“Anyway,” Colonel Forbes’s voice was declaring gruffly over the babble of voices in the hallway; it seemed that Mrs. Forbes had been trying to force him to hold the baby. “Anyway, this was a damned inconvenient thing to happen. What would have been the outcome if one of our number had not turned out to be a doctor, eh? Whoever heard of any woman having a baby at Christmas?”
The babble of voices stopped entirely.
The Marquess of Lytton’s eyes smiled slowly into Pamela’s. “Good Lord,” he said, and everyone kept quiet to listen to his words, “a crowd of marvelous Christians we all are. Did any of us realize before this moment, I wonder? We have, in fact, been presented with the perfect Christmas, have we not? Almost a reenactment of the original.”
“ ‘How could I spoil a Christmas that had promised to be so dismal for everyone?’ ” Pamela said quietly. “I think someone realized, my lord.”
“The child was very nearly born in a stable,” Lady Birkin said.
“It is uncanny enough to send shivers up one’s spine,” Miss Eugenia Horn said.
“I hope you have not caught a chill from the damp sheets, Eugenia,” Miss Amelia Horn said.
“I wonder,” Lord Birkin said, “if above the heavy rain clouds a star is shining brightly.”
“Fanciful nonsense,” Colonel Forbes said. “I am ready for my dinner.
When will it be ready, landlord, eh? Don’t just stand there, man. I would like to eat before midnight-if it is all the same to you, of course.”
Lady Birkin took the baby from Mrs. Forbes’s arms. “I’ll take him back to his mother,” she said, tenderness and wistfulness mingled in her voice.
“Back to his manger,” Lord Birkin said, laughing softly.
“Well, anyway,” Mrs. Palmer said to the gathered company as she cleared away the plates after dinner, “we didn’t keep ’em in the stable like them innkeepers did in the Bible. We gave ’em one of our best rooms and aren’t charging ’em for it neither.”
“For which deeds you will surely find a place awaiting you in heaven,” the Marquess of Lytton said.
“And yet it give me quite a turn, it did, when the colonel said what ’e did and we all thought of that other babe what was born at Christmas,”
Mr. Palmer said. He was standing in the doorway of the dining room, busy about nothing in particular. “I was all over shivers for a minute.”
“I am sure in Bethlehem there was not all this infernal rain,” Colonel Forbes commented.
“The kings would have arrived in horribly soggy robes and dripping crowns,” the marquess said. “And the heavenly host would have had drooping wings.”
“I am quite sure their wings were more sturdy than to be weakened by rain, my lord,” Miss Amelia Horn said. “They were angels, after all.”
Mrs. Forbes nodded her agreement.
“I think it would be altogether fitting to the occasion,” Miss Eugenia Horn said, “if we read the Bible story together this evening.”
“And perhaps sang some carols afterward,” Lady Birkin said. “Does everyone feel Christmas as strongly as I do tonight despite all the usual trappings being absent?”
There were murmurings of assent. Mrs. Forbes nodded. The quiet gentleman smiled.
“Does anyone have a Bible?” Lord Birkin asked.
There was a lengthy pause. No one, it seemed, was in the habit of traveling about with a Bible in a trunk.
“I do,” the quiet gentleman said at last, and he got to his feet to fetch it from his room.
And so they all spent a further hour in the dining room, far away from friends and families and parties, far from any church, far away from Christmas as any of them had ever known it. There were no decorations, no fruit cake or mince pies, no cider or punch or wassail. Nothing except a plain and shabby inn and the company of strangers become acquaintances. Nothing except a newborn baby and his mother asleep upstairs, cozy and warm because they had been taken from the stable and given a room and showered with care and with gifts.
The quiet gentleman himself read the story of the birth of another baby in Bethlehem, and they all listened to words they had heard so many times before that the wonder of it all had ceased to mean a great deal.
They listened with a new understanding, with a new recognition of the joy of birth. Even the one man who rarely entered a church, Lord Lytton, was touched by the story and realized that perhaps Christmas had not been meant to be an orgy of personal gratification.
Singing that might have been self-conscious, since there was no instrument to provide accompaniment, was, in fact, not self-conscious at all. Lady Birkin, Pamela Wilder, Colonel Forbes and, surprisingly, Miss Amelia Horn all had good voices and could hold a tune. Everyone else joined in lustily, even the tone-deaf Mrs. Forbes.
Lord Birkin left the room after a while. He found Tom Suffield in the kitchen, where he had been eating with the guests’ coachmen. Lisa and the baby were asleep, Tom explained, scrambling to his feet, and he did not want to disturb them. Lord Birkin took Tom through into the taproom.
“I don’t know what you are good at, Tom,” he said. “I can’t offer much in the way of employment, I’m afraid, but I can send you to my estate in Kent and instruct my housekeeper to find you work in the stables or in the gardens. I doubt there will be an empty cottage, but we will find somewhere where you and Lisa can stay for a while, at least.”
Tom shifted his weight awkwardly from one foot to the other. “That be awf’ly good of ye, sir,” he said, “but Mr. Cornwallis needs a cook and a handyman and have offered the jobs to me and Lisa.”
“Mr. Cornwallis?” Lord Birkin raised his eyebrows.
“The doctor, sir,” Tom said.
“Ah.” It was strange, Lord Birkin thought, that even though they had all introduced themselves the evening before, he had thought of Mr.
Cornwallis ever since only as the quiet gentleman. “I am glad, Tom. I hated to think of your taking Lisa and your baby to one of the industrial towns with no job waiting for you there.”
“Aye, sir,” Tom said. “Everyone is right kind. Thanks again for the money, sir. We will buy new clothes for the baby with it.”
Lord Birkin nodded and returned to the dining room.
The Marquess of Lytton found Tom just ten minutes later. “Having a woman and child and no home or employment is a burdensome situation to find yourself in, Tom,” he said.
“Aye, that it is, sir,” Tom said. “But I feels like a wealthy man, sir, with all the gifts. And with your gold ring, sir. And a home and a job from Mr. Cornwallis.” He told his tale again.
“Ah,” the marquess said. “I am glad to hear it, Tom. I was prepared to give you a letter of introduction to a friend of mine, but now I see you will not need it. I would like to give you a small sum of money, though.
Call it a Christmas gift to you personally, if you will. It is the price of a license. You must marry her, Tom. Such things are important to women, you know. And you would not wish to hear anyone calling your son a bastard.”
“Bless you, sir,” Tom said, flushing, “but Mr. Cornwallis is to marry us, sir, as soon as we gets to his home.”
“The physician?” the marquess raised his eyebrows.
“He’s a clergyman, sir,” Tom said.
“Ah.” The marquess nodded pleasantly to him and returned to the dining room. The quiet gentleman, he thought, was becoming more intriguing by the moment. Was he a physician or a clergyman? Or both?Or neither?
Lord Lytton seated himself beside the quiet gentleman and spoke to him while everyone else was singing. “You are a clergyman, sir?” he asked.
The quiet gentleman smiled. “I am, my lord,” he said.
“And a physician, too?” The marquess frowned.
“It is possible to be both,” the quiet gentleman said. “I am a clergyman, but not of a large and fashionable parish, you see. My time is not taken up by the sometimes tedious and meaningless duties I would have if I belonged to a large parish, and certainly not by the social commitments I would have if I had a wealthy patron. I am fortunate. My time is free to be devoted to the service of others. I am not distracted by the trappings of the established faith.” He chuckled. “I have learned to deliver babies. It is the greatest delight and the greatest privilege a man could experience. You discovered that once upon a time, I believe.”
