CHAPTER V CHRISTMAS EVE

NOT long after, the Christmas holidays began. Any number of entertainments would be given in Westhaven in which the Girl Scouts of the Eagle’s Wing would be included. One evening they intended to make peculiarly their own.

In several homes in the village they felt perfectly privileged to hold their meetings, to give parties, or do whatever the occasion required.

Miss Victoria Fenton having learned the purpose and the influence of the Scouts, the old Fenton house was at any time at their disposal. Mrs. Peters, Joan’s mother, had urged the girls to come at any time to their old-fashioned cottage, wide and empty, which sat some distance back from the street, offering a fine, open space for the outdoor drill and signalings.

Sheila Mason, the Troop Captain, was an only daughter, and her parents among the wealthiest families in Westhaven. If for no49 other reason than the miracle Mrs. Mason insisted had been wrought in her daughter’s life by her work among the Girl Scouts, she would have freely given up her home to their use at a moment’s notice. Months before Sheila Mason seemed to have lost all interest in life, when her lover, to whom she had been engaged, was killed at the battle of Chateau-Thierry. Persuaded by the first Patrol of Girl Scouts in Westhaven to become their Captain, so engrossed had she grown in her work and in the girls themselves that oftentimes her former happy nature reappeared.

Members of their Council, made up of the most prominent and interesting people in Westhaven, were glad to be of service at any time.

Nevertheless, when a choice had to be made of a place for their Christmas entertainment there was not one dissenting voice: Memory Frean’s little House in the Woods! Here was an intimacy and an atmosphere they found nowhere else.

Moreover, as the character of the entertainment was to be a secret from all outsiders, it was much simpler to manage at a distance from town. Memory Frean was well again50 and as interested in their idea as the girls themselves.

Certainly the living-room at the House in the Woods was so transformed on the afternoon of Christmas Eve that one would never have recognized it. The walls were massed with pine and cedar and holly.

Raised upon a dais was an arm chair covered with a piece of tapestry worked in gold dragons.

Below, and filling the entire center of the room, was a circular table.

Extending around the walls of the room were eight banners of silver cloth, bearing no inscriptions save an embroidered design of an eagle’s wing.

Crossed over the mantel were the American flag and the flag of the Girl Scout Troop.

At nine o’clock there was a pealing of Christmas bells that swung like a censer above the round table from which a white dove also was suspended.

“Shall we read Kara’s poem that she sent from the hospital in New York as a greeting to us before we begin the other ceremony?” Tory Drew inquired.

She wore an unusual costume, but one exactly like the rest of the girls. It was composed51 of a stiff material, a silver cloth of cotton and silk. Cut in straight lines, it had no ornamentation save a silver girdle about an inch wide and loosely tied about the waist.

Undoubtedly the costumes were striking and original and strangely becoming.

“I have asked Margaret Hale to read Kara’s verse, for one reason because she will do it so much better than I, and for another because I so regret Kara’s not being with us to-night of all nights that I do not trust myself. I was to tell you that Kara writes she is not under the impression that she is a poet. Being in a hospital several months has forced her to spend so much time alone that she devotes many hours to thinking of us and our holiday together last summer in Beechwood Forest.[B] Small wonder that Kara is more devoted to the evergreen cottage than the rest of us because of its association with her past!”

[B] See “Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest.”

Margaret Hale arose. She was a tall, fair girl of about fifteen who had been first chosen Patrol Leader because of her influence over the other girls. To-night her hair was bound close about her head in broad plaits. With her simple, severe costume the effect was more like an old picture than a modern girl.

52 She read in an agreeable voice:
“Through aisles of spreading beeches,
’Mid tangle of pendent vine,
A brown road curves and reaches
Up hillside dark with pine.
“Shelter from scorching sunshine,
Haven when days are drear,
Its slogan: Do a good turn
All ye who enter here.
“Nights when the red logs are roaring
Nights when the flame leaps high,
The bright sparks snapping and soaring,
Think of me as close by.
“In the midst of holiday meetings
Radiant with hope and cheer,
A Lone Scout sends you greetings
For Christmas and the New Year.”

When the girls had ceased discussing the little poem and Kara’s accident the summer before, followed a sudden silence of intense and almost painful suspense.

Sheila Mason, the Troop Captain, leaned over. Her hands were clasped tightly together. Only a few years over twenty, with pale-gold hair and delicate features, she was not much older in appearance than several53 of her own Scouts. In fact, her own unfitness for her position had troubled her greatly in the early days of her work as a Captain. Of late she had become so absorbed in the work that the fear of her own unfitness only affected her occasionally.

“Before we begin what I think is going to be a rare and wonderfully beautiful occasion, I want to talk to you for a few moments.

“We were all, and I equally so, fascinated with Tory’s idea that for this winter we organize our Patrol of Girl Scouts into ‘The Girl Scouts of the Round Table’—each one of us to bear the name of one of the Knights of the Round Table and to promise among ourselves to perform whatever acts of valor and service we are able.

“The suggestion was fanciful, as most of Tory’s suggestions are, yet at first I saw no reason to object. Later I began to be troubled for fear it might in some fashion interfere with our Girl Scout principles and organization. I wrote to the National Headquarters explaining the situation and asking for information and advice. I assured them that under no circumstances would we be willing to break any rule of the organization. Our desire was to play a kind of idealized game, or something54 more than a game, which would last through the winter rather than through a single evening.

“I merely wanted to tell you we have received their consent and they are deeply interested. Now it is growing late and we must begin.”

An unusual solemnity fell upon the little company.

The girls remained seated at the round table.

Sheila Mason arose and, flushing, partly from embarrassment and partly from nervousness, slowly ascended the raised platform and took her seat in the chair covered with a cloth of gold. She was wearing a costume strikingly unlike any other. It was bright red in color, while about her fair hair was a band of gold.

Withdrawing from the group, Miss Frean found a place nearer the fire, but facing the eight girls about the round table. To-night her dark hair was powdered to give a suggestion of greater age. Her toilet was a strange one, a green and brown smock, with strange symbols covering it, the moon and stars, and signs of the Zodiac. She was not to be one of the Knights of the new Round Table, knighted this evening in the House in the55 Woods. Instead she represented Merlin, the wise man, who “ever served the King through magic art.”

Sheila Mason was King Arthur, “robed in red samite easily to be known.”

No formal rehearsal had taken place of the mystic ceremony the Patrol of Girl Scouts intended to reproduce upon this Christmas Eve. Certain details and preparations, of course, had been arranged.

A misfortune that there was no audience to behold the little company at this moment!

The big room was beautiful with banners and evergreens. There were no lights save the firelight and the seven branched candlesticks upon the mantel and table. The odd costumes, the strange colors, the ardent faces about the round table made an unforgettable picture.

Outside, the night was clear and cold and still, with a crescent moon in the sky.

Great had been the discussion of the choice of Knight to be allotted each Girl Scout. In the end the final decision had been left to the Troop Captain. At present no girl knew the Knight she would portray until her name was called and she went forward to receive her investiture.

56 From her chair by the crimson and golden flames Memory Frean at this instant repeated:
“Then the King in low, deep tones,
And simple words of great authority,
Bound them by so strait vows to his own self,
That when they rose, knighted from kneeling, some
Were pale as at the passing of a ghost,
Some flush’d, and others dazed, as one who wakes
Half-blinded at the coming of a light.”

“Margaret Hale.”

Surprised by hearing her own name before the others, Margaret Hale hesitated. She then arose and, biting her lips to hide their trembling, went forward and kneeled before the Troop Captain.

Lightly Miss Mason, as King Arthur, touched her upon the shoulder with the point of a silver sword, exclaiming:
“Bold Sir Bedivere, first made of all the Knights,
Strike, thou art worthy of the Table Round.”

Returning to her place, Joan Peters followed Margaret, repeating the little act of homage before the golden chair and hearing the words:
57 “Sir Percival, whom Arthur and his knighthood called the Pure.”

Tory Drew came forward to be appointed the third Knight. She looked as if she were dreaming, as if unaware that they were only going through a picturesque ceremony as an unusual Christmas entertainment. Of course they intended to add a new element of romance and of service to their work, but no one of the other girls appeared so deeply affected.

Miss Mason was conscious of this, so that Tory’s attitude influenced her own. Moreover, Tory’s short red-gold hair, her white face with the wide dark eyes and slender chin to-night wore an expression of singular ardor and intensity.

The Troop Captain and her friends knew that Tory through her vivid imagination had overleaped the bounds of centuries. She saw in vague outline not her own Girl Scouts and Miss Mason, not the dearly beloved room in the House in the Woods transformed to suit their purpose, but a castle in Britain, King Arthur and his famous Knights.

Miss Mason had chosen for Tory the one Knight in all the Table Round who seeks and finds the Holy Grail.
58
“Galahad:
And one there was among us, ever moved
Among us in white armour, Galahad.
‘God make thee good as thou art beautiful,’
Said Arthur when he dubbed him knight.”

When the winter evening had passed into a memory, there was a never-ending argument as to which one of the eight girls made the most impressive Knight. Of the three who stood out from the rest, Dorothy McClain was perhaps the favorite.

Her height and athletic figure, the slender, upright shoulders and the upward lift of her head gave her a kind of frank and boyish air. She was more conscious than Tory of herself and her surroundings, for she flushed hotly. Then the color left her cheeks after her investiture:
“Gareth, the last tall son of Lot and Bellicent.
A knight of Arthur working out his will,
Follow the Christ, the King,
Live pure, speak true, right wrong,
Else wherefore born?”

Teresa Peterson felt pleased with the selection the Troop Captain made for her. Not that she saw any particular meaning in the ceremony, save that it was picturesque and afforded an opportunity for wearing a fancy59 costume. She was looking forward with keener anticipation to the dance Margaret Hale was to give the Girl and Boy Scouts later in the Christmas holidays.

Nevertheless, her dusky face with soft curling, dark hair and pouting lips appeared serene and good-humored as she accepted her new title.
“Pelleas, and the sweet smell of the fields
Past, and the sunshine came along with him.
Make me thy knight, because I know, Sir King,
All that belongs to knighthood. And I love
This new Knight, Sir Pelleas of the Isles.”

Edith Linder became Tristram:
“One knight
And armoured all in forest green, whereon
There tript a hundred tiny silver deer,
And wearing but a holly spray for crest
With ever scattering berries, and a shield,
A harp, a spear, a bugle.
Sir Tristram of the Woods.”

Characteristic of Louise Miller that a burning sense of her own awkwardness and unworthiness almost destroyed the pleasure she would otherwise have felt in her knighthood!
“In the midnight and flourish of his May,
Gawain, surnamed the Courteous,
Fair and strong.”

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Martha Greaves, the English Girl Guide, who had spent the previous summer in Beechwood Forest with the Girl Scouts of the Eagle’s Wing, had not returned to her home in England with the close of the summer. She had no parents to call her back and preferred to remain until the return to Westhaven of Tory Drew’s father and stepmother; the latter was her cousin and nearest relative. She was not, however, living with Tory in the old Fenton homestead, but boarding with Mr. and Mrs. Peters, Joan’s father and mother.

Martha had insisted that she had no place in to-night’s ceremony, notwithstanding the fact that as an English girl she might have a closer historical claim than the others. However, she yielded to the persuasion of the Girl Scouts. This evening she had discarded her Girl Guide uniform and wore the knightly costume of the others:
“Geraint,
The brave Geraint, a knight of Arthur’s court,
Wearing neither hunting dress
Nor weapon, save a golden-hilted brand,
A purple scarf, at either end whereof
There swung an apple of the purest gold.”