It was Christmas Eve, some forty years prior to the events of the somewhat reserved reunion between Thrush and his daughter Violette Marie Constance on the morning of November 16th. Alas, but the stockings were not hung by the chimney with care, and St. Nick—long considered by Thrush to be a wholly frivolous encumbrance on the critical formative years of childhood—had been summarily banished to the abodes of lesser children in the neighborhood.
To the mind of Elwood Addington Thrush, his progeny were to be more suitably occupied and consumed by matters of undeniable intellectual gravity and import such as a close study of the Classics, the venerable arts of antiquity and the Renaissance, and preparation for productive livelihoods in law, medicine, the Academy, and needless to state, the continuation of the Thrush family name. This last was to be achieved with the assistance of suitable youth to be carefully selected by Thrush and certain of his confederates among the Old Garde of his Club.
But on this particular Christmas Eve, the Thrush family would dine modestly in the smaller dining room on lamb with shallots and white wine and various hardy accompaniments as Mathilde-Eloise found on hand in the pantry. She had purchased at her own personal expense a number of pine garlands and arranged them attractively over the small white marble fireplace, and Fredreich had brought candy and a few small gifts for the children. Thrush had looked upon these displays and grunted approvingly, but had said nothing. He had done his duty to the season by placing generous yearly envelopes on the salver outside the door to his servants’ quarters.
As for the children and Felicity, his wife, Thrush had provided a hearty meal, prepared by the best staff his robust resources could afford, and Fredreich would be driving them to church at the end of the evening. Tomorrow was another day. They would eat the remains of this meal or the offerings of another, the heady pine scent of Mathilde’s garlands would amuse the children, and then they would move swiftly and with purpose toward the New Year.
As they sat together in the grand salon waiting for Fredreich to call them in to dinner, Felicity stood at the window, admiring her favorite sight: the unobstructed view of the Hudson River on its silent march toward the waiting arms of Manhattan and the sea beyond. Three of Elwood and Felicity’s four daughters, Amelia Cecile, Violette Marie Constance, and Daphne Alice, sat before the roaring fire playing Whist—a game much favored by the Thrush women—and eying the box of confections sitting on the table that had been strictly designated for after dinner only.
The snow had begun to fall earlier in the day and now lay as a three-foot thick blanket over the rose garden and the walking path, while the tree branches sagged heavily under its powdery weight. This had put Felicity into a festive mood that utterly baffled and clearly irked her husband.
“My dearest, why on this earth would you rejoice in something that only makes for dreary and dangerous work for our Fredreich? It’s highly unthinking of you, and I hope you will refrain from such childish displays in the future or confine this silliness to the children’s rooms,” Thrush admonished, glancing at Felicity and shaking his head as she continued to gaze at the river.
“You could at least look at your husband when he speaks to you in such a tone. It reflects poorly on my authority,” he grumbled.
“No one questions your authority in this house, my dear Thrush,” she began lightly, turning to look at him and coming to sit at his side on the divan.
“It is well known and thoroughly understood,” she continued, patting his arm affectionately. “Now, would it be possible, do you think, for Fredreich to drive our girls and me up Route 9 to look at the snow and, well, the houses? You know, I love seeing how people decorate at this time of year,” she asked hopefully.
“Yes, certainly,” Thrush replied, happy for the occasion to bestow permission where he suspected more and more that none was truly required.
“And perhaps Mathilde-Eloise, might she go as well?”
”Oh yes, please!” the girls cried out happily.
“If the house is in proper order,” Thrush replied sternly. “And Fredreich does not require some task of her in the kitchens, and you are away for no more than two hours, then yes,” he concluded firmly, glaring at them as though they had all gone mad. “And where is Augusta Clarice? Call her. We’ll be dining shortly, and I don’t want to be seated at the table waiting for her, again. It happens with altogether far too much frequency, and I want it stopped,” Thrush said angrily as the three other girls got up and ran from the room in search of their sister.
Just a few moments later, the service bell rang outside the salon door, and Thrush stood up, believing it to be the call that dinner could be served at the family’s leisure. Instead, after the customary count to ten, the door swung open, and Fredreich entered and walked up to where Thrush stood.
“A word, sir, if I might,” Fredreich said in a hushed tone while gesturing toward the door.
“Yes, yes, Fredreich, we’ll dine now, as soon as my daughter deems us worthy of her company. Her siblings are even now in search of her.”
“Sir, a word, if you please,” the manservant said curtly, his eyes stark with such fanatic emotion that Thrush, startled, glanced at his wife and then followed Fredreich out the door without a word.
“What is it, man?” Thrush demanded, his face a mask of anger and confusion. “Out with it, if…” His words trailed off as he saw the tear welling up in Fredreich’s eye.
“Come,” Fredreich whispered hoarsely and then quickly lead the way to the mezzanine observatory above the second floor where the wooden and metal door, like that of a fortress vault, stood ajar, and one of the great door-sized windows beyond lay wide open, allowing the icy winds to violently tear at the draperies and already leaving a considerable pile of snow on the floor beneath.
“I just came up here to check the door, sir. I felt the cold air and realized the window was open so I, naturally I, sir…she had already fallen before I got here. Look, sir,” Fredreich choked. “See there, she’s almost completely covered with snow. She could not have survived such a fall from this height, sir. I’m so sorry. We must go down and get her,” he continued, tugging gently at Thrush’s coat sleeve where he stood immobile, staring down at the small form of his youngest child, twelve-year-old Augusta Clarice, her body broken and lying at a horrible angle far below.
“How?” Thrush gasped and visibly staggered. “I don’t understand.” Then he heard the scream of his wife behind him as she clung violently to his arm and peered out the window.
Within an hour, the body of Augusta Clarice was indoors, wrapped in blankets by the fire. By the time they reached her, the body was cold and lifeless. Thrush had waded through the deep, drifting snow and lifted his daughter gently, cradling her body in his arms as he made his way into the formal salon where her mother and sisters sat huddled together sobbing.
Elwood Addington Thrush could not bear it. He had dared to entertain the secret in his heart that Augusta Clarice was his favorite. In sharp contrast to the irreproachable equanimity and charm of the other three Thrush young ladies, Augusta Clarice was bold and defiant. She was an explorer of attics and river fronts. She was a teller of incredible, and incredibly preposterous and entertaining, lies. She was a hider from Mathilde-Eloise and a consummate avoider of tasks, the sort of tasks that build character in a young woman and ensure she is never vain or withdrawn.
The prankish girl had been a recalcitrant thorn in her mother’s ordered and peaceful daily routine, and she had made everyone laugh in a household that was, by its very nature and careful design, reserved and distant from the baser sentiments that constrain the lives of lesser citizens among the rank and file. Augusta Clarice, from the earliest age, had been a dresser-up in ridiculous get-ups culled from the attic and a putter-on of shows, demonstrations, antics, and wild displays of unpredictable and youthful chicanery. And this, Thrush had known in a heartbeat, was what had drawn his daughter out onto the precarious ledge outside the open window of the observatory on the night of the first blizz
ard of the year.
In short, Augusta Clarice was absolutely everything that Thrush himself, as well as the more obedient and compliant members of his familial entourage, was not and could never be. And he had secretly loved her for this as he loved no other person in his life. And she had never known.
Mathilde-Eloise dried the body and dressed her in clean clothes and then brushed her long hair at Thrush’s instruction. She had sent the girls to their rooms and tried without success to urge their mother to take some warm milk. The dinner sat cold in the kitchen. Fredreich paced with worry. Thrush attempted several times to elicit some small reply from his wife, who lay half draped on the divan, either willfully ignoring her husband or unable to respond to his entreaties.
After some hours of this, Felicity composed herself and rose stiffly then dried her eyes. She announced calmly that she was going to bed and issued a muffled, cool “good night” to her husband. Thrush turned to follow her but then considered her closed and silent demeanor and decided to remain behind. It had always been their custom to maintain separate sleeping quarters at opposite ends of the house with the children amply situated between them.
After dismissing Fredreich and Mathilde-Eloise for the evening and accepting their distraught condolences and tears, Thrush retired to his manly quarters with a snifter and a bottle of cognac, a libation whose company he rarely sought but which always seemed to induce a reliably deep slumber after only a glass or two.
He was awakened to the sound of a great commotion below and numerous voices in various states of distress and command. He leapt from his bed at the sound of unknown male voices and looked out the window. There were unfamiliar vehicles, three late-model sedans and a small, unmarked van, in the driveway. He could see Fredreich was out in front of the house, clearly directing traffic as numerous persons, complete strangers, shuttled back and forth between the waiting vehicles and the front door that lay wide open, casting the full light of the foyer and entry hall on the blanket of snow and the chaotic network of footprints that ruptured and dirtied its pristine surface.
Thrush quickly donned his dressing gown and slippers and hurried downstairs, exercising just enough decorum and control of his person as was required in the presence of strangers and unknown goings-on in his home in the middle of the night, the nature of which clearly involved both the complicity of his wife and children—and his complete ignorance—for their successful completion. Barreling down the stairs, his indignity and rage fully alight, Thrush came to a halt before the open towering double doors of the formal salon, clearly the seat of command for the current campaign of affairs.
It was then that he peered into the center of the great salon and beheld it. An image so startling and momentous in its scope and import that it would embed itself indelibly upon his psyche and inscribe the very fabric of the remainder of his days with its memory: the great mound of stuff, piles of luggage and mountains of clothes, boxes and bags all thrown on the pile, books and trinkets as well as a thousand small mementos of a life, of their life together, his wife’s, his children’s, and his own.
Within an hour, all was cleared away, carted off, and shoved into the waiting vehicles, and then along with his wife and his daughters, both living and deceased, all disappeared into the night, and he never saw the four of them ever again. Until one morning very many years later…