With September the road lifted steadily, growing stony and ever steeper. It wound on ahead of her like a silver thread through a brocade of red and gold and purple, that was heather and bracken and beech. But the beech blossoms could never be gathered; they fell apart into a shower of dull leaves, and left her with a branch of bare twigs in her hand. The briony berries that she twisted into wreaths stained her straw hat with their black, evil juice; even the manna-like old-man's-beard smelled sour and rotten. The decaying, witchlike beauty of the season tricked and frightened her; autumn was a hard hill to climb.
But far away, on the summit of that difficult hill, stood a house. An old house, gaily bricked, dressed in ivy, with a belfry from which carols rang out unceasingly. It was always night-time where it stood and cheerful lights were set in every window. Alwynne never saw the house till she had turned the bend of the road into November; then it faced her suddenly and she would wave to the distant windows with a thrill of excitement, and quicken her steps, with the goal of the journey in sight at last. There was yet a weary climb before it was reached; every day of December was a boulder, painfully beclambered. But she would come to the gates at last, and tear up the frosty drive, from the shadow of whose shrubberies Jacob Marley peered and clanked at her and ghosts of Christmas turkeys gobbled horribly, to the open holly-hung doorway where Santa Claus, authentic in beard and dressing-gown, welcomed her with Elsbeth's voice. Followed stay-at-home days of delirious merry-making, from which she awoke a week later, to find herself, her back to a closed door, a spent cracker in her hand, looking out again, eager and a little wistful, across the white untrodden plain of yet another January.
But ever the next Christmas beckoned her anew.
To Elsbeth, too, Christmas was the day of delights, and Alwynne the queen of it. To Elsbeth, too, the pleasure of it began many weeks earlier in the secret fashioning of quaint gifts and surprises, and the anticipation of the small niece's delight in them. Elsbeth would have cheerfully cut off one of her slim fingers if Alwynne had happened to covet it. The childless woman loved Alwynne--the child in Alwynne she worshipped.