapped her hand
over her eye; but the other gleamed at me, with a
concentrated scorn, for asking so needless a question; and
with ill-disguised mistrust, as if I were a person who had
no business to have even a nodding acquaintance with you.

"'It would taike a lot of furgittin' ter furgit _'im_!' she
observed, her face threateningly near mine; the whirling
feather broom moulting freely over both of us. ''E's the
sort of gent as maikes a body remember?'

"So now, my dear David, we know why I never forget to write
to you by each mail. You are the sort of gent who makes a
body remember!

"I asked her what she chiefly recollected about you. She
stared at me for a minute, with chill disapproval. Then her
face illumined, suddenly. ''Is smoile,' she said.

"I fled to my motor. I felt suddenly hysterical. She had
such quaint black grapes in her bonnet; and you _have_
rather a nice smile you know, David.

"Not many smiles come my way, nowadays, excepting Mrs.
Mallory's; and they are so very ready-made. You feel you
could buy them in Houndsditch, at so much a gross. I know
about Houndsditch, because it is exactly opposite St.
Botolph's, out of Bishopsgate Street. I tried to have a
little friendly conversation with the people who stand in
the gutter all along there, selling extraordinary little
toys for a penny; also studs and buttonhooks, and
bootlaces. They told me they bought them in Houndsditch by
the gross. One man very kindly offered to take me to
Houndsditch, and show me where they bought them. It was
close by; so I went. He walked beside me, talking volubly
all the way. He called me 'Lidy,' all the time. It sounded
uncomfortably like a sort of pet-name, such as 'Liza or
'Tilda; but I believe it was Bishopsgate for 'Lady', and
intended to be very respectful.

"The wholesale shop was a marvellous place; so full of
little toys, and beads, and scent-bottles, and bootlaces,
that you just crowded in amongst them, and wondered whether
you would ever get out again.

"My very dirty friend, was also very eager, and pushed our
way through to the counter. He explained to a salesman that
I was a 'lidy' who wanted to 'buoy.' The salesman looked
amused; but there seemed no let or hindrance in the way of
my 'buoying,' so I bought heaps of queer things, kept
samples of each, and gave all the rest to my friend for his
stock-in-trade. He was so vociferous in his thanks and
praises, and indiscriminate mention of both future states,
that I dreaded the walk back to Bishopsgate. But,
fortunately, Knox, having seen me cross the road, had had
the gumption to follow; so there stood the motor blocking
the way in Houndsditch. Into it I fled, and was whirled
westward, followed by a final: 'Gawd bless yur, lidy!' from
my grateful guide.

"These people alarm me so, because I am never sure what
they may not be going to say next. When _you_ talk to them,
David, you always seem able to hold the conversation. But
if _I_ talk to them, almost immediately it is they who are
talking to me; while I am nervously trying to find a way to
escape from what I fear they are about to say.

"But I was telling you of Mrs. Mallory's smiles----

* * * * *

"Just as I wrote that, my dear David, Mrs. Mallory appeared
at the door, wearing one of them, and inquired whether I
was aware that it was nearly eleven o'clock; all the
children were asleep, and she was waiting to help me 'do
Santa Claus'?

"So I had to leave off writing, then and there, and 'do
Santa Claus' for my large family, with Mrs. Mallory's help.
I began my letter early in the afternoon; and, with only
short breaks for tea and dinner, have been writing ever
since. Time seems to fly while I sit scribbling to you of
all my foolish doings. I only hope they do not bore you,
David. If the reading of them amuses you, as much as the
writing amuses me, we ought both to be fairly well
entertained.

"Now I am back in the library, having been round to all the
beds, leaving behind at each a fat, mysterious, lumpy,
rustling, stocking! Oh, do you remember the feel of it, as
one sat up in the dark? One had fallen asleep, after a
final fingering of its limp emptiness. One
woke--remembered!--sat up--reached out a breathless
hand--and lo! it was plump and full--filled to overflowing.
Santa Claus had come!

"I wish Santa Claus would come to empty hearts!

"David you don't know how hard it is to go the round of
those little beds upstairs, and see the curly tumbled heads
on the pillows; feeling so little oneself about each
individual head, yet knowing that each one represents a
poor mother, thousands of miles away, who has gone to bed
aching for a sight of the tumbled curls on which I look
unmoved; who would give anything--anything--to be in my
shoes just for that five minutes.

"There is a tiny girl here now, we call her 'Little Fairy,'
whose mother died eight weeks ago, just as the parents were
preparing to return to England. The little one is not to be
told until the father arrives, and tells her himself. She
thinks both are on the way. She talks very little of the
father, who appears to be a somewhat austere man; but every
day she says: 'Mummie's tumming home! Mummie's tumming
home!' When her little feet begin to dance as she trips
across the hall, I know they are dancing to the tune of
'Mummie's tumming home!' Each evening she gives me a soft
little cheek to kiss, saying anxiously: 'Not my mouf, Mrs.
Rivers; I's keeping that for mummie!' It's breaking me,
David. If it goes on much longer I shall have to gather her
into my arms, and tell her the truth, myself.

"Oh, why--why--why do people do these things in the name of
religion; on account of so-called Christian work.

"I wish I loved children! Do you think there is something
radically wrong with one's whole nature, when one isn't
naturally fond of children?

* * * * *

"Hark! I hear chimes! David, it is Christmas morning! This
day last year, you dined with me. Where shall we be this
time next year, I wonder? What shall we be doing?

"I wish you a happy Christmas, David.

"Do you remember Sarah's Christmas card? Yes, of course you
do. You never forget such things. Sarah retailed to me the
conversation in St. Botolph's about it; all you said to
her; all she said to you. So you and I were the
turtle-doves! No wonder you 'fair shook with laughin'!'
Good old Sarah! I wonder whether she has 'gone to a
chicken' for god-papa. Oh, no! I believe I sent him a
turkey.

"There are the 'waits' under the portico. '_Hark the herald
angels sing!_'

"I hope they won't wake my sleeping family, or there will
be a premature feeling in stockings. These self-same
'waits' woke me at midnight when I was six years old. I
felt in my stocking, though I knew I ought not to do so
until morning. I drew out something which rattled
deliciously in the darkness. A little round box, filled
with 'hundreds and thousands.' Do you know those tiny,
coloured goodies? I poured them into my eager little palm.
I clapped it to my mouth, as I sat up in my cot, in the
dark. I shall never forget that first scrunch. They were
mixed beads!

"Moral....

"No, you will draw a better moral than I. My morals usually
work out the wrong way.

"I must finish this letter on Boxing-day. Christmas-day
will be very full, with a Christmas-tree and all sorts of
plans for these little children of other people.

"Well the mail does not go until the 26th, and I shall like
to have written to you on _our_ three special
days--Christmas-eve, Christmas-day, and Boxing-day.

"Good-night, David."