Noughts and Crosses Part 19

"What?" I asked, covering her shoulders with the empty sack that had been my pillow.

"Why, that the cows pray on Christmas-eve. Nurse says that at twelve o'clock to-night all the cows in their stalls will be on their knees, if only somebody is there to see. So, as it's near twelve by the tall clock indoors, I've come to see," she wound up.

"It's quig-nogs, I expect. I never heard of it."

"Nurse says they kneel and make a cruel moan, like any Christian folk. It's because Christ was born in a stable, and so the cows know all about it. Listen to Dinah! d.i.c.k, she's going to begin!"

But Dinah, having heaved her moan, merely shuddered and was still again.

"Just fancy, d.i.c.k," the little one went on, "it happened in a chall like ours!" She was quiet for a moment, her eyes fixed on the glossy rumps of the cows. Then, turning quickly--"I know about it, and I'll show you. d.i.c.k, you must be Saint Joseph, and I'll be the Virgin Mary. Wait a bit--"

Her quick fingers began to undress the sailor-doll and fold his clothes carefully. "I _meant_ to christen him Robinson Crusoe," she explained, as she laid the small garments, one by one, on the straw; "but he can't be Robinson Crusoe till I've dressed him up again."

The doll was stark naked now, with waxen face and shoulders, and bulging bags of sawdust for body and legs.

"d.i.c.k," she said, folding the doll in her arms and kissing it-- "St. Joseph, I mean--the first thing we've got to do is to let people know he's born. Sing that carol I heard you trying over last week-- the one that says 'Far and far I carry it.'"

So I sang, while she rocked the babe:--

'Naked boy, brown boy, In the snow deep, Piping, carolling Folks out of sleep; Little shoes, thin shoes, Shoes so wet and worn'-- 'But I bring the merry news --Christ is born!

Rise, pretty mistress, In your smock of silk; Give me for my good news Bread and new milk.

Joy, joy in Jewry, This very morn!

Far and far I carry it --Christ is born!'

She heard me with a grave face to the end; then pulling a handful of straw, spread it in the empty manger and laid the doll there. No, I forget; one moment she held it close to her breast and looked down on it. The G.o.d who fas.h.i.+ons children can tell where she learnt that look, and why I remembered it ten years later, when they let me look into the room where she lay with another babe in her clay-cold arms.

"Count forty," she went on, using the very words of Pretty Tommy, our parish clerk: "count forty, and let fly with 'Now draw around--'"

"Now draw around, good Christian men, And rest you wors.h.i.+p-ping--"

We sang the carol softly together, she resting one hand on the edge of the manger.

"d.i.c.k, ain't you proud of him? I don't see the spiders beginning, though."

"The spiders?"

"d.i.c.k, you're very ig-norant. _Everybody_ knows that, when Christ was laid in a manger, the spiders came and spun their webs over Him and hid Him. That's why King Herod couldn't find Him."

"There, now! We live and learn," said I.

"Well, now there's nothing to do but sit down and wait for the wise men and the shepherds."

It was a little while that she watched, being long over-tired.

The warm air of the chall weighed on her eyelids; and, as they closed, her head sank on my shoulder. For ten minutes I sat, listening to her breathing. Dinah rose heavily from her bed and lay down again, with a long sigh; another cow woke up and rattled her rope a dozen times through its ring; up at the house the fiddling grew more furious; but the little maid slept on. At last I wrapped the sack closely round her, and lifting her in my arms, carried her out into the night. She was my master's daughter, and I had not the courage to kiss so much as her hair. Yet I had no envy for the dancers, then.

As we pa.s.sed into the cold air she stirred. "Did they come? And where are you carrying me?" Then, when I told her, "d.i.c.k, I will never speak to you again, if you don't carry me first to the gate of the upper field."

So I carried her to the gate, and sitting up in my arms she called twice:

"Laban--Laban!"

"What cheer--O?" the hind called back. His lantern was a spark on the hill-side, and he could not tell the voice at that distance.

"Have you seen him?"

"Wha-a-a-t?"

"The angel of the Lo-o-ord!"

"Wha-a-a-t?"

"I'm afraid we can't make him understand," she whispered.

"Hush; don't shout!" For a moment, she seemed to consider; and then her shrill treble quavered out on the frosty air, my own deeper voice taking up the second line--

"The first' Nowell' the angel did say Was to certain poor shepherds, in fields as they lay, --In fields as they lay, a-tending their sheep, On a cold winters night that was so deep-- Nowell! Nowell!

Christ is born in Israel!"

Our voices followed our shadows across the gate and far up the field, where Laban's sheep lay dotted. What Laban thought of it I cannot tell: but to me it seemed, for the moment, that the shepherd among his ewes, the dancers within the house, the sea beneath us, and the stars in their courses overhead moved all to one tune,--the carol of two children on the hill-side.

[1] Cow-house.

THE PARADISE OF CHOICE.

It was not as in certain toy houses that foretell the weather by means of a man-doll and a woman-doll--the man going in as the woman comes out, and _vice versa_. In this case both man and woman stepped out, the man half a minute behind; so that the woman was almost at the street-corner while he hesitated just outside the door, blinking up at the sky, and then dropping his gaze along the pavement.

The sky was flattened by a fog that shut down on the roofs and chimneys like a tent-cloth, white and opaque. Now and then a yellowish wave rolled across it from eastward, and the cloth would be shaken. When this happened, the street was always filled with gloom, and the receding figure of the woman lost in it for a while.

The man thrust a hand into his trousers pocket, pulled out a penny, and after considering for a couple of seconds, spun it carelessly.

It fell in his palm, tail up; and he regarded it as a sailor might a compa.s.s. The trident in Britannia's hand pointed westward, down the street.

"West it is," he decided with a shrug, implying that all the four quarters were equally to his mind. He was pocketing the coin, when footsteps approached, and he lifted his head. It was the woman returning. She halted close to him with an undecided manner, and the pair eyed each other.

We may know them as Adam and Eve, for both were beginning a world that contained neither friends nor kin. Both had very white hands and very short hair. The man was tall and meagre, with a receding forehead and a sandy complexion that should have been freckled, but was not. He had a trick of half-closing his eyes when he looked at anything, not s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g them up as seamen do, but appearing rather to drop a film over them like the inner eyelid of a bird. The woman's eyes resembled a hare's, being brown and big, and set far back, so that she seemed at times to be looking right behind her. She wore a faded look, from her dust-coloured hair to her boots, which wanted blacking.

"It all seems so wide," she began; "so wide--"

"I'm going west," said the man, and started at a slow walk.

Eve followed, a pace behind his heels, treading almost in his tracks.

He went on, taking no notice of her.

"How long were you in there?" she asked, after a while.

"Ten year'." Adam spoke without looking back. "'c.u.mulated jobs, you know."

"I was only two. Blankets it was with me. They recommended me to mercy."