"You won't meet him. I'm staying with Uncle Griff and Aunt Dolly; they're dears, too, but not the least bit Celtic scholars. You'll see."

"But it was an understandable mistake. You see, I've looked your uncle up in Burke's Landed Gentry. Terrific ancestry, so I thought he might be very hot on Welsh history, and customs and whatnot."

"You've been doing your homework, haven't you? Uncle Griff will talk to you about genealogy all night, but any Welshman will do that. No, Uncle Griff's not a scholar, but he's a landed gent."

"Unbroken tenancy of the Neuadd Goch estate since 1488, the book said."

"Oh, how beautifully you say Neuadd Goch!"

"No kidding?"

"Well -- not very much kidding."

Miss Ceinwen Griffiths, it appeared, was not only very attractive but an accomplished flirt. Monica began to feel reservations about her.

They had mounted a steep hill, and were now driving along a ridge. Because the pony cart was high, they could see over the hedges on both sides of the road, toward England on the right, and toward the mountains of Wales on the left. It was such country as Monica had never seen before, rolling, gentle, quiet in its winter sleep, yet with an air of mystery which could not be explained. Perhaps it was the quality of the light, which varied so greatly within the range of her vision. Where they were it was not quite so fine a day as Miss Griffiths had said; as the pony trotted through the lanes the air was wet and chilly on their faces. But a mile or two away on the English side of the ridge the sun shone in golden patches, moving slowly across the side of another hill. On the Welsh side it seemed to be raining in the middle distance, for there the land was purplish, as though it had been bruised, but near these darkened patches were stretches of grey obscurity, which occasionally stirred and heaved, for it was mist. But beyond the purple, and the mist, and a few pools of tearful sunlight, rose mountains which caught a little wintry glory from an unseen setting sun, and were otherwise deepest blue-black. Their heads were in cloud.

"On a good day you can see the two peaks of Cadeir Idris from here," said Ceinwen, "but not often in winter."

"Marvellous!" said Ripon. "Just the country for Morte d'Arthur."

"We like it very well," said Ceinwen.

"Oh, come on. Miss Griffiths, that won't do! It's absolutely terrific, and you know it. Leave understatement to the English. I'm an enthusiast; they say all Americans are, but it's not true. But I am. I enjoy things while I've got 'em. I'm a romantic. Don't discourage me."

"I won't. Wales always seems very beautiful to people when they first come to it. Perhaps we try to restrain our own feelings so as not to seem to be boasting. Now we leave the Cefn, and drop into this little wooded place. It's called Cwm Bau."

"Cwm, a valley, and bau -- let's see, wait till I get out Welsh in a Week -- or will you tell us?"

"In English it means the Dirty Dingle -- though why nobody knows, because it's very pretty, as you see. And then we go up the hill on the other side to Neuadd Goch. You haven't said anything, Miss Gall; I hope you don't find your first sight of Wales disappointing?"

"I'm an enthusiast, too," said Monica; "but I'm not very good at words. I think it's the loveliest landscape I've ever seen."

"I truly hope that it will be kind to you."

[TEN].

Life at Neuadd Goch was kind indeed. Monica knew nothing of country life; in Canada she had had the usual experiences of cottage life at lakesides with the joys of insects, privies, boiled water and the thunder of rain on the roof, but an ordered and comfortable existence in the midst of natural beauty was utterly new to her. In this house there was no window which did not look out upon a view of the beautiful valley on one lift of which it stood, and the variations of light changed these views from hour to hour, and sometimes from minute to minute. The farms and cottages in the landscape, thatched and built of white plaster and blackened oak beam, were so picturesquely pretty that she could not believe that they were real farms at all, for her only experience had been of the plain-faced farmsteads of her own part of Ontario. She fell immediately and deeply in love with North Wales, and in this affair she was rivalled by John Scott Ripon. As for the family at Neuadd Goch, they were everything that was kind and charming. No awesome butler, but two maids so obliging that Monica suspected them briefly of hypocrisy, managed affairs. She liked Ceinwen better than any girl she had met since leaving home, and desperately wanted her as a "best girl friend" -- but Ceinwen was not aware of this North American relationship, and was quite as flirtatious in her behaviour toward Monica as she was toward Ripon. And Mr and Mrs Hopkin-Griffiths were very old hands at entertaining house guests, and knew that the art lies in leaving them to themselves a great part of the time. Monica and Ripon arrived on the afternoon of the twenty-first of December; by tea time the day following they felt as though they had been at Neuadd Goch for a glorious year, and on the morning of the twenty-third they were such seasoned country folk that they went for a walk after breakfast, wonderfully happy. Ripon was bursting with talk.

"I've got it straightened out now," said he. "Ceinwen is the daughter of Professor Morgan Griffiths, who is only a half-brother of our host, who is Hopkin-Griffiths, and very big stuff in this part of Wales, and a timber man in a large way. That's where the money comes from. He doesn't seem to work, but that's his craftiness. Dolly was a widow when she married him; she's English and has a son -- that's the son she's always talking about who may come for Christmas. The Squire seems very fond of the boy, but I think I detect a note of worry in his voice when he talks about him. It makes it interesting, I think, everybody being halves and steps. Now in my family we're all fully related, and I can't say it makes either for interest or good feeling. What about your family?"

"Oh my family hasn't got any specially interesting relationships. It seems to make them interesting, being Welsh. When I was a child I sometimes used to wish we had a romantic foreign strain of some sort, to cheer things up."

"That's what I don't understand. Ceinwen seems to make a lot of being Welsh, but the Squire, who is the real thing, and can trace his ancestry back to Bleddyn ap Cynfyn, takes it very lightly. You heard what happened last night when I asked him about it at dinner; he just laughed and said he supposed it was true, but that it had never made much difference one way or another. He likes me calling him 'Squire' though, especially when I explained about my fondness for Gryll Grange and Squire Gryll. I was astonished he'd never heard of it. D'you know, Monica, I don't think these people understand or value what they have. I don't suppose it's twenty-five miles from here to the Mary Webb country, but would you believe that when I asked Mrs Hopkin-Griffiths about it, she had never heard of Mary Webb? And they've lived all their lives close to Shropshire, but they don't seem to know anything about Housman. George Herbert? Unknown! Of course I don't mean that they ought to develop those things as we do in the States. God forbid! But you'd think they'd know about them, wouldn't you? I mean, what do you suppose gives shape and focus to their lives?"

"Do books give shape and focus to your life?"

"Why certainly. Don't they yours?"

"No. You must be a very literary sort of person."

"I wouldn't say that. But you have to see and feel life in terms of something. Think; what makes you tick? What shapes your life?"

"Music, I suppose."

"Well, there you are."

"But not quite the way you mean. I hear music all the time. I've always done so, even though I've tried very hard not to."

"Why did you do that?"

"When I was very small I once told my mother about it, and she said I must break myself of the habit, or it would drive me crazy. So I tried, but I didn't succeed. The music is always at the back of my mind. It's not particularly original, but on the other hand it isn't anybody else's. It's just that I feel in terms of music. And when I can be quiet enough to get at what's going on in my mind, the music is what gives me a clue."

"Have you ever tried to write it down?"

"Oh no. And I don't want to try. I'm not a composer. It's just that music is a part of my way of feeling things. I only realized that a few months ago. And do you know that when I finally discovered that my mind worked that way, it set me free from that fear of going mad. And until I was free of the fear, I hadn't really admitted to myself that it was there. But for years I had been listening to my inner music guiltily. It was like -- oh, like being let out of a jail! You're the only person I've ever told about that."

"I'm glad you told me, and I'll keep it to myself. Look at that view! Now I'm appreciating it in literary terms, and you're interpreting it in some kind of inner music which is incomprehensible to me. So I ask you again: what does it mean to the people who live here? By what means do they interpret it to themselves?"

"Do you know, I've just had the most extraordinary experience? Look at these hedges; do you know what they are?"

"Of course I do; they're holly."

"Yes, but -- I've never seen holly before. Oh, I've seen a few sprigs, imported to Canada for decoration, and I've seen imitation holly. But this is the real thing -- miles and miles of it -- just growing beside the roads as a hedge. All my life I've associated holly with Christmas, but I never really knew till this minute why. I never understood that it was something real. I've seen it on paper wrapping, and in pictures, and I never knew why it went with Christmas, except that it was pretty. But here it is, in December, green leaves and red berries and all! It's like suddenly getting a mysterious piece of a jigsaw puzzle to fit into place."

Ripon solemnly removed his hat. "This is a sacred moment," said he. "Sacred to me, anyhow, as a student of literature. You have just made the great discovery that behind every symbol there is a reality. For years you have accepted holly as a symbol of Christmas, unquestioningly, like a true Anglo-Saxon believer. And now, in a flash, you know why it is so. It is because, in this land which gave you your Christmas, holly is at its finest at this time of year. Perhaps we should cause a carved stone to be erected on this spot, to identify forever the place at which, for one human being out of the whole confused race, a symbol became a reality."

They were standing in the lane which traversed Cwm Bau, and at this moment Ceinwen rounded the corner, leading an aged donkey, across whose back two large willow-work panniers were fixed.

"We've been admiring the holly, as only North Americans can," said Ripon.

"Good," said Ceinwen; "then you can come with me and gather a lot of it. I thought I might catch you, so I brought plenty of gloves and two broom-hooks. I know where we can get mistletoe, too."

It was idyllic to gather holly and mistletoe with Ceinwen, to take it back to Neuadd Goch and hang it in festoons on the staircase, to put sprigs of mistletoe in places where, Griffith Hopkin-Griffiths assured them, mistletoe had been hung for as long as anyone could remember.

Neuadd Goch was not an uncommonly old house, though it stood where two very old houses had preceded it. The older, which had been built before the Welsh Tudors had sought their fortune in England, had been supplanted by a Jacobean house which, after a fire in the first decade of the nineteenth century, had been replaced by the present building. It was not the sort of house which attracts the attention of connoisseurs, for it had no special architectural distinction; but it was wonderfully pleasing and comfortable. Its park and its gardens were pretty, but not remarkable. It was not large enough to be a mansion, but it was quite large enough to hold its owners, their servants, and ten or twelve guests without crowding. It was fully and admirably what its name said -- it was the Red Hall at Llanavon, modestly appropriate.

Whether it took its character from its owners, or whether they became like it, nobody could say. Mr Hopkin-Griffiths certainly was as red as his own house. His face was brick red, round, and wore a look of surprise allied to firmness; his hair was of a red which had faded from its original foxy shade to a browner tone. His hands were red and covered at the joints with red hair. As with so many of his race, a few red hairs grew capriciously out of the tip of his nose. He gave an impression of bluntness in his speech and manner, but those who knew him were not deceived; he came of a family which had foreseen the time for getting out of goats and going into sheep, in the fifteenth century; had dropped sheep for cattle in the eighteenth; and had added timber to cattle in the nineteenth. His neighbours respected Mr Griffith Hopkin-Griffiths as a smooth man.

Dolly, his wife, was a charming, walking monument to her own beauty as it had been thirty years ago; she had not changed her way of dressing her hair, and though she had yielded a little in matters of clothing she still looked more like the 'twenties than the 'fifties. She even made up according to the methods she had perfected in her youth, and it was a credit to the good qualities of her face that the effect was not grotesque. Seen at a distance, by a short-sighted man, she was a pretty, frivolous ghost from the period immediately following the First World War; seen closer, there was about her the pathos of the woman who has not quite grown as old as her years, either in body or mind.

She came upon them as they were hanging the last of the Christmas greens.

"Mistletoe!" she cried. "Oh, what fun! You'll be absolutely worn out with gallantry, Mr Ripon. Oh, I do so hope Gilly can come. Don't you, Ceinwen? Yes, I'm sure you do! It'll be no sort of Christmas without at least two young men."

Monica and Ripon were by now very familiar with this hope that Gilly, her son, would be able to get away from his work in London to join them at Christmas. By many broad hints Mrs Hopkin-Griffiths implied that Ceinwen must be especially anxious for his presence; Monica and Ripon were happy enough to fall in with this notion on the part of their hostess. The young are usually, out of sheer good nature, ready to indulge the sometimes clumsy romantic ideas of their elders.

If it was idyllic to hang the Christmas greens, it was Dickensian to drive the twelve miles to Trallwm and buy Christmas gifts. The rule at Neuadd Goch was that gifts exchanged among guests and family must not cost more than a shilling. It was on Christmas Eve that they made the journey, Monica, Ripon and Ceinwen in the Squire's serviceable Humber.

"The sheer bliss of this robs me of speech," said Ripon. "Here we go, on Christmas Eve -- get that, Christmas Eve -- to buy Christmas presents. If I were at home, I would have finished my Christmas shopping a full two weeks ago; I would have wrapped everything in elaborate paper, and tied it with expensive plastic twine. I would approach the great festal day prepared for everything but a good time. But here I go, prepared to squander ten shillings at the utmost on the very eve of the day of giving; for the first time in my life I have got Christmas into focus. Tomorrow I shall worship, I shall feast and, quite incidentally, I shall give and receive. And that's how it ought to be. It's Dickensian. It's Washington Irving-like. It's the way Christmas ought to be."

They spent all day making their purchases, for the shilling rule had been made in a time when a shilling bought a bigger variety of possible gifts than it does now. But Ripon persuaded a bookseller and stationer to let him rummage among some old stock, and produced a wonderful variety of paper transfers, Victorian post-cards, and works of edification which had once been sold as Sabbath School prizes. And in an outfitter's he got a dicky for ninepence, and an almost forgotten oddity -- a washable "leather" collar -- which he said would be just the thing for Mr Hopkin-Griffiths. Monica, who did not want to be outdone, turned up some cards of pretty old-fashioned buttons in a woolshop and, after much pondering, bought another copy of Welsh in a Week to give to Ripon, who had been mercilessly teased by their hosts and Ceinwen about his earlier adventures with that work. At mid-day Ripon took the two girls to lunch at The Bear, where they ate fat mutton with two veg. following it with prunes doused with a custard of chemical composition, and some surly cheese. But even this did not crush their spirits.

Driving back to Llanavon, Monica and Ripon agreed that it had been one of the happiest days they had ever known. Their protestations of pleasure made Ceinwen shy at first, then effusive, and the drive ended in an atmosphere which a cruel observer might have described as maudlin, but which was in truth full of genuine, warm, though possibly facile feeling.

They rushed into the house in time for tea, hungry from the asperities of The Bear, and hungry too as only emotion can make one. Mrs Hopkin-Griffiths scampered out of the drawing-room to meet them.

"Oh darlings, it's too, too wonderful. He's been able to come! I never quite dared to hope but he's here. Gilly's come! It's going to be a perfect Christmas!"

Swept forward by her excitement they burst into the room. There, before the fire, stood Giles Revelstoke.

[ELEVEN].

That night, having made herself ready for bed; Monica went to the bathroom to clean her teeth, a maiden; in slightly less than fifteen minutes she returned to her room, her teeth clean, and a maiden no more.

There was only one bathroom at Neuadd Goch. It had formerly been a bedroom, and was a chamber of considerable size, in a corner of which was a very large and deep bath, encased in mahogany and standing on a dais; there was also a large and ornate marble basin, a full-length cheval-glass with candle-brackets, an armchair and a side chair, and a set of scales upon which it was possible to weigh oneself by sitting on a large, padded seat. There was a couch of the type familiar in the best-known picture of Madame Recamier, with one arm and a partial back. The two large windows were richly curtained to the floor. This splendid chamber was for ablutions only; the water closet was housed in mahogany splendour in a smaller room nearby: it had a bowl in the agreeable Willow pattern.

If Monica had not been a North American her fate might have been very different; in each bedroom was a washstand, with ewer and basin, and night and morning a copper pitcher of boiling water. But she had been accustomed all her life to clean her teeth in running water, and so she went to the bathroom in her dressing-gown, her toothbrush and a tube of paste in her hand. She would only be a minute, thought she, so she pushed the door around, but did not bolt it. It was not quite closed, and less than a minute later Giles Revelstoke, towel in hand and in his dressing-gown, pushed it open.

"Oh, I'm sorry," said he.

And then, because Monica looked so attractive with her hair brushed out, and her mouth foaming slightly with pink dentifrice, and because the lamplight in the bathroom was so charming, and because the couch was so conveniently at hand, and probably also because it was Christmas -- because of so many elements so subtly combined, Monica returned to her bedroom in just under a quarter of an hour, much astonished and even more delighted.

As always when something important had happened, she wanted a time of quiet in which to think about it. But that was not to be hers just yet. As she was opening her door, a figure hastened to her side out of the darkness of the stairs. It was Ripon.

"Want to talk to you for a minute," said he, and hurried into the room after her.

Monica's bedroom was large, and as the electricity at Neuadd Goch -- a private system -- operated only on the ground floor, it was lit with a large oil lamp by the bed. She and Ripon were in a rich gloom, but it was plain that he was excited.

"You get into bed and keep warm," he said. "I'll sit here. Listen; Ripon the sleuth has done it again! I just got the lowdown on this whole situation from Ceinwen; she's a bit put out that this chap Revelstoke has turned up -- she was hoping against hope that he wouldn't, and Mrs H.-G. was aching that he should. We've been misled by Mrs H.-G.; Ceinwen does not look on this Giles as Prince Charming. And do you know why? It's a fantastic deal among the older generation. Ceinwen is to marry Revelstoke: Mrs H.-G. wants it because she is keen for him to settle down, live a quiet life in the country, and be a good boy. It appears that he isn't a very good boy in London. She's got quite a bit of money, you see, left her by her first husband, who was a stock-broker, of all things. And the Squire wants the marriage because he will then leave this house and estate to Ceinwen, on condition that they change their name from Revelstoke to Hopkin-Griffiths, thus continuing the name at Neuadd Goch. And Ceinwen's father, Professor Griffiths, wants it because he wants her to have Neuadd Goch, which he thinks ought to be in his part of the family anyhow, and the marriage will make him retroactively county gentry, instead of just a well-known scholar. Did you ever hear anything like it?"

"No," said Monica. "But surely it all depends on what Ceinwen and Giles want?" It was fortunate that it was dark in the room for it was the first time she had ever called him Giles, and she blushed deeply.

"Ah, that's what you'd think, and what I'd think, but it's not what these people think. And that's what makes it fascinating. It's like finding oneself in a Victorian novel. I've got to re-adjust all my thinking about the set-up here. You see, I had it all worked out on the Hamlet-theme; I asked myself why Mrs H.-G. was so wild to have her son come home, when there seemed to be so much doubt about it. I mean, nobody ever said he couldn't come; they just said he mightn't. Well -- it was plain as a pike-staff. Revelstoke was a Hamlet-figure, unconsciously jealous of the Squire, identifying himself strongly with the late Revelstoke, and bitter against his Ma. It sees itself, doesn't it? I was crazy for him to come home, because I've never had a chance to observe a man in the Hamlet-situation at close quarters. But how wrong I was!"

"You certainly do see life in terms of literature, Johnny."

"Well -- just look at the fun I have! But now, you see, I'm bang in the middle of one of those terrific novels about Who Gets the Dibs; the next thing to be decided is -- are we in a Jane Austen situation, or a Trollope situation?"

"Does it have to be one or the other?"

"But you can't call it a modern situation?"

"Well, it's happening now, isn't it?"

"Only in a very limited sense. There are whole climates of thought and feeling which aren't really modern; I can't see a situation where two people are being pushed toward marriage in order to save family name, and family pride, as modern."

"Go on; I bet it happens all the time."

"You're just being feminine and perverse. Anyhow, you said you felt in terms of music; I feel in terms of literature."

"All right, then; where do we fit into the plot?"

"Frankly, I don't see that you come into it at all, except as a fringe figure -- Nice Girl for Christmas Purposes. But for myself -- well, I don't mind telling you that I go for Ceinwen in quite a big way."

"So soon?"

"Don't be naive. I have the feelings of a poet. There's a remarkable quality about her, don't you think? Sort of figure in a poem by Yeats? Or really more like one of those wonderful women in the poems of Dafydd ap Gwylim. You know that Welsh verse she recited to us the first day, when we were in Cwm Bau? That was Dafydd ap Gwylim. I asked her, and then I read up on him in the encyclopaedia. Wonderful, warm, infinitely fascinating women, full of passion yet teasingly chaste."

"Johnny, you've got a really bad case."

"It's not anything that can be described as a case. Here she is, being sacrificed to ideas which don't really come into her climate of thought and feeling at all; she's in the wrong book. The thing is, can I get her into the right book?"

"Johnny, I want to go to sleep. And if anybody hears you talking at the top of your voice in my room, you won't get Ceinwen into any book at all. You go to bed now."

Monica leapt out of bed and fetched a small parcel from her chest of drawers.

"Just so you won't think I'm unsympathetic, here's your Christmas present now. Don't open it until morning. It's something that will be useful to you in getting Ceinwen back into the right book."

She pushed him out of the door, bearing her gift, which was, of course, another copy of Welsh in a Week.

Rid of Ripon, she was able to attend to her own affairs, and her first act was to fetch the lamp, and set it on the floor beside the full-length mirror which formed part of the front of the large wardrobe. Then, chilly as it was, she took off her nightdress and studied herself in the mirror with satisfaction.

By the laws of literature which meant so much to Ripon, her first experience of sex should have been painful, dispiriting and frightening. But it had been none of these things. She had been too confused and surprised to take great heed of the physical side of the encounter; it had all been so strange -- the nearness, the intimacy of the posture, the inevitable and natural quality of the act itself; though new to her, it did not seem utterly unaccustomed, but rather like something dimly but pleasurably remembered from the past -- and this in itself was strange. What had moved her more than these things were the endearments which Revelstoke had whispered, and the kindness and gentleness with which he had carried out his purpose. Nobody had ever spoken to her in such a fashion before. She had been kissed once or twice in a very tentative way, but that was nothing; this had touched the tender places of her spirit, caressed and stirred them, bringing her a fresh consciousness of life. And again this was not utterly strange, but like the resumption of something once cherished, and lost for a time.

She should feel evil, depraved -- she knew it. But, miraculously, at this moment when she should have stood in awe of her mother, and Pastor Beamis and the whole moral code of the Thirteeners, she felt, on the contrary, free of them, above and beyond them as though reunited with something which they sought to deny her. She knew something which they could never have known, or they would not have talked as they did. If Ripon had known about it, he would have said that she had moved into a new climate of feeling.

Gazing at her naked body in the mirror she stretched, and preened, and looked at herself with an intent and burning gaze. She was, by the standards of her upbringing, a ruined girl, and she had never looked better or felt happier in her life.

She slipped again into the nightdress, blew out the lamp and jumped into bed. Almost at once she was asleep. But not before a new and warming Christmas satisfaction rose from the deeps of her mind: What a smack in the eye for Persis Kinwellmarshe!

[TWELVE].