Shivers for Christmas (50 page)

Helen, if possible, slept less than I. And she had terrible spasms of sobs that shook the bed. She would try to choke them down, thinking I was asleep and she might wake me. But she never went through a night without at least one frightful paroxysm of tears.

In the daylight she controlled herself better, made a heart-breaking and yet heart-warming effort at her normal cheeriness over the breakfast things, and greeted me beautifully when I came home. But the moment we were alone for the evening she would break down.

I don’t know how many days that sort of thing kept up. I sympathized in silence. It was Helen herself who suggested that we must force ourselves to be diverted, somehow. The theatre was out of the question. Not merely the sight of a four-year-old girl with yellow locks threw Helen into a passion of uncontrollable sobbing, but all sorts of unexpected trifles reminded her of Amy and affected her almost as much. Confined to our home we tried cards, chess and everything else we could think of. They helped her as little as they helped me.

Then one afternoon Helen did not come to greet me. Instead I came in I heard her call, quite in her natural voice.

‘Oh, I’m so glad that is you. Come and help me.’

I found her seated at the library table, her back to the door. She had on a pink wrapper and her shoulders had no despondent droop, but a girlish alertness. She barely turned her head as I entered, but her profile showed no signs of recent weeping. Her face was its natural colour.

‘Come and help me,’ she repeated. ‘I can’t find the other piece of the boat.’

She was absorbed, positively absorbed in a picture puzzle.

In forty seconds I was absorbed too. It must have been six minutes before we identified the last piece of the boat. And then we went on with the sky and were still at it when the butler announced dinner.

‘Where did you get it?’ I asked, over the soup, which Helen really ate.

‘Mrs Allstone brought it,’ Helen replied, ‘just before lunch.’

I blessed Mrs Allstone.

Really it seems absurd, but those idiotic jig-saw puzzles were our salvation. They actually took our minds off everything else. At first I dreaded finishing one. No sooner was the last piece in place than I felt a sudden revulsion, a booming of blood in my ears, and the sense of loss and misery rushed over me like a wave of scalding water. And I knew it was worse for Helen.

But after some days each seemed not merely a respite from pain, but a sedative as well. After a two hours’ struggle with a fascinating tangle of shapes and colours, we seemed numb to our bereavement and the bitterness of the smart seemed blunted.

We grew fastidious as to manufacture and finish; learned to avoid crude and clumsy products as bores; developed a pronounced taste for pictures neither too soft nor too plain in colour masses; and became connoisseurs as to cutting, utterly above the obvious and entirely disenchanted with the painfully difficult. We evolved into adepts, quick to recoil from fragments barren of any clue of shape or markings and equally prompt to reject those whose meaning was too definite and insistent. We trod delicately the middle way among segments not one of which was without some clue of outline or tint, and not one of which imparted its message without interrogation, inference and reflection.

Helen used to time herself and try the same puzzle over and over on successive days until she could do it in less than half an hour. She declared that a really good puzzle was interesting the fourth or fifth time and that an especially fine puzzle was diverting if turned face down and put together from the shapes merely, after it had been well learned the other way. I did not enter into the craze to that extent, but sometimes tried her methods for variety.

We really slept, and Helen, though worn and thin, was not abject, not agonized. Her nights passed, if not wholly without tears, yet with only those soft and silent tears, which are more a relief than suffering. With me she was nearly her old self and very brave and patient. She greeted me naturally and we seemed able to go on living.

Then one day she was not at the door to welcome me. I had hardly shut it before I heard her sobbing. I found her again at the library table and over a puzzle. But this time she had just finished it and was bowed over it on the table, shaken all over by her grief.

She lifted her head from her crossed arms, pointed and buried her face in her hands. I understood. The picture I remembered from a magazine of the year before: a Christmas tree with a bevy of children about it and one (we had remarked it at the time) a perfect likeness of our Amy.

As she rocked back and forth, her hands over her eyes, I swept the pieces into their box and put on the lid.

Presently Helen dried her eyes and looked at the table.

‘Oh! why did you touch it,’ she wailed. ‘It was such a comfort to me.’

‘You did not seem comforted,’ I retorted. ‘I thought the contrast …’ I stopped.

‘You mean the contrast between the Christmas we expected and the Christmas we are going to have?’ she queried. ‘You mean you thought that was too much for me?’

I nodded.

‘It wasn’t that at all,’ she averred. ‘I was crying for joy. That picture was a sign.’

‘A sign?’ I repeated.

‘Yes,’ she declared, ‘a sign that we shall get her back in time for Christmas. I’m going to start and get ready right away.’

At first I was glad of the diversion. Helen had the nursery put in order as if she expected Amy the next day, hauled over all the child’s clothes and was in a bustling state of happy expectancy. She went vigorously about her preparation for a Christmas celebration, planned a Christmas Eve dinner for our brothers and sisters and their husbands and wives, and a children’s party afterwards with a big tree and a profusion of goodies and gifts.

‘You see,’ she explained, ‘everyone will want their own Christmas at home. So shall we, for we’ll just want to gloat over Amy all day. We won’t want them on Christmas any more than they’ll want us. But this way we can all be together and celebrate and rejoice over our good luck.’

She was as elated and convinced as if it was a certainty. For a while her occupation with preparations was good for her, but she was so forehanded that she was ready a week ahead of time and had not a detail left to arrange. I dreaded a reaction, but her artificial exaltation continued unabated. All the more I feared the inevitable disappointment and was genuinely concerned for her reason. The fixed idea that that accidental coincidence was a prophecy and a guarantee dominated her totally. I was really afraid that the shock of the reality might kill her. I did not want to dissipate her happy delusion, but I could not but try to prepare her for a certain blow. I talked cautiously in wide circles around what I wanted and I did not want to say.

On December 22nd, I came home early, just after lunch, in fact. Helen met me, at the door, with such a demeanour of suppressed high spirits, happy secrecy and tingling anticipation that for one moment I was certain Amy had been found and was then in the house.

‘I’ve something wonderful to show you,’ Helen declared, and led me to the library.

There on the table was a picture-puzzle fitted together.

She stood and pointed to it with the air of exhibiting a marvel.

I looked at it but could not conjecture the cause of her excitement. The pieces seemed too large, too clumsy and too uniform in outline. It looked a crude and clumsy puzzle, beneath her notice.

‘Why did you buy it?’ I asked.

‘I met a peddler on the street,’ she answered, ‘and he was so wretched-looking, I was sorry for him. He was young and thin and looked haggard and consumptive. I looked at him and I suppose I showed my feelings. He said:

“Lady, buy a puzzle. It will help you to your heart’s desire.”

‘His words were so odd I bought it, and now just look at what it is.’

I was groping for some foothold upon which to rally my thoughts.

‘Let me see the box in which it came,’ I asked.

She produced it and I read on the top:

‘
GUGGENHEIM’S DOUBLE PICTURE

PUZZLE
.

TWO IN ONE
.

MOST FOR THE MONEY
.

ASK FOR GUGGENHEIM’S
’

And on the end—

‘
ASTRAY
.

A BREATH OF AIR
.

50
CENTS
.’

‘It’s queer,’ Helen remarked. ‘But it is not a double puzzle at all, though the pieces have the same paper on both sides. One side is blank. I suppose this is ASTRAY. Don’t you think so?’

‘Astray?’ I queried, puzzled.

‘Oh,’ she cried, in a disappointed, disheartened, almost querulous tone. ‘I thought you would be so much struck with the resemblance. You don’t seem to notice it at all. Why even the dress is identical!’

‘The dress?’ I repeated. ‘how many times have you done this?’

‘Only this once,’ she said. ‘I had just finished it when I heard your key in the lock.’

‘I should have thought,’ I commented, ‘that it would have been more interesting to do it face up first.’

‘Face up!’ she cried. ‘It is face up.’

Her air of scornful superiority completely shook me out of my sedulous consideration of a moment before.

‘Nonsense,’ I said, ‘that’s the back of the puzzle. There are no colours there. It’s all pink.’

‘Pink!’ she exclaimed pointing. ‘Do you call that pink!’

‘Certainly it’s pink,’ I asserted.

‘Don’t you see there the white of the old man’s beard?’ she queried, pointing again. ‘And there the black of his boots? And there the red of the little girl’s dress?’

‘No,’ I declared. ‘I don’t see anything of the kind. It’s all pink. There isn’t any picture there at all.’

‘No picture!’ she cried. ‘Don’t you see the old man leading the child by the hand?’

‘No,’ I said harshly, ‘I don’t see any picture and you know I don’t. There isn’t any picture there. I can’t make out what you are driving at. It seems a senseless joke.’

‘Joke! I joke!’ Helen half whispered. The tears came into her eyes.

‘You are cruel,’ she said, ‘and I thought you would be struck by the resemblance.’

I was overwhelmed by a pang of self-reproach, solicitude and terror.

‘Resemblance to what?’ I asked gently.

‘Can’t you see it?’ she insisted.

‘Tell me,’ I pleaded. ‘Show me just what you want me to notice most.’

‘The child,’ she said pointing, ‘is just exactly Amy and the dress is the very red suit she had on when—’

‘Dear,’ I said, ‘try to collect yourself. Indeed you only imagine what you tell me. There is no picture on this side of the sections. The whole thing is pink. That is the back of the puzzle.’

‘I don’t see how you can say such a thing,’ she raged at me. ‘I can’t make out why you should. What sort of a test are you putting me through? What does it all mean?’

‘Will you let me prove to you that this is the back of the puzzle?’ I asked.

‘If you can,’ she said shortly.

I turned the pieces of the puzzle over, keeping them together as much as possible, I succeeded pretty well with the outer pieces and soon had the rectangle in place. The inner pieces were a good deal mixed up, but even before I had fitted them I exclaimed:

‘There look at that!’

‘Well,’ she asked. ‘What do you expect me to see?’

‘What do you see?’ I asked in turn.

‘I see the back of a puzzle,’ she answered.

‘Don’t you see those front steps?’ I demanded, pointing.

‘I don’t see anything,’ she asserted, ‘except green.’

‘Do you call that green?’ I queried, pointing.

‘I do,’ she declared.

‘Don’t you see the brickwork front of the house,’ I insisted, ‘and the lower part of a window and part of a door? Yes, and those front-steps in the corner?’

‘I don’t see anything of the kind,’ she declared. ‘Any more than you do. What I see is just what you see. It’s the back of the puzzle, all pale green.’

I had been feverishly putting together the last pieces as she spoke. I could not believe my eyes and, as the last piece fitted in, was struck with amazement.

The picture showed an old red-brick house, with brown blinds, all open. The top of the front steps was included in the lower right hand corner, most of the front door above them, all of one window on its level, and the side of another. Above appeared all of one of the second floor windows, and parts of those to right and left of it. The other windows were closed, but the sash of the middle one was raised and from it leaned a little girl, a child with frowzy hair, a dirty face and wearing a blue and white check frock. The child was a perfect likeness of our lost Amy, supposing she had been starved and neglected. I was so affected that I was afraid I should faint. I was positively husky when I asked:

‘Don’t you see that?’

‘I see Nile green,’ she maintained. ‘The same as you see.’

I swept the pieces into the box.

‘We are neither of us well,’ I said.

‘I should think you must be deranged to behave so,’ she snapped, ‘and it is no wonder I am not well the way you treat me.’

‘How could I know what you wanted me to see?’ I began.

‘Wanted you to see!’ she cried. ‘You keep it up? You pretend you didn’t see it, after all? Oh! I have no patience with you.’

She burst into tears, fled upstairs and I heard her slam and lock our bedroom door.

I put that puzzle together again and the likeness of that hungry, filthy child in the picture to our Amy made my heart ache.

I found a stout box, cut two pieces of straw-board just the shape of the puzzle and a trifle larger, laid one on top of it and slid the other under it. Then I tied it together with string and wrapped it in paper and tied the whole.

I put the box in my overcoat pocket and went out carrying the flat parcel.

I walked round to MacIntyre’s.

I told him the whole story and showed him the puzzle.

‘Do you want the truth?’ he asked.

‘Just that,’ I said.

‘Well,’ he reported. ‘You are as overstrung as she is and the same way. There is absolutely no picture on either side of this. One side is solid green and the other solid pink.’