As if this marvellous tree — this lovely invention from that land of elves and goblins somewhere under the shadow of the Hartz Mountains — were not enough, there was a wonderful institution called a ‘bran-pie,’ in a dusky corner of the hall; and into this bran-pie every little hand was to be dipped, to catch what it could amidst the mystery of bran.
The children, gentle and simple, were all flocking into the hall as Bruno and Lucille and the Vicarage girls came in from their walk. Time had flown so swiftly for Lucille.
‘Is it really five?’ she exclaimed, astonished. ‘I never heard it strike four.’
‘It’s ever so much past five,’ cried Totty; ‘and you told us to come at five. We’ve been waiting ages.’
‘Totty, what a rude child you are!’ exclaimed Mrs, Raymond.
Totty ran to Lucille with the basket full of tickets.
‘Please, mayn’t we begin to draw?’ she asked.
‘ But when you have all drawn you’ll want to pull the tree to pieces,’ said Lucille.
‘ No, I won’t: but I should like to be able to look at a doll, and know that it is mine,’ answered Totty.
Lots were drawn, and a tall footman unhooked all the dolls and watches and bonbon baskets, which were most accurately distributed, leaving the tree still glorious with its innumerable tapers and festoons of gold and silver. The treasures were shared indiscriminately by gentle and simple. There were no galling distinctions: only Lotty, who was known to be a clever child, was seen to absorb a good many toys by a system of exchange and barter, and by taking toys bodily from stupid open-mouthed infants who had not been educated up to their acquisitions, and relinquished them to any sturdy assailant in sheer helplessness.
Bruno caught a glimpse of Elizabeth May in the distance, among the upper servants, looking flushed, and radiant with an unearthly brightness. She wore some scarlet ribbon about her neck, and a gold locket which Lady Lucille had given her that morning as a Christmas present; and her new black gown fitted her so well as to accentuate her alarming slimness. She looked a mere reed, and a reed that could be easily snapped in twain.
Mrs. Raymond, alarmed by Bruno, took occasion to observe her future governess more closely than she had done hitherto, and she, too, saw ground for apprehension. But she was careful not to scare the patient.
‘I don’t like that nasty little worrying cough of yours, Miss May,’ she said lightly. ‘I think I shall take you to London the day after to-morrow to see some kind clever doctor, who will set you all right again before we go to Brighton.’
‘I don’t think it’s worth while,’ answered Elizabeth. ‘You lire all of you too kind to me. I daresay my cough will go of its own accord when the summer comes.’
‘No doubt; but that is rather too long to wait. A clever doctor will get rid of it much sooner. Good gracious, what is Dotty doing?’
Dotty, the youngest of the three chubby daughters, was fighting the eldest of the Vicarage girls over the ruins of the bran-pie, which Dotty, in her eagerness to explore its inmost treasures, had turned upside down. And now she wanted to have her pick of the scattered contents, an act of marauding which the Vicarage girl would not allow.
‘No, no, Dotty; the school-children must have their share, protested Emma. Whereupon. Dotty attacked her with clenched fists — chubby pink paws rolled up into tight little balls of flesh — pummelling her adversary’s waistband.
‘O, you dreadful child!’ cried Mrs. Raymond, snatching up the spoilt darling. ‘The Christmas-tree has quite turned her head.’
‘I want more toys!’ shrieked Dotty, in baby accents; and was led away by Elizabeth, still shrieking, to be restored to composure, and to return, ten minutes afterwards, with washed face, a meek and lamblike image of childhood, to take her place at the tea-table in the long dining-room, where the simple children were entertained at two long tables, and the gentle children at a shorter table placed across the upper end of the room.
Mrs. Raymond, Tompion, and Elizabeth waited on Lucille and the three Vicarage girls, whose pleasing duty it was to go on pouring out tea without intermission for the next hour. When the children had stuffed themselves with cake and buns and bread-and-jam, liquefying that stodgy mixture with warm tea, the tables were cleared and rearranged for the mothers and aunts and elder sisters, who all came to this afternoon entertainment, and for whom there was a second bran-pie, containing ribbons and gloves and Prayer-books and Hymn-books and Christian Years. The men were to have a great supper of beef and pudding in the hall at nine o’clock, when the Christmas tree was dead and gone, the tapers all burnt out, and the ill-used conifer restored to the anxious gardener, to be nursed into health and vigour after this frightful shock to its constitution.
The children were playing at blind-man’s buff in the hall while the matrons and maids were at tea. The joyous ring of their voices went echoing among the rafters in the fine old Gothic roof. Lucille and Bruno and the Vicarage girls left the older party to the care of Mrs. Raymond and Elizabeth May, and went to have half an hour’s romp with the little ones before the warning gong should sound at half-past seven and disperse the assembly. Lucille’s face was lovely in the soft light of the tapers as she and Bruno drew near the Christmas-tree. There was no other light in the hall, except the glow of the wood fire, and an occasional sparkle of flame, as one log, slowly crumbling to ruin, reeled over and struck against the others, spluttering sparks as it fell.
‘My love, how sweet you look!’ said Bruno, touched by the tender light in Lucille’s soft eyes.’ This is the kind of party which sets you off to the best advantage. I doubt if you would look half so lovely if you were entertaining the county.’
‘It is so nice to make these little things happy,’ answered Lucille, quietly. ‘They have so few pleasures! Why, do you know, they begin to look forward to their Christmas treat directly the summer school feast is over! But this year we are giving them a grander entertainment than usual. My dear father wished it to be so, in honour of—’
‘Of our approaching marriage. How proud I ought to feel!’ said Bruno. ‘Next year I shall have a hand in the preparations. We will do something out of the common. What should you say to a mystery play — Saul and the Witch of Endor, or Daniel in the Den of Lions? I feel that it is in me to make a great effect as a witch or a lion.’
‘I should not like to make light of sacred things, ‘remonstrated Lucille gently. She had been educated in a some-what old-fashioned reverence for the Bible.
‘O, but the grand old picturesque stories, we may make what use we please of those, I think,’ said Bruno. ‘The bishops treat them very lightly in the Speaker’s Commentary. They manage to account for everything in a pleasant rational way. I daresay they explain the civility of Daniel’s lions by supposing that they were the worn-out veterans of the Royal Zoo, toothless and overfed.’
Lucille looked quite unhappy at this horrible suggestion; and just then an avalanche of children, all rushing away from an ubiquitous blind-man, in the person of the youngest Vicarage girl, swept against the lovers, and entangled them in the game. The Vicarage girl, who seemed to be all eyes, pounced on Bruno; whereupon he had to be blindfolded, and went about catching children in armfuls of half a dozen at a time, after the manner of an ogre who wanted to spit them like larks, or bake them in a pie, with their toes sticking up out of the pastry.
The game proceeded with riotous mirth, till the sound of the great gong rose booming and buzzing through the hall, like some gigantic bumble-bee which had lost his way, and was knocking his head against the painted windows.
‘Now then, all you little Cinderellas, ‘cried Bruno, throwing off his bandage, ‘scurry home before your glass slippers fall off, for we have no princes for husbands in this country!’
The mothers and aunts came in from the tea-room, and swept up their belongings. Comforters and hats were pat on, gratitude for the treat was expressed in hearty rustic accents, curtsies were made to the donors of the feast, and then away they all went, ge
ntle and simple, tripping briskly over the frost-bound paths, while Lucille ran to her dressing-room to put on her dinner-gown.
There was to be no one but the family at dinner. Lord Ingleshaw had been dozing over his favourite Variorum Horace all the afternoon, hearing the clamour of childish voices and the prancing of little feet afar off, subdued by thick doors and tapestry curtains. When the children were gone he emerged from his retirement, and looked at the Christmas-tree, with its tapers waxing low, like so many lives fading out, and heard, with satisfaction, that his daughter’s festival had been a great success. He found Elizabeth May in the hall, extinguishing the tapers and stripping the tree of its tinsel decorations.
‘What an industrious young woman you are, Elizabeth!’ he said kindly; ‘I hear that the greater part of this tree was your work.’
‘It was a great pleasure to work for it. I never saw a Christmas-tree before, my lord; I never went to church on a Christmas-day before; I never knew what Christmas meant till Lady Lucille taught me. O, how happy and good it all is, and how different from the life in the alley where I used to live! I wish some one would do something for those poor children at Christmas.’
‘Surely some one does. There are good people all over London trying to help,’ said Lord Ingleshaw.
‘Yes, I know there is a great deal done; but there are so many who want help. There are so many dreadful holes and corners that ought to be done away with altogether; yet, if they were pulled down, where could the poor creatures go? There is a new city wanted in London — a city built for the poor, and owned by the rich. Poor landlords and poor tenants — that means misery.’
‘And by a rich landlord I suppose you mean a man who doesn’t expect to get any rent?’ said his lordship.
‘No, my lord; only a man who will give fair value for the money — a man who will see that his tenants drink pure water, and are not poisoned in their wretched houses. Let him be as exacting as he likes to get his due, but let him give us our due, and not take advantage of our helplessness. We must live near our work, whatever it is. The landlords know that, and they won’t spend a shilling upon the fever-dens that are always crowded — yes, even when death is the tenant one hears of oftenest.’
‘There are the Peabody houses.’
‘Not half enough of them. We want more, and on a humbler scale. My heart aches when I think of what I have seen the little children and the old people suffer. Those who can go out and work are better off; but those that have to stay at home, and huddle together in those wretched rooms, and breathe that poisoned air — O, my lord, how hard it is for them! I was ill once, and lay in my attic for weeks, and I know what it was.’
‘Poor creatures!’ sighed his lordship. ‘It is a hard nut for legislators and philanthropists to crack. We must get Mr. Challoner to take up the question next session. Well, Elizabeth, I am glad to see you happy and useful. Everybody speaks well of you. And that husband of yours — you have heard no more of him?’
‘No, my lord, thank God!’
‘So say I. We will do our best to protect you from him, come when he may.’
CHAPTER IX. FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH.
‘Some innocents ‘scape not the thunderbolt.’
IT was about ten minutes before nine, and the men and lads were coming lumbering into the great hall, looking just a little clumsier than usual in their Sunday raiment — a good deal of it new, in honour of Christmas; for it is well that such an important event as a new coat and waistcoat should be marked and, as it were, sanctified by some great day in the calendar, being so much easier for reference as an unmistakable date ever afterwards. Gaffer Goodlake would never forget that he wore his olive-green coat with brass buttons for the first time on Christmas-day. The sound of joy-bells would be associated with that garment for ever after; even when it came to be an every-day coat; going forth to its labour in the dewy mornings, and coming home dusty in the shadowy evenings; sitting under flowery hedges in the sunny noontide, and lying down for a brief snatch of slumber among the foxgloves and ragged-robins after the labourer’s frugal meal.
Lord Ingleshaw and his family were dining in a pretty room on the upper floor, opening into the long corridor, a good way from the hall, but on a level with the musicians’ gallery, where all those servants who were not actually employed had assembled to watch, the village-feast. The housekeeper was there, in her purple brocade gown — a gown bought in a long-ago period, when every well-to-do matron had her brocade gown — and which Fashion’s revolving wheel had made again the mode.
‘I never thought I should live to see brocades come in again,’ said Mrs. Prince, as she put on her purple garment, ‘after the run there was upon morees; but so long as I’ve got a silk that can stand on end for richness, I don’t care two straws for the fashion.’
‘That’s not my way,’ said Tompion; ‘I’d rather have a gingham made in the last fashion than silk-velvet if it was out of date. Give me style.’
Mrs. Prince, Tompion, Elizabeth, and all the housemaids had assembled in the gallery. In a separate group were the old man-cook — whose cuisine dated from the time of the Reform Bill, and who had lived at the Castle so long, and had done so little work, that he had almost forgotten even that antique school of cookery — the clerk of the kitchen, and a butler or two. Dinner was finished in the Wouvermans room, and the family were dawdling over dessert, so the butlers were off duty. The village supper had been cooked by the kitchen-maid, and was being served by underlings. The upper servants looked on at the festivities of the lower classes as at a play.
‘There’s old father,’ said one of the housemaids, pointing out her parent to her companion, as he shuffled into his place at the board. ‘I hope he’ll behave. He does put his knife into his mouth dreadful. I never care to sit down to a meal at home, though they’re ever so pressing. When one is used to having everything set before one nicely it makes such a difference.’
The chief gardener sat at the head of the table, and carved. He was a Kentish man born and bred; and though he felt he had left these rustics far behind in the march of civilization, to say nothing of having saved a good bit of money, there was a bond between them. They had picked hops together on crisp October mornings years ago, when he was one of many cottage-children, poorly fed and clad, bringing his meagre little handful of grist to the family mill. He had worked hard and learned hard, and had made the very most of his intelligence in an intelligent form of industry; while these other poor fellows had laboured with their hands, and legs, and loins alone, digging and delving, and bush-harrowing, and ditching, and never rising above the rudest form of labour. He looked down upon them kindly from his lofty height, and smiled on them benignantly, as he sliced the savoury baron of beef, and filled plate after plate with that substantial fare.
Elizabeth May looked down at the cheerful scene — the long tables spread with that fine old pewter dinner-service which was one of the glories of Ingleshaw, the big brown beer-jugs, the bonny home-made loaves on bread wooden platters, the huge Cheshire cheese at one end of the table, a look of almost Gargantuan plenty on the board. Mrs. Prince had taken Elizabeth into particular favour, and, sheltered by that ponderous matron, she stood quite apart from Tompion and the rest of the maids, who were sniggering together, with their elbows resting on the gallery-rails, at the uncouth ways of their kinsfolk below. Some of them had sweethearts in that rural assembly, and were interested in watching the vigorous manner in which those favoured ones despatched their beef and beer.
Elizabeth watched the scene with only a faint interest. She had been pleased and amused by the little children, with their fresh rosy cheeks and starry eyes; but these dull clodhoppers, with their gruff voices and loud laughter, their boorish movements and gigantic appetites, were hardly a pleasing sight. The old men, perhaps, were the most interesting; there was mute pathos in those bent shoulders, bowed with the labour of long years, that silvery hair worn of a patriarchal length. Were Abraham and Isaac and Jacob old men like that, Elizab
eth wondered, bent and worn with field labour, fulfilling in the most literal manner God’s curse upon man’s disobedience? or were they grander figures, masters of many servants, owners of flocks and herds, lording it over their slaves, and eating the fat of the land? That story of Isaac’s death-bed had always brought before her mind the picture of an old field-labourer, bent, and haggard, and worn with toil, eating his last meal with poverty’s keen hunger, and leaving a heritage of homely labour to his sons.
Gradually as she looked down at the lighted hall, she grew to distinguish the various figures, to identify and individualise different faces in the four long rows of revellers. There was one man, near the upper end of the table, whose appearance puzzled her. He was so different in look and movements from the others. She was sure that he was a stranger, for she saw that no one spoke to him, and that, although he tried now and then to join in the conversation at his end of the table, the attempt always fell through, and he remained outside the circle, looking on with eager crafty eyes.
This man was a Londoner, Elizabeth felt assured. There was an indefinable something in his every movement which belonged to the costermonger class — the men born and bred in London alleys, steeped to the lips in a city life. That ferret-like eye, that peculiar cut of the jaw, so intensely expressive of cunning, were never seen in a field-labourer. Those sidelong glances and bird-like motions of the head — the movements of a creature that is always on the watch, the movements of a bird of prey — she had seen them all among her old acquaintance, and she had never seen the same type among the Kentish villagers.
There was no reason that a London labourer should not, by some chance, find himself fairly entitled to a Christmas supper at Lord Ingleshaw’s expense. Yet the presence of this man disturbed Elizabeth, and she would have been very glad to discover how he came there.
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