It was Christmas-eve at Craigaderyn as well as before Sebastopol, and all over God's land of Christendom--the "Land of Cakes," perhaps, excepted, as Christmas and all such humanising holidays were banished thence as paganish, by the acts of her Parliament and her "bigots of the Iron Time," as in England by Cromwell, some eighty years later, for a time. A mantle of gleaming white covered all mighty Snowdon, the tremendous abysses of Carneydd Llewellyn, and the lesser ranges of Mynyddhiraeth. Llyn Aled and Llyn Alwen were frozen alike, and the Conway at some of its falls exhibited a beard of icicles that made all who saw them think of the friendly giant--old Father Christmas himself! Deep lay the snow in the Martens' dingle and under all the oaks of the old forest and chase; for it was one of those hearty old English yules that seem to be passing away with other things, or to exist chiefly in the fancy of artists, and which, with their concomitants of cold without and warmth and glowing hospitality within, seemed so much in unison with an old Tudor mansion like Craigaderyn--a genuine Christmas, like one of the olden time, when the yule-log was an institution, when hands were shaken and faces brightened, kind wishes expressed, and hearts grew glad and kind. But on this particular Christmas-eve Winifred and Dora were not at the Court, but with some of their lady friends were busy putting the finishing touches to the leafy decorations of the parish church, for the great and solemn festival of the morrow, with foliage cut from the same woods and places where the Druids procured similar decorations for their temples, as it is simply a custom--an ancient usage--which has survived the shock of invading races and changing creeds.
The night was beautiful, clear, and frosty, and to those who journeyed along the hard and echoing highway the square tower of the old church, loaded alike by snow and ivy, could be seen to loom, darkly and huge, against the broad face of the moon, that seemed to hang like a silver shield or mighty lamp amid the floating clouds, and right in a cleft between the mountains. The heavens were brilliant with stars; and lines of light, varied by the tinting of heraldic blazons and quaint scriptural subjects, fell from the traceried and mullioned windows of the ancient church on the graves and headstones in the burial-place around it; while shadows flitted to and fro within--those of the merry-hearted and white-handed girls who were so cheerily at work, and whose soft voices could be heard echoing under the groined arches in those intervals when the chimes ceased in the belfry far above them. Huge icicles depended from the wyverns and dragons, through whose stony mouths the rain of fully five centuries had been disgorged by the gutters of the old church, and being coated with snow, the obelisks and other mementos of the dead had a weird and ghostlike effect in the frosty moonlight.
In the cosy porch of the church were Sir Madoc Lloyd and his hunting bachelor friend, Sir Watkins Vaughan, each solacing himself with a cigar while waiting for the ladies, to escort whom home they had driven over from the Court after dinner in Sir Watkins' bang-up dog-cart. While smoking and chatting (about the war of course, as no one spoke of anything else then), they peeped from time to time at the picturesque vista of the church, where garlands of ivy and glistening holly, green and white, with scarlet berries, and masses of artificial flowers, were fast making gay the grim Norman arches and sturdy pillars, with their grotesque capitals and quaint details. Nor were the tombs and trophies of the Lloyds of other times forgotten; so the old baronet watched with a pleased smile the slender fingers of his young daughter as they deftly wreathed with holly and bay the rusty helmet that whilom Madoc ap Meredyth wore at Flodden and Pinkey, her blue eyes radiant the while with girlish happiness, and her hair as usual in its unmanageable masses rolling down her back, and seeming in the lights that flickered here and there like gold shaded away with auburn.
The curate, a tall, thin, and closely-shaven man, in a "Noah's-ark coat" with a ritualistic collar, stood irresolutely between the sisters, though generally preferring the graver Winifred to the somewhat hoydenish Dora, who insisted on appropriating his services in the task of weaving and tying the garlands; but he was little more than an onlooker, as the ladies seemed to have taken entire possession of the church and reduced him to a well-pleased cipher. At last Sir Watkins, a pleasant and gentlemanly young man, though somewhat of the "horsey" and fox-hunting type, who had a genuine admiration for Winifred, and had actually proposed for her hand (but, like poor Phil Caradoc, had done so in vain), seemed to think that he was letting his reverence have the ladies' society too exclusively, tossed his cigar into the snow, entered the church, and joined them; while Sir Madoc preferred to linger in the porch and think over the changes each of those successive festivals saw, and of the old friends who were no longer here to share them with him.
"Here comes Sir Watkins, to make himself useful, at last!" said Dora, clapping her hands, as she infinitely preferred the fox-hunter to the parson. "I shall insist upon him going up the long ladder, and nailing all those leaves over that arch."
But Winifred, to whom his rather clumsy attentions, however quietly offered, were a source of secret annoyance, drew nearer her female friends, four gay and handsome girls from London, who were spending Christmas at the Court (but have nothing else to do with our story), and whose eyes all brightened as the young and eligible baronet joined them. But for the charm which the presence of Winifred always had for him, and the pleasure of attending on her and the other ladies, Sir Watkins would infinitely have preferred, to a cold draughty church on Christmas night, Sir Madoc's cosy "snuggery," or the smoking-room at the Court, where they could discuss matters equine and canine, reckon again how many braces of grouse, black-cock, and ptarmigan they lad "knocked over" that day, or discuss the comparative merits of coursing in well-fenced Leicestershire, and in Sussex, where the downs are all open and free as the highway, or other kindred topics, through the medium of hot brandy-and-water.
"Now, Sir Watkins, here are my garlands and there is a ladder," said Dora.
"Any mistletoe among them, Miss Dora?" he asked, laughing.
"No; we leave the arrangement of that mysterious plant to such Druids as you; but here are some lovely holly-berries," said Dora, holding a bunch over the head of one of her companions, and kissing her with all that empressement peculiar to young ladies.
"By Jove," said the baronet, with a positive sigh, "I quite agree with some fellow who has written that 'two women kissing each other is a misapplication of one of God's best gifts.'"
Glancing at Winifred, who looked so handsome in her cosy sealskin jacket, with its cuffs and collar of silver-coloured grebe, the bachelor curate smiled faintly, and said, while playing nervously with his clerical billycock.
"I do not plead for aught approaching libertinism, but I do think that to kiss in friendship those we love seems a simple and innocent custom. In Scripture we have it as a form of ceremonious salutation, as we may find in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, and in first Samuel, where the consecration of the Jewish kings to regal authority was sealed by a kiss from the officiator in the ceremony."
"And we have also in Genesis the courtship of Jacob and the 'fair damsel' Rachel," said Dora, looking up from her task with her bright face full of fun, "wherein we are told that 'Jacob kissed Rachel, and then lifted up his voice, and wept.' If any gentleman did so after kissing me, I am sure that I should die of laughter."
"We are having quite a dissertation on this most pleasant of civilised institutions," said Sir Watkins, merrily, as he flicked away a cobweb here and there with his silver-mounted tandem whip; "have you nothing to say on the subject, Miss Lloyd--no apt quotation?"
"None," replied Winifred, dreamily, while twirling a spray of ivy round her white and tapered fingers.
"None--after all your reading?"
"Save perhaps that a kiss one may deem valueless and but a jest may be full of tender significance to another."
"You look quite distraite, Winny, dear, as you make this romantic admission," said one of her friends.
"Do I--or did I?" she asked, colouring.
"Yes. Of what or of whom were you thinking?"
"Such a deuced odd theme you have all got upon!" said Sir Watkins, perceiving how Winifred's colour had deepened at her own thoughts.
"But how funny--how delightful!" exclaimed the girls, laughing together; while Dora added, with something like a mock sigh, as she held up a crape rose,
"When last I wore this rose in my hair, I danced with little Mr. Clavell--and he is spending his Christmas before Sebastopol! Poor dear fellow--poor Tom Clavell!"
Winifred's colour faded away, her usual calm and self-possessed look returned; and, stooping down, she bent all her energies to weave an obstinate spray of ivy round the carved base of a pillar, some yards distant from the group.
"Permit me to be your assistant, Miss Lloyd," said the baronet, in a low voice and with an earnest manner. "Miss Dora must excuse me; but I don't see the fun of craning my neck up there from the top of a twelve-foot ladder."
Winifred started a little impatiently, for as he stooped by her side, his long fair whiskers brushed her brow. "Do I annoy you?" he asked, gently.
"O no; but I feel nervous to-night, and wish our task were ended."
"It soon will be, if we work together thus. But you promised to tell me, Miss Lloyd, why your old gamekeeper would not permit me to shoot that hare in the Martens' dingle, to-day."
"Need I tell you, Sir Watkins--a Welshman?"
"You forget that my place is in South Wales, almost on the borders of Monmouthshire, and this may be a local superstition."
"It is."
"Well, I am all attention," said he, looking softly down on the girl's wonderfully thick and beautiful eyelashes.
"The story, as I heard it once from dear mamma, runs thus: Ages ago, there took shelter in our forests at Pennant Melangell, the daughter of a Celtic king, called St. Monacella, to whom a noble had proposed marriage; one whom she could not love, and could never love, but on whom her father was resolv............