CHAPTER XV

Dick, a little under-slept, a trifle red about the eyes, was shaving. He knew he was late for breakfast and that that would bother Cecily. He knew the mechanism of his house ought not to be disturbed when the comfort and routine of the children depended on it. He did not feel quite fit for work and the hang-over of dance tunes persisted in his head. Moreover it was the first time that he and Cecily had not come home together from a party and while the arrangement was perfectly amicable at the time it was made with Matthew, it did seem a trifle irregular this morning. Dick hurried and it made him cross.

Cecily hurried him at breakfast, too. She wanted to go over lists of Christmas presents with him, to plan the trimming of the tree. Christmas was day after to-morrow. She did not refer to the night before. He wondered with some irritation whether that was deliberate, and forced the opening of the subject.

“Did you have a good ride last night?”

“Wonderful. It rested me ever so much. I slept hard.”

“I hope,” said Dick, “that you’ll try to keep a bit more fit. You ought to be in good enough condition to stand a few hours’ dancing. Don’t you think you need a tonic, perhaps?”

It seemed very much off the point to Cecily. “I’d hate to have to take medicine so I could get myself to the point of dancing all night. Hardly worth while, is it?”

“I’m not sure it isn’t.”

She let that pass, and merely sat there answerless, looking hurt and cold. Dick got up.

“I’ll meet you down town and we’ll finish our shopping. Five o’clock at my office.”

“That’s fine.”

He kissed her, wishing that she did not look so virtuous and hurt, that she would fly at him, get in the wrong somehow, and went out of the house whistling the tunes he had carried over from the night before. Cecily, conscious of a hundred things to do, sat still, and Ellen, passing through the room, looked at her commiseratingly.

“Tired after last night, Mrs. Harrison?”

“A little. Everybody’s much gayer than I am, Ellen. No one else seems to get tired.”

“They don’t all have three children and go to dances.”

“Don’t they? I wonder how they manage. Ellen, I’m going to have every one here to-morrow night for the tree--Mrs. Harrison, my mother and father, Mr. Gerald and Mr. Walter. Then we will carry the children down after the tree is lit.”

“Won’t it be lovely?”

Dorothea ran in, clamoring. The business of the day pressed on Cecily. She lost her over-serious mood of the night before, a little ashamed, as Matthew had understood she would be, that she had let her half-grown thoughts out so freely. Well, Matthew was not like other people.

By the time she met Dick her day of activity had put her troubles into the background. She dressed rather carefully to go shopping with him and in her soft gray fur coat and hat, with a sprig of holly in her muff, she looked like an illustration for some Christmas story. Dick appreciated that. He was always proud of her. They sent the car on to meet them at the confectioner’s, and walked through the sparkling streets, gazing into windows. In the toyshops they were madly extravagant, though Cecily kept insisting that all the possible toys for the children were already bought.

“They’ll smash and then they’ll have these,” said Dick. “These are my own contribution to the Christmas wreckage.”

He took her to the jeweler’s while he bought presents for his mother and hers, cigarette cases for the boys and was furtively given a package which he did not show her. Then to a florist’s where he supplemented the holly with a great bunch of violets. They were so happy, so young and handsome that many a man and woman turned to look at them in admiration and envy. And the snow covered streets, the street lights and sparkling windows, the faces of happy people passing, all the setting made Dick and Cecily feel a magic in the air.

In the car Dick turned Cecily’s face up to his and kissed her, as he had not kissed her lately--without any savor of duty or habit.

“Quite as if you wanted to,” said Cecily breathlessly.

“Quite,” laughed Dick. “I always want to, but I’m a bit afraid of hurting you or you are busy with the children or have your mind on something else. To-night you seem so particularly mine.”

They had come upon a mood which was the breath of life to Cecily--exalted, joyous, without a note of ribaldry. Dick could share those moods at times, but he did not live for them as did Cecily. She went about the next day in a happy blur of excitement. The house was full of the smell of Christmas baking and Ellen’s face, steamed and red, fairly shone with pride as she loaded the shelf in the butler’s pantry with the things she was making. Dorothea was full of excited baby questions. The tree was brought in and stood in a corner of the living-room which seemed particularly made for it. The fireplace had a Christmas log, thick and round. Presents were delivered. Expressmen brought packages. The postman left dozens of Christmas cards. The glitter, the greeting of the holiday season permeated the house. Dick was like a boy, stealing up to his room to hide still more extravagances. And by evening, after the tree was ready to light and Dorothea was in a wild palpitation about staying up after seven o’clock, the Christmas charm had reached its height. Mrs. Harrison came early. Her chauffeur brought her basket of packages to the door and the dainty, aristocratic little lady came in, all aglow herself with the excitement of spending a Christmas eve where there were children. Mrs. Harrison was very fond of Cecily and loved to enjoy herself with unsuitable indulgences for the children, which because she was a lady who thought in terms of material things, meant embroidered dresses and superfluous bonnets.

Mrs. Warner was there, looking as beautiful as only she could look, and Mr. Warner’s pockets were bulging with white packages, his arms laden with mechanical toys, already almost destroyed because he and his sons had been trying them out at home. The two young men were there, carrying on systematic “jollying” of Ellen, who adored it and them as only an old maidservant can enjoy the notice of the young men in the family. They gathered in the breakfast-room and then marched to the living-room, even Mrs. Harrison entering into the spirit of the procession. Dorothea whooped with joy, the elder baby blinked at the candles and waved an incoherent hand at them all and Dick began delivering the presents.

Cecily, whose household budget was always leaving her in financial straits, found herself in delighted possession of a thousand-dollar check from her stepfather because “she had been a good girl.” She had no way of realizing then how much that money of her own would mean to her later. They joked a good deal about how she would spend it. Dick gave her a slim platinum bracelet, slipping it on her arm himself, calling it his “handcuff.” There was a deluge of tissue paper as the dozens of gifts were unwrapped. Then they all focused on Dorothea, somewhat dazed and bewildered by the onpouring of new things to amuse her. Mr. Warner set a mechanical duck, a toy train and a self-starting toy automobile in uncanny procession across the room, Gerald tooted the horns, and Dick started to build a toy house out of blocks which were far too complicated for the children to handle. Cecily sat on the floor and watched him and Mrs. Warner watched them both as she talked inconsequences with Dick’s mother. Ellen had retreated to the kitchen, full of grateful embarrassment because she had been given a fur piece that amazed her and she poured dandelion wine and cut the richest fruitcakes recklessly, for Jenny, of course, was out at a “swell dance” somewhere or other. The nurse took Dorothea to bed. The tissue paper was collected and the dandelion wine drunk with much jesting. Cecily was sitting with her head against Dick’s arm when the door bell rang and Matthew and Fliss came in.

“Do you mind?” asked Matthew. “Our house is celebrating Christmas by six dollar holly wreaths in the windows, but we’ve no excuse for a tree.”

A warm, treacherous little sense of virtue rose in Cecily. She was immensely cordial to them both. She wanted them to see the tree, taste the warm spicy atmosphere of her home on Christmas, see the toys that meant plenty of children. She wanted Matthew to enjoy it all. She wanted Fliss to see it all.

But it worked out a little differently. Perhaps Gerald and Walter began it. They had been gay all evening, but they were gayer with the advent of Fliss. They insisted on making her presents, giving her cigarette cases and cuff links so that she wouldn’t feel neglected and putting one of the baby’s fat dolls on the heap of nonsense they laid at her feet. They plied her with dandelion wine and Fliss, taking just a cordial glass more than the other ladies had, proceeded to make herself interesting. Under Cecily’s influence the evening would have mellowed, changed from gayety to soft quiet and seriousness. Under Fliss’s influence gayety mounted higher and higher. It was Fliss who dominated. It was Fliss who got them all into gales of laughter by her tales of her Christmas shopping for Matthew, Fliss who started the competition to see who could blow the candles on the tree out at longest range, Fliss who started a sophisticated little gossip with Mrs. Harrison about the latest and most fascinating scandal, and finally Fliss who offered to show Dick again just how that dance step was managed.

“Sorry I can’t demonstrate here,” she said.

“Sure you can. Here, roll up the corner of the rug,” suggested Dick.

There was a Christmas carol on the Victrola. Cecily watched them whisk it off and change it to a dance tune--watched them wrecking the Christmas scene that she had planned and loved.

“Why dance to-night?” she protested, trying to be jocular about it all and succeeding so poorly that every one turned to look at her. There was an undercurrent of angry pain in her voice.

Walter came over pulling her to her feet by both hands.

“Now, don’t be a crab, Cecily. You’re getting too old for your age. Let’s have some fun.”

He whirled her into an absurd dance and when he had finished she was laughing in earnest. But she went over to the sofa on which her mother sat and dropped down beside her.

“It wasn’t the kind of evening I’d planned,” she said in an undertone.

Mrs. Warner looked at the boys and Fliss and Dick, all grown so uproarious, at her own husband smoking in placid enjoyment as he and Matthew talked politics.

“But there’s no harm in it, and you can’t dictate in your own house.”

“There is harm in it,” said Cecily, her voice tight and hard. “There is harm in it.”

She stayed there a little longer and then slipped from the room. Upstairs beside her window she stood with her hands pressed to her head as if to still the torrent of painful thought that raged through it. The front of her mind seemed trying to reassure the back of it, she thought--the front persisting that as her mother said “there was no harm”--the back protesting against a violation of ideals and sanctities and against cheapness and frivolity. She did not know how long she stood there, how long it was before she heard Dick’s step in the doorway. At the look on his face she knew that he was conscious of no wrong--he was puzzled and a little angry.

“Your mother sent me to find you. Is anything wrong? Aren’t you well?”

The impossibility of putting her grievance, her torture, so real the moment before, into words confronted her.

“I’m quite all right.” And then, irrepressibly: “Only I don’t see why they should act so ribald on Christmas eve.”

Dick’s face grew hard; a new disagreeable little glint was in his eyes.

“I really can’t see what has come over you, Cecily--why you object to every bit of fun you see around you. You want to run things your own way absolutely--allow no one else to enjoy things that you won’t or can’t enjoy. I don’t think you’re a good hostess or a sport, sulking off up here by yourself.”

He went out and left her fairly stricken with horror, wanting to call him back, wanting to scream, cry, wake up--do anything to undo the fact that he had spoken to her like that on Christmas eve, that the glamour of the day before had been torn across already. Instincts of control struggled for the mastery of her hysteria. And control won. Over her knowledge that the sacredness of Christmas, the sacredness of love was stained and hurt irrevocably, with the memory of that cruel light in Dick’s eyes making her almost dizzy, suddenly aware that Dick was not carelessly disregarding her wishes, but deliberately doing so--she went downstairs. It was very trivial, yet nothing could ever hurt Cecily quite as much again. She would never be quite so unprotected again. In those few moments she had learned the art of concealing pain and going on with things.

Dick thought she was fine. His little fit of anger had spent itself and he was sorry, and genuinely glad that Cecily had come to herself. Inwardly he put it down to the old excuse that she was “tired” and then forgot. For they were all very gay, gayer than ever now that Cecily had really joined in. In the dancing the Christmas tree fell a little awry and had to be propped up with a chair.

It struck midnight. Christmas had come in, unheralded. Matthew spoke, suddenly grave:

“We’re going now, Fliss. This is Christmas, and it’s a holy-day with lots of people. Come.”

They all said good night and Dick and Cecily were left alone in the disordered room. Some sense of Cecily’s grievance must have come to Dick as he looked about.

“Come to bed, dear. We’ll straighten this mess up in the morning.”

“In a minute. You go on.”

He went up and she moved about, arranging and ordering, her brows knit. When she had finished it did not look so different from the way it had looked early in the evening. But she regarded it without emotion. She was doing this for the children and for their self-respect--not for joy. Then she turned out the lights and the room was soft in the light of the dying fire. The tinsel on the tree sparkled. She went upstairs.

Dick was in her room, trying to restore everything, wipe out those few angry words. Cecily was conscious as he talked on, mostly about the children and their enjoyment, that she was making things difficult. She was not responsive, and she knew he felt it. The little glint had gone from his eyes. They were honest and tender now. But, she thought, that other expression lies back of them--just back of them.

Then she was sorry. He was hurt as she turned a little from his kiss. She felt old, maternal, conscious that she could not tell him what he had done, how he had hurt her. Perhaps men were like that; perhaps things did not matter so much to them. She could not tell him. She did not want to hurt him. Gently she kissed him.

“Merry Christmas, darling,” said Dick.