The Doll Maker

4

Miss Geary, by some mysterious means, learned that Niall had gone away. She mentioned it to Clare the next afternoon when she met her at the lodge−gates. Clare glanced sharply at her; the old lady's face was as serene as ever, and her tone had been as usual, gentle and remote, but Clare fancied she had caught a suggestion of satisfaction or relief in her words. Clare told herself she was over−sensitive and suspicious: what earthly reason had old Miss Geary to be glad that Niall had gone—gone and left his mother alone? She should have been sorry for Mrs. Sterne, left lonely in her silent house in the wood. Niall had been gay, galant, in an innocent and merry way, with Miss Geary, and she had seemed to like him on Christmas Eve. Clare could not believe that the old lady had been in any way anxious on her account because of Niall's presence.

She had missed his cheerful clatter with the tea−cups at three o'clock that afternoon more sorely than she had thought possible. With as much seeming casualness as she could affect she had tried to find out from Mrs. Sterne where Niall had gone and when he would return. The answer was vague. He had gone on business to the north of England; he might be away some time; he was frequently away from Brackenbine, of course.

Clare stuck to her programme, working hard each morning and evening and looking forward keenly to her afternoon hours at Brackenbine. Though the house was quieter and less lively now, Mrs. Sterne's company was still a rich treasure; Clare could scarcely understand how she had endured the drabness of life before she knew her.

The days were still infinitely happier than any Clare had known at school; but her nights became oddly troubled. The assurance and the shining peace were shattered after Niall's departure; they broke very suddenly after dark on the evening when she last saw him. Each evening, after that, as soon as she had closed the door of her little room and was alone, she was beset by a strange agitation of mind. Again, like the extraordinary content which it had displaced, this agitation was something she had never experienced before. She deliberately recalled all that she had felt in the few weeks succeeding Anne Otterel's death and compared her present feelings with those. There was a distinct difference of kind; then she had been dispirited and crushed; something had been taken away from her: she had suffered loss and defeat, but it had been a passive feeling. Now, if it was a loss she was feeling, it left no deadness in her heart, but a strange, active anguish; her feelings were acute, her nerves uncontrolled, her mind worked with a too−hectic voluntary energy creating images of anxiety and fear.

Yet, in waking, she could not seize the images. She was afraid, yet could not see the thing she was afraid of.

Struggling to pin down either in words or pictures the subject of her anxiety, the nearest she could come to describing it to herself was that something was broken that must, at any cost, be made whole again. In dreams, however, her fears wore distinct, visible shapes. She slept badly in these nights, tossing on her bed for hours before she lost consciousness, and when she woke she was weary in both body and mind, her brain especially tired from intensive labour. She was aware that in her sleep she had been driven pitilessly through a succession of most crowded scenes, forced to follow a baffling course among persons and things that changed with mad haste and in−deflectable purpose from form to form, always progressing towards some huge, frightening, general transformation of being that was never reached. Some parts of the dreams, a few fragments only, she knew, remained vivid in her memory after she had wakened. They all related in some way to Brackenbine and the ones of which she retained a clear visual impression longest pertained to the little park of dwarf trees.

Time and again, in her dreams she found herself groping at that little window in the studio, desperately anxious to get out, and unable to move the fastening; and there was someone out there, among the little trees, whom she must at all costs join. Then, after a long time, during which she had been hurried through tumultuous events all lost to her waking memory, she would be running frantically through Brackenbine wood, not pursued, but searching for something, something that it was of the utmost importance to find, and which ever eluded her. Then the dark trees round her would thin out and she would be running more slowly with long strides, so long she seemed to be flying smoothly and effortlessly just above a field of deep green moss, and in a light that was neither sunlight nor moonlight she would see the Captain's evergreen oaks floating past her, and she knew that she was being drawn in her flight up towards the ruined castle behind the dark belt of forest, and there, though she could not see the entrance of the castle, she knew that there was waiting for her someone she dared not face and yet must join. She knew that she had wept with anxiety in her dream because if she could but find the thing she had lost then she would be able to face the person who stood in the entrance of the castle.

Sobbing, she looked wildly about her for the lost thing, knowing that everyone else had it and she alone had not. For now there were other people round her. She began to go more and more slowly, until she was walking, dragging her feet, rather, over the yielding moss, and she had fallen behind the murmurous throng. Still, she was not alone; she was under the gnarled old trees that screened the castle, and by every tree there stood a person. At first she could not make out who these people were, but the wood grew lighter after a time and then she saw that they were girls in shining dresses, some green, some gold and red and yellow, like flames; they stood upright, close to the trunks of the trees, so close, indeed, that she was not sure if their bodies did not form the very trunks of the trees, and their pale arms upheld long, gleaming tresses of hair which at the same time was the foliage of the trees. Round each girl was a bright ring of flames which neither increased nor diminished, but burned still and clear upon the moss; and the girls were laughing, each with uptilted face, listening to something, a voice or a sound of instruments that sounded, Clare knew, though her own ear could not catch it, infinitely sweet from the halls of the castle.

Weeping, she looked down at her own feet, round which she knew there should be a circle of bright, still flame, and all that shone there was a broken chain of little sparks, green points like cats' eyes or glow−worms. The green sparks wavered, weaving in and out about her, but would not form the circle that she must have; her feet sank deep into the moss, which clasped them and held her fast, and she awoke with a dreadful load upon her heart, hearing herself say aloud: 'It is broken! It is broken!'

It seemed to Clare that these fragments recurred constantly in the immense volume of dreams that her imagination composed every night. In themselves the images were not frightening; on the contrary, there was a strange grace and beauty about those half−human trees, but the accompanying feeling of anxiety, of dreadful sorrow for the broken circle, was so intolerable that by the third or fourth night after she began to experience this agitation of mind, she grew afraid to sleep at all and tried to force herself to keep awake by reading, but then, perversely, sleep would overcome her almost at once, and willy−nilly she was back in Brackenbine wood, or in the dark studio, a prey to the same anguish.

She told no one about these troubles—indeed, there was no one at Paston Hall whom she would ever have dreamt of telling; but she saw the effects in her pale face and darkened eyes, and she feared that either Miss Geary or Mrs. Sterne would notice the change and ask her if she was not well. Above all, she feared that Miss Sperrod would conclude that she was overworking and make her reduce her visits to Brackenbine, or perhaps advise her father that she was not fit enough to work for the scholarship and so end her connection with Brackenbine altogether. To guard against that, which would have been an unbearable loss, Clare in the first place took care to avoid meeting Miss Sperrod as much as she could, and secondly, deliberately put on a cheerfulness of expression and a briskness of demeanour beyond her normal wont.

The nightly travails of her mind ceased as abruptly as they had begun, and in circumstances that proved to her what their true cause had been.

One afternoon about a week after Niall's departure she went to Brackenbine as usual. Miss Geary had told her that she would be late in meeting her at the lodge−gates on her return, and the prospect of a longer time with Mrs. Sterne should have put Clare into the highest of spirits; but today she walked the rough road through the wood slowly, her mental exhaustion seeming to induce a like lassitude in her body, so that she felt drained of energy and as worn−out as though she had in fact laboured over all the rugged miles her dream−body had traversed the night before.

The door of the house, as always, stood open, but Mrs. Sterne was not in the dining−parlour. A slight noise or the breaking of sticks drew Clare to the door of the drawing−room, and there she saw Mrs. Sterne at the hearth piling all the evergreen Christmas decorations into a great pyre inside the chimney.

“Hallo!” Mrs. Sterne called cheerfully. “I'm just finishing!”

Clare went across to her and bent to help her to stack up the withered sprays of laurel and the branches of fir and holly that had decked the room. The great Christmas−tree had been taken down and stripped of its candles and it lay now slanting across the fireplace as the centrepiece of the bonfire to be.

“Mind your hands on the holly,” said Mrs. Sterne, who was wearing leather gloves. Clare picked up an armful of fir branches which rained needles down upon the bricks of the hearth.

“I thought you were supposed to take your Christmas decorations down on Twelfth Night,” she said. “It's past that now, isn't it?”

“It is,” answered Mrs. Sterne. “I just left them up until Niall came back.”

Clare had taken a step inside the great fireplace. She stood rooted there with her back to Mrs. Sterne and her eyes fixed on the branches of the spruce sloping across the brick cavern in front of her.

“Niall?” she said, without turning round. “Is he back?” Mrs. Sterne answered with incredible casualness:

“Not yet. He will be this evening, I expect.”

Clare turned and began sweeping up the sprays and branches, being busy as if her dear life depended on it, and she talked in a babble which, try as she might to control it, sounded feverishly elated in her own ears.

“There,” said Mrs. Sterne in a short while. “That's the lot, I think. You haven't scratched yourself, have you? There's old Christmas on the bier again. We shall sit and watch him burn tonight. Let's go across to the other room now. It's chilly in here.”

Clare gave a last look at the pile of brushwood, then, with a sudden exclamation of surprise, stepped nearer and parted the branches of the Christmas−tree near its top which leaned against the smoke−blackened wall.

“Oh look!” she cried. “You've forgotten the doll! How lucky I noticed it!”

The little figure in green that she had seen on the tree on Christmas Eve was still there, tied with thread to the stem of the tree and hidden by the branches. She tugged and twisted it to free it. The few threads soon broke and she turned with the doll in her hand, to find Mrs. Sterne looking at her rather oddly, with raised eyebrows.

Clare looked down at the doll. It was beautifully made and dressed; its silken hair and delicately carved and painted features were most life−like.

“What a shame if it had got burnt,” she said. “It's so pretty. It's one that Niall made, isn't it?” “Yes,” said Mrs. Sterne. She paused and then, when she spoke again, she sounded a little at a loss.

“I hadn't exactly forgotten it,” she said slowly. “We leave the doll on when we burn the tree after Christmas. It's an old superstition. We've always done it in our family. It's supposed to bring good luck throughout the next year, you know.”

Clare looked crestfallen. “Oh ... Oh dear, I'm sorry.... I shouldn't have taken it off.” She turned uncertainly towards the tree again as if wondering whether she should put it back. “Oh, but what a shame to burn such a pretty little thing,” she exclaimed again. “It must have taken him weeks to make it!”

She sounded so distressed that Mrs. Sterne laughed, and patted her shoulder.

“As a matter of fact he said it was a dud,” she said. “But I'll tell you what: we won't burn that one. You have that one. I'll cut one out of paper for tonight. I don't expect the Fates or the Fairies or whoever it is receives these sacrifices will know the difference.”

Clare was still more embarrassed. “Oh, but if it's Niall's...” she began. Mrs. Sterne laughed at her objections, and, carrying the doll off to the dining−room, quickly wrapped it in a piece of tissue−paper and stowed it in the pocket of Clare's coat. “There,” she said. “Perhaps it will bring you good luck all this year.”

Clare still protested that she could not take it. But in the end, blushing a little for the lameness of the compromise, and the confession of superstition, she said:

“I'll ask him if he'll let me keep it till after Easter, just till the exam.”

“Of course!” said Mrs. Sterne, smiling. “That's it. My grandmother would have read a meaning into your coming into the house and taking the Christmas doll from the tree, like that. But I expect you don't believe in omens?”

“Only good ones,” said Clare firmly.

She gave herself to the Latin lesson that afternoon with an even greater cheerfulness and energy than before Niall went away. Throughout their reading and the digressions Mrs. Sterne permitted she was alert to catch any hint of the time when Niall was expected, but Mrs. Sterne did not refer to his home−coming again.

The short afternoon darkened, Mrs. Sterne made the tea and they drank it by the firelight, and at last Clare, seeing that it was turned four o'clock, dared linger no more in the hope of hearing his footstep in the hall.

She set off along the winding drive alone, and she went now with a brisk step. The disappointment of not seeing Niall this afternoon was nothing in comparison with the certainty that he would be there at tea−time tomorrow. Clare had discarded all pretence with herself now. She curled her fingers round the little parcel in her pocket and rejoiced that she was in love with Niall Sterne and would see him in twenty−four hours' time. He had come back and the magic circle was whole again. She felt the bright certainty ring her round like the still, clear circle of flame that had shone round the girls in her dreams.

A little before the lodge−gates were reached the drive turned sharply round a great flat rock that obtruded from the slope of the hill. Just as she reached this point Clare was startled by an animal that shot down from the dusk of the wood, stood poised for a second in the middle of the path and then scurried back behind the rock. It was too big for either rabbit or stoat, and as it disappeared she had a glimpse of a long furry tail held high. A fox? she thought, moving slowly forward again and looking wonderingly after the creature. Suddenly it sprang into full view again, on the rock, on a level with her shoulder: an enormous cat. She gave a gasp—Grim, of course! She called his name aloud.

She was answered gaily from the wood by a human voice:

“And his master! Less active on this confounded hillside but no less happy to see you!”

There was a slithering and a crackling of branches and then a tall form came scrambling down the slope of a little path under the trees beside the rock.

“Niall!” she exclaimed, aware, but heedless, of the joy and relief that sounded in her voice. He had taken her in his arms before she could speak another word and held her, looking down into her face. They looked at one another in the thickening dusk for a long time and Clare marvelled at the great tenderness the twilight seemed to lay on his face, marvelled until she understood, with a sudden, strange defection of her bodily strength, that it was not the twilight alone that had changed him. His arms encircling her were very hard and strong; she wished their circle might never be broken again.

“I am so glad it wasn't long. So very glad,” she said at length. “Have you missed me so?'

She nodded. “The nights were the worst,” she said, in a voice which, in spite of herself, had a pitiful little note of pain in it. “I couldn't sleep. I had—ah! such wearying dreams. I cried in my sleep.”

He nodded slowly and understandingly.

“But I have drawn the circle again now. The spell is whole. Do you want it never to be broken again?” “Never.”

He kissed her. “Never is a word of power,” he said, in a voice as low and serious as her own. “And Solomon never sealed a spell with an impression more potent than this.”

She clung to him, but at last he gently loosed her, stroked her hair, and said regretfully: “This is too short a meeting. There will be Miss Geary waiting for you at the lodge−gates, and my mother waiting for me in the house....”

“But did she expect you so early?”

“Ah, I came by a short−cut over the hill. I met this old poacher hunting in the wood and he heard you and led me to you.”

“Good Grim,” said Clare softly, stroking his broad head. “Oh look!” she exclaimed, suddenly recollecting and pulling the wrapped−up doll from her pocket. “I ought to tell you—I was helping your mother to pile up the Christmas decorations for burning and I saw this—the doll—on the tree and I thought it'd been overlooked—I mean, I didn't know she meant to burn it—”

He took the little parcel quickly from her and felt it with his fingers as if identifying its contents. “She gave it to you?” he enquired sharply.

“Yes,” said Clare. “I wanted to put it back when she told me, but she said you wouldn't mind, and it is so pretty—I couldn't bear to think of its being just burnt: all that work. You don't mind, do you?”

“Why,” he answered, hesitating a little. “Why, no. If you like it, I'm pleased that she gave it you. Only I'd rather have made one for you specially—a perfect one. That's one of my failures.”

“A failure?” she exclaimed. “But it's a lovely little thing. Why is it a failure?”

“I don't know why,” he said slowly. “I don't know why it was wrong. But something did go wrong with the animation. That's why I put it on the tree. I wouldn't have burnt a good one, of course.”

“Oh, but why burn one at all? After all, even though it doesn't work it's a beautiful bit of carving. I don't mind its not working. It doesn't matter, really, does it, your not having one on the tree?”

“Ah, no. That's only old superstition: more a childhood custom than superstition now. I suppose my grandmother—my mother's mother, that is—had a lingering sort of belief in it. Perhaps she was the very last recipient of the very last shred of the memory of a Druid tradition.”

“Druid?”

“I imagine so. It seems to me that the custom of the Christmas−tree descends from ancient religion in which worship was carried on in groves or under particular sacred trees. Trees played a large part in Druid ritual. We have the mistletoe from them. But the Druids also practised human sacrifice: the doll we put on our Christmas−tree and ceremonially burn is, I think, a substitute for the human victim the Druids sent to communicate with the immortals in their groves of Britain long ago. Barbarous, isn't it, to think of children playing at human sacrifices; but then, you practise a bit of ritual cannibalism every time you take communion in Halliwell Church, and I never heard that the Druids ate their victims. That practice came from the Orient I suppose.”

He weighed the doll in his hand a moment, and then gave it back to Clare. “Poor doll,” she said. “I'm glad I saved you.”

She pondered a moment and then said:

“I'm sorry it didn't turn out right, all the same. But how do you make them work? I've often wondered, since you told me you made puppets. I've never seen them acting. Are they very life−like? It must be very difficult to make a lot of them move at once. How do you do it? With strings?”

He was silent for some time, and it had grown so dark now that she could not see his expression clearly, but she felt that he was frowning, thinking out something very difficult. Abruptly he gripped her by the shoulders.

“Listen!” he said. “Dare you come and see my puppets act? I want you to see them. But dare you come?” “Dare?” she repeated. “Why...?”

“Because,” he went on quickly, “you will have to come at night, alone, without anybody knowing. You'll have to come in the way you came when we first met—over the wall. Dare you do that?”

She could think of nothing for a few moments but the power of his hands and the strange languor they seemed to induce in her: there was an extraordinary mingling of sadness and delight in the feeling; the surrender, or captivity, rather, in which there was such pleasure, was the very captivity she had been seeking in vain in her dreams. Niall had to repeat his question, and then she replied as though the thing were self−evident:

“Yes, of course I dare. When shall I come?”

“A week tonight—but only if it's fine. I shall see you in the afternoon before, anyway. You must come over the wall by the beech−tree where you came before, at midnight. I'll meet you.”

She did not answer, but as he bent his head she put up her lips, willingly, eagerly, to be kissed again. They parted then and Clare ran the remaining distance over the rough, hard frozen track to the lodge−gates.

Miss Geary had been waiting for her some little time, walking up and down on the road outside. Clare broke into apologies, but the old lady seemed not to have minded her wait.

“Poor Rachel must be rather lonely now, with her son away and no one else in the house,” she observed, on their way back to Paston Hall.

“Yes,” said Clare, and hesitated. “Yes, I suppose she is a bit lonely,” she added, after an appreciable pause. She had meant to tell Miss Geary that Niall was expected back this night—that he was back, but she had hesitated: she could not tell Miss Geary that she had met him in the wood; and then there was her suspicion that Miss Geary did not like Niall. The moment to tell her had gone. She remained silent, justifying herself by reasoning that Niall's return would soon become known; she would see Niall at tea−time tomorrow and if Miss Geary mentioned him tomorrow she could say quite casually that she had seen him.