Becoming Mrs. Lewis(77)

“Joy, I have an education fund for children who can’t afford the public schooling. The Agape Fund. If you’re in a bind, I’m here to help.” His voice echoed off the stone wall, rolling down the stairwell.

I stopped midstep and turned around to face to him. “That is generous and kind, but I’m not here to take your money.”

“Joy, I have reserved it for children’s education—it’s already there. You aren’t taking anything that I haven’t already given. It will be used for the same purpose, whether your sons use it or not.”

I placed my hands over my heart. “Thank you, Jack. If Bill doesn’t come through, that gives me tremendous peace of mind. But know I won’t use it unless I must.” I continued on down the stairwell, holding tightly to the rail.

We made it to the bottom and then to the deer park, where Jack opened the gate to let us all in. Warnie joined us again.

“Do you miss home?” he asked quietly as we watched the boys drawing close to a fawn with Jack.

“I don’t.” I pulled my hat lower and my coat closer around my body. “No. I don’t miss New York at all.”

“We’re glad to have you here,” Warnie said. “And your sons. They’ll bring life to the house.”

“The Kilns,” I admitted, “feels more like home than anything in New York has for a long time.”

“Well, Joy, it’s ours to share with you.”

“I hope they adapt well.” I stared off, watching them run. “I took a chance bringing them here—it might not work. But it was one I had to take. I had to try.”

“That’s the best we can all do,” Warnie said. “Try.”





CHAPTER 35


To be rejected, O this worst of wounds.

Not for love of God, but love of blondes!

“SONNET XX,” JOY DAVIDMAN



The sunrise had barely lit the trees when the boys were full of Mrs. Miller’s sausage and eggs and bundled up, their ear-flapped fur caps drawn with tight strings beneath their chins. Off we went into the day, interrupting Jack’s normal slow morning of Bible reading and correspondence. But his buoyancy belied any annoyance if he felt it at all.

Once deep into the forest, ice tinkling in the trees and crackling under our feet, Jack crouched down as if peering behind an oak tree, his jacket flapping in the wind and the faint smell of tobacco wafting toward me. “Keep a lookout for Mr. Tumnus,” he said to Douglas.

“He isn’t here,” Douglas half whispered.

Davy plodded on, not seeming to want to be a part of the fantasy, still weighing the merits and deficits of England in his ten-year-old way.

“But how can we know they aren’t here?” Jack asked Douglas, his hands resting on top of his walking stick.

“We can’t know for sure.” Douglas peered at the ground.

“And what about giants?” Jack asked in a low voice.

Douglas stopped and glanced upward as if expecting to see one as real and obdurate as the birch tree with its silver bark glistening in the winter frost.

“Giants can’t hide, though,” Douglas said, his words echoing in the winter quiet.

Jack pulled his old fisherman’s hat lower and stated with authority, “Oh, Douglas, my boy. How could you know? You would only see his foot and you might think it a tree. If you don’t pay attention, you might miss it.” His laughter bellowed and off they went, the two of them on a hunt for magical creatures.

I saw the forest and pond, the guesthouse and the gardens, through my sons’ eyes, and then through those of Jack, the storyteller. Yes, a White Witch might ride on her sled down the path leading to the pond. Tumnus might prance under this very snow-clad forest with his umbrella. And the pond, padded at the edges with tall grasses, could very well shroud a talking beaver. And of course Aslan could come plummeting through that forest, crashing his way toward the children or carrying them on his back to safety.

This man, with a mind as sharp as any I’d known, could become as childlike as my sons, imagining a world so intense and full of color and myth that it became more real than reality.

As we reached the pond, Douglas asked Jack how to cross it with the old punt, which bobbed against the rickety dock.

“You see that old stump sticking up in the middle?” Jack asked.

Douglas squinted against the sun, took two more steps to the edge of the pond, where thin ice cracked when a ripple moved against it. “Yes! I see it,” he said.

“When it’s warm, that is where I tie the punt and dive in. Swim to our hearts’ content.” Jack smiled as if he could already see the next sunny day when leaves would rest on top of the murky water and he would dive into its chilly depths.

“Let’s go.” Douglas took another step forward.

“Not now,” I told him. “It’s freezing, and if you fall in, I’m not the one to save you. I’ll have to let you both sink to the very bottom of that muck.”

“I’m so cold,” Davy said and moved closer to me. “I want to go back to the house and play chess with Warnie.”

“No!” Douglas cried, and I put my fingers to my lips.

“Shhh,” I said. “You’ll scare off Mr. Tumnus.”

With that both Jack and Douglas burst into laughter.