“Look here,” he said, “you go round and collect some toys from a toyshop. I’ll make an excuse to Worsley if by any chance he wants the Fairy Queen at the beginning. But he won’t. He wants to get the shipwreck right. We shall probably be on that till nearly midnight.”
So Nancy left Bram at the stage-door and went on to do her shopping. The streets were crowded with people, and in spite of the cold wind everybody was looking cheerful. The shops, too, with their brightly lit windows all decorated with frosted cotton-wool and holly, exhaled that authentic Christmas glow, which touches all but hearts too long barren and heads too long empty. The man who sneers at Christmas is fair game for the Father of Lies.
Nancy revelled in the atmosphere, and for a while she allowed herself to drift with the throng—hearing in a dream the shrill excited cries of the children, the noise of toy instruments, the shouts of the salesmen offering turkeys and geese; smelling in a dream that peculiar odour of hung poultry mixed with crystallised fruit, oranges, and sawdust; and perceiving in a dream the accumulated emotion of people who were all thinking what they could buy for others, that strange and stirring emotion which long ago shepherds personified as a troop of angels crying, “Peace, good-will toward men.” She felt that she could have wandered happily along like this for hours, and she was filled with joy to think that in a short while she should be welcomed by some of these children as the Spirit of Good. The part of the Fairy Queen had never hitherto appealed to her; but now suddenly she was seized with a longing to wave her silver wand and vanquish the Demon King. She passed four ragged children who were staring at a heap of vivid sweets on the other side of a plate-glass window. She went into the shop and bought a bagful for each. It was wonderful to pass on and leave them standing there on the pavement in a rapture of slow degustation. But her time could not be spent in abandoning herself to these sudden impulses of sentimental self-indulgence. She entered a bazaar and filled her bag with small toys for Letizia’s stocking—a woolly lamb, a monkey-on-a-stick, a tin trumpet, a parti-coloured ball—all the time-honoured cargo of Santa Claus. She had already bought a case of pipes for Bram’s Christmas present. But now she was filled with ambition to give him some specially chosen gift that would commemorate this cold Greenwich Yuletide. What should it be? She longed to find something that would prove to him more intimately than words all that he had meant to her these years of their married life, all that he would mean to her on and on through the years to come. Bram was such a dear. He worked so hard. He was never jealous. He had nothing of the actor’s vanity, and all the actor’s good nature. What present would express what she felt about his dearness? Ash-trays, cigarette-holders, walking-sticks—what availed they to tell him how deep was her love? Pocket-books, card-cases, blotters—what eloquence did they possess? Then she saw on the counter a little silver key.
“Is this the key of anything?” she asked the shopman.
“No, miss, that is what they call a charm. We have a large assortment this season. This silver puppy-dog, for instance. You’d really be surprised to know what a quantity of these silver puppy-dogs we’ve sold. They’re worn on bracelets or watch-chains. Quite the go, miss, I can assure you.”
“No, I like this key better. Could you let me have a box for it?”
“Certainly, miss.”
“And I want to write something on a card and put it inside if you’d kindly seal it for me.”
“With pleasure, miss.”
Nancy leant over the counter and wrote, with a blush for her folly: This is the key of my heart. Keep it always, my darling.