In the words of Nellie Dean After playing ladies maid to the newcomer,
And putting my cakes in the oven,
And making the house and kitchen cheerful with great fires befitting Christmas Eve,
I prepared to sit down and amuse myself by singing carols all alone,
Regardless of Joseph's affirmations that he considered the merry tunes I chose as next door to souls.
He had retired to private prayer in his chamber,
And Mr.
And Mrs.
Earnshaw were engaging Mrs.
Attention by sundry gay trifles,
Bought for her to present to the little lintons as an acknowledgement of their kindness.
They had invited them to spend the morrow at Wuthering Heights,
And the invitation had been accepted on one condition,
Mrs.
Linton begged her darlings might be kept carefully apart from that naughty,
Swearing boy.
Under these circumstances I remained solitary.
I smelt the rich scent of the heating spices,
And admired the shining kitchen utensils,
The polished clock decked in holly,
The silver mugs ranged on a tray ready to be filled with mulled ale for supper,
And above all the speckless purity of my particular care,
The scowled and well-kept floor.
I gave due inward applause to every object,
And then as I remembered how old Earnshaw used to come in when all was tidied,
And called me a cant lass,
And slip a shilling into my hand as a Christmas box,
And from that I went on to think of his fondness for Heathcliff,
And his dread lest he should suffer neglect after death had removed him.
And that naturally led me to consider the poor lad's situation now,
And from singing I changed my mind to crying.
It struck me soon,
However,
There would be more sense in endeavouring to repair some of the wrongs than shedding tears over them,
So I got up and walked into the court to seek him.
He was not far.
I found him smoothing the glossy coat of the new pony in the stable,
And feeding the other beasts according to custom.
Make haste,
Heathcliff,
I said,
The kitchen so comfortable,
And Joseph's upstairs,
Make haste and let me dress your smart before Miss Cathy comes out,
Then you can sit together with the whole half to yourselves and have a long chatter till bedtime.
He proceeded with his task and never turned his head towards me.
Come,
I said,
Are you coming?
There's a little cake for each of you,
Nearly enough,
And you'll need half an hour's donning.
I waited five minutes,
But getting no answer,
I left him.
Catherine supped with her brother and sister-in-law.
Joseph and I joined at an unsociable meal,
Seasoned with reproofs on one side and sauciness on the other.
His cake and cheese remained on the table all night for the fairies.
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot Fine old Christmas,
With the snowy hair and ruddy face,
Had done his duty that year in the noblest fashion and had set off his rich gifts of warmth and colour with all the heightening contrast of frost and snow.
Snow lay on the croft and riverbank in undulations softer than the limbs of infancy.
It lay with the neatliest finished border on every sloping roof,
Making the dark red gabled stand out with a new depth of colour.
It weighed heavily on the laurels and fir trees till it fell from them with a shuddering sound.
It clothed the rough turnip field with whiteness and made the sheep look like dark blotches.
The gates were all locked up with the sloping drifts,
And here and there a disregarded four-footed beast stood as if petrified in unrecumbent sadness.
There was no gleam,
No shadow,
For the heavens too were one still pale cloud.
No sound or motion in anything but the dark river that flowed and moaned like an unresting sorrow.
But old Christmas smiled as he laid this cruel-seeming spell on the outdoor world,
For he meant to light up home with new brightness,
To deepen all the richness of indoor colour and give a keener edge of delight to the warm fragrance of food.
He meant to prepare a sweet imprisonment that would strengthen the primitive fellowship of kindred and make the sunshine of familiar human faces as welcome as the hidden day star.
His kindness fell but hardly on the homeless,
Fell but hardly on the homes where the hearth was not very warm and where the food had little fragrance,
Where the human faces had no sunshine in them but rather the leaden,
Blank-eyed gaze of unexpected want.
But the fine old season meant well,
And if he has not learned the secret how to bless men impartially,
It is because his father Time,
With ever-unrelenting purpose,
Still hides that secret in his own mighty,
Slow-beating heart.
And yet this Christmas Day,
In spite of Tom's fresh delight in home,
Was not,
He thought,
Somehow or other,
Quite so happy as it had always been before.
The red berries were just as abundant on the holly,
And he and Maggie had dressed all the windows and mantelpieces and picture frames on Christmas Eve with as much taste as ever,
Wedding the thick-set scarlet clusters with branches of the black-buried ivy.
There had been singing under the windows after midnight,
Supernatural singing,
Maggie always felt in spite of Tom's contemptuous insistence that the singers were old patch,
The parish clerk and the rest of the church choir.
She trembled with awe when their caroling broke in upon her dreams,
And the image of men in fustian cloaks was always thrust away by the vision of angels resting on the parted cloud.
But the midnight chant had helped as usual to lift the morning above the level of common days,
And then there was the smell of hot toast and ale from the kitchen at the breakfast hour.
The favourite anthem,
The green boughs and the short sermon gave the appropriate festal character to the churchgoing.
And Aunt and Uncle Moss,
With all their eight children,
Were looking like so many reflectors of the bright parlour fire,
When the churchgoers came back stamping the snow from their feet.
The plum pudding was of the same handsome roundness as ever,
And came in with the symbolic blue flames around it,
As if it had been heroically snatched from the nether fires into which it had been thrown by dyspeptic Puritans.
The dessert was splendid as ever,
With its golden oranges,
Brown nuts and the crystalline light and dark of apple jelly and damson cheese.
In all these things Christmas was as it had always been since Tom could remember.
It was only distinguished,
If by anything,
By superior sliding and snowballs.
