me if there are dwarves and trolls out there?”
She didn’t respond.
He was just miserable enough in his torn and wet shirt and pants to let her assist, forgetting until it was too late that he had no underwear on, of course. But she had the terrycloth robe over his shoulders instantly, quickly wrapping it around him as he slipped his arms into it, and tying the sash for him as if he were a little boy.
She was almost as tall as he was. And her resolute gestures again struck him as odd, no matter what she was.
“Now, when the master is not out of sorts, he will perhaps explain everything to you,” she said, her tone softening even further. She dropped her voice, laughing under her breath. “If on Christmas Eve they did not appear, he would be disappointed,” she said. “It would be a terrible thing in fact if they did not appear at that time. But he does not like it at all that they are here now, and that they’ve been invited. When they’re invited, they become bold. And that irritates him considerably.”
“Invited by Felix, you mean,” Reuben asked. “That’s what’s been going on. Felix howling—.”
“Yes, invited by Master Felix, and it is his prerogative to tell you why, not mine.”
She gathered the soiled and torn clothes and made of them a little bundle, obviously for throwing away. “But until such time as the august masters choose to explain about them to you and your young companion, Stuart, let me assure you that the Forest Gentry cannot possibly bring you the slightest harm. And you must not let them force your … your blood to rise, as it were, as it seemed it did tonight.”
“I understand,” he said. “They caught me completely by surprise. And I found them unnerving.”
“Well, if you do want to unnerve them in return, which I do not advise, by the way, under any circumstances, just refer to them as the ‘fairy people’ or ‘elves’ or ‘dwarves’ or ‘trolls’ and that will do it. Real harm they cannot do, but they can become quite an incredible nuisance!”
With a loud sharp laugh, she turned to go, but then,
“Your raincoat,” she said. “You left it in the forest. I’ll see to it that it is brushed and cleaned. Sleep now.”
She went right out the door, shutting it behind her, leaving him with all the questions on the tip of his tongue.
12
THE HOUSE WAS IN a pleasant uproar with people coming and going everywhere.
Thibault and Stuart were decorating the giant Christmas tree and commandeered Reuben to help them. Thibault wore a suit and tie as he almost always did, and with his wrinkled face and mossy eyebrows looked the schoolmaster next to Stuart, who, in cutoff jeans and a T-shirt, climbed the creaking ladder like a muscular young cherub to the top step to decorate the highest branches.
Thibault had put on a recording of old English Christmas carols sung by the choir of St. John’s College at Cambridge, and the music was soothing and haunting.
The intricate lighting of every branch of the giant tree had already been done, and what was needed now was the hanging of countless gold and silver apples on the tree, little lightweight ornaments that sparkled beautifully amid the deep thick green pine needles. Here and there small edible cookie gingerbread men and gingerbread houses were to be added, and the gingerbread had a delicious aroma.
Stuart wanted to eat them, and so did Reuben, but Thibault forbade them sternly to even think of it. Lisa had decorated every single one herself, and there weren’t enough as it was. The “boys” must “behave” themselves.
A tall elegant St. Nicholas with a gaunt but benevolent porcelain face and soft green velvet robes had been placed at the very top of the tree. And the branches from top to bottom had been dusted lightly with some sort of synthetic gold dust. The effect of it all was grand and impressive.
Stuart was his usual buoyant self, eternally smiling, freckles darkening when he laughed, explaining to Reuben that he’d been able to invite “everybody” to the Christmas gala, including the nuns from his high school, and all his friends, and the nurses he’d known in the hospital.
Thibault offered to help Reuben add any last-minute college or newspaper friends, but Reuben had taken care of all of this earlier when Felix had knocked on his door, offering to help him. Numerous phone calls had been made. Reuben’s editor from the
Meanwhile activity went on all around them. Lisa and the caterers had laid out hundreds of sterling knives and forks and spoons on the giant dining room table, and Galton and his men swarmed over the backyard area, clearing an old parking space behind the servants’ quarters for the refrigerator trucks that would come the day of the banquet. A band of young teenagers, answering to Jean Pierre and Lisa—everyone was answerable to Lisa— were trimming every interior door and window frame with garland.
That might have looked absurd in a small house, so much greenery, but it was perfect here in these vast rooms, Reuben thought. Masses of thick red candles were being added to the mantelpieces, and Frank Vandover brought in a cardboard box of old Victorian wooden toys to be placed under the tree when they were finished.
Reuben loved all this. It was not only distracting; it was restorative. He tried not to study Heddy and Jean Pierre as they passed, for clues of whatever nature they shared with the redoubtable Lisa.
And everywhere from outside came the noise of hammers and saws.
As for Felix, he left before noon to fly to Los Angeles to make “final arrangements” with the mummers and other costumed people who’d be working the Christmas fair in Nideck or the party up here after the Christmas fair ended. He would stop in San Francisco before coming home to see to the adult choir and the orchestra he was assembling.
And Margon had gone to meet the arrival of the boys’ choir from Austria, which would also be singing at the party. They’d been promised a week in America as part of their compensation. After he’d seen to all their arrangements at the hotels on the coast, he was headed on to make some other necessary purchases of additional oil heaters for the outdoors—or so Reuben and Stuart were being told.
Frank and Sergei, both very big men, came and went continuously with boxes of china and more silver flatware and other decorations from the lower storerooms. Frank was snappily dressed as always, in a polo shirt and clean, pressed jeans, and there was as ever that Hollywood sheen to him even as he toted and reached and lifted. Sergei, the giant of the household, his blond hair an unruly mop, sweated in his rumpled denim shirt and looked faintly bored but eternally agreeable.
A team of professional maids was inspecting all the extra bathrooms on the second floor, those on the inside of the corridors, to make sure each and every one was properly stocked for the banquet guests. The maids would stand outside these bathrooms to direct guests on Sunday.
Deliverymen rang the bell about every twenty minutes; and some reporters were outside braving the light rain to photograph the creche statues and the ceaseless activity.
It was rather dazzling and comforting, actually—especially since neither Felix nor Margon could be reached with any questions about anything.
“You can expect the entire week to be this way,” said Thibault casually as he handed the ornaments out of the box to Reuben. “It’s been this way since yesterday.”
At last they broke for a late lunch in the conservatory, the only place where decorating was not going on, its tropical blooms seeming woefully incongruous with the Christmas spirit.
Lisa brought plates for them piled high with freshly carved prime rib and huge potatoes already dressed with butter and sour cream, and bowls of steaming carrots and zucchini. The bread had been freshly baked. She opened Stuart’s napkin for him and put it in his lap, and would have done the same for Reuben if she’d had the
