THE GOLDEN HOUR

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 69, 15 December 1931, Page 20 (Supplement)

THE GOLDEN HOUR

GREAT HAPPENINGS AT YULETIDE.

By

Mollie E. Jamieson.

Set in the charming English countryside, this delightful tale of Christmas happenings makes excellent reading at this time of the year. The author is a well-known English writer, whose books zvill be known to many of our readers. .

PERHAPS it was hardly Lady Mary’s fault so much as that of Lady Mary’s companion. Not that Lady Mary ever blamed the companion for the happenings of that particular Christmas Day. Lady Mary’s enjoyment of that particular Christmas Day had been too keen t{> admit of her blaming the companion for anything at all concerning it. It was the companion, Miss Emily Constantine, who was certainly, in the first instance, and that by neglect of her duty, responsible for the “adventure,” if adventure it might be termed. .Miss Constantine had been with old ‘Lady Darner, Lady Mary’s grandmother, for quite a number of years, and it was her custom to attend and escort Lady Mary upon the daily morning constitutional, which it was her grandmother’s pleasure that she should take. Miss Constantine was not at all an interesting or inspiring person, and Lady Mary bore with her, not cheerfully, but of necessity; for, without her, even those dull, daily outings would not have been permitted. But tills particular Christmas morning, when, having attended church, they were returning, Miss Constantine, who had been unusually silent as she and her charge proceeded upon their way, proved herself suddenly interesting, Bud quite humanly interesting at that. “I want to show you a letter, Mary,” Miss Constantine said, introducing the subject a little nervously. This was ■what the bewildered Mary read, inscribed in a fine, manly hand:— “Dear Little Em.—We’ve lost sight ©f each other for a bit, haven’t we; but Tm coming to look you up if you’ll letine, and my fancy tells me that I eouldu’t do better than choose to do the same on dear old Christmas Day. Have you forgotten, Em? I haven’t, though twenty years of the life out yonder knocks most sort of sentimental memories out of a man’s head. We’re neither of us so young as we were; but not too old, I take it, if you’re willing to carry out the old plan that once we had some thought of. So, if you’re still fancy free, Em, will you give, me the best welcome I could hope for, and meet me at Euston at noon on Christmas Day? I don’t know your address; but I’m sending this on to the old place, and they will know where to forward it Wear a sprig of mistletoe when you come, for the sake of old times, and so that I may know, without any telling, that things are all right. “Looking forward to seeing you—(that’s to say, if you haven’t forgotten. •—Yours ever, “OWEN CONSTANTINE."

“Why!” Lady Mary said, looking up, her usually pale face all aglow. Romance had hitherto had no part in Lady Mary’s carefully-walled-in life; old Lady Darner had seen to that; but this was surely a romance if ever there was one. “He is my cousin,” Miss Constantine Bald, and smiled, a happy, far-away smile, which the younger girl had never Been upon her face before. “And that Is why my dear father objected—long iago. Owen went away then—it was a Christmas Day, too; I remember it all no well. That is why he says about coming back on Christmas Day. I am so glad that Owen —remembers, too.”.

“And now you are to go to Owen.” Lady Mary gave the companion a quick, imperative little push. “Isn’t that what you said—that you wished to ask my advice? But, of course, you must have known all the time that you : couldn’t do anything else but go. Oh! how I wish I were you, Miss Constan- ' tine, and had someone who really cared : for me. But here I am, almost twenty-five, and never have known I what it is to have a lover. Sometimes i 1 wonder why ever I was born.” | Miss Constantine — good, well-jbrought-up Miss Constantine, even in I the midst of her late-found happiness— I was quite genuinely shocked at this untapected outburst “My dear child, my dear Mary, I think you hardly realise what you are faying. With your good grandmother to love and care for; your books, your work, in fact — ahem! — everything,” I wound up Miss Constantine, endeavourllng conscientiously to catalogue Lady i Mary’s list of mercies. “And, believe I me, the married life is often very far [from being the happiest one. Be coni tent, my dear, as you are at present. I am almost twice your age, and yet, have you ever heard me, in so many words, repine against my lot?” “I haven’t heard you: but that isn’t to say that you never did,” Lady Mary returned truthfully. “But now, you dear, good old Connie, if, instead of preaching at me, you were to do your best to catch the first ’bus to Euston Station, I think you’d really be a little wiser. No, you aren’t to worry about me In the very slightest. I shall find piy way quite’comfortably home about luncheon-time, and Grannie need never have the slightest inkling of the whole affair.” Miss Constantine sighed. “I know that I ought to have informed your grandmother, and that is Why I hardly like to leave you alone here, my dear Mary, without her express permission. But Lady Darner, Considerate as she has always been to me, might hardly prove herself sympathetic over such a very ancient love Story as mine. By and by, of course, tf things go as Owen wishes”—Miss .Constantine blushed again consciously —“she will have to know; but for the present it seems almost needless to trouble her. But only' say the word, Mary, and I will remain with you. I know my duty too well to desert my post.” Lady Mary turned almost impatientHy away. Oh 1 this sense of being eternally guarded, eternally watched. It was small wonder that, at times, she grew restive against it, Impatient of ' Bio grey, walled-in life to which her

grandmother, since her veriest child-hood,-had condemned her. Lady Mary's mother, long since dead, had never met with her austere mother-in-law’s approval, and it was to guard Lady Mary from the snares of just/such a butterfly existence that the net was drawn now so tightly on every side. Had the girl possessed more strength of character, a Jess docile nature, she would possibly' have struggled, and perhaps not altogether vainly, to free herself from her environment. But to Lady Mary, never over-strong, the easiest way had been always the best. It required less nervous energy to submit than to revolt, though such submission brought merely a hated monotony in its train. “Oh! go!” said Lady Mary a little irritably, and Miss Constantine, rising not unwillingly, for time pressed, fastened in more firmly and tautly the little sprig of mistletoe in her coat lapel and went. Miss Constantine must have been thinking of Lady Mary as she hastened through the elusive sunshine of the December day, for, though she was going to meet her lover, her eyes were sad, and she gave vent to at least two distinct sighs before at length she reached the park gateway and the desired 'bus. “Poor child,” said Miss Constantine, forgetting, in her pity, that conscientiously detailed list of mercies which she had so shortly before enumerated to Lady Mary; and again, “Poor child!”

11. As for Lady Mary, she sat still on the seat from which Miss Constantine had departed for quite a long time, which, considering that the month was December and chilly, though sunny, was rash, to say the least of it. Then Lady Mary rose, walked slowly the round of the park, cogitating many things, and having finally arrived once more at the same individual seat sat down again. It was of Miss Constantine that the girl was. thinking as she went —mainly Miss Constantine, and, incidentally, herself Miss Constantine’s sudden leap forward into the fuller, -freer life which was pulsing all about her, • had awakened Lady Mary from her temporary stagnation as nothing else could have done. If Miss Constantine, almost twice her age, had successfully burst asunder the bonds of her prison house and escaped, was It not possible for Mary herself to go and do likewise? Surely aH life need not necessarily be cribbed, cabined, and confined because her grandmother willed it so. "For I can’t bear it to go on like this for ever,” Lady Mary told herself drearily. "Anything—anyone—l don’t

care what or whom, to make a difference.” She glanced up as a shadow momentarily obscured the faint sunshine, then blushed, in spite of herself. A tall young man stood 'before her, 1 touching his cap, and she saw that in his hand was a little sprig of mistletoe. “Beg pardon, miss, but I fancy this belongs to you. I picked it up just after you’d passed. And it wouldn’t be wishing to lose their luck that anyone’d be this Christmas Day.” “My mistletoe?- Oh, yes, how careless of me!” Lady Mary said. She hesitated, wondering what this particular young man’s social status might be, and whether she dared offer him a sixpence. “Thank you ever so much,” added Lady Mary, after one swift, upward glance, deciding against the sixpence. “I should have been sorry to have lost my mistletoe; more particularly when it had just been given to me.” The young man, though the mistletoe had now been safely delivered over to Lady Mary, showed no disposition to go away. Lady Mary, wondering whether she had been wrong about the sixpence after all, fumbled furtively in her little silver wrist-bag. But it was

evidently not for the sixpence that the young man was lingering, but for further conversation. “You’re welcome', miss, and there’s no occasion for thanks,” he said, flushing up a little awkwardly, for Lady Mary’s movement in the direction of the silver wrist-bag had not escaped him. “I’m not superstitious myself, but I know what store some people set by the mistletoe—the ‘little, lucky white berry,’ as they call it. And that's how I knew you would be missing yours directly you found that it was lost.” He raised his cap again, and was moving off had not Lady Mary—perhaps Lady Mary, being lonely, was not disinclined to converse either—seen fit to correct his evident supposition. “And I’m not superstitious either. Oh! no, you mustn’t think that for a moment,” she said, smiling up at him. Miss Constantine would never have permitted such unauthorised conversation for a moment; but then Miss Constantine was away, presumably enjoying herself, and there is an old proverb which Informs us how, the cat being absent, even the best-brought-up

mice will play. Lady Mary was so , totally unused to young men that the situation presented both daring and terrifying possibilities. “Aren’t you? Well, I suppose it was just the mistletoe made me think you must be.” He was standing, looking down at her, and Lady Mary, glancing half-shyly up, told herself, with a not unpleasing thrill, that this particular young man was rather- good to look upon. Perhaps it was the discovery that she was distinctly enjoying herself which made Lady Mary, with a guilty throb, presently recall Miss Constantine, and Miss Constantine’s oft-repeat-ed injunctions. Lady Mary rose, and, as demurely as though she had practised the art of coquetry all her life, said that she must be going. Lady Mary would have been as good as her word, and this quite uneventful little story never have come to be written, had not Fate, in the person of an enormous Newfoundland dog, temporarily escaped from its owner, come rushing along the pathway just at that moment, and, evidently mistaking the greyclad figure for its missing owner, made a violent and affectionate onslaught on her. Lady Mary, fearing the canine breed as she feared little else on earth, was thrown into a perfect panic of terror. It was all her champion could do to first, quite goodnaturedly, send the dog about its business and thereafter endeavour to reassure the now thoroughly alarmed Lady

Mary. “It was dreadfully silly of me, but I couldn’t help it,” she recovered herself" sufficiently to say presently. “No, don’t bother about my dress. I don’t care whether the dog has ruined it or not, if only it has gone away.” But, kneeling before her, he still continued to rub her skirt assiduously with the handkerchief, which he had unfolded for the purpose. Lady Mary glanced down at him a little ruefully. “You have quite spoilt your handkerchief, and my dress really doesn’t matter. Oh! I wish you wouldn’t. You make me feel so horribly ashamed of myself for having been so silly.” “I don’t consider you silly,” he informed her gravely. And then, the damage having bceen repaired to the best of his ability, what else was there for Lady Mary to do but to Invite him to rest from his_labours upon the seat which she herself occupied? Lady Mary, forgetting that, a few moments earlier, she had signified her intention of departing, discoursed fluently upon the weather to her new friend, and, altogether, was as polite as she herself knew how, to one who had proved himself her timely rescuer. t

“I’m having a holiday to-day because of Christmas,” he informed her presently. “From the country It is I come, and a day up in town always means a bit of a change. It’s Lord Hurlingham’s place I’m on, underkeeper, though I’m to be head when old Jarrold retires next year. I wish you could see Hurlingham Woods, the prettiest spot, I often think, in the world, and when, presently, the snowdrops will be beginning to show above the ground and, later, the primroses, why, it’s a perfect paradise!” “I wish I could,” Lady Mary said, truth to tell, a little uneasily, for the conversation was beginning to take a personal note once more. She had known that lie.-was her social inferior; but a keeper—Mis§ Constantine would certainly have drawn the line at a keeper. And yet, how handsome he was. Lady Mary peeped out at him again from beneath demure eyelashes. If only he had not been a keeper; if only she, Lady Mary, grand-daughter of proud old Lady Darner, had been anyone else. Lady Mary, for by no means the first time in her short life, found herself wishing that she had been porn anything else but Lady Mary. “Then I wonder—couldn’t it be managed?” he said eagerly. “There's plenty of cheap trips run from town, and I could easily get you a pass into the woods. And if you would say wnat day it might be likely to be, my aunt would be proud to make you a cup of tea. -She housekeeps for me now, Aunt Susan does, since my mother died." Now, Lady Mary—it was naughty, of course, of Lady Mary—ought by rights at this precise juncture to have drawn herself up and given this presumptuous young man'lo understand that, not only was she as far removed from him in social position as the stars in the sky, but that. Lord Hurlinghany being old Lady Darner’s cousin, she had an entrance to those woods to which he re- 1 ferred in such glowing terms at any and every hour of the day. But into Lady Mary’s poor, starved life so little of girlish pleasure had entered that perhaps, one need hardly marvel that when, for the first time, one man’s eyes rested in seeming approval upon her, she found it impossible all at once to bid him begone. Rather lot her play out the fantastic farce while it lasted, hugging her poor little triumph only the more closely and jealously to her, in the knowledge that when, shortly, he and she parted they should meet again no more. HL “Yes,‘l’d like to come to Hurlingham,” Lady Mary said, and, indeed, at that moment meant what she said. She thought, a little wistfully, of spring’s awakening, ere long, in the fresh, beautiful country far away, of those woods of Hurlingham, which might veritably have spelt Paradise to her had she been anyone but safely-guarded Lady Mary, for ever debarred frpm that fairest dream of love, of which to-day she had had her first half-envious glimpse. “But tell me more about it —about yourself. I like to listen to you,” added Lady Mary, looking up with eyes blue as the

blue December sky, and forgetting, in the pleasure of the moment, that any , such grim duennas as Miss Constantine , or old Lady Damer had ever existed, j “You’re sure you want to hear?" There was a little, hardly repressed ( note of gladness in his voice. “But, after all, there isn’t much to tell either, ; not, at least, what you town folks . would count much. I’m John Thorpe, that’s to begin with, and, I sometimes tell myself, the happiest fellow in the whole wide world, barring just one tiling. That’s what’s easiest mended, Aunt Susan’s fond of telling me. A man’s free to pick and choose where he likes, provided always he can find; well, I don’t mind telling you that, either—the woman who’s worth more to him than the whole world put together.” “And have you?” Lady Mary questioned in a very subdued, small voice, and then could have bitten her tooinquisitive tongue out. John Thorpe glanced across to her, and, to the end of her life, utter stranger as he was, Lady Mary was never altogether to forget the look in John Thorpe’s eyes. “Yesterday I hadn’t. To-day—well, it’s too early yet to say anything about to-day. Later, perhaps, you’ll let me tell you.” And then John Thorpe abruptly put what seemed a totally irrelevant question. “Do you believe in love at first sight?” John with startling directness, inquired. Lady Mary’s own blue eyes fell beneath those questioning orbs. Oh! if John Thorpe had only been anything but what he was —how beautiful, how more than beautiful to be looked at just like that, to find, perhaps ultimately, what all those years her starved heart had been crying out for—the supreme gift of a good man’s love. Yet, because he was only John Thorpe and she was Lady Mary, Lady Mary prevaricated. “Oh! I don’t know. Some people say one thing and some another, don’t they?” Lady Mary did not, in her turn, ask John Thorpe why he had put such a question. Perhaps Lady Mary feared just then to put such an inquiry to John Thorpe. “But what do you think?” he further questioned. Lady Mary only toyed with her sprig of mistletoe and shook her head. “I’ve no experience, you see. I always thought that that sort of thing took years and years. What do you think yourself?” inquired Lady Mary, throwing caution to the winds, and still concentrating all her attention upon her mistletoe. John Thorpe rose, towering above her, a grand figure of a man against

the blue December sky. His deep voice trembled a little as he spoke. “If I told you what I thought about it you’d think me mad, and anything short of the truth would be—a lie. You’ve only seen me once: so why should you believe me? But some day I’ll tell you—that’s to say, if you’ll listen. Will you listen, I wonder.?” Bor a moment, by his vehemence, the girl’s breath had been away. A wild longing to fling discretion aside, to have her chance, as others had, irrespective of birth and station, surged at her young heart with an insistence she had never known before. Life and love! —what else in the wide world mattered; what else, lacking them, availed at all? She knew nothing of this man, save what her intuition told her; but this time her intuition was not at fault. Just then she could neither look back nor forward. It was enough for her that, untutored son of the soil though he might be, a true man’s heart beat within his breast, and, incredible thought it might seem, he loved her. “Why! of course I will listen.” She met his eyes, those honest, compelling eyes, smiling slowly. “Haven’t I listened all this time? Haven’t I fold you that I like to listen to you?” Lady Mary further questioned. To just how much she had pledged herself she could hardly tell. She only knew that she was quivering with happiness from head to foot, that her whole being was alive with a joy that was almost pain. To be loved —it was that Which her hungry heart had been yearning for all her life long; it was that which this never-to-be-forgotten Christmas Day had brought her. At the back of her mind an undefined, dull pain, she knew that presently

must come the awakening, the.return to actuality again. Yet, come what might, she could never forget that for one brief hour she had lived—had had her moment of triumph, like other women, in the knowledge that, for one man, at least, she was, just then, the very centre of the universe. “Then that’s settled,” he told her joyously. “We’re to be friends, that’s to be the beginning of it; and by and by, when you’ve got to know me better, perhaps you’ll let me tell you a bit more. I couldn’t expect you to go just slap-dash at the thing, same as I’ve done. And now—for time’s wearing on—won’t you let me take you to have some lunch? We haven’t been properly Introduced I know; for, though there’s plenty can vouch for me down at Hurlingham, I don’t know so much as a soul here. Where shall we go? If you’d just name the place I’d be happy to take you anywhere.” “Oh! but I can’t. I’ve got to go home," Lady Mary told him a little miserably. “No, you can’t come with me; I get the bus just at the park gates. Yes, I’ll remember about Hurlingham, and if I can come down some day I will.” Lady Mary stumbled unhappily over her words. She knew that, w’hen she parted from John Thorpe at the park gates, she should see his face no more; and that, sorrowful as It might be for herself, it was probably a great deal better for John Thorpe that it was so. John Thorpe objected quite naturally. John Thorpe, that ardent and impetuous lover, told himself that, though he had come almost within sight of. his Promised Land—still, a miss was as good as a mile.

“I’m afraid I want a bigger promise than that,” he said, smiling. “And, remember that, though I’ve told you my name, I haven’t the very slightest notion of yours, or your address either. You surely don’t mean to go away without giving me so much as that This your ’bus? I wish you weren’t in such a hurry, all of a sudden, or that you’d let me come along with you. I wonder why you won’t” “Just because I won’t,” Lady Mary, with a suspicious little catch in her voice, informed him. Lady Mary, too, had seen the Promised Land, and was bidding farewell to it for ever, more than a little forlornly. “And now, goodbye, and many thanks for all your kindness.” John Thorpe felt something thrust abruptly into his hand, and, looking up from the little green sprig of mistletoe which lay there, saw Lady Mary vanish into the 'bus, which bore her lumberingly from his sight. Lady Mary was just in time for luncheon, and collided—most providentially for both of them—with Miss Constantine on the doorstep. Miss Constantine had parted with her sprig of mistletoe, too, and was beaming—actually beaming. “I've had the loveliest time: but I'll tell you all about it afterwards,” Miss Constantine whispered quit* girlishly as they went together upstairs. “I only hope you weren't lonely, Mary, dear.” “No, I wasn’t lonely,” Lady Mary answered truthfully. For she, too, like the elder woman, had had “the loveliest time” that unforgettable Christmas Day; though, neither then nor afterwards, could she tell Miss Constantine, or anyone else, “all about It”