CHAPTER XVI
A CHRISTMAS CALL
The Christmas holidays were drawing near and Barfleur was making due preparations for the celebration of that event. He was a stickler for the proper observance of those things which have national significance and national or international feeling behind them. Whatever joy he might get out of such things, much or little, I am convinced that he was much more concerned lest some one should fail of an appropriate share of happiness than he was about anything else. I liked that in Barfleur. It touched me greatly, and made me feel at times as though I should like to pat him on the head.
During all my youth in Indiana and elsewhere I had been fed on that delightful picture, “Christmas in England,” concocted first, I believe (for American consumption, anyhow), by Washington Irving, and from him rehashed for magazines and newspaper purposes until it had come to be romance ad nauseum. The boar’s head carried in by the butler of Squire Bracebridge, the ancient peacock pie with the gorgeous tail feathers arranged at one end of the platter and the crested head at the other, the yule log, the mistletoe berries, and the Christmas choristers singing outside of windows and doors of echoing halls, had vaguely stood their ground and as such had rooted themselves in my mind as something connected with ancestral England. I did not exactly anticipate anything of this kind as being a part of present-day England, or of Barfleur’s simple country residence, but, nevertheless, I was in England, and he was making Christmas preparations of one kind or another, and my mind had a perfect right to ramble a little. I think most of all I anticipated another kind of toy from that to which we are accustomed in America.
So many things go to make up that very amiable feast of Christmas when it is successful that I can hardly think now of all that contributed to this one. There was Sir Scorp, of whom by now I had grown very fond, and who was coming here to spend the holidays. There was Gerard Barfleur, a cousin of Barfleur’s, a jolly, roystering theatrical manager, who was unquestionably—after Barfleur—one of the most pleasing figures I met in England, a whimsical, comic-ballad-singing, character-loving soul, who was as great a favorite with women and children as one would want to find. He knew all sorts of ladies, apparently, of high and low degree, rich and poor, beautiful and otherwise, and seemed kindly disposed toward them all. I could write a splendid human-interest sketch of Gerard Barfleur alone. There was Mr. T. McT., a pale, thoughtful person, artistic and poetic to his finger tips, curator of one of the famous museums, a lover of Mr. Housman’s “A Shropshire Lad,” a lover of ancient glass and silver, whose hair hung in a sweet mop over his high, pale forehead, and whose limpid dark eyes shone with a kindly, artistic light. Then there was Barfleur’s aunt and her daughter, mother and sister respectively of the highly joyous Gerard Barfleur, and wife and daughter of a famous litterateur. Then, to cap it all, were the total of Barfleur’s very interesting household,—housekeeper, governess, maid, cook, gardener, and—last, but not least, the four charming, I might almost say adorable, children.
There, too, was Barfleur, a host in himself. For weeks beforehand he kept saying on occasion as we wandered about London together, “No, we can’t go there,” or, “You mustn’t accept that, because we have reserved that Saturday and Sunday for Christmas at my place,” and so nothing was done which might interfere. Being in his hands I finally consulted him completely as to Christmas presents, and found that I was to be limited to very small gifts, mere tokens of good-will, I being his guest. I did manage to get him a supply of his favorite cigarettes, however, unknown to himself,—the ones his clever secretary told me he much preferred,—and had them sent out to the house with some favorite books for the remaining members of the household.
But the man was in such high spirits over the whole program he had laid out for me—winter and spring,—the thought of Paris and the Riviera,—that he was quite beside himself. More than once he said to me, beaming through his monocle, “We shall have a delightful time on the continent soon. I’m looking forward to it, and to your first impressions.” Every evening he wanted to take my hastily scribbled notes and read them, and after doing so was anxious to have me do them all just that way, that is, day by day as I experienced them. I found that quite impossible, however. Once he wanted to know if I had any special preference in wines or cordials and I knew very well why he asked. Another time he overheard me make the statement that I had always longed to eat rich, odorous Limburger cheese from Germany.
“Done!” he exclaimed. “We shall have it for Christmas.”
“But, Papa,” piped up Berenice maliciously, “we don’t all have to have it at the same time, do we?”
“No, my dear,” replied Barfleur solemnly, with that amazingly patronizing and parental air which always convulsed me, a sort of gay deviltry always lurking behind it.