I do not in the least remember how Pelleas and I got out of the room. I do remember that we two stood in the middle of our drawing-room looking at each other, speechless with the marvel of what had come. No wonder that the blindfold Hope over the mantel had wreathed herself in holly!
It was late when Hobart hurried home to dress and it was later still when we four had dinner which I do not recall that any of us ate. And then Pelleas and I left those two in the library in the presence of their forgotten coffee while we flew distractedly about giving last touches for our party, an event which had all but slipped our minds.
“Pelleas,” said I, lighting candles, “think how we planned that Hobart’s wife must be a woman of the world!”
“But Eunice,” Pelleas said, “is a woman of many worlds.”
Our shabby drawing-room was ablaze with red candles; and what with holly red on the walls and the snow banking the casements and bells jingling up and down the avenue, the sense of Christmas was very real. For me, Christmas seems always to be just past or else on the way; and that sixth sense of Christmas being actually Now is thrice desirable.
On the stroke of nine we two, waiting before the fire, heard Nichola on the basement stairs; and by the way in which she mounted, with labor and caution, I knew that she was bringing the punch. We had wished to have it ready—that harmless steaming punch compounded from my mother’s recipe—when our guests arrived, so that they should first of all hear the news and drink health to Eunice and Hobart.
Nichola was splendid in her scarlet merino and that vast cap effect managed by a starched pillowcase and a bit of string, and over her arm hung a huge holly wreath for the bowl’s brim. When she had deposited her fragrant burden and laid the wreath in place she stood erect and looked at us solemnly for a moment, and then her face wrinkled in all directions and was lighted with her rare, puckered smile.
“Mer—ry Christmas!” she said.
“Merry Christmas, Nichola!” we cried, and I think that in all her years with us we had never before heard the words upon her lips.
“Who goes ridin’ behind the sleigh-bells to-night?” she asked then abruptly.